Wednesday, May 16, 2012 at 9:02AM A bit of a portfolio update has happened on the site to reflect the images I'm currently making this year. Gone are a lot of the former wedding galleries I had up and in their place are a wider selection of editorial images in black and white (mono) and colour.
A few of the signature indoor theatrical head shots I am now creating can also be seen in a dedicated gallery.
Sunday, May 13, 2012 at 7:59PM 
Stratus Cloud | Image © Tom Heller, some rights reserved | http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomopteris/You, dear prospective client, are a smart reader. You already know that photography is literally photo-graph-y from the Greek etymological roots of the word:
Without turning you into a photography geek I wanted to let some light in on the magic (ahem) so you understand why I choose my regular modus operandi of making pictures outdoors on dull grey days.
The Sun Makes Hard Light
It sort of follows in most people's thinking that you want good strong bold light illuminating the subjects in the picture. What could be better than a perfect sunny day to make a great picture, right?
Right?
Wrong.
I think this misconception might have its roots in the non-digital film photography of the last century where the common and garden photography films were not enormously sensitive to light. When the family camera was dusted off a sunny day was usually involved:
Sunny days were good days to take pictures back then because you loaded up your Olympus Trip with not very sensitive colour film for the best colour results and until the film was finished you were kind of restricted to bright light conditions. My family didn't understand the ISO rating system for films or know about more sensitive film stocks to do anything different. And neither did yours.
Do you remember those very hard solid shadows that featured amongst the cheesy smiles and noonday sunshine? Maybe you don't but go back and check, they are there. Not only on the sandy beach but on the faces of your friends and family.
Now imagine those same shadows on your face on your best-foot-forward theatrical head shot. Yuk.
Just to prove a point I took an image of the normally very photogenic Darragh with the sun high in the sky to demonstrate where those shadows land on the face. This image is taken straight out of the camera and would actually be more dramatic but there is a big silver reflector out of shot underneath his chin in an attempt to throw some light back into those dark areas. Epic fail.
Take any light source that is very small relative to the subject (and yes the sun is very big but very far away so it's apparent size is relatively small) and you get what photographers call hard light. Most of the photons are hitting the subject from the same point in geographical space and that creates shadows on all surfaces that the light source can't itself 'see'.
On a regular sunny spring or summer day the Sun will be high in the sky during the daytime so it won't be able to see underneath your browbone or the other side of your nose. So there will be dark pooling shadows there. And chances are you will have a passing resemblance to a raccoon or a panda!
Clouds Diffuse Hard Light to make it Soft
Most artificial light sources that photographers use produce hard light - they tend to be small point sources of light and are relatively far away from the subject being lit. Sometimes thats the effect wanted but most of the time one type or other of light modifier is put over the light to diffuse or reflect the light into different shapes and intensities. Light modifiers tend to get more expensive the larger they are for obvious reasons.
On cloudy days I am employing what is possibly the biggest light modifier available in the UK - the enormous stratus cloud. It is flat, featureless, grey, sometimes hundreds of kilometers wide and dreadfully boring but it diffuses sunlight like nothing else can. Its free at point of use and very often available for use in the UK.
All those photons travelling in a straight line from the sun hit papa stratus and get deflected every which way. Those that pass through (and many don't, which is why the cloud has a right deserved dull reputation) are coming in at all angles.
Here is Darragh again on the same day and in the same place but when a dirty great lovely helpful puffy white cumulus cloud blocked out the direct light of the sun for a few minutes. Everything has got a lot softer and those shadows have almost disappeared. On a properly overcast day they wouldn't be there at all.
So whilst a cloudy day means less light to work with, it also means much more flattering light for faces. No more panda impressions.
And so that's why I am often found outdoors underneath a big stratus taking theatrical head shots when many people think I should be hiding indoors waiting for the sun to come out.
Tuesday, May 8, 2012 at 10:39PM 
Spent a productive hour or two with actor Chris Brown today creating new theatrical head shots for him using my normal modus operandi outdoors and then in the 'studio' with a new lighting arrangement I'm trying out.
The new arrangement produces a very dramatic high contrast image that stands out even when a small thumbnail on a web site.
A confession about the 'studio' in case any rumours of studio acquisition start - its my garage.
Sunday, August 21, 2011 at 12:54PM ;)
This is the last in a series of photo sessions (the previous three described here, here and here) for some new promotional images for celebrity chef Steven Walpole and his agent.
The final shoot entailed making some of my signature theatrical head shots for Steve for him to use in web media. I find squarer cropped photos are all the rage as bio photos for 'serious' professionals and artists so this is what I had in mind. They work well in crowded social media sites too where high-contrast black and white images can stand out from the rest. The head shot of Steve on the left is deliberately small to show you what I mean. If you click that image you'll see a bigger sized version pop out.
As is my regular modus operandi we met up in a country park on a cloudy day using very simple kit (camera and just a few reflectors) and made images for just under an hour. I then took them home and worked on some of the best images in post-production to give them the feel that they might have been taken with traditional black and white film and cropped them to a squarer, less rectangular size as is standard for theatrical head shots.
So at the end of this series of four posts I hope that I've demonstrated how its possible to interpret a brief from a client in a number of different ways and then to create a some very different sets of images that can be used by the client in different forums.
Sunday, August 14, 2011 at 4:33PM 
So to continue the series of photo sessions (the previous two described here and here) for some new promotional images for celebrity chef Steven Walpole and his agent for the third session I traveled over to Steve's product development kitchen in the heart of Gate Gourmet next to Heathrow airport. This is where first class airline food is designed before it gets put into production. And Steve is the guy who designs it.
A kitchen environment is a familiar place for me to be but not whilst being a photographer. Come to think of it I think this was probably the first time I had taken portraits in a kitchen. Fortunately, Steve's kitchen is a long rectangle like a ship's galley and one of the long sides is mostly windows. So before I drove over I had decided that we'd go for natural window light rather than using portable flashes. A few test shots when I arrived confirmed that it was do-able on that front. Phew.
The results worked particularly well with the daylight because of the large amount of stainless steel cladding and furniture. Stainless steel surfaces=light reflecting surfaces. Lots of light bouncing about and a few portraits were taken using a steel table in the same way I'd use a photographic reflector.
Pleased this session went well because this was the most important of the four I had planned. It was important to get some images in a work environment that could be used outside of the context of Steve's agent's web site in other promotional material that would instantly identify him with his vocation.
