CAMERA CLUB: Rasa MG on what to wear for a photoshoot

She set up Alnwick Photo a six years ago and she specialises in portraiture, weddings and photographing children, babies and families. Rasa’s images have featured in international magazines including Child Couture, Style Reins and International Kid Model Magazine. She has also won prizes and awards for her work too; most recently, she won first prize last year as the best children’s photographer at the Glendale Show.

“I love taking photographs,” she said. “I discovered it is an incredible language that doesn’t need any translation. I can position and set my camera to communicate what I want to say.”

With her smiling, easy-going nature and excellent results, Rasa has a natural talent to put people at ease. “I love connecting with people.” She said. “I want to capture their essence and leave them with

memories to look back on for the rest of their lives.” She told me she adores meeting couples, expectant mothers and families who are looking for something natural. Working together with her clients she takes the awkwardness out posing and “makes some magic.”

She is self-taught as a photographer although has an art background. She trained as a secondary school art teacher in Vilnius, then she moved to the UK. Rasa lives here with her husband and two

children who regularly feature in her photography.

Rasa uses ‘MG’ professionally as her surname as many people struggle pronouncing her Lithuanian family name. We talked about confusion over her name and she told me that people don’t realise

she is Alnwick Photo.

Priding herself on her eye for detail, she spends 2-3 hours developing and editing every image using Photoshop. We discussed one of the great misconceptions that many people have about professional photography. They see the photographer at a photoshoot for a couple of hours and don’t realise that processing the images can take days of work. Being a true professional, she clearly sees each image as a work of art and a long way from and instant snap with a generic Instagram filter applied.

Her biggest influence is Elena Shumilova and one can see some impact of that outstanding Russian Photographer on Rasa’s photography.

I asked what advice she would give to clients. She said that if people are having their photograph taken, they should think about their clothing. “Co-ordinate the style and colours with the location in

mind. Choose a colour pallet that will work with the environment where the photos will be displayed. There are some great online tools to help you with this, such as Design Seeds, Big Huge Labs, CSS Drive and DeGrave.

“It is also important to avoid clothes that are super-seasonal. Red or green scarfs may look great for a Christmas photo, but not right in the summer.

“Don’t be afraid to use a little bit of colour or pattern to help a photo to ‘pop’ but don’t overdo it as it will make the image too busy.”

She said that someday in the future people will look at the pictures and will not only notice what they were wearing, the size of the celebratory cake and the people present but all those details will

help trigger the memories of that special day. “You’ll be touched with those same feelings again.”

You can find Rasa’s work posted on her Facebook page, bit.ly/RasaMG or by searching online for Alnwick Photo. Her work is also often featured in The Northumberland Camera Club.