For a while now I have wanted to photograph people, but the main thing that has put me off has been my shyness, and confidence, or lack of, in directing someone. Recently I have been looking at the work of some of the influential fashion photographers from the 60’s and 70’s it has really given me the urge to finally try it out. For me this time period was a magical time in photography, most of my favourite photographers developed their careers in these decades, it was a time of experimentation, and the art’s were really coming into the spotlight, not to mention, culturally the world really started to take a turn, especially in the UK.
So feeling inspired I loaded up my Bronica SQ-A with some black and white Kodak Tri-X, dragged a mate a long with me in his suit and we headed off to an abandoned factory so i could have a play..
It was a grim, rainy day so it was pretty cloudy outside, which was beneficial really because the building I was planning on using had some rather large windows, and I had set off with the intention of pushing the film a stop to add some contrast. All in all im quite happy with what I took, remember this is only really the second time I have photographed a person before so I still have a lot to learn.
equipment-wise, I used my SQ-A with a standard 80mm 2.8, a sekonic handheld light meter measuring incident light, two rolls of Kodak Tri-X400 pushed to 800, and developed in Ilford Ilfosol 3.
A thank you to James for letting me boss him around all day!