Blog 24 Photo shoot 1 Hannah low key images

Here's a few photo's from my first studio session taken in the college yesterday Sat 27th Feb.


I bought in my niece Hannah to the studio as a model who was very patient and proved the ideal model. She's very friedly and easy to get on with. She's a student and saving to go to the states so slipped her £20 for the session but she was willing to model all day for that amount. Let me know if you require a model and you can keep all the images,no copyright problems as you get with some models.


I found it harder than I thought to achieve the desired results but with a little patience and persistance I was able to produce some low key images. I was quite pleased with the overall results for my 1st bash in the studio but hope to produce some better stuff next time in the studio


I'm not used to using a studio and needed a few tips from Steve and Eric. I was working in near total darkness so I would recommend an assistant to help with props and holding a torch etc. Pip gave me a hand and was great in assisting me with props,lighting etc.


Feel free to critique the images and give me tips etc to improve this kind of work

 

Blog 20 Done London where next!!

The magnificent 7

So off we went to London puss was in her boots, eric in his 3 foot high pom pom hat and Jim in his usaul SAS fancy dress outfit. There a funny lot but I suppose I kinda like em. I know they don't get out much but I think they enjoyed themselves ;-))

We all made a new friend the newbie on our course "Pip Plant Pot" ;-)) forgot to tell her that newbies always buy a round of drinks, shame the pub was chocker but there's always next time


I was hoping you girls would do some more photography down there but quess what, I caught you all out. I took this photo of you when you told us you were off to the museums


Here's a few pickies of the day and one I shot the last time I visited the NHM


You won't always find me lying around in gutters on my days out in London,honestly I wasn't nubbing, it's all in the art of photogrphy



Travel costs for the whole day in London were £13.00, what a bargain! Thanks Jim for driving and thanks to mr tour guide (pictured below)





Ok so what's next ? Landscapes- the lakes, the roaches? Cities-York,Cambridge,Oxford Bristol etc I don't mind you decide, as long as Iv'e got me camera a good set of mates I'm happy, so that's why I'm inviting you lot again :-)))

Blog 8a Photographer Val Tourchin (Low key Images)

Photographer Val Tourchin

While researching some low key photography and photographers I came across this american photographer. His name is Val Tourchin, he's a semi professional photographer born in Russia but now resident in the USA. Some of his work includes low light/low key images and I was particularly inspired by this part of his work.
He produces a lot of studio/model work, lowkey sport and fitness photography


He did a shoot on black Basketball players and shown here are some of the results

I love the way he has lighted this particular shot. Lighted from a side elevation  he has emphasized the players face which gives the subject very good form and detail with a nice catchlight in one eye. This particular shot appeals to me, it's very interesting how much detail there is in the photograph. Lighjting this subject just from the front wouldn't have given the photograph the same impact and would not have given the same effect perhaps from using just one light source from the front.

It looks like there were two light souces used to produce this shot,one from the side and maybe just a small delicate light  in front of the face as there is a catchlight evident in the model's face

I think the low key effect shown in this photo would not have been possible using a white person as the model. With the black face of the model and the perspiration on the face gives this type of shot a lovely reflection and glow from the lighting, something that could not have been possible using a white model

Shown below are some more photos of this photographers work

Click on the link below to go to this photographers website and view his images

http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/valeriy-tourchin.html?tab=artworkgalleries&artworkgalleryid=2748

Blog 8 Photographer Steve Pyke

Steve Pyke (under construction)

A really great british photographer renown throughout the world for his portraits of famous people of their time. A lot of his early work was captured in black and white using old Rollieflex film cameras using negative sizes of 6cm x 6cm

Studying his work has given some ideas and inspiration to produce some of my own black and white low key portraits. The results can be seen in my fianal 10 images of "low key images"

His photography is really outstanding the way he has lit his subjects which brings out every little bit of detail in their faces. He chose a lot of elderly subjects because their faces have more detail and interest and have a more weathered appearance making the photographs more interesting than using a younger model

I don't actually know who the models were they may be a little before my time

Steve Pyke Biography

Born in Leicester in 1957, Steve Pyke left school at 16 to work in the local textile industry as a factory mechanic. He became involved in the turbulent music scene of the late 1970's, a move which led him into his first experiments in photography. Pyke moved to London in 1978. He became a singer in a number of bands and was involved with establishing a record label and fanzines. During an extended motorcycle tour of the USA in 1976, he assembled a collection of Instamatic pictures. On his return he Xeroxed and coloured them and fascinated by the results Pyke purchased a Rolleiflex camera, and by 1980 had abandoned rock music for the visual arts.

Pyke's early work was sold to magazines and the music press, and exhibited from 1982. It helped to define the emergent visual signature of the iconic 1980s magazine, The Face. His first cover subject was John Lydon, and Pyke's predilection for distinctive, graphically adventurous portraiture was immediately evident. He sought to develop his style by joining the Film Centre Stream course at the London College of Printing in 1982, though he was an unconventional student, working as much on his own projects as college assignments. His independent mind attracted the film director Peter Greenaway for whom Pyke created photographic works used in his films, stills and the poster shots for A Zed and Two Noughts, The Belly of an Architect, Drowning by Numbers and The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and Her Lover.

More recently his work featured prominently in Mike Nichols movie Closer. It was during an early project on film directors that Pyke established his trademark portrait style, chancing on the little close-up lenses which when placed on his Rolleiflex camera allowed him to make incisive, direct images within the square 6x6cm negative. The first picture made in this way, of the film director Sam Fuller in 1983, was taken the same afternoon as Pyke found the Rolleinars in an Edinburgh camera shop. Throughout his career Steve Pyke has developed, funded and then published a number of personal projects which have given his work shape and thrust. Best known perhaps are those on the world's leading thinkers "Philosophers" and on youth identity as expressed through Uniforms. In the late nineties he completed the series, Astronauts, photographing the men that had walked on

the moon as well as related still life artifacts from the Apollo Missions.

Pyke is fascinated by collecting the Faces of Our Times, for almost thirty years, recording those who have made a contribution to the history of the age. He has made a touching series on First World War veterans and The Holocaust Survivors as well as a major study of the worlds leading film directors. Confounding those who would define him simply as a portraitist, he has produced fascinating still-life projects that include his Soles series and the Post Partum Post Mortem collection. There is also powerful landscape work, exciting experiments in collage and multiple imagery, and a profound body of humanist street photography.

Pyke has worked for many of the world's leading magazines, and published eight books which concentrate on different aspects of his work. His work has been exhibited widely in the UK, Europe, Japan, Mexico and the USA. It is held in many permanent collections, including the National Portrait Gallery, the Imperial War Museum, the V&A in London, and the New York Public Library. In 2004 Pyke received the MBE in the Queen's New Years Honours list for his services to the Arts. In 2006 he was made a Friend of the Royal Photographic Society. He became staff photographer at The New Yorker in 2004 and lives in New York City.

Blog 6 Photographer Rankin

Rankin      (Portrait and fashion photogrpher)


I find this british photographer really exceptional who has an incredible eye for detail. His work is renown throughout the world and is second to none. He has photographed many famous models, bands and celebraties even royalty through his career
He was invited to Buckingham palace where he photographed the queen, He said “ the palace smelled like a fusty old hotel”

Bio
 
John Rankin Waddell (working name Rankin, born 1966, Paisley, Glasgow) is a British portrait and fashion photographer. His subjects have included Britney Spears, Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Kylie Minogue, Leonardo DiCaprio, the Spice Girls, Holly Valance, Cate Blanchett, Damien Hirst, Queen Elizabeth II, Tony Blair[1] and more recently The Saturdays.

Born in Glasgow, he was brought up in St Albans, Hertfordshire.[2] After being expelled from school, he briefly studied accountancy at Brighton Polytechnic before moving to Peckham and studying photography at the London College of Printing, which he left to found Dazed & Confused with Jefferson Hack in 1991, assisted by a £50,000 loan from his father.[1][2]

He launched his own quarterly fashion magazine, RANK, in December 2000. In 2002 he launched with art gallery owner Alex Proud a photographic book imprint, Vision On. He also publishes Another Magazine and more recently Another Man. He continues to work in fashion, advertising and for magazines internationally. He is divorced from the actress Kate Hardie.[1]

Rankin has recently moved into film production with his project The Lives of the Saints, a gangster film set in London.

Rankin was recently the photograper for Regatta’s upcoming advertising campaign featuring outdoor loving celebrities; Bill Oddie, Janet Street-Porter, Michaela Strachan and ex-Blue Peter presenter Peter Duncan. The photo shoots which took place at Richmond Park, Hampstead Heath and a Scenic location in Yorkshire, were part of Regatta’s efforts to promote their forthcoming Spring/Summer 2008 range.[1]

In January 2009 BBC 4 broadcast his 1 hour documentary Seven Photographs that Changed Fashion in which he created his own tributes to the iconic images by Cecil Beaton, Erwin Blumenfeld, Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton, Herb Ritts, David Bailey and Guy Bourdin. He interviewed an array of original photographers, models and assistants, and used contemporary models including Heidi Klum, Erin O'Connor, Jade Parfitt, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, his girlfriend Tuuli Shipster, Mollie Gondi, Daphne Guinness and David Gandy.[3]

Rankin was also involved with controversial reality show ‘Britain’s Missing Top Model’.The show featured aspiring models with a physical disability competing for a shoot with Rankin to feature in Marie Claire. Despite being impressed with the winner, Kelly Knox, he was concerned that she would find it difficult to progress in the modelling industry with a disability.

He told the show’s website:

“If I’m honest with you, I don’t think the fashion industry will accept her disability. I think she’ll find it really hard, and an uphill struggle. However, what she should do is use everything she’s got going for her – including her disability – to make it work for her.”



In June 2009, Rankin was interviewed for VogueTV by fashion designer Henry




The link below shows a video of rankin being interviewed for some of the fashion shoots he takes on for Voque the famous fashion magazine

 http://www.vogue.co.uk/video/voguetv/player.aspx/exclusives/video,7971/