Sisters Are Doin’ It – Photoshoot

Zadie and Zoeé are sisters – Zadie lives in East Yorkshire, UK, and sister Zoeé lives on La Réunion island, itself sitting close to Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. They see each other once every few years on average, and when Zoeé took the flight into the UK for a few weeks stay recently, Zadie contacted us to ask for a very special birthday present for her sister. That present was to treat the sisters to a magazine style photoshoot, resulting in fine art canvas prints for them both and their parents.

The plan for this late Summer’s eve, was to catch the last rays of sun in a local park, and shoot the girls, just head and shoulders (in a kind of back to back ‘ABBA’ style). Debbie and I set up the gear, which included the Bowens 400 monolight, travelpack battery and a beauty dish, whilst the sisters chatted and relaxed. We all had a bit of a laugh and joke actually as Zoeé insisted on being wrapped up in a ground sheet to keep warm in the dwindling UK sunshine (well, she is from a tropical island).

After setting exposure on the Nikon D700 (yes, we’ve gone full frame!), and balancing the ambient light with the flash exposure, we got the girls settled into the first frames of shooting. Using the evening sun as a glorious yellow and green backdrop we continued on, taking most of the shots along the back-to-back Abba girls theme mentioned earlier. We also grabbed a few frames of the girls flying solo as you can see above and below.

The outdoor shoot lasted around two hours from set-up to being back at Zadie’s flat chatting about the whole experience. Deb and the sisters grabbed a glass of wine and they sat round me whilst we reviewed the evening’s images on the back of my camera – oohs and ahh’s prevailed and we knew we already had two happy clients.

A few days later, I got to work on the post-production using my usual combination of Lightroom, Photoshop and a few secret ingredients. As well as the two main canvas images for Zadie and Zoeé (which got the full Dakeyne Photography magazine style treatment to enhance the girl’s already stunning features), I gave them a little bonus of ten extra more stylised images ranging from black and white, retro and ‘cinematic’ styles – just for fun. This shoot was actually my first opportunity to try the all new RadLab filter (this is an awesome piece of software and helped me provided some of these more stylised ‘looks’ at breakneck speed). As an extra special gift, we also made a DVD slideshow for the girls (video at bottom of this post)’

With sister Zoeé back home on La Réunion island, Zadie picked up her canvases and prints from us – leaving very happy she mentioned she was heading straight to her Father’s house to give him his copy. We heard back from Zadie the very next day – she said in a text: The first time Dad saw the portrait of Zoee and I, he stared at it for quite some time, then turned to me and said – “Zadie, it’s like having my two girls right here in the room with me” – He had a tear in his eye..”

How much fun would you have letting us photograph you on a Sisters Are Doin’ It photoshoot? And what a great present for family members too! – Book now by simply visiting our Contact page.