Sue Bryce, thank you! I know what beautiful looks like …

On my blog, I have displayed mostly images of animals so far.  Partly because it’s an exciting challenge (a bit like riding a psychotic horse out of a burning stable, you NEVER know what is going to happen in pet photography) and because I just love animals.  From a very young age I desperately wanted to be a vet, sadly that’s not how things turned out, so taking photographs of my furry and feathered friends helps assuage some of that lifelong desire.

I digress as usual, try to stay on track Moira!  A few weeks ago, I’m not even sure how it came about but I ended up watching some Sue Bryce photography tutorials on Creative Live and I was so gobsmacked by her images, her brand, her personality and way of working that I was instantly inspired to try some portraits of my own.

I totally agree with Sue who says that women want to look, younger, slimmer and gorgeous.  Most of the women I know hate having their photograph taken and very rarely are they satisfied with any images of themselves.

Halfway though one of the tutorials Sue said something that really made me sit up and take notice, she said,

“I know what beautiful looks like and I can find it in you because everybody has it.”

What a priceless gift to give to any woman, find the beauty within her, capture it in an image and show it back to her so that she can see it too! Don’t be mistaken, it’s not all beauty queens and stunning models, Sue photographs ordinary people in ordinary light and produces extraordinary images because she can find the beauty within.

To any photographers reading this who aspire to make beautiful images of women, you need to, immediately if not sooner, dive headfirst into Sue’s blog and devour everything that you find there.

One of Sue’s rules is to keep the hands soft and natural looking, “ballet hands”.

There must also be a connection in the eyes, a twinkle or tiny smile in the eyes has to captured.  This is a difficult one!  I didn’t manage to catch that in all the images I took but certainly in at least one or two.

This is such a fun image below…

The quality of my images are not even close to what I would have liked them to be but it’s early days yet and I learned a lot and had heaps of fun with my model.  We laughed our way through most of the session even though it was hard work for both of us and we needed a cold glass of white wine at the end of it all.

Would I do it again?  I think so.  Finding the innate beauty in a woman and capturing it in my camera, a noble challenge worth pursuing methinks.

All my love

moi ♥