Jay

This is my good friend and colleague Jay. Jay and I have been doing some work together in Campbeltown this week, and I took the opportunity to photograph him as we took a stroll along the loch-front. I generally try to show my portrait subjects in a number of different settings or poses, but I only took about 30 exposures of Jay in quick succession. Oddly I liked so many of these similar poses that I can only bring myself to whittle them down to 6 to share with you. The first one is my favourite, the rest are not in any particular order.

I can’t tell if this is contemplative or “little boy lost”? A friend who was strolling with us held my Canon 580 remote flash about 30 degrees to his side for all of these shots. It’s great to have a helper. The whole “session” was done in only about 10 minutes.

Jay has a real confidence, that he wears well. He is generous and looks after other people both professionally and by disposition. I think this direct and relaxed look captures him very well.

Talking of confidence though, he was too shy to also wear the pyjama bottoms!

My “Lightroom” adjustments aside, you can just see the acceleration of the warming of the light in these last two pictures. Sunset was upon us. Without the flash, Jay was just a silhouette. My 7D triggers the Canon flashes without the additional infra red transmitter; it’s great to carry one less piece of gear.

The sunset now entering its “full bhoona” phase, the flash makes the foreground colours leap out against the darker surroundings. It actually makes Jay look a bit stuck-on to the background, but I STILL love the picture enough that I don’t care; he looks seriously cool.

This last one is the only one I have used from my beloved Sigma 28mm. Very unusually for me, the rest are the 50mm f1.4. I suspect the reason these work well is that the 50mm being slightly telephoto compresses the scale of Jay against the roofscapes of Campbeltown in a nice way.

As many of you know, I really enjoy photographing people who are not confident about having a portrait done, I kind of like the challenge, and pretty much always get results that my subjects like. Jay was almost too easy for me, he behaved perfectly, was totally relaxed, looked where I asked him to look, smiled and seemed to take everything in his stride. I think I could get used to that as well:-)

Hope you like these as much as I do Jay.