This is just a quick entry in between catching up on emails after a brilliant week shooting in Spain (more on that soon!). I just wanted to show a few shots from a photographer I worked with earlier this month (no link to his work online, unfortunately, but he knows who he is and this is posted with thanks!) at the Kennington camera club. I was sent these images straight after the shoot, just so that I could see how they look, but they aren't finished products, in the sense that they are intended to become cyanotypes and carbon transfer prints, and a chosen few of them might be put onto copper plates later this summer. The photographer uses the techniques and process of the Nineteenth Century (mainly gravure and platinum printing) and is doing a PhD concentrating on representations of the body. The shoot was quite unusual for me, in that it consisted almost entirely of 'acting' (more properly so than in the usual sense of 'modelling'); I was given roles to dramatise and unusual things to do while being photographed. I found it quite challenging, but in a refreshing way, and it was certainly fun! This was the first shoot during which I've ever been asked to be photographed while singing a song, for example! I love singing, but I'm pretty shy about doing it in front of people... I won't tell you what I sang, but it is a childhood favourite!
Anyway, acting adventures aside, I thought some of the portraits I was sent were very nice in particular, and as they are in the 'not quite what they're meant to be yet' phase (though, as I say, I think they're great and very nicely lit), they are completely unretouched. To be fair, a lot of the work you'll see in my portfolios and on here are also unretouched in this way (e.g. no skin work) and I'm a big fan of natural, simple shots. I hope you like them too.
