The Edinburgh Walkabout – Pt 1 of 2 : Fashion Model Photo Shoot with Zan Phee

Recently I was lucky enough to visit Edinburgh for a commercial photography job, whilst I was there I took the opportunity to photograph the beautiful city and I also organised a photo session with a model. This first blog post includes the model portrait photos, part two will be the buildings.

I asked Zan Phee (who lives in Glasgow) if she’d be interested in modelling for me, and luckily she said yes – she even styled herself after our initial conversations about the kind of thing I had in mind. We decided on this stunning vintage outfit with accessories.

I  walked around Edinburgh in the afternoon before this shoot, planning which locations might work for these shots. I was definitely looking for interesting architecture to act as a backdrop for Zan, I wanted places she could interact with. I certainly didn’t want it to be as if she were simply in front of landmarks, smiling and looking excited.

We met on Princes Street, and our first port of call was Market Street, this gave us these beautiful steps to work with:

Zan brought a superb love heart brolly (from Love Umbrellas) to the shoot, and it caught the sun in a striking way. We were lucky that the sun was shooting right down the steps for us to use.

This location was a great start to the shoot, and so we moved on to search for other locations…. I spotted a superb narrow alley which gave us the atmosphere I wanted for a closer more angsty shot, even using some of the signage.

In the back of my mind for this shoot I was thinking of a David Bailey photo shoot from 1962 with Jean Shrimpton… Jean posed in busy streets, in shop windows and phone boxes in New York and it’s one of my favourite photo shoots ever… in a way, this shoot is a tribute to that NYC shoot, but in Edinburgh. These pictures were taken very close to Edinburgh Castle.

Spotting opportunities around and about Edinburgh started getting easier as we got into the shoot. A colourful red door? Perfect with Zan’s hair, red phone boxes – a definite…

We chanced upon a vintage train – The Royal Scotsman, which takes people lucky enough to be able to afford it around Scotland. It was a superb prop for this particular shoot, with Zan’s vintage clothing.

At the end of the shoot we happened to walk by a man with a puppy husky dog, we asked if Zan could quickly hold the dog’s lead and before you know it, she’s standing there with a beautiful dog! A wonderful end to an excellent photo shoot, thanks Zan!

Part 2 COMING SOON!