Street Portraiture

After watching a recent Wired Magazine video blog post by Watchmen Photographer Clay Enos, I was inspired to get out on the street and try some portraits with the public, on Thursday this week I set out to find a nice shady spot in Bournemouth town center with a plain wall as a back ground, I was looking to take fairly honest ambient light portraits, concentrating more on the convincing them to have a shot taken that anything fancy at this stage.

I was very surprised to find that It didn't take much to get over 60 varied portraits before I lost the light. I am really happy with my first results and met some great characters along the way. I will definitely be doing this again very soon and will try to introduce some of my own creative slant to proceedings.

Ive processed a couple below, take a look and let me know what you think in the comments.


Clay Enos Street Studio

Published Assist: Volt Magazine

Independant fashion and beauty magazine Volt has just released their September issue (no. 6) and I was lucky enough to work with beauty and advertising photographer Iain Crawford on the shoot. The A3 unbound format of Volt really shows off the fantastically detailed textures that ran through the shoots flowing liquid themes. I really love the colour pallette of the shoot, it was hard work but qell worth it for the results.



You can see more of Iain's fantastic work HERE

Volt Magazine available online and in store at Borders

Instant Artistic crediblity: the easy way...

Having moved back to Bournemouth today and I found this literary gem on A Photo Editors Blog. Genius, this will definitely come in handy in this terms critical evaluations and portfolio reviews.

Deeply memorable insights include:

"With regard to the issue of content, the disjunctive perturbation of the spatial relationships brings within the realm of discourse the distinctive formal juxtapositions."

and:

"Although I am not a painter, I think that the reductive quality of the spatial relationships contextualize a participation in the critical dialogue of the 90s. "

The Instant Art Critique Phrase Generator by Pixmaven

Strobist DIY Beauty Dish, UK

A while ago I began the process of building my own 13 inch beauty dish for use on my portraiture and fashion projects. I vaguely remember promising that I would blog about the build, so here it is only six months late!

I love the soft but directional light a beauty dish casts and really wanted to achieve this look on location with my Strobist style off camera lighting set up, which currently consists of three Sunpak auto 30 dx manual flash guns, Radio Triggers and numerous light modifiers.

My project began by cobbling together the bits and pieces I would need to create a beauty dish. I used David Tejada's excellent instructions, although not living in the U.S. I made my own modifications to account for a lack of home depot.




















My first modification was to use a steel mixing bowl (from Wilkinsons £1.20), I found this slightly lighter than the thick plastic David favored, The polished steel surface of the interior of the bowl also maximizes the amount of reflected light (quite important as the flash will be used with small low-powered flash guns) and saved me shelling out for white spray paint which I was worried might scratch off with heavy use. Like David I opted for a 3 1/2 inch reversing mirror (eBay £4 delivered); rather than mounting in a CD case housing I went all out and had a transparent acrylic mount cut at college with three arms that attach to the outside of the dish (£0 off cut from a scrap pile), this allowed for the mirror to be held at a decent height without cutting down the reflected light leaving the dish.



















For the flash mount, I cut a hole in the base of the dish just big enough for the flash guns head to fit through snugly and covered the sharp edges with electrical tape. I then added a 62mm steel hinge (£2.49 for two at Homebase) to one side of the opening on the outside of the dish, to act as the locking mechanism for holding the flash in place. I attached a Velcro strip (£1 for a 5m roll on eBay) to the inside of the free hinge plate and a matching strip on the flash gun. On the opposite side of the opening I placed a second strip of Velcro directly onto the base of the dish and an opposing strip on the body on my flash gun. This firmly holds the gun in place with the flash placed in a standard right angle position. This hinge mechanism works great and as the hinge closes flat it makes storage footprint of the dish much easier to manage, especially useful as I will be using it primarily on location.



















When using beauty dishes in the studio I have found that a diffusion panel really adds to the soft delicate shadows that beauty dishes are favored for. For my diffusion material I choose gardening fleece, which is a white semi-transparent fiber based material used to protect gardens from heavy frosts, this can be picked up cheaply at most garden centres in the UK ( I paid £1 for a 2m by 2m roll at Homebase).


Attaching the diffusion material proved relativity easily I stretched three elastic bands (£0 found at bottom of drawer) between the bolts protruding from the mirrors acrylic housing where it my the edge of the dish. These elastic bands provide an easy way to secure the diffusion material and any other modifier I might want to put onto the light. The elastic fastening also means that I don't have to damage my diffuser when attaching or removing it, so hopefully the material will last longer.

To finish off I masked up the flash head opening and sprayed the outside matte black (matte enamel spray £3 at Homebase) and voila my very own portable beauty dish, total cost £12.69!



Examples shots to follow shortly after anybody from my unsuspecting family returns...