Barcelona is one of my favourite cities in the world. I’m not sure what it is, but I just feel at ease there. Earlier this year I went to Barcelona, but this time I decided to go alone! It may sound strange to a lot of people but I actually really like travelling alone, you can really get a sense and feel of a place. Wandering the streets of Barcelona on this trip really confirmed my love for this incredible city and culture. While I was there I spent a few days wandering with my camera, taking all manner of street style shots and being a bit of a tourist. I took hundreds of shots but I won’t bore you with those, I will save them for another time.

For this blog post I thought I would share some images from a shoot that I had set up while I was out in Spain. Before I travelled to Barcelona, I reached out to a model friend of mine, who was living in the city at the time, to see if she would like to meet up and shoot together while I was there. She said ‘Yes!’ So I had an incredible lingerie model, Irina ( http://legend-models.com/ru/172-mainmodels/portfolio/1154-irina-i-portfolio ). Now, all we needed was a location and a team.

I had been building contacts in Barcelona, from my previous trips, so I got in touch with Terri Altman, who is a stylist, to see if she wanted to get involved and knew of any locations in Barcelona that might be good to use for the shoot. Luckily for us, Terri has a great apartment that she rents out for shoots and also has some contacts in the city who she could source lingerie from. Everything came together quite easily in the end.

The shoot was all shot using natural light. I only tend to take a speedlight in the bag when I am travelling and also… It’s Barcelona where the sun shines for pretty much 300 days a year so it just made sense. Terri had sourced a few lovely pieces of lingerie for Irina to wear so the shoot was set.

Here are some of the results from our shoot…

I wanted to play with the different light that was available in the location to create a mix of shots. These small balconies made the perfect location for our first look. Irina had one balcony and I was shooting from another at the next window. The building opposite was blocking the direct sun giving us this warm diffused light that was perfect to create that soft look we were after.

With a simple change of angle, we created some images with a little more shape and mood. Irina moved just inside of the balcony and I shot her from inside the apartment making the most of the back lighting.

A quick lingerie change and we headed for the roof! With the bustling city below oblivious, we made the most of that Barcelona sunshine. I am the first to admit that I am not normally the biggest fan of hard light and I would normally try and avoid it, but it’s good to do something different sometimes so I embraced it, and so did Irina (with the help of some sunglasses). There was something I loved about the rooftop! Satellite dishes and wires all over the place, the perfect location for a beautiful lingerie model right haha???

For the final set, I turned Irina so that her back was to the sun. We were getting towards the end of the shoot but the Barcelona sunlight was still quite strong. I love a bit of flare so couldn’t resist letting a little creep into these final shots.

I’ve said it before but I am never quite sure how to end these blog posts! I hope you have enjoyed checking out some of the shots from my shoot in Barcelona with Irina and Terri. I can’t wait to go back soon and shoot some more cool images and meet some more amazing people.

I will share some of the images from my wanders with the camera around Barcelona in another blog post in the future so keep your eyes peeled and in the meantime, have a great week!!