Portrait Photography

Nutmeg Shoot

04.06.09

Homes and Interiors Scotland article

I have been meaning to post this for ages. This is the December edition of “Homes and Interiors Scotland”. Two of my 100 portraits subjects are running this amazing little deli in Dennistoun in Glasgow. Gillian asked me to take some pictures for their article, and so I spent a pleasant hour drinking coffee and taking pictures for them. I got a kick seeing my pictures in the magazine, (even if it is a tiny article), and I’m very pleased that Gillian asked me to help. I don’t think I’ll ever become a shop photography expert, but I’m happy that the pictures got used and that that helped the publicity article make the deadline for the December edition. I thought I’d just include a few of my favourites from the shoot here:

Deli Front

Margaret at work

Gillian at work

Aren’t the girls lovely in their stripey shop overalls!

Thats all!

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Elliston Tower from Castle Semple Loch

04.05.09

I’m actually quite pleased with this one. Everyone has a favourite local landscape I’m sure and this is mine. This walk is perhaps 2 miles from where I live and although it’s accessible by (muddy) footpaths, it really is hidden away from the roads. The tower has a lot of different aspects and in fact we can see it from the other side from our house, but this is my favourite and I believe that this was the aspect that its original builders would have enjoyed. I have tried a number of times before to photograph it from this spot on the edge of the loch but the light has never been interesting enough or the sky flattering enough to do justice to this wonderful landscape. Well today the light and sky were better than I have been lucky enough to catch on this walk and so I feel I have finally captured it. If you are interested the Lochwinnoch bird sanctuary is centred around this little gem of a loch.

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Catherine

04.05.09

Just a quick one from our walk up the hill behind Howwood on Thursday evening. The light was very low as the sun had gone down, but it did have a lovely quality about it. It seemed to make the grass unnaturally green. The LX3 was in my pocket and I tried a snap of Catherine against the fading sunset without any flash. The LX3 chose ISO 250 on auto-ISO and gave about 1/100th of a second on the maximun f2.7 aperture that I was able to select at that focal length. (The LX3 was zoomed almost right in – probably 55 mm equivalent). I like this portrait; it has just enough light, but nothing to spare.

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Fiona

04.02.09

This is my colleague Fiona from my trip yesterday that I posted the landscape from. On the ferry just before we arrived at Mull we took a turn on deck and Fiona kindly permitted me to take a few pictures of her. I took 6 pictures and this one, the last of them caught Fiona’s characteristic (some might say wicked) smile. The light wasn’t particularly great at the time, and I found the resulting colours lacking warmth and so I chose a low contrast black and white conversion to focus attention on Fiona, and away from the distracting colour elements. Although Fiona has agreed to allow me to try again when we have a little more time and better light, I’m really pleased with the warmth that the picture has captured.

I chose f2 to ensure that both eyes were sharp due to the angle of Fiona’s head putting both eyes in a different plane. At that range with an effective 80mm focal length (50mm lens with 1.6 smaller sensor factor) I only just got away with that. f2.8 would have been safer and if anything I over-blurred the grey seascape background. It’s not the firsty time I’ve made this error and I’ll need to try to internalise the lesson!

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Loch an Ellen and Loch Airdeglais

04.01.09

Today was one of those days working in Argyll when you pretty much drive all day. I was visiting the Isle of Mull with a colleague and working to a tight schedule and so stopping to take photographs was difficult. We stopped briefly in a layby and I snatched this handheld landscape. The East end of Mull is a stunning landscape and I really wanted to capture at least a moment from it. I never like landscapes without a foreground and so I cast my eye around to find some foreground interest; the metal walkway was lying below the layby and since I only had about 2 minutes I made that the foreground. What the hell it’s doing there I can’t imagine?

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