A couple of months ago, I had the privilege to complete two portrait shoots in one weekend. Both were completely different from each other.

Holly’s was actually the second shoot I did that weekend – I will blog the other one in due course, not to worry.

The weather was sunny, the flowers were in bloom and Holly looked great. Cathays Park is one my favourite places in Cardiff, and as such it’s often a default location for portrait shoots or general reviewing. It’s got some great architecture, beautiful flowers (which change throughout the year) and perhaps because it’s small, it’s usually pretty quiet, which is handy.

May is probably the best time of year to visit Cathays Park, as you can glimpse a little in these pictures, it’s when the blossom really comes out and makes for an even more excellent portrait backdrop.

Holly is studying medicine, and was very patient with me when I photographed her for quite some time and from quite a variety of angles.

I was using the Canon EOS 100D, which is, at the time of writing, the world’s smallest and lightest DSLR. Being a long-time Canon user I felt pretty comfortable with this miniature machine, and naturally I already had quite a few lenses which I could use with it.

It’s a great little camera which would make an excellent beginner DSLR for anyone – that’s not to say it’s not capable of capturing some great images, hopefully you’ll like the portraits here. You can head over to TechRadar to read my full Canon 100D review.

The black and white images were created in camera with just a little tweaking in post-production.

Hope you like these – as always, any comments, thoughts, suggestions and so on are most welcome in the comments box below!