Bianca - portrait photography session, Oxford

Soon to be seen in Vogue (yes, really)

Hello.  Sharing some favourites from my shoot with Bianca at her home back in February.  I'm particularly excited about the shot above, love the soft light of the window on her face as she pauses to look out at the garden over a cup of tea and it has a kind of classic feel that I dig.  It's the image chosen to appear in Vogue when I'm in the 'Oxford vs Cambridge' article next month.  Exciting: now I can say '... as featured in Permaculture Magazine and Vogue' ;)

Bianca was after some informal portraits for professional use, and we worked together at her garden flat on a cold winter's morning, experimenting with a range of poses and positions, and two types of lens (my new 35mm f/1.8 prime and the 24-70 f/2.4 zoom for longer shots).  The location was a photographer's dream, with it's high ceilings, big windows, great decor and beautiful light.  A great space to work, and a fun shoot.  Thank you Bianca!

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Reeds Solicitors - professional headshot photography

Do you know a business in its infancy, or an established business undergoing re-branding and a website update?  I offer professional headshot photography for businesses and individuals, and am always looking for new and exciting clients to join my list of happy customers.  To find out more, including rates, please get in touch, and please note that I offer special rates for charities and not-for-profit.

I have neglected to blog about my work with businesses, so thought I would share some shots from a couple of this year's headshot sessions over the next few weeks.  Today here are a couple of images from my work with Reeds Solicitors, Thames Valley specialists in criminal and family law, from March this year.  I visited the firm on two separate occasions, starting early in the morning to catch the busy team before they headed off to court.

I used my beautiful 50mm f/1.8 prime, and chose a spot with good light and a logo at head height, so it would appear in the background - but only partially and slightly out-of-focus, so as to bring the images together as a set, but not detract from the faces in front.  Reeds were very happy with my work:

"Mim is delightful to deal with. She is professional and always available to help. She did exactly what we required and it took her almost no time!" - Reeds Solicitors (headshot photography of all staff)

A few of my favourites below (see Reeds website for full set).  Please note that for the client, the images were cropped to a uniform size and made black and white, like the first image - personally, I like some of the images better in their original format and so am sharing them with you that way.

Arun - informal portrait photography session

Hailing from the Old Smoke, Arun journeyed to join me for a one-hour session split in two between the Ashmolean and University Parks.  We managed to pick a sunny day, not quite sure how!  Below are a couple of my favourites from the shoot.  Thanks for a fun hour Arun :)

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University College Oxford - headshot photography extravaganza

In May this year, I spent two days shooting with 80 members of University College Oxford (staff and fellows), for their exciting new website, which will be appearing in August.  The shoot took a whopping 9 hours (we allocated 10 minutes per person), I took *a lot* of images, and the several thousand I edited were very well received.  'Several thousand?!', I hear you say?  Yes, several thousand.  Headshots are a deeply personal thing.  What you or I might think is a beautiful picture of someone, they might look at and only see that their chin looks funny, or they're smiling too much.  So when I take headshots of anyone, I like to offer each individual a good choice of image, so they can chose the one they feel works best.  I want every client to feel great about photos of themselves, and this is one of the ways I help that happen.

The dynamic and ambitious Anne-Marie Canning, Communications Project Manager at the College (and City Councillor for Carfax, as it happens - busy woman!) and her colleagues seem to have really understood the power of good photography, film and social networking in creating a buzz about a place.  They have brought in talented multimedia artists, like Kerry Harrison, to create beautiful images for their alternative prospectus.  He also created a series of short films, of which my favourite is this one, simply entitled 'At Univ...'.  You can also find a good one about the Master, Sir Ivor Crewe.  I was flattered and chuffed when Anne-Marie contacted me to do the headshots for the college, and it was great working with her.

For the shoot, we wanted a background which had a slightly different feel about it - not just the dark wood and sandstone often associated with Oxbridge Colleges.  I visited the college a couple of weeks pre-shoot and found the perfect location - a modern, glass corridor extension, with great natural light at all times of day, and built onto part of the original building.  The headshots were taken against a background of the meeting place between the old and new buildings, a metaphor for the new life the college breathes into the great traditions of learning.

On the day, armed with my portrait lens of choice, the trusty Nikon 50mm f/1.8, I worked with each individual in private for the 10 minutes allocated, to help them relax and feel good about what can be a daunting process for many.  I think everyone had fun, and I do know that everyone was happy with the results of the shoot, which is great.  See some favourites, including a shot of Univ Master, Sir Ivor Crewe, below.

“Mim is a great photographer and a delight to work with. She gets people to relax in front of the lens and captures them in a moment of genuine expression. Her portraits really helped us to show Oxford staff and academics in another light. The photos are professional, good quality and we had plenty of choice. The photos have been well received by the college community I would highly recommend working with Mim!” - Anne-Marie Canning, Communications Project Manager, University College, Oxford

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J.F.Penn - a headshot fit for an author of thrillers

The author J.F. Penn came to me from the smoke, in search of a new headshot for her novels and publicity.  To date, she has written two books, the 'ARKANE thrillers' Pentecost and Prophecy, both available on Amazon (both score an average of 4+ from the reader reviews).  Oxford features prominently in the novels (she studied Theology here as a student and frequently visits for research and inspiration), so the city centre with it's ancient spires seemed like the perfect setting for the shoot.  My brief was 'ancient mysteries, modern thrill' and I bimbled round the city centre finding possible locations for headshots that would allow for a hint of the familiar face of Oxford  (think Radcliffe Camera, the Bod, all that) in the background of a headshot at ground level - we had hoped to climb up the tower at University Church and shoot downwards onto Radcliffe Square, but the tower is being renovated.  Here's what J.F. Penn has to say about the importance of Oxford to her work:

"Oxford is a key part of my identity as a writer. I studied Theology here so the Radcliffe Camera was my library and where I spent my days studying. My thrillers feature a secret government agency, ARKANE, that investigates religious and supernatural mysteries across the globe. They have an Oxford base under the Pitt Rivers and Morgan Sierra, my kickass heroine, has an office in Bath Place near the Turf tavern. There are fight scenes set here as well as murders and chases, so I wanted to have Oxford as part of my author headshots. Mim did a fantastic job of incorporating the feeling of Oxford into the fantastic photoshoot."

So, below are a selection of my favourites from our one-hour shoot on a grey Sunday afternoon.  Joanna was a great model, we had fun, and I'm looking forward to curling up with one of her novels soon!  You can check out her work and website here - she is currently writing her third book in the ARKANE series, Exodus, about a hunt for the Ark of the Covenant as the Middle East counts down to a religious war.

Oh, and here is a really lovely testimonial to boot:


"Mim chose some fantastic locations for the photoshoot that resonated with what I was aiming for, as well as bringing her own interpretation. She advised me on what to wear and made me feel at ease during the shoot. It's never easy to feel comfortable doing these type of photos but Mim's friendliness and encouragement really helped. I'm thrilled with the photos and will be using them on my site and also the covers of my novels."
J.F.Penn, author. http://www.JFPenn.com

Over and out,
with love, 
Oxford headshot photographer