I’m delighted to announce that I was recently signed by the world’s leading independent travel photography specialist; Robert Harding World Imagery, and my photos now represented by them. I’ll be submitting all my new travel & landscape photography here where it will be available for commercial and editorial use under rights managed license. Check out my growing collection here.

What you’ll need

• Any digital camera with a clock
• A smartphone (I use iPhone but most should be fine)
• A gps tracking app for your phone that can great gpx files
  • iPhone – Tracks (Free)
  • Android – Geotag Photos ($2.99 or free version)
  • Palm, Nokia etc – There’s lots of options available, just make sure it can export a .gpx file of your track.
• Lightroom 4 – An amazing piece of software for mac or windows and well worth buying anyway! You can get a 30 day free trial here

Step by step guide

Click the thumbnails for instructions

Summary

It might seem like a lot of extra work at first, but if you get in the habit of doing this with every trip, and make it a part of your workflow, it will help you build up a rich geographic library of your images!

Francesco Group is one of the largest, award winning hairdressing companies in the UK and their Eccleshall, Staffordshire Salon needed some new photos for marketing and competition entries. I was given the brief “stylish, beautiful and luxurious” and aimed to capture the hair stylists’ cuts and colours in the best possible light. To achieve the look I set up a full-size strobist studio in the Salon, complete with iMac for instant wireless proofing.

“The overall quality of the photos was so good it made the final selection very difficult. We were very impressed by the bespoke photographic style and retouching. Thanks for a great shoot!” – Kev & The Team @ FG Eccleshall

“We hired Ian to create a portolio of photographs that we could use on our website, printed materials and event slideshows. Ian helped us to choose the right conditions, and travelled with us to Shropshire and the West Midlands to find timeless locations. Ian involved us at every stage of the shoot: this is because Ian gave us his iPad upon which we could view the pictures as he took them. This helped us to change aspects of our Daimler and helped us all to get that ‘perfect shot’. Ian assisted us with the photographs from the planning to the poster creation and engaging with our printers: this holistic approach was fundamental in our choice to use Ian, as total solutions and continuity offer us not only value for money, but a seamless quality marketing approach.” – Terry Jenkins, Darwin Classic Cars

Andy Peters is an amateur bodybuilder and needed some new photos for an adonis body transformation competition. Strict competition rules meant that the photos couldn’t be edited, and had to be submitted immediately after the shoot, so I had to get everything right in camera and decided to shoot on a white background with cross and rim lighting to bring out muscle definition.

“I wholeheartedly recommend you get your photos taken by Ian Egner. He was friendly, welcoming, and knows how to make you look your best. He put me at ease, captured my best features and I was really impressed to see photos in high res as they were being taken, on the studio monitor. A definite recommendation” – Andrew Peters

The Lastolite Tri-Flash is a bracket designed to mount 3 hotshoe flashes (speedlites) onto one lightstand. Tripling your flash is really useful when you want to get extra power, or combining low powered output for faster flash recycle times. The bracket also has an umbrella holder which can be used for shoot-through or reflective brollies. I always use an umbrella to diffuse the triflash otherwise there can be problems with multiple shadows.

There are 4 versions of the triflash. The standard model (pictured above) is the one I own. The Triflash Shoe-Lock has screw locks for each hotshoe, but all my flashes have their own hotshoe lock. The Triflash Sync has a built in sync system, but all my flashes are wirelessly linked to my transmitter. Lastly the Joe McNally Triflash has rotating hotshoes, but all my flashes have tilt/rotate heads anyway so again this extra feature is redundant. If you use any of the canon ex speedlites or nikon sb-xxx speedlights with wireless triggers I’d recommend just getting the basic Triflash.

The one criticism I have of the triflash is that you can’t use it with a softbox, however lastolite have since introduced the quad bracket and ezybox. The triflash has become an essential part of my outdoor lighting kit. Whenever I’m competing with ambient light I find the extra power useful, and even if light isn’t as much of an issue the faster recycling makes shooting much easier.

Models: Rosie Burke, Vicki Cartwright & Lucy Carney. Makeup Artist: Harpreet Kaur. Hair Stylist: Bożena Starzewska

Bonus: Special offer – 15% off all products in the gallery before christmas with voucher code: 4F2C41

It was a very low-key, self-styled shoot with just myself and the model. The looks comprise of earthy tones set against the ruins of an Elizabethan manor in Shropshire, UK. View the full set below…

Ian Egner is a Professional Fashion Photographer based in the West Midlands, working throughout the UK. Find out more…

Footage by Simon Cole, edited by me.

See the photos here

Assistants: Lee Jordan, Simon Cole

Location: Church Bay, Anglesey

Behind the scenes video here

The Skylite is panel system for reflection and diffusion for outdoor photoshoots. The kits consist of a frame, handle, light stand adapter, double-sided reflector fabric, diffusion fabric and a carry bag. There’s 3 different sizes, 1x1m, 1x2m and 2x2m with a selection of reflector colours. I bought 2 1x2m kits with the sunfire and silver reflectors.

The main use of the skylite is controlling available light on-location. The diffuser can be used to soften harsh sunlight and give a cool shaded effect, and the reflector is used to fill in flattering light, even on full length portraits. The diffuser alone allows you to create a very soft commercial look but combined with different sun angles and reflectors you can get very creative for fashion looks.

The frame is made of lightweight aluminium, in 6 sections with elastic string holding them in order (a bit like a tent frame). The fabric attaches with velcro over all the edges to keep it tight. The handle attaches across the frame easily and the light stand bracket fits onto the edge of the frame and the angle can be adjusted to sit on top of a light stand. It take a couple of minutes to put together, and although you can do it by yourself it’s much easier with 2 people. When using a panel on stands, sandbags are essential otherwise the wind will really take it away!

My favourite setup is having the model’s back to the sun, with the diffuser to give a nice soft rim, then the sunfire reflector at the front giving a warm bright fill light.

Some people use the panels to diffuse or reflect strobe lighting, but for my purposes I would rather use a softbox.

Pros:

• Lightweight solid build
• Wide range of setups and uses
• Battle harsh lighting conditions

Cons:

• Aiming and holding a reflector panel is very very difficult without an assistant
• Each kit only comes with 1 bracket, you really need 2 to hold a panel up securely

The skylite system has become an essential part of my location equipment, for both fashion and commercial photography. It’s flexible and really helps turn challenging light into flattering light.

It takes about 5 mins to construct using a few plastic pieces, metal rods and the fabric reflection and diffusion material. Since I got them I haven’t packed them away, when they’re not in use I have them hung on my studio wall. They’re really really light, and are easily supported by my smallest light stands.

At first I was worried about it giving a hot spot with using a small flash, but the inner diffusion panel makes sure there is an even spread of light. I tend to use a sto-fen diffuser on the flash head too, just to add a bit more diffusion.

Pros:

• Lightweight, sturdy design
• Good performance, provides great quality light
• Only strip softbox available for hotshoe flashes

Cons:

• Doesn’t fold up/down quickly
• Quite a lot of light spill from the back
• Quite expensive if you don’t use rim lighting a lot

This has become one of my most used light modifiers and I’m really glad I bought them. Hopefully Lastolite will add pop-up functionality to the next version!

To license any of my other photos from my portfolio or blog for commercial, editorial or personal use, please contact me directly at ian@egnerphotography.co.uk