Shoot: Josie Gibson

So at the weekend I was helping out at my mums charity event, An Evening With Josie Gibson. For those of you who don't know who Josie is, she won Big Brother 11 last year, and since then has been doing various presenting jobs on TV, and writes a column in OK magazine. She's pretty high profile and has been for the last year, and I had been asked to do a shoot while she was up for her official website, www.josiegibsonofficial.com


I had looked online at the shoots Josie has had done, and between Big Brother and the various magazines she's been in, she's had a LOT of shoots. I didn't see anything low-key though, and I didn't see any headshots that I liked. 


Now, I'm a sucker for headshots. If I could only shoot one type of image for the rest of my life, headshots is what I'd choose and its inevitably the first thing I look at when I browse a photographer or models portfolio. As a result it was a bit of a no-brainer for me as to what I wanted to shoot and what style. Low-key headshots, portraits, and then some natural light shots too, if time permitted.


Anyway, Saturday morning went by at a hectic pace, getting things ready for the event and I got ten minutes to set up the lights in the function suite a little before noon. I opted for a beauty dish, set quite high up, with all the other lights in the suite off to create a black background. Josie arrived and I have to admit she's a very nice person. Very sweet, very open and happy to be in Edinburgh. She was also very exhausted. 


Seeing how tired she was I opted to keep the shoot as short as possible and positioned her in front of the light and began chatting with her. I explained that I was looking to take a mixture of serious and smiley images to which she laughed, saying she'd only ever been asked for 'cheesy'. 


Anyway, I shot 17 images in the room in only a few minutes, and then we popped out to the hotel lobby where I turned one of their armchairs side on to the window, and took another five images. Total time for the shoot, less than ten minutes. 


Josie is pretty pleased with the images and so are the people who run her website. The response from Twitter has been phenomenal!! Bottom line - Happy customers, Happy Craig.