Woodland spiritual – documentary portrait photography

A photo shoot in woodland and in Derbyshire, amongst ferns and silver birch to capture documentary portrait photography of my client.  This shoot, part of many for Julie Anne, was an illustration of a different dimension of her brand. She is an inspirational speaker, but her retreats also engage with the spiritual and ritual. The brief was to create a sense of environment whilst capturing certain moments of the ritual.  The style was of something more fluid and less staged and the capture of her alone in a quiet space. We achieved this by the repetition of certain movements and rituals over and over so that I could observe, shoot and review. I used the tree in the foreground, in some of the shots, with subtle use of fill-in flash, to suggest boundaries, ie the onlooker is on the outside of the frame, whilst my client is on the inside; this adds to the privacy of the moment.

By Tracy