Justine – Our Photographer

Twelve years ago I met Justine at a gorgeous off-beat place in Dubai known as DOSC or The Dubai Offshore Sailing Club. A little oasis of calm in a city of seven star hotels and six lane highways where we were both living at the time. Neither of us sail but were were very good at sitting around chatting while others did.

Justine used to be a model (the legs of Pretty Polly if you can remember them) and then co-founded Bareface model agency in Dubai which is now part of the Linktia group which specialises in a broad range of e-commerce solutions. In the last year or so she has turned full circle and gone behind the lens. Take a look at www.justinekirby.co.uk.

Justine is responsible for all the model photography on this site.

Last week we did our first Cleverly Wrapped photo shoot. I hadn’t realise how hard it would be choosing the models. In my head I had a vision of what I was looking for to reflect the brand I want to create. It can take ages to find that vision in the real world! Finding the female model Rachael was relatively straightforward. As soon as I saw Rachael I knew I had to use her. Finding a man that didn’t look completely self obsessed took for ever! Eventually I booked James Green who it transpires is also a TV presenter, but I had no idea.

Both models were a joy to work with, very professional and extremely attractive which made our jobs easy. It was definitely harder styling Rachael as with women you have so many hair, make up and posture permutations. With men there are only so many positions they can stand in when modelling a scarf and the only styling we could do was to add glasses.

The biggest mistake we made with James was asking him to do the beach shots first. How that translated in reality was that within five minutes of arriving this rippling young man was standing naked in front of us (with the exception of a very small pair of turquoise Calvin Klein underpants) and asking to have a sarong wrapped round him. That made both of us get the giggles and generally behave in the manner of a couple of star struck teenagers as opposed to middle aged mothers! All in a days work!

Justine has been the most amazing photographer to work with and we’ve had a laugh doing it. I don’t think that either of us could ever have predicted that we would end up doing this when we first met all those years ago in Dubai. Everything happens for a reason. I am already looking forward to our shoot for Spring/Summer 2015. Think we’ll have lots more male beach shots in that one!

Thank you Justine. x