We all can feel overwhelmed by this idea of being perfect. In a hundred different ways I'm sure this is true. In a heavily saturated industry surrounded by incredible talent it's especially tough.

I've never considered myself to be one who strives for technical perfection; pin sharp, crisp light, counting every eyelash; it's just never been my thing. And that's alright.

Yes, I know, I can almost hear some of you cracking your knuckles, stretching your fingers, ready to blitz out a comment telling me otherwise but I think it's true. Hear me out.

We all fall in love with photography (or our respective fields) for a reason that's particular to us; something that drives us, or captures our imaginations, or just generally gives us the warm fuzzies.

For me, it's always been the idea of a story. There is something magical about peeking into the world of a fashion photograph, for me anyway. It's probably something to do with my bookworm escapist nature but I've always been mesmerised by the fashion story, the tale of the girl in the shots.

For you, it could be purely technical. You could have fallen in love with the shutter speeds, and apertures, and lens choices; you might love creating the world in print exactly as it's seen before you in minute detail.

That's just never been what's driven me. I don't think that makes one desire more valid than another, or one's art more worthy than another; that's just the way it is.

Over the last year however, I'd started to doubt this. I'd started to worry about technical perfection, I'd began picking apart my images, my kit, my choices.

This year I'm taking a step back. I'm consciously avoiding the pursuit of perfection. I'm going to break rules, and push boundaries, and try not to be swallowed up by the technical stuff.

With that in mind, I leave you with this.



The incredible Lara Jade for DigitalRev TV shooting fashion on a cheap children's camera.

It reminds me of the love I first had for photography; for the capturing of the moment, for the telling of a story, for the genuine fun of it.

I hope you guys are as excited for 2017 as I am. I can't wait to see what we all create this year.

Let me know what your thoughts are and your plans for this year! I want to hear all about them!

With love,
Rachael♡

Alright so, I have to ask, is it possible to be in love with a body suit? Because I'm pretty sure I'm in love with a body suit.

Hey you.

So recently I had the absolute pleasure of working with these two amazing ladies from Superior Model Management; Rebecca and Amy J.


Not only are they're both insanely talented young women, they're genuinely lovely too. ♡ In fact, the entire team on this project were incredible.

Hair- Kimberly Logie
Make up- Stephanie Milne
Fashion styling- Kayleigh Swan
Photography & retouching- Rachael Sammon

Now I know I've been away for a while but I loved this shoot so much I thought I would show you a little look behind the scenes- and the lighting details if you're into that sort of thing! If you are, grab yourself a cup of tea and let's get going! If you're not, I'll see you in the next one.x

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Alright, so, talking about it beforehand, we all decided that we wanted to shoot something quite slick and editorial. We pulled together our ideas and started building mood boards and each set about deciding what we would bring to the shoot.

I usually love to keep my light soft and natural looking so being the nerd that I am, I wanted to keep true to this but still have the light pop. Highlight-y, soft light, but with an editorial edge... Not that that's asking a lot of myself or anything!

Playing around with the lighting beforehand I decided on one of my favourite lighting set ups of the moment.


Does this make sense to you? I hope it does! This is how I find myself sketching out lighting diagrams, in a sort of aerial view, so hopefully you can see what I mean.

Shooting like this makes a nice big tunnel of light in front of the models, more than enough to illuminate the two perfectly, and it's feathered so you get that lovely glowing highlight. Of course I still wanted shadows and depth so that's where the black v flats come in. I genuinely don't know how I ever worked without them.

I also feel I should tell you that the white v flats were really, in this instance, two white walls. My living room, where I shot this, is teeny tiny so I just utilised the walls instead of cluttering up what little space there was.



Why those settings? Well, for aperture I never shoot more than 6.3 because I'm a sucker for softness, but since we wanted that crisp editorial look 6.3 is, for me, a good balance of soft and sharp.

In terms of studio light, 1/125 is a good starting point for flash and anything not requiring a specific shutter speed. And, if you didn't know (which I didn't, even after three years of formal photographic education) you can't, in general, go higher than 1/250 with flash. That's when you get the black stuttering bars on your images because you're shooting too quickly for the bulb and you're out of sync- or something.

For ISO, 100 is really low for me; I love noise and grain. Since we were talking slick and clean I didn't want to go all out, but I couldn't help adding a little back in in post.

Oh and yeah, this is the background I painted myself, if you recognised it! I still love it. If you haven't seen it, you can check out how I made it here.

I had so much fun on this shoot- I think we all did!

It was so great to work with Amy, Kimberly, and Steph again; it was amazing to work with Kayleigh and Rebecca for the first time. I cannot recommend these ladies enough. ♡

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Well, I think that's everything! It definitely was a long 'un, but I hope it was informative. If there's anything else you'd like to know, please don't hesitate to ask. 

I'll leave you with the final images; I hope you love them as much as I do.

I'm in the midst of a wee portfolio refresh so if you could let me know your favourite(s), that would be amazing; I'd really appreciate it.

With love,
Rachael♡