In December I travelled to Wicklow to photograph three generations of the Lawlor family in a beautiful house just outside Wicklow town. The photoshoot was a present from siblings Susan, Alan and Conor to their parents to mark their 40th anniversary, and all we needed to proceed with it was a date when everyone would be able to be in the same room (me included). That day arrived just before Christmas.
Last summer I had two photographic projects which I wrote about but couldn’t really share photos from. One was the Dublin Simon project which made it to print at the very end of the year. The second was a series of staff portraits which I ended up shooting in two pretty short sessions in the company’s boardroom. At the time I wrote a behind-the-scenes post about the taking of the images, sharing only a set-up shot showing the lighting. I promised to refer you to the images when they went live. Well, that time has come.
Up to now, whenever I’ve done studio portraits – or, to be more correct, ‘portable studio’ portraits, I’ve tended to do high key images on a white background. I really like that look, and it works especially well, I think, for child portraits, which I like shooting. But it’s not without it’s disadvantages. In fact, three issues with it come to mind immediately, best summarised as follows: it can be a big hard mess. Last night I started playing with an alternative approach to portraits, and five minutes in I could feel myself being converted. It’s quite possible that for my portraiture at least, black might be the new white.
I don’t tend to post many photos of Síofra here – at least not relative to the number of photographs I take of her – but this is one I just had to share, for the week that’s in it if for no other reason. We had some friends over yesterday for mulled wine and mince pies to kick off the countdown to Christmas, so it was fitting to dress Síofra for the occasion. And I know I’m biased, but how cute is she?! This being a photography blog I should at least give you some technical info about the shot. It was taken, as almost all my photos of Síofra are, on a Fuji X100 at f/2. I think I was at ISO 800, 1/125s. The lighting is available light – about 8 feet behind me is a large south-facing window which gives quite nice soft light, making this corner of the couch a favourite place of mine in which to photograph her. It has been through a straightforward RAW to JPEG conversion in Aperture, and I’ve applied a slight vignette, but otherwise the shot is straight out of the camera. She’s at that age where it’s not as easy as it was to get her to sit still for long enough for photos like this, but I get lucky every now and then. In this photo she’s styled by Aoife, but the cuteness is all her own. You probably won’t be surprised to hear that this photo is the wallpaper on my iPhone now, and may be for quite some time!
I’m sure there are lots of rules about portraiture that you could find if you go digging and one of the more important ones might well be: “Don’t forget your subject’s name”. ”Don’t forget to include your subject in the frame” might be higher up the list, but remembering his or her name is important. This is especially the case during the shoot, but also holds true afterwards. Which is why I’m embarrassed to say that I think the subject in the photograph above is called Pat. I think, but I’m not certain. But let’s pretend it is. Anyway, Pat (or whatever his real name is), won’t mind me telling you that the image above wasn’t really about him at all. It was more a vehicle to illustrate of a particular concept of lighting an environmental portrait with flash, and one that I had to fight with in Newbridge a few weeks back as I reached the end of another outing of my Taking Control of Flash Photography course, and as I raced against the clock and the setting sun. And as often happens when time is tight, not everything worked as it was supposed to. But while I might remember that day for all the wrong reasons – not least the technical hiccups with getting this photo, but also the loss of my voice – the people of Newbridge may possibly remember it as the day that the town was blitzed with speed cameras for about 5 minutes. Or so it must have seemed to the passing motorists as we sought to get the photo above.
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I hope you enjoy it!
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