story behind the still

It was great to be asked by Digital Photographer to talk through the lighting techniques behind some of my still images.
I don’t think of myself as a technical so much as an instinctive photographer. I love watching the play of light and how it shapes, highlights and contrasts things. I think I have more of a feel for photography than a desire to analyse it. When I compose a shot it’s like having a band playing in my head and I arrange the lighting like a man who knows his music but isn’t interested in how the notes are formed.
I’m in awe of the whole gear head thing but I’m more of a ‘get out there and just do it’ guy so see if you can guess how I took this shot and then click on the image to find out for real.

10 second portrait

It’s funny how you become known for a certain style, a certain signature ‘look’ to your images.
Encouraged by the industry that feeds you to define and identify that ‘style’, you find yourself exploring less and less avenues as you close down on your own visual eye and work on specialising your ‘branded’ identity.
Trouble is, the danger is, that along the way you lose yourself and it’s not until you strip everything away and start back with the basics – just you, a camera, an open mind and your own creative vision that you can start seeing again.
Recently I decided to give myself a task.
Take a photo.
Sounds simple doesn’t it? And it is!!!!!
But, sometimes, the further you get from that place you first started out in the harder it is to stop obsessing about the light, the location, the set up and just seize the moment to take the shot.
I’d been invited to a boxing match and after his fight I grabbed this 10 second portrait.
It’s not my best work but I like it because I took it.
I like it because I didn’t let the fluorescent lighting talk me out of taking it.
I just took it.

digital photographer

Rafa Botello – twilight portraits shot on flash

shooting professional athlete Rafa Botello for my ‘Twilight Portraits’ series of images, I had the shot set up perfectly and was all prepped and ready for that all too short window of twilight that comes and goes in a flash.
Here you see the light and the balance is perfect but I had wanted to make this a moving image and just as Rafa set off his tyre blew out and he had to do a quick change…Fast as he was the light fell faster into the night to make this much of a differnce but while, to me at least, the top shot is more technically well balanced I still prefer the moving one below.