I’ve blogged before about the virtues of using your friends and family to experiment on. In many ways, there’s less pressure when taking their portrait because you can be open with them and they’re less likely to be damning of you if you cock things up a bit. They’re also likely to be grateful for the free dinners you have to ply them with in order to get them to sit for you.

So, enter Ed. In this case, he came to me asking for some portraits that he could use both personally and professionally, and he had a few ideas too. He’s a very outgoing chappy so I knew he’d be open to me trying out a few things on him. This would also be the first time we’d shot in our new house in Brighton. It has a massive basement kitchen that instantly lends itself to being used a studio. It also has a nice worn out Chesterfield sofa which is a great prop.

We kicked things off with some very formal headshots. Simple stuff, really. One shoot-thru brolly camera right (nice and close for that soft light), and a teeny bit of fill on the left. Hey I even managed to get a slight Rembrant Triangle in there!

Next up, the Chesterfield. I love shooting leather. Its specular highlights really give it a nice 3D feel. This time, we had two shoot-thru brollies in order to give the whole of the sofa a nice even light. Ed obliged by relaxing and basically hanging out on the couch.

Not to be out-propped by his photographer, Ed had brought along a wardrobe and a guitar. OK, let’s shoot the guitar, then! You can see from the highlight on his face that the brolly was quite high this time (camera right), and in hindsight, I wish I’d had a softbox for this one. A second flash was down low catching the guitar.

And finally, Ed proved he’s not just a pretty face by breaking out some tunes.

This one may work better in black and white, to be honest.

So, grab your friends and some props and practice!

I invited Joe and Leigh around this weekend for dinner. In exchange, they took part in a little photo project I’m working on. I set this scene up with three lights; the ambient was fast disappearing so I had complete control of the setup. This can be a good thing sometimes.

This was a test, as I’m proving out some concepts for a new picture I’m working on. The final thing will be shot in a very different location, in a different style, but the lighting concept will be similar. Unfortunately, I have to wait for certain natural conditions before I can shoot, but I hope it’ll be worth the wait..

It’s been a long time coming, but we’ve finished the Crunch portraits!

The prints were made and mounted on 12mm MDF by the awesome Spectrum Photographic in Hove and after a couple of nights of drilling they’re hanging in Crunch’s offices! They look great!

Here’s a little background to each piece…

The boss, Darren Fell. Darren’s a successful entrepreneur and Crunch is his baby. He’ll talk about it at most opportunities. With this in mind, I decided that I’d like to show him silenced, but at the same time looking boss-like. Out came some Crunch stickers to seal his mouth and bingo, the shot was born. I was surprised that he was up for this, but it paid off.

There’s a single key-light (a gridded snoot), camera right with the background blown out by two other lights.

The account managers. These are the front line of Crunch’s customer service. If a customer has an issue or a question, they come to this crew first. Tireless and strong-willed, they frequently face adversity but always show a strong face. The original idea only had four of them, but by the time I came round to shooting this, the team had doubled in size! I had envisioned a Kraftwerk album cover, Man Machine, almost with a Soviet look. Additionally, I wanted to show them looking strong, hence the gaze upwards. There needed to be some consistency, so I had each team member wear their headset.
Simple lighting for this one; shoot-through brolly – which is where the subjects are looking. Lights on the background to blow it out.

The accountants. Coming up with an idea for the accountants took a little longer. I discounted having them use calculators, or chew pens, or paw through ledgers – they all seemed too cliched. The accountants at Crunch are all young and very clever chaps, so I thought I’d parody those public impressions and have them reading a Dummies Guide to Bookkeeping. A little tongue-in-cheek, I know, and in retrospect a tad obvious, but they were up for it. The shirts and ties were purely for the camera; Crunch is not your normal accountancy practice and no one is forced to wear the normal business attire.
There’s a largeish softbox acting as the keylight, camera left, behind my shoulder. Then another light camera right to make sure their dark trousers retain some detail, and the ubiquitous lights blowing out the background.

The advisors. I really enjoyed shooting this one. A little background for you: the horn used to be honked each time one of these advisors made a sale. So I wanted to elevate its status to a thing that is to be coveted, worshipped even. The original version of this was ruined by my inability to iron a white cotton sheet (too many creases). So I returned a couple of weeks later armed with a nice red crushed velvet sheet.
There are three lights here. A flash directly over the horn; and one either side of the camera to illuminate the subjects.

Ops. This is the operations team of Crunch. They’re responsible for keeping the business running on a day-by-day basis. I struggled for a while to conceptualise their picture. Initially I was going to have them buried neck deep in paper shreddings, but this would’ve required saving up weeks’ worth of shreds. Then I hit upon the idea of them being surrounded by paperwork. Lots of paperwork. I set about making dummy versions of invoice, demands, tax letters etc and had them fan out from the team members. Conversely I wanted to have them posed in a resigned or even fed-up manner (at number88 we’re not big fans of happy, smiling people!)
There’s a large softbox camera left, behind the camera and two flashes behind the team members to light up the wall a little. I would’ve preferred to have shot this against an infinity wall, but as I was shooting all of these portraits at Crunch’s HQ, that wasn’t an option.

The four marketeers. The marketing and all-things-online team of Crunch. Clearly quite creative individuals and I pondered long and hard over this. Right up until the night before I shot this, I was going to have them sat on beanbags, surrounded by cups of coffee and all using flashy Apple kit. But during a dinner with my wife Lauren, she suggested that that idea was a tad too busy. “Keep it simple”. So I retained the beanbags and had them all do various forms of pondering over devices I felt were indicative of marketeers.
The keylight is a softbox almost directly behind camera, plus a couple of flashes blowing out the backgound.

The techies. This was fun. It was the first team picture I took (Darren’s was the first shot, but was a solo jobby). This is almost exactly as I had sketched it, many weeks before (I always sketch out my ideas). The leader, Nick, was supposed to staring into a monitor with a look of either massive confusion or just plain impatience. And he did it! I wanted the team members all aghast at what he was looking at. And they did it too! The outtakes from this are pretty damn funny! This was a bugger to edit in post, however. The black backdrop I used was nowhere near as wide as I anticipated so I had to cut out a lot of the unhidden background (windows, radiators, desks) using Photoshop – this is not my forte!
Dead simple lighting for this one. The monitor illumination is a flash pointing at the monitor and bouncing off a piece of white paper stuck to the monitor’s glass. This is in fact more of a keylight, but the fall-off meant that the team members at the back of the picture were dimly lit. So, I threw in a couple of other flashes on low power to add some fill. Bingo.

Lauren and I have just returned from a little Easter break at her late grandparents’ place in Normandy. My inherited French family is a smorgasbord of passion, humour, wit and character and they all make for great photographic subjects.

The family house, known as Bois Remy, is a beautiful Normandy cottage set in lush green countryside near Nogent. Its location truly sets it apart from other homes in the region. But not only is location key for a house, but it’s key for photography too.

Whether you choose to shoot a portrait in a white studio, on top of a windy hill, or on a beach, the location clearly marks the photograph in almost as important a way as the subject. Whenever I visit Bois Remy, my mind races with ideas for photographs; it’s just one of those amazingly inspiring places.

So, with this combination of great portraiture subjects and a great location, I set about creating some new portraits of my family. On one of our previous visits, I shot this sequence of images in the garden. It was a simple setup: one chair and a flash with a shoot-through brolly. Each picture took about 20 seconds.

Easy peasy. However, on this most recent sojourn I decided to repeat the exercise, sans chair. I came across this old set of shelves in one of the many rooms:

Now it’s worth mentioning that among Lauren’s relatives is a chap called Jean-Paul. Every photographer needs a Jean-Paul. Why? Well, he’s an ex-pap! And with that, he brings a wealth of anecdotes, tips and techniques (in fact, he’s still shooting – his main client is the Dutch royal family). I showed him the shelves and told him my idea (which was to place it in the garden) and after a little walking around the house, we came across a patch of tall green bamboo growing in the woods. “How about you shoot it in here? Make the shelves look totally out of place in this jungle-like setting?” Bingo!

So, we hacked away nettles and brambles to clear a pathway to the bamboo and set up the shelves. Then Lauren chipped in with, “And shoot it from this angle so you can see the shelves’ structure better” Great! And following my little chat with Noah Kalina (he nudged me towards using as few lights as I could get away with), I decided to shoot this with one flash. The sunlight coming through the bamboo gave me enough ambient and backlight anyway. Nice.

In the evening, as the sun was setting, we moved the shelves to the garden for a few more, just to see if my original idea would’ve worked out. Lola was itching to be my subject, and we caught this one:

Again, one light (bare, this time) with the sun giving me my ambient. It’s definitely harder shooting at sunset because the ambient is dipping rapidly, but Lola was a fast mover and never tired.

I just wish I could go back tomorrow; I’ve got my eye on the massive garage at Bois Remy – it would make an awesome outdoor/indoor studio space..

OK, so it’s not Friday, but I’m going to ignore that for now.

This short is going viral at the moment, and with good reason. One take. One take! And that’s not all. It’s a great story and the one take issue is used to great effect. Damn it, why didn’t I think of this?

This movie shows what can be done with a lot of dedication. It’s brevity hides its complexity.

Andy

Freelancers’ website, Freelance Advisor, recently interviewed number88 about online marketing and other related bits and bobs. The interview is now online. Go listen!

I’m a geek. There, said it. OK, I’m not the sort that beavers away at his Unix-powered, home-built PC every night, writing code for my own sick pleasure. Nevertheless I’m a geek; I like technology.

But above all else, I like science. Ever since I was about 9 years old, I was fascinated with space and rockets and mushroom clouds (I lived through the Protect and Survive years). I built my own reflecting telescope and hooked it up to an old Olympus SLR and got into astrophotography, taking pictures of the moon and getting star trail prints back from Boots (I miss my Tri-X days).

I’m a tad too young to remember the Apollo missions of the late 60s and 70s, but from the age of 10, I was writing to NASA on a weekly basis, asking for information on their space programme and the yet-to-be completed Space Shuttle and Space Station. Heck, they even sent me Neil Armstrong’s autograph once. But I digress. I came across this awesome piece of narrated footage some while ago and if you’re into rockets and power and slow-motion, then this should definitely get your geeky juices flowing.

Enjoy.

So I finally met the man. No, not The Man, but Noah Kalina.

Brighton’s Garage Studios had invited Noah over from Brooklyn to host talks, lighting & portraiture workshops and one-to-one sessions with whoever wanted to see him. When they announced this a month or so ago, I instantly booked some time with him, without really knowing what I was going to do! I mean, it’s not every day you get a chance to spend a little time with someone whos work you admire.

I decided, very late on, to bring in some pictures I’ve been working on with a view to getting his input. Additionally I wanted to delve into his mind a little about the way he approaches his portraits and finally, I wanted to take his picture (hell, I’m a photographer; I can’t NOT take his picture).

I turned up at Garage Studios to find a single table in the middle of the studio, lit with subtle red lights and Noah sitting there, ready and waiting. We went through the prints I’d brought along (yeah, it had to be prints. I mean, what else?) and Noah gave some great feedback and it wasn’t all praise either. His critique was well thought out and reasoned, and he gave me some great advice. Oddly, he confirmed what I had already been wrestling with; that my pictures are generally over-lit.

I then had a chance to talk about some of his pictures and find out a little about how he made them. He’s such an easy-going guy and you can tell he loves what he does.

After shooting the breeze a little, I whipped out my Canon and a single light and grabbed the shots you see above.

60 minutes flew by but it was well worth it. Can’t thank Garage Studios enough for getting him over and as for Noah himself; what a guy! Great photography, extremely passionate and wicked hair to boot!

Thanks Noah.

Andy

Thanks to the good folks at Brighton’s Garage Studios, none other than Noah Kalina will be visiting these windy shores this month. And to top it off, I’ve managed to grab some one-to-one time with the bearded man.

If you don’t know his work, go to www.noahkalina.com or visit his blog.

His pictures certainly sing to me; I like the natural look of his subjects, even when they’re placed in unlikely places and situations. And it’s obvious he enjoys his outdoor lighting; something I enjoy to do too. So, I now need to work out what I’m going to do with this precious hour before I meet him, and I’ll report back here once I have.

Until a few short months ago, I would procrastinate. Well, maybe that’s a bit too harsh. Until a few short months ago, I’d come up with an idea for a picture, sketch it all out, write it down in my to-do list and then dream about doing it one day when I had the time.

But this year, with number88 needing a kick up the ass, will be different. I’ve realised there’s no point waiting for time. Instead, I need to make time. And that’s what I’ve started to do and, as number88, both of us are pulling up our socks and getting our hands dirty.

For example, we started a project last year (codename: Diversity) and it started well. We’d arrange a shoot for the early evening, execute it and move on. But when winter set in and the late afternoons turned into evenings, all motivation disappeared. Now we realise that that was being defeatist. To that end, we’ve booked our next shoot for that project and it’s going to take place in early February; hardly Spring-like conditions guaranteed but what the heck.

We’ve also started two new personal projects, one of which we hope will be unique (a tall order, I know). And an idea I had a few nights ago is going to be executed this weekend.

So, what am I saying? To steal a quote from Starsky, “do it”.

Andy