Simple product or still-life groups.

Chardin and Dutch sixteenth and seventeenth century artists did much to create the still life genre. It lives on today in product  photography and, to a lesser extent, in modern painting. Still-life and product photography aren't always so very far apart since both rely on artistry to elevate the commonplace. A jar of jam, my first light meter, or Grandma's vase, are all lifted from the mundane world and have our attention focused on them simple by isolation from their normal background.

The photos in this blog were done with the simplest of means on the kitchen table. Find a clean flexible sheet of any material.This can be any sympathetic colour, or texture, or surface, as long as its crease free. I used a sheet of cartridge drawing paper to create an infinity curve against the kitchen wall. The table is pushed against a wall with about half of the sheet of paper on the table top and the rest curved gently against the wall. Blue tack was used to fasten the paper in place. From the side it looks like a letter 'L' lying on its back.

To the left of the picture another sheet of white paper or card was used as a reflector....you could use a Lastolite or the dull side of kitchen foil stuck to cardboard with double sided sellotape. Foil would give a slightly harder light.

Lighting was as simple as it gets: window light coming through the kitchen door on the right hand side of the picture. Most of the kitchen is painted white so its filled with a soft light everywhere. Its important that you don't have shafts of strong sunlight coming into your picture area. A tripod was used and the mirror locked up in my camera to make sure that there was absolutely no camera shake. Many cameras do not have this facility. If yours doesn't just try not to jolt the camera when pressing the shutter. Thus the lighting was soft but the exposure very sharp.

If a tripod isn't available then increase the ISO number to about 400 or even higher and you should have just enough light to do a hand held shot. Do not let the speed fall below a sixtieth of a second. Remember that a photo that appears sharp when reviewed on the back of your camera will often be out of focus when enlarged to print size.

Almost anything can be used as subject matter, flowers, old tools, car parts, cakes, works of art, old toys, fishing tackle, medals, jewelery, collections of cups and saucers, babies shoes etc. This very simple background and lighting system is excellent for the type of small item sold on eBay that benefits from better presentation for online retailing.

Little Angels ...

For art historians much of the 1980's was preoccupied with rewriting the history of photography. Out went a long continuum of facts and dates and in came a new approach based on the then popular philosophies of structuralism and semiotics. It was argued that all things had many levels of meaning and that these meanings were continually developed by society. A n experience could be interpreted at its literal or factual level and as a metaphor for something else. All things were subject to this type of analysis and as a result there was much debate about meanings in photographs. A photograph of a man dressed as John Bull could imply all sorts of meanings from sentimental popular culture, to anti common market politics, to English beef, to winning the football World Cup, to a traditional beer, saving stamps or to extreme rightwing politics. The meanings mutated and evolved with each new context the same picture was associated with.

In my studio last weekend I had the privilege of working on a family portrait shoot. There was a baby girl of 13 months, quite able to walk around the studio, and her five year old sister. The toddler was intent on running from person to person in the studio making a nonsense of my carefully worked out lighting plan where each family group would be posed the optimum distance from the flash lights. The studio flash lighting did not seem to bother her very much. The difficulty was to get the baby stationary at the right distance from the lights. Her parents tried picking her up and this was moderately successful for a time until she felt it necessary to try her newly acquired walking skills. Then the five year old did a few tricks I had long forgotten about with a hula hoop that had been in the studio unused for years. Little Anna found the solution to my problem by getting her baby sister to play with her inside the hoop thus allowing me a little more time to focus on positioning them in relation to the lights. If you are trying to photograph very young children find ways of keeping them in a fixed place. The pictures began to appear on the monitor, as the shoot progressed. I was transported in my mind back to my student days in the late 1980's

The hula hoop had transformed itself from an outdated toy and taken on a new reality in my picture. The baby was no longer a client's baby. The hoop had transformed her from another child to a different level altogether. The hoop became a halo and baby an angel in modern dress. She would have been comfortably at home in one of Giotto's paintings. There aren't many jobs where this sort of thing happens on a drizzling bank holiday afternoon.

A Passion For Portraits

It's always nice to work with enthusiasts, people who have a passion. They bring a vitality to any shoot. Gareth is a young man passionate about his python, Amy, who he has been carefully looking after for some considerable time. They allowed me to take their portraits together. I should confess that prior to the shoot I had very little experience of working with snakes as big as Amy. At ten feet long, she is considerably bigger than any snake I have come across before.

Amy looked at me with her liquid black eyes and twisted herself around Gary's torso in a languid way. Despite being silent, she was the dominating presence in the room. Amy was relaxed about the whole affair, seemingly indifferent to my light boxes and the people around her. She had a remarkable skin, flawless in every detail, rich in texture and pattern, with beautiful colouring and a soft sheen all over.

I have done a number of photographic shoots with snakes previously, but Amy's size made her a different order of things. Despite repeated attempts to get her to pose in a particular way, Amy simply ignored us and continually moved her head out of sight of the camera. All I could do was be patient and quickly take pictures when she positioned her head how I wanted it. Far from being a ‘decisive moment’, it was more like an hour of unresolved ideas. In my experience, good images don’t come easily, planning, preparation and patience all play their part.

Gary and Amy will go into a collection of people and their companion animals that I've been working for ten years or more. I like working with the wealth of creativity hidden across the length and breadth of suburban England. People who build their lives around their pets, their tattoos, their art, the music they make, who reorganize their households to have a special space set aside for their fascination. The list goes on and on and gives me endless opportunities for working creatively with other people.

Wedding Photography

Photographing weddings has more variety than most people realize. No two weddings are ever exactly alike, even when they are booked as the same wedding package and shot by the same photographer.

One of the weddings I did last year was for a couple who took full advantage of the extended services that I can offer my wedding clients.

Parisa and Warren visited my studio a couple of weeks after their wedding to add a series of more posed portrait pictures to their very informal wedding pictures.

Parisa was rewarded with some fine prints of her dress showing all its beautiful details, since studio lighting can be controlled in very precise ways that are impossible “on the run”. Most wedding photographers can’t offer a shoot like this simply because they don't have a studio available for them to do this more planned and considered kind of photography.

Contrast this with her being carried along Chelsea High Street by Warren just after their wedding - a completely spontaneous event that’s never happened at any other wedding I've photographed. Spare a thought for myself running after them, trying not to fall over, concentrating on making the picture, getting the exposure right, the focus sharp - all while crossing Chelsea High Street on a Saturday afternoon.

If you like what you've seen here, you can contact me, David Turner, on 01494 483887 , and we can talk about how I can make your wedding day special.