Category: photography
Portraits: Marcus
Photographing theatre producer Marcus Bernard was my second attempt at an environmental portrait and this time the weather was on my side.
After our initial chat, we decided to shoot at the the Bunker Theatre, which has sadly since closed. I made a visit a few days before to check the light and agreed on a time to meet up.
The light, bright and sharp, was just the way I like it. I shot Marcus against the light at the entrance at first before heading indoors. We photographed in the bar, the back office and the auditorium itself, but my favourite shot was from the office: the mixture of ambient and practical lighting, along with the clutter and theatre paraphernalia within the room, really worked for me.
Later, Marcus requested one of the images taken outside, which I was happy to provide. I learned a lot about light in this session and I would love to further experiment with this in future.
Portraits: Daniel
Daniel, an actor, writer and director, was one of the first people I approached to photograph in an environmental portrait.
I had been fascinated for some time about Arnold Newman‘s environmental portraits, as well as the set design set-ups in some of Annie Leibowitz‘s portraiture, so I set about approaching people who interested me in film, theatre and journalism to photograph in this way. Daniel was one of the first to respond.
After an initial meeting and conversation about his work, we decided to take the photograph outside the Royal Court Theatre stage door. I visited the theatre on days before to work out when the best light would hit and we agreed on a time to meet.
The big day came… and it was raining. It was cloudy and cold. All my predictions and preparations had gone out of the window. Daniel and I met, got the permission of the Royal Court to take the photo and I got to work quickly.
Maybe a touch too quickly: I raced through a number of set-ups with an aim to get us away from the location as soon as possible without getting soaked. Maybe I should have taken a little more time on some different set-ups, or tried a more sheltered location nearby? But, this was my first attempt and I was learning. And I was up for trying again.
Portraits: Christmas Lights
My experience with street photography is limited. I like taking street scenes, but I find it difficult to take a portrait of a passer-by. I feel like I have intruded on the subject’s personal space: the few I’ve taken I’ve been loathe to display.
That said, I do love some photographers’ street portraits and I think that I should attempt to take more in my own style. Plucking up the courage to ask someone’s permission to do so would be the first step.
This was the step I took with this portrait. I was with my camera group, taking photos of the West End’s Christmas lights, when I came across this young woman smoking a cigarette. There was something about her calm, away from the busy-ness of the shopping area that surrounded her, that was fascinating so I asked if I could take her photo.
She said yes: I took a few exposures as quickly as I could before thanking her and leaving her to her cigarette.
Looking back, I wish I got this woman’s contact information to send her the final image. It was a pointer to how I could go about street portraiture in future.
While I realised that the street lighting on her face wasn’t satisfactory, an aspect that struck about this image was the woman’s relationship with her surroundings. This made me very interested in environmental portraits, elements of which I’ve tried to bring into my portraiture since.
Portraits: Amy
Amy was after a headshot for acting jobs and I was delighted to have the opportunity take her photo: her expressive features and personality were a great draw.
In the event, the photo session was fun, with us trying a variety of poses and set-ups in the soft light of the garden near her flat. Several choices were made from the completed image, but I always liked the cheekiness of her smile in this one.
The big difference with this portrait was the post production edit. Normally I just balance the levels in Adobe’s Lightroom Classic, but in this case I used Photoshop, to layer and retouch Amy’s hair and skin. It was a fascinatingly involved process and I felt it really enhanced, rather than distorted, the image.
Often I have used just a few tools in Photoshop and wondered how things would go if I made more extreme alterations with skin tone, clothing or backgrounds, but I feel that I would need to design the image in my head before shooting and post production. I hope to experiment more with this in future.
Portraits: Alistair
Some time ago at my old workplace, I made a habit of taking film photographs of work colleagues.
These snaps found their way to the dark room, where I made prints, the best of which I would give to the colleague as a thank you for letting me photograph them.
After taking his photo at work, I asked my then-colleague Alistair, who is now an actor and educator, to work with me on a portrait session. Since we lived in the same area, we agreed to do the portrait session at my flat.
Relishing the opportunity to really spend time on a portrait session, I tried a number of set-ups, with Alistair sitting, standing and at one point singing around my flat, but in the end I found the most interesting place to shoot was outside in the summer light.
I loved the way the natural light caught the details on Alistair’s face and in his eyes. Making prints afterwards, I spent time on tones and highlights, dodging and burning until I got the representation I was after.
Later I saw a headshot Alistair had made for his acting work by another photographer. The quality was stunning and I was inspired by it. I was determined to take more portraits to get to that standard.
Portraits: Alex
Alex was after a headshot for her blog and website and, having photographed her a number of times before, I was very interested in creating a portrait for a professional’s use.
On an overcast day, we walked to a park nearby her flat and found an ideal backdrop of a flowering bush for the photo session.
What marked this out as a different experience for me was how Alex and I worked out the next pose. Working from the communication aspect of her work, we aimed to shoot Alex in mid-conversation.
I was used to shooting portraits in a landscape frame, so the portrait framing and pose were new experiences for me. When faced with the choice of finalised images, Alex went with the portrait composition.
A journal of the quiet months
I was very excited to get my newly developed negatives and scans back from Photofusion recently.
The black and white films had been developed then scanned at a low resolution by the same darkroom I spent a great many afternoons in developing prints. I miss those days.
The four rolls of film were donated and probably expired (they could have been up to 20 years old): indeed, one film was partially fogged; but the results were fascinating. I’m stunned by the look of the photos: raw and stark, with blazing whites and deep blacks; wispy skies and sharp details. I’ll definitely be shooting film again soon.
There is a palpable sense of place and time in the images, from our Christmas tree to a friend’s late summer birthday party: a journal from lockdown to a kind of liberty. Crowds don’t feature and most of the open spaces and pavements are empty, except for the odd family member. A lot of photos are from inside my home, with shots out of the windows.
The grainy black and white images have an archival quality: they look like “the past”, unlike the crisp, colourful digital images I normally take. These film images, with their imperfections in focus, exposure and composition seem to look more “alive”.
It’s been some years since I’ve been in a dark room, but I would love to see prints of a few of these photographs. I could still arrange with the developers at Photofusion to make prints of my favourite images, or I could compile my favourites in a digital picture book.
I’d like to try newer film of different varieties, be it colour or black & white, or print or transparency, in my various cameras. In the meantime, I’ll give serious thought to which prints I’ll make out of this particular batch.
Dreaming in black & white
On being donated a few rolls of 35mm black & white film, I decided to run them through my Voigtlander rangefinder camera.
While taking photographs (and enjoying the immediate results) with my usual digital camera and new phone, I enjoyed the time spent on setting up photos with a film camera for images I will not see until they return from the (yet to be chosen) printers.
Its this time taken over that has been the most attractive thing about taking photographs on film again. A roll or two into this venture, while scanning a plethora of old transparencies, I thought both about the film images I took, developed and printed in the past, as well as the cameras I used to take them.
Towards the end of the recent photo podcast I took part in, we were asked about which photos we wanted to take in future. I said that I wanted to take more time over my images: slower, more considered photography, if you will. I thought about my medium format camera and how using it slowed down the whole process of image making. I thought about large format cameras and how precise one had to be in using them. I considered returning to previous digital images in order to refine them by taking better versions with improved compositions and lighting. In all, I thought about a photography beyond “snapping”.
This may lead to my taking fewer images, which may be a relief considering the many digital photos I’ve catalogued recently. The opportunity to really craft photos, for lighting, composition and subject, will develop my practice in extraordinary ways.
Realities
I’ve just completed a short film that I’d been working on for a few weeks.
“Realities” takes an idea from a science fiction feature screenplay I’m currently writing and imagines it in another setting. While I may not have brought complete clarity to the idea, I enjoyed making this short film and may rework aspects of the feature script as a result of making this.
Realities from Burning Details on Vimeo.
Two of my favourite aspects of this short film were building props and recording sound, the latter of which has been a problem in previous shoots. My next hope is to use more lighting, which I have also found difficult previously: short films offer great opportunities for experimentation.
Now “Realities” is complete, I’m going to make another short science fiction film, from a screenplay of about equal length. I have a few other ideas mulling around, as well as the opportunity to try some new editing platforms: I’ll see what new aspects I can bring to these productions.
Thames Walk
I’ve been transferring my photographs from my website to my Behance profile, mainly because of the freedom I have to put together themed collections.
The most recent one I’ve made is for the river Thames, between Erith and Greenwich.
Living in south east London, I have visited most spots between these two points over the years, photographing them on film and digital. It’s good to see them all together.
My hope is to get bigger projects made, not just collecting photos around a theme, but making them also: travelogues, that unify place, point of view and style. But for now, I’ll be collecting place by place.
Burning Details 
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