West Phillips

London: Simon, part 1

Added 2021-09-04 12:14:00 +0000 UTC

Simon and I met via Instagram while I was living in London. I liked his unique look and strong physique, though if I'm honest, I wouldn't have minded if the hair was a bit shorter 😂 Anyway, nice, nice guy - hair and all.

I'd always wanted to do a 'horse photo shoot', but have never had the chance. Simon didn't have a horse, but his girlfriend did and he was all in. She lived in the city, but boarded the horse at a farm well outside the city in the town/suburb of Pinner. We set a date and on the morning of the shoot my boyfriend at the time and I awoke to find that the weather was shit. After such an abnormally hot, dry and sunny summer and fall living in the UK, of course the day of my shoot would be typical English weather. The bf was helping me out with lighting, video and behind-the-scenes shots, so we made the long journey out to the farm (2 trains, an Uber and then walking) - hoping along the way the weather would improve. It didn't. All I could do was make do, so we tried some natural light and also some flash. Here are the first shots I'll share - quite a bit of photoshop was done to give the sky actual clouds and depth, as opposed to the flat gray it was originally. The next ones from this shoot I'll share will have the original sky and such, so you can see the difference! Poor lighting aside, we had a good time and I enjoyed the challenge of shooting a model on horseback - figuring out angles, placement and all of course while working with a moving, sometimes annoyed horse.

Pinner, England, October 2018