Holly In The Summertime

I can’t believe I’ve just got around to editing the images from this shoot with the wonderful Holly Alexander at Strangetown Studio from August 2019!  But editing images from late summer, with some lovely afternoon sunshine, is exactly what’s needed on a day when my home town is facing yet more floods.

This was a really enjoyable grouo shoot in which we were able to utilise not only the studio (and its lighting) but also the corridors and lifts within the studio building and the streets nearby.

And here’s our merry little group on the day (excluding me, as I’m taking the photograph)…

 

Fun And Games At The Gym (Part 2)

A few more (of the very many) shots taken at the recent Henrietta Street Gym Games. You might want to put the kettle on and have a nice sit down after you’ve looked at these. As someone once said, “I love hard work – I could sit and watch it for hours”.

Expressions are what made these images for me. The 24 participants absolutely went for it and it definitely shows in their faces but they also definitely thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

If you’re wondering about the technical stuff, I can tell you that it wasn’t easy. The light levels aren’t high and vary greatly in different parts of the gym so my ISO on the Nikon DSLR never dipped below 2000. Also, the lighting is mainly fluorescent so when shooting at shutter speeds of around 1/500, the pulsing nature of the lighting meant that images taken a split-second apart had quite different exposures.

Henrietta Street Gym in Birmingham has been called “Britain’s coolest gym” and for good reason. If you’d like to know more about HSG, click here.

James: Headshots

I enjoy shooting “headshots”, especially when the subject is a performer or someone who understands the importance of image presentation. And it’s also more fun if it’s someone I’ve known for many years and have worked with before.

James is an actor and musician that I first photographed around 14 years ago when I was putting together my final project for my Photography degree. We originally met via a mutual interest in a band. James is definitely less affected by those years than I am.

I know I’ve said it before but the best thing about my studio (Strangetown Studio) is that apart from my cosy and well-equipped studio space, there’s the rest of this huge 1930s industrial building to use as backdrops for my portraiture and quite a few of the corridors and stairwells have rather nice natural light.

Fun And Games At The Gym (Part 1)

Some days, I’ve very happy to be on this side of the camera, and rarely moreso than the day (a couple of weeks ago) that I was asked to photograph the very first “Henrietta Street Gym Games” where 6 teams of 4 gym members competed in a series of gruelling challenges.

The challenges required a mixture of individual and team effort, testing the strength, speed and stamina of the participants. All 24 participants gave the Games their all and it was a joy to photograph (mine was definitely the easy bit). Consequently, I took a LOT of shots, so this is a very small sample of the first part of the day – I’ll post more soon.

Henrietta Street Gym in Birmingham has been called “Britain’s coolest gym” and for good reason. If you’d like to know more about HSG, click here.