Blog
I believe the job of a photographer is to tell a story with the images they take. But sometimes my photographic adventures have stories that go beyond the camera, and I enjoy writing about them.
The posts below are a mixture of those adventures, combined with tutorials on lighting and printing, and all are designed to make photography more accessible to those with a shared interest in creating impactful images.
My love of a Black Backdrop and why it makes you focus on the person.
Photography has always been a mix of science and soul. This post is about what happens when you strip the first away and leave only the second, a simple black backdrop, natural light, and the quiet dialogue between photographer and subject.
I don’t think I’ll ever know which came first, but I have always enjoyed black and white and strong contrasty images. The two go together hand in glove. Part of that has to be down to my formative days, printing in my darkroom when you brought your own photographs to life and that, for me, created a bias towards black and white images. But I was also working in the industry assisting other photographers at a time when black and white photography was a singular art form and the models were treated like royalty. The nineties were chaotic, but looking back they were also golden. Plus the decade had a great backing track of some of the finest music.
Tutorial: The perfect hard light set up for studio portraits
A tutorial on how to create the perfect one light setup for hard lighting. This post contains portraits, behind the scenes photos and a walkthrough of the kit and the settings I use to achieve great results.
I first used this set up when working as an assistant back in the 90’s. It was a common way to do castings, a simple white wall and bare head positioned above the model would provide a consistent way to showcase the talent.