At the time of the shoot, Lauren worked as a fitness instructor at the Newhaven David Lloyd Club in Edinburgh. We were lucky to have some gorgeous weather and a room with a spectacular view.
It was therefore obvious to use that scenery as a background for the photos. We first started with some jumps shots for both of us to get warmed up.
I usually ask my subjects to wear something colourful as it works well in colour photographs. After the jumps, Lauren changed to a wonderful outfit and started to do flips. This is way harder to capture than jumps. The decisive moment for a jump is a the apex where the person slows down to a standstill. For a flip, the decisive moment is in the middle of the action, occurring at maximum speed. Needless to say it took me quite a few tries to get the shot below. In order to have the proper exposure balance between the inside and outside, I lit Lauren with speedlights. Unfortunately, at the time I didn’t not have access to high speed sync technology (I do now) and was limited in the shutter speed I could use. Therefore I wasn’t able to completely “freeze” the action. Nevertheless, in spite of the small technical flaws, this shot is one of my all time favourites.
There were only so many flips I could ask Lauren to do, so once I had the shot I wanted, we moved to more dance like poses and photos to finish the session.
by 
