Not commercial photography. Not advertising photography. Just photography.
Every now and again, it’s important to pick up a camera with no brief, no client, no commercial objective whatsoever. Just to see what happens. This post is a collection of exactly that — personal work, experiments, a portrait session with a friend, and a few holiday snaps taken on an iPhone because we deliberately left the proper cameras at home.
Tony
Tony is a friend and a client. We’d talked for a while about doing some portraits — he wanted something that brought out the character in his face rather than the kind of polished, softened headshot that corporate photography tends to produce. His brief to us was essentially: make it honest.
It had to be black and white. I had the lighting already mapped out in my head before we started — a single key light with strong directional quality, letting the shadows do some of the work. It’s a style I hadn’t shot in some time, and it was genuinely enjoyable to go back to it. No fill card, no softening, no flattery. Just Tony’s face, lit the way it deserved to be.
He was also up for some less serious shots, which is always a good sign in a portrait subject. The results were a mix — the more formal portraits have a quality I’m really pleased with, and the looser shots are just fun.
The motorbike
Tony has a beautiful, very loud motorbike. We’d talked about bringing it into the studio for a couple of years — one of those conversations that keeps not quite happening. It finally happened. Bikes in a studio present their own interesting challenges: the reflective surfaces, the complexity of the shapes, the question of how to make something feel like it’s in motion when it’s sitting completely still.
We used a combination of directional lighting and careful positioning to give the bike some drama without losing the detail. It was a good afternoon’s work.
Our portrait photography page covers our approach to headshots and corporate portraits.
Related reading: Photographers on the Other Side of the Lens.
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