one to one
Cosplay in the castle
James Artaius couldn’t pass up the chance to photograph top models in a stately home
James Artaius
Portrait photographer
Editor-in-chief of the Digital Camera World website, James Artaius has been a portrait photographer for over a decade, working with Aston Martin Racing, Elinchrom and L’Oréal.
Instagram: @jamesartaius
YouTube: @Artaius
As the editor-in-chief of the Digital Camera World website, I was recently invited to take part in a professionally organised portraiture shoot.
It was such a great experience and I was so pleased with the photos, I thought Digital Camera readers should get to hear about it. There wasn’t time for my magazine colleagues to arrange travel to the location, so in a slight departure from the typical One-to-One format, they asked me to recount my experiences on the day instead.
I have been a portrait photographer for over a decade and dare say that Digital Camera readers would love to have images like these in their portfolio. So what if I told you that they were all taken in a single afternoon? That I got to photograph seven professional models in full, production-quality period costumes and makeup. That I had the free run of a 19th-century Victorian castle, used as a filming location by the BBC and Hollywood studios and had access to professional lighting equipment, along with guidance on how to use it. And that all the above came with a ticket price of just £165 (around $215).
Hiring one top model for the day can cost you that much, let alone seven. Then you have to think about the cost of costume hire and the price of a professional makeup artist. And as far as the location, well… you can only imagine the hire cost of a Gothic castle that’s frequently hired by the likes of the BBC.