Portrait Session at The Walker Art Gallery - 5th July 2009

Some people are amazing to photograph - and Sunday saw the first of the Beaton Portrait Sessions in the Sculpture Gallery at The Walker Art Gallery with a great range of different people who were all fabulous to photograph. We even found our own Jackie O, sunglasses included, and these 4 photographs are each beautiful, taking full benefit of the gorgeous light in the gallery.

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Claire was lovely to work with - she has such a bubbly personality and so it wasn't realistic to photograph her with the blank expression you find in so many of Beaton's images. So I followed another of Beaton's techniques - allowing the sitter's true personality to come through.

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Friends Gerry, Greta and David gave me the chance to create one of Beaton's iconic group images, before photographing them as the married couple, and David on his own. I particularly love the photograph of David with his glasses.

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Beaton seems to have had a thing about hands - so I loved it when we had a little sitter who, just for a split second, hid her face with her hands!

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Not everyone was a willing participant - and considering that Peter had to persuade Sarah to be photographed, this is just beautiful! Sarah looks so peaceful and serene.

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This is one of my favourite images of the day - I love the way Anyas posed for me, and the way Damian is looking on from behind her - a technique that Beaton regularly used in his photography.

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A visit to the Walker Art Gallery to listen to jazz landed this pair in the Sculpture Gallery to have their portrait taken in the Beaton style - we were able to replicate two of Beaton's signature approaches. One of these is shown in the first image as Beaton would often have one person looking into the camera and the other seemingly distracted by their own thoughts or other things going on in the room.

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When you meet some people you just know straight off how you want to photograph them, and with this fun loving couple it was obvious straight off that they should pose in the style of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. I just love this image of the two 'stars'!

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Our final couple of the day came with an incredible link - 6 degrees of separation really does exist as we found out quite by accident that Philip has worked with my cousin Paul on the other side of the world in New Zealand. Such a small world!

And as the two of them were returning to New Zealand we took a few extra photographs for them to be able to have a record of their visit to the UK!

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Images from the session are for sale through zoe@zoephotography.co.uk - card mounted images are £15 for a 7x5 print and framed images are £50 for a 16x11. However, more important than selling images, we thoroughly enjoyed working will all of the sitters on Sunday - the next session is Saturday 25th July in the Sculpture Gallery at The Walker Art Gallery.