Hamilton Kerr Junior

We are delighted to introduce the arrival of our new son - Cairn Hamilton.
We have been off on maternity/paternity leave recently, so apologies for not posting any recent work.
We are now back open and looking forward to sharing lots of new exciting photo-shoots with you throughout the year.

As well as family portraits, we also provide commercial images for the Hair & Beauty industry. Our premises in Kirriemuir, Angus has a selection of landscapes and fine art for sale. Samples of these can be seen on the website.
We also offer a professional framing service. We have a wide selection of frames to choose from, suitable for your own artworks.  We look forward to seeing you soon!

Outdoor Portraits by Hamilton Kerr

As the seasons in Scotland are forever changing, it's great to use outdoor locations as a backdrop for portraits. The changing light also provides great opportunities for more creative images.
The Spring presents a beautiful carpet of bluebells, a perfect soft backdrop as seen in these 3 portraits of two young brothers. This was a great location, no too far from our studio in Angus. It was a great afternoon out for the boys and it produced some really sweet photos.

We were recently asked to capture the character of a fun 9 year old girl - Caitlin. Caitlin loves the outdoors and has such character that we knew the studio wouldn't show off her personality to it's best. After a chat about her favorite hobbies and places, she chose her local woodland and her favorite outfit (wellies included!) and we set off on a Summer's afternoon of fun in the trees.
Her Mum Jo came along too - and kindly sent us some behind the scenes snaps from her phone. In these three photos, you can see how we used off camera flash. This helped fill in any dark shadow areas as the sun was quite strong.  This also created side lighting when extra tonal detail in the shadows were needed.

Caitlin and her parents came in to the studio and chose their three favourite photos. We presented them in one frame as a triptych. Below is the finished design.

The recent introduction of Autumn colours makes for a beautiful, rich, red background for this dog portrait. The rusty tones of the Labrador against the foliage makes for a very striking result.

With winter now just around the corner, watch this space for some new shots, possibly even some snow scenes with families wrapped up and rosey cheeked.

For more examples of our portrait work, please visit the galleries on this site, we also have one dedicated just to dogs too!

Landscape photography by Hamilton Kerr

Capturing the scenery of the great outdoors can be a rewarding experience. Landscape photography is an excellent field of study that can be as creative or as simple as your own individual style. The majority of the landscapes here at Hamilton Kerr are by Kyle Hamilton. Kyle grew up on the Angus coast. He frequently visited the beach and coastal villages up and down the Montrose area. He often revisits favorite haunts from his childhood.  I (Louise Kerr) was brought up in Edinburgh, and still find myself drawn to townscapes and more urban landscape images. We are now based in Angus and are fortunate to have gorgeous glens not too far away. We plan to capture these throughout the changing seasons.

This is Kyle, perched on a rock at Loch Lee, Glen Esk, Angus, Scotland. March 2013.







What's in the bag? There are a few essentials in our kit bag when planning a landscape photo-shoot. A tripod is always top of the list. This not only ensures your images are as sharp as possible whilst out in the elements, it also gives you greater options for small apertures and slow shutter speed and ensures you can achieve broad depth of field. A wide angle lens will allow you to capture more of the landscape in one single frame. A polarising filter is great for both skies and water shots. It can make a fairly plain sky really come alive. It is great for both colour and black & white photographs. It also can help with water reflections. A neutral density filter will cut down the amount of light passing through the lens and give you more control if you require a slower shutter speed, essential for slow moving water and more creative images. Other that that, the rest is usually down to the location, weather and lots and lots of patience.

Using the rule of thirds in landscape photography really does elevate your images to a greater level of interest. It encourages you to be more considerate of composition. It makes the eye roam around the image more pleasingly, plus keeps viewers interest longer. Keep this in mind next time you venture out.

This is another behind the scenes shot from a recent shoot at Loch Lee.  You can see there is a dead ram on the right, with the Loch in the background. We came across this unfortunate sight along our walk. Although this was a particularly unusual subject matter, Kyle felt that this captured the true tale of the harsh winter that both the farmers and the livestock have suffered this year.

This is the final image, exactly as it was shot - in one single frame. 

We will post more landscape images throughout the year. We are happy to visit places of interest that are special to you and your family and capture an image especially for you. If you have somewhere in mind, then get in touch. 

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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