Cake Smash Portraits at Hamilton Kerr Studio

        Happy Birthdays, captured forever.

Capturing good photographs of your young ones special birthday can be tricky, especially with other kids, extended family members, friends, and clutter around on the day. Why not take time out either the day before or the day after the big day, and book a 'Cake Smash' photo-shoot with Hamilton Kerr. 

We provide a fun setting with lots of space to get great, natural photos of kids experiencing birthday cake, often for the 1st time. 

The expressions and fun action shots make a fantastic keepsake to treasure of your son or daughter. You bring the cake and we provide the rest, and best of all, you get to leave behind all the mess!

Our package includes a personalised montage of 16 squares. This is professionally mounted and framed, ready to hang. 

Book your little one's birthday Cake Smash now - 01575 573 052  or contact Louise

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Hair Photography by Hamilton Kerr

Photographing hair is a very specialist niche and is a very different approach to photographing models, in terms of lighting, equipment and expertise. We have many years experience in photographing hair, capturing depth of colour, texture, style, shape and theme. Many samples of this can be seen in our Hair & Beauty gallery.

It's now past the glitzy Christmas season rush and hair salons up and down the country are turning their attention to a spring season update of their photographs/marketing images, and in particular -  hair industry awards entries. Photographs are now a key marketing tool for salons.

It is great for long standing clients to see that you are constantly challenging yourself as well as keeping up to date with the rest of the UK, no matter how big or small your salon is. The press exposure generated from these awards is great both locally and nationally. 

Most salons these days have a website, they also have a facebook and twitter page too. Drip feeding your twitter followers with snippets of the behind the scenes shots from your shoot, building up to revealing a fully finished photograph is a great way to keep your followers interested and interacting with you.

 As part of our photography package, we now include extra images specifically designed with this social media marketing in mind.

Salons become a hive of activity getting their moods boards ready, gathering Pinterest ideas, casting models and finalising the details for a photo shoot to show off their creative team skills. There are many industry awards throughout the year, one of the most popular one is the L'Oreal Colour Trophy, established in 1956. This is one of the longest running hair awards in the UK. Salons can compete in both ladies and gents categories, as well as a young colourist awards and the recent afro catwalk addition. You can imagine the fun and the buzz in the salon creating looks to compete in these prestigious awards. We have produced photographic entries for  many salons and have had great success across various categories.

The Wella Trendvision awards are also a very popular choice for many salons. These awards generate themed categories and gather inspiration from around the globe. The 2013 themes are Fusion, Decibel, Echo & Allegra. The idea behind the categories this year was inspired by sound - The Sound of Colour. This is an extract taken from Wella:
"This year, TrendVision 2013 brings together the richness of the audio and visual worlds, igniting a wave of energy to inspire the artist in you, as you interpret the latest seasonal trends in-salon."

The images produced as entries to these awards are also a great update to your salon website.  Not only does it show that your salon is on trend, but hopefully an award winning salon too.  This gives salons an edge over its competitors in this very saturated industry.

There are many other prestigious annual awards too, including the British Hairdressing awards, Goldwell Colour Zoom, Matrix Destination and many more. 

Get in touch to book your 2013 photo-shoot now. Follow us on twitter and facebook too. 

Etched Self Portraits at Hamilton Kerr Studio

We are hosting an exhibition titled “To see oursels as ithers see us"  by local school primary children from the of 25th Jan -1st Feb.

This exhibition of self-portrait etchings by local schoolchildren was inspired by the line from Burns’ poem and made possible by local artist and teacher Maureen Crosbie. 297 children from Northmuir and Southmuir primary schools in Kirriemuir, Angus, took part in this project, creating etchings on acrylic using a dry point technique.

Always keen to turn her work and experiences as an artist into new teaching techniques, Maureen could see the traditional etching process with acids and other chemicals were not possible in a classroom environment. However, the dry-point method using acrylic sheet was one which could be translated easily to work with children as young as seven.

Using the line from “To A Louse” by Robbie Burns to inspire the self-portraits, the children’s work was of such high caliber Maureen decided to ask us at Hamilton Kerr to donate our space to exhibit the etchings.
We are passionate about the portrait medium and have taken photographic portraits of many of the children taking part. We were delighted to be able to host such a great collection of work.

The exhibition runs from 25^th January to 1^st February and the studio is open from 10 am to 5pm Tuesday to Saturday.

I hope a few of you can make it along to view these fantastic portraits.

Portrait Photography

Both Kyle and myself (Louise) have had a passion for portraiture for as long as we can remember. Kyle takes an illustrative approach to the way he produces work. Initially Kyle had an attraction for capturing interesting textures. This evolved into using textures as part of a series of creative portraits, combining the human form with naturally decaying textures.

Below is a perfect example of one of his well known pieces called 'Within'. Many more can be seen in our fine art gallery on this site.

Traditionally the portrait and the texture were shot separately on transparency film. The slides were then placed one on top of the other using the sandwiching technique. A cibachrome photograph was then produced with the 2 images printed as one final portrait.

This particular image won overall in the British Institute of Professional Photography International Photographer of the year, in 2001.









The style of portraits that I enjoy capturing are those precious family moments. We are often asked to photograph family members as a surprise gift for a relative. The feedback and reaction to receiving something so sentimental is really rewarding.

Spending time with families and capturing family portraits, especially of young children, is an area of photography that I especially enjoy.  It is lovely to see families returning for future shoots as their little ones grow up and new additions arrive. 

Now and again we get the opportunity to capture more creative baby portraits. This cute little line up was a group of 9 new Mum's who were all close friends. The studio was pretty crazy that day! 

We offer our portrait services from newborn babies right through to the great grandparent generation. For more information about booking a portrait with Hamilton Kerr call us on 01575 573 052 or leave us a message below.

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1920's Style Photograph

We were asked recently to produce an image with a very different kind of feel. The brief was for a 1920's style, with an up to date, fresh feel. The hairstylist producing the hair and headpiece was Louise Chrystal. She layered up the floral head pieces and created a shape similar to that of a traditional synchronised swimming cap, typical of the era we were aiming for. The different size and texture of the hair pieces added great shape and tonal value to the over all feel. We initially began setting up the studio as you would for a standard white background shoot.

Red gels were added on either side of the back lights. Initially these created a deep red, not what we were looking for, but it made for a funny test shot - this is Kyle at his best!

After a few tweaks we matched the tone nicely with the models skin tone and generated a lovely peachy/pink tone. The background could have been dropped in later in post production, but when working on a shoot like this, we aim to get the photographs as close to the brief as possible in camera.

Traditionally, make-up of this era was quite heavy and chalky. We asked the Make Up Artist Margaret-Anne to use an old English rose colour palette but with a fresher dewy finish instead. The rose pink cheeks and pale undertones work really well with the over all style of the image. Everything came together nicely.
I converted the file and only did a very small amount of post production. Whilst initially we were happy with the way the image was shot in camera, when I had processed it, I thought that perhaps it would look better desaturated to produce a more vintage tone.

The Saturated Image

This is the original photograph as it was shot to let you see the lighting techniques and the balance between the  background and the model.

The Final Image

If you would like to book your next shoot with us, please get in touch and follow this blog for up to date information and more creative photography blogs.

Red Squirrel Playing Peek-a-Boo!

We are lucky enough to live at the foot of the Cairngorm mountain range in Kirriemuir. Kirriemuir is known locally as the gateway to the glens.  As well as the lovely hills and glens we have gorgeous woodlands full of wildlife, including these furry friends:

Whilst in the woods on Saturday, I managed to capture a funny video - here is the link in blue:  video of a squirrel playing Peek-a-boo with me. It was amazing how close it came and how inquisitive it was.
Have a look for yourself, it's so funny. It was taken on my mobile phone so the quality isn't perfect but it came so close to me that the camera and tripod with 300mm lens was far too over the top!

This photograph on the left was shot (I mean photographed - no squirrels were harmed in the making of this blog!) in the low evening sun back in March 2012. I frequently walk the dog through Caddam Woods and I am delighted to say that the red squirrel population is definitely thriving in this area.

My favourite squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris) fact: They are mainly solitary creatures but when the temperature drops they can often be found in relatives dreys/dens huddling together and having sleepovers to keep warm.

If you would like to find out more information about the conservation of these animals and what you can do to get involved, please check out the Scottish Wildlife Trust or Saving Scotlands Red Squirrels.

As many of you will know, my other passion for photography is capturing red heads of a different kind - Hair photography. Have a look through our various galleries and please follow our blog for more squirrel activity updates, photography tips and recent projects.

Hairdressing Photography with Louise Chrystal

The first time Louise Chrystal and I worked together was years ago, on a shoot for a make up artist. Louise was styling the hair to compliment the make up looks. I instantly saw that she had an eye for what would and wouldn't work in camera. Since then we have kept in touch and finally we got the opportunity to plan a shoot.

Louise currently works freelance and was looking to produce some new images to use as promotional material to show a more creative side of her work. When we asked about the planning behind her shoot, she told us she was looking for photographers who specialise in hair photography, rather than general photographers who 'give it a go' with little knowledge of the hair industry or how to create a professional hair photograph.

Knowing that Louise had an early passion for architecture, I expected nothing less than a structured avant garde look. She delivered exactly that, and produced fantastic looking hair that I couldn't wait to wrap my lights around. This particular look was inspired by retro 80's pop culture with a contemporary up to date feel. The make up (by Margaret-Anne McKay) complimented this look perfectly with this seasons metallic hues.

Although the model has dark hair, we decided to photograph her against a dark charcoal background. Having worked with many hair models over the years, we know that lighter tones of backgrounds can wash out depth of colour within hair and can dull down highlights.

The model was shot against a charcoal wall in our studio. We placed a background light on the wall down low, creating a gradient effect from light to dark, we then used a blue gel over the top to tone the wall with a blue tint. We placed a snoot in from the left hand side of the shot. A blue gel was used on the snoot to create a highlight down the neck of the model, and to throw some blue highlights into the hair itself. This again, was to add to the 80's pop feel - the technique was used a lot in old school music videos as well as stills. A second snoot was positioned in from the right hand side to give the band of shine around the hair. These concentrated lighting techniques show off the over all structure of the hair style, and define the face from the background. The warmth from Nicole's natural skin tone was toned down in post production as a cooler skin tone worked better with the cold blue lighting effects.

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If you would like to book your next hair shoot with us, please get in touch and follow this blog for up to date information and more creative photography blogs.