rachel simpson

When you think of Rachel Simpson you think of the most beautiful, elegant and femine shoes.. shoes with a slight vintage feel.. gorgeous colours and cute little accessories... but when I think of Rachel Simpson I also think of the most wonderful, sweet, kind hearted, funny and most genuine lady you could ever meet. After first meeting Rachel when I was involved with the Designer Vintage Bridal Fair last Feb I now consider her a friend and when she asked me to photograph her new collection I was completely touched but at the same time... shit scared. Within the industry her brand is really well known.. in all the Bridal mags and on a lot of my Bride's feet on their wedding day so for me this was pretty mega. Rachel wanted photographs of her new collection (which I have completely fallen in love with!) for her new look book and for other publicity. I've never shot anything like this before and when she mentioned that we had the Grand Theatre in Wolverhampton as one of the locations I was doing both a happy dance and an "Oh my god.. can I do this?' sort of wiggle....

I had such a great time on the shoot... Rachel is wonderful to work with, the models Lana and Verity are bloomin' wonderful too and we had great hair and make-up from Make-up by Jodie. It's funny as it was also the first time I'd really worked with models and a brief and also the theatre was very interesting with regards to lighting. I'm more of a natural light photographer and although I did bring extra lighting I ended up not using any of it. It made me really work with what was there and I'm actually glad I didn't use any. The whole shoot was completely out of my comfort zone but it is true about jumping in with both feet... you can really surprise yourself with what you can achieve.

A few weeks ago Rachel presented me with the look book. I honestly cannot describe to you how it made me feel. To see my pictures in a book that I would have looked at not too long ago and thought of as completely unreacheable.. I'm not afraid to say.. I was absolutely filled with pride.

Please check out the Rachel Simpson Shoes website and she's also offering free delivery for the whole of August so I'd bag a pair now!!