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London Street Photography - Edging Towards Normality
So the vaccines are having the desired effect and slowly, oh so slowly, the world is tentatively moving back to the new normal.
We decided it was time to get out there and see how it’s doing and headed to That London to do some street photography…and it was a little weird.
Life has resolutely returned to the streets, but inside, in galleries and shops, things are still very sparse and quiet. It gives a different mood to the place, with life being lived on the street rather than hidden away. We liked it a lot.
Here’s a selection from both our sets, mainly taken around Soho, Shoreditch and The South Bank.
Street Photography
Street photography has become mainstream in the last 5 years, although the pandemic has naturally limited this practice recently. Wikipedia references Mary Warner Marien’s 100 ideas that changed photography when defining street photography as:
“photography conducted for art or enquiry that features unmediated chance encounters and random incidents within public places.”
It’s not by chance that this definition could broadly be applied to our style of wedding photography, and indeed Em and I have been working on street photography projects for many years. We’ve also attended lectures and collected books from some of the greats of the genre, but that’s another post for another day!
Here’s a small sample of some of our images from some time ago (all pre-lockdown, when masks were a curiosity and crowds of people unremarkable).
Gotton Farm Evolves
Exciting times at Gotton Farm! Since the closing of the milking parlour and the relocation of the herd, Gotton Farm is in full swing with it's amazing transformation and happily we’ve been asked to track its progress. In the last six months, between an organic garden and a paddock, Katie & Ted have nestled a gorgeous hand crafted shepherd’s hut, supplied by South Coast Shepherd’s Huts, at the foot of the Quantock hills in Somerset.
‘The Croft’ is an ideal staycation for couples who are perhaps looking for a mini-moon or just a much needed break from it all (yes please!). Hestercombe House & Gardens is just a stones throw away and there are so many picturesque walks to take. Since it launched on air bnb a few months back, the shepherd’s hut has been extremely popular with only a few spare dates available during this summer…but with its wood burner it would be a cosy get away at any time of year!
Sitting in a hot tub with a glass of bubbly in hand overlooking the stunning Blackdown hills…what’s not to like?!
For Gotton Farm
I first got news that Gotton Farm was to be sold in the summer of 2018. I was devastated and extremely worried for the future of my family
Gotton has been with us for a hundred years and my cousin Ted is the last of the three generations to live and work there. I've grown up with him and spent many a summer day on the farm and the long nights by the fire. The fear of change was overwhelming for us all.
It was later that I learned that there was a way to keep the farm in the family, but to do this meant selling the entire herd and changing the structure of the farm buildings.
I decided I wanted to capture the life of the farm and the enormous changes it was undergoing I later discovered that the history of the farm has never been recorded so this will be the only document of Gotton as a working farm.
The final months of the herd were witness to mv uncle Mike suffering from significant illness, a trusted farm hand suddenly losing his life, deaths in the herd and failed TB tests. All the while, Ted and his father remained upbeat, showing smiles that hid the tension and anxiety they were facing every day.
The following is my initial set from an ongoing project. The photos are a mixture of digital and medium format film, which was taken on my Bronica.
Our kit
I’m a big fan of the Shotkit website as I’m a bit of a photo nerd and love to see what kit other people are using. Em and I were chatting about this, and thought it would be fun to set up a shot of our own wedding kit. This is a picture of most of the kit we take to weddings. We each have two Fuji X-H1s, but there’s probably a few more cameras floating around in our car because we really like to be prepared for any eventuality! My Ricoh GRII goes with me everywhere, so that’s definitely in a pocket somewhere!
Photographing a wedding with a large format camera
If you’ve seen our previous posts on large format photography, you’ll know that it’s quite a challenge to capture even a few photos on film during the hectic chaos of a wedding day!
Aaron and Aggie were keen to give it a try, so during a quiet time (few and far between during any wedding) we managed to set up the camera and get them to pose. The ground was soaking and we didn’t want to get Aggie’s beautiful dress muddy, but we needed the light for the camera so our only option was to pose them in the doorway to the house.
Aggie’s dad was fascinated with the camera
This limited our options a bit, but this was really a trial run and Aaron and Aggie had agreed knowing that there was a good chance we’d not get great results with the film camera. They loved the example large format pictures we’d shown them.
We took several shots and then all moved to the side of the house to take some group shots - hard enough with digital, but all the more so with an unwieldy large format camera. Especially when you factor in that the image you see on the screen is not only reversed side to side, but is also upside down!
We did confirm our suspicions though - people are fascinated with the camera and gathered around comfortably, so that’s a massive bonus!
We fired off the sheets we had prepared in film holders and then put them in the bag to process later, not really knowing that we had.
It’s always with a mixture of excitement and fear when you process important film images, and although we’d promised nothing, we felt quite a responsibility loading these into the development tank.
Success!
We actually got a few good shots, and Aggie and Aaron were very pleased with the results. If we have time and willing participants, we will definitely be repeating this experience.
Lockdown Wedding! Aggie and Aaron
It’s been a very hard year for everyone, and people who have been planning weddings have been hit particularly hard by the new regulations along with the constant changes being introduced at short notice.
So we were very pleased to hear from Aggie and Arron, who were planning to have an intimate lockdown wedding and loved our photojournalistic style of photography. When we learned that their wedding was taking place at the quirky and magnificent 13th Century manor Maunsel House, we were even more excited. The venue is set in a 2000 acre estate in Somerset and its unique features reflect the tastes and interests of its owner, Sir Benjamin Slade Bt.
The day was very emotional one as Aaron and Aggie have been together for over 20 years and had had to put the day off several times due to the ongoing pandemic. Eventually they decided to invite a much smaller congregation and use Zoom to include other relatives both near and far. The small number of guests were privileged to get to see Aggie looking absolutely radiant and beaming from ear to ear.
While the venue has bags of character, one thing that some rooms lack is light! In the more intimate spaces, where suits of armour and weapons hang on the walls along with a well worn stuffed bear, the lighting is almost non-existant! Thankfully our Fuji cameras were up to the job and we were able to capture emotions and events where it would have been impossible a few years ago.
Scanning Large Format Negatives
A new scan of one of our earlier shoots
A big part of creating analogue images is producing a final usable result.
When working with large format, this is further complicated because the equipment for mechanically enlarging the negatives is harder to find, more expensive, and harder to accommodate.
We’ve been looking into doing contact prints, which would give us a physical copy made entirely using the old methods, but this would be limited to prints of 4x5 inch size.
So, we also need to scan the negatives so that we can print them digitally. Our first attempts at this process involved using a flat-bed scanner and then reversing them in software to produce a positive image.
We thought the results were passable, but blamed our analogue process for the quality of the results:
Initial attempts at scanning were less than perfect!
Although this method captured the essence of the old process, it really doesn’t reflect the quality that is possible from a large format camera.
So…we kept looking.
Our scanner can scan 35mm negatives as well as medium format, but there’s no option for large format…but photoshop can stitch images together, so we thought we’d try that.
The mask is just a big piece of black card, roughly cut to shape
And it works!
I had to make a mask to put on the glass of the scanner, and we have to move the negative twice for each scan then feed the two images into photoshop.
The results are night and day between the two methods (the new scans are shown after the old ones):
Large Format Photography
Lockdown has given us some time to perfect our large format photography process - we were able to shoot a few during our most recent wedding, and we’ve shot some portraiture at home using each other as subjects.
Woz, shot by Em.
We’re using the Intrepid 4x5 as shown in previous posts and using sheet film, in this case Ilford HP5.
The film has changed what we can photograph. Previously working with paper negatives meant we needed so much light, and such long exposures that the process wasn’t really practical, especially in winter.
The film allows us to even take pictures indoors with windowlight.
Pictured with the film is the processing system we’re using - an SP-445 from stearmanpress.com
This is what’s enabled us to shoot film - as film is far more sensitive to light, it’s much harder to process in a darkened room as even a tiny amount would fog the image.
This is what it looks like with the lid off:
It’s essentially a light proof bottle that allows you to pour and mix the chemicals in daylight, meaning that you don’t need a darkroom to process the negatives.
That said, it’s still a long process, needing a sink and lots of different bottles. Calling it a processing system makes it sound a lot more automatic than it is!
Woz, shot by Em.
This and the above portrait were both shot in window light, with a single reflector being used to create some fill. Without this, one side of my face would be in very dark shadow. The reflector was hung from a light fitting in the kitchen! Not exactly a studio, but it does show that we could do this anywhere where there’s enough light.
Even in my little cottage with small windows, the exposure times aren’t too bad - these were at 1/15s, which means we won’t be shooting any indoor sports or even vague movement!
I’ll write in another post about the trials and tribulations of actually using large format in a wedding situation, which offers many more challenges!
Michael Eavis
Michael Eavis
There aren’t many people out there, I am sure, that haven’t heard of the legendary music get together Glastonbury Festival!
With being a massive music lover and a local lass to the festival, I can’t honestly describe the overwhelming feeling when entering the site….a vast beautiful city of lights, people, tents and music risen from the earth…nah I can’t explain it! Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that the magical place still amazes me now and I’ve been going since 1997 - there is nowhere quite like it.
The festival launched in the grounds of Worthy Farm in Pilton, run by farmers Michael & Jean Eavis in 1970 (my mum went that first one along with 1500 people!). Entrance fees were a mere £1 and you received a free bottle of milk. It’s come a long way since then, and now with over 200,000 people attending the five day festival, with 79 stages to pick from to watch the largest range of music in the world. Whether it’s sunny or more often than not wet, you’ll never cease to be amazed of what Glastonbury Festival offers to you.
In recent times, I arranged to meet the very jovial Michael Eavis when he opened up a village hall in a Somerset village close to Pilton. I have met him a few times in the past but never had the opportunity to take his photo. Most of the time I see him popping into my local Sainsbury’s and didn't feel it was appropriate to ask!
Unfortunately and understandably like many other major events, Glastonbury Festival was cancelled this year due to the pandemic but we are keeping our fingers and toes crossed for next year….
Michael Eavis
The Escott Family
Over the weekend we had brilliant fun with the Escott family who wanted some pictures to send to relatives during the strange times we are having at the moment. We had to arrange this a bit in advance as getting diaries and weather all matching was a bit of a nightmare. Finally, we had a day with some sun and we thought the trees would be lovely at this time of year, so we all met up near a local monument at Burton Pynsent to have a family shoot.
The location is perfect as the monument provides a bit of interest and texture for group photos while the woods below is gorgeous at all times of year, but particularly now with the explosion of autumnal colours in full effect.
It was a lovely time as they were all so happy and full of smiles - although getting them all to look at us at the same time was, as usual, quite challenging!
We are still taking bookings for socially distanced family photo shoots before Christmas so don’t hesitate to get in touch!
Press the button below to take you straight to our contact page!
Intrepid Camera family shoot
We had a family shoot towards the end of October and as we were preparing to finish we asked if they would be happy to pose long enough for us to try out our Intrepid large format camera. They were very keen! When the camera emerged from the car they were all extremely curious and wanted to get under the dark cloth and have a look at the screen to see what we saw.
The image you get on the back, as you’re focussing the camera, is upside down and reversed, which makes framing the image quite interesting!
When you add that you can’t just ‘click a button’ and get a picture, the whole thing becomes much more of an event than using a digital camera.
Here’s the rough process, to give you an idea of the time it all takes:
Arrange everyone in the frame. There’s no zoom and everything is cumbersome and on a tripod, so this involves moving people and camera around a lot…which you’ll see we didn’t quite get right!
Get under the dark cloth and focus the image.
Get a meter reading (we cheated and used one of our Fuji cameras)
Set the Aperture and shutter speed.
Realise people have moved, so refocus the image.
Notice a cloud has covered the sun, so take another meter reading and change the settings!
Manually cock the shutter - this is priming a spring that will open and close the shutter for a set time when you eventually get to press it!
Close the shutter - you have to do this manually and if you forget you will expose the film when you remove the dark slide at step 10 and get no picture.
Insert the film holder (you can’t do this before as it goes in front of the focussing screen and blocks your view).
Remove the dark slide.
Get everyone to smile…while noticing the cloud has moved so the light has changed!
Press the shutter button.
Replace the dark slide.
Remove the film holder.
This process happens for each shot, and takes a while! Weirdly though, it’s such a performance that the family posed really well and it’s about the only time we got them all to hold still and smile at the same time!
Of course, we had no idea if we’d managed to actually capture anything on our 4 shots, so off we went to process the film.
Result!
Of the four shots, we got one dud, which we think was because the shutter was cocked but not closed, and two that are a bit too contrasty because the light changed before we took the picture.
Overall though, we’re happy with the results on this first trial. Next time, we’ll definitely spend more time posing and hopefully less time in the process of taking the image!
David Bailey, David Hurn & Martin Parr
“It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the extraordinary.”
David Bailey
As massive fans of photography, we love to visit The Martin Parr Foundation at Bristol Paintworks. Being regulars, we sometimes get to hear about events before they get a chance to sell out, and one such time was when the one and only David Bailey was booked to give a talk alongside David Hurn and Parr himself.
If you are into photography whether it’s a hobby of yours or you photograph as a profession, there is no way that the name David Bailey has escaped you. Bailey along with Terence Donovan and Brian Duffy captured and assisted in creating the 'Swinging London’ of the 1960s with a culture of fashion and celebrity chic. The three photographers socialised with actors, musicians and royalty, and found themselves elevated to celebrity status.
I’ll be honest with you I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of Bailey initially as his whole demeanour gives a grumpy disposition but as soon as he started talking he had a very dry wit, was incredibly entertaining and funny. He doesn’t hold back and says how it is (I admire that!) and sure has a tale to tell having spent sixty years as a photographer!
You know when you really admire someone and you try to act ‘cool’ and ‘normal’ when you’re around them?! well that was me when I took his photo using my Olympus OM-n1 camera. Now obviously using a 40 year old film camera is always a bit risky when it comes to taking photos but as you can see it still works a treat! Bailey was very gracious in having his photograph taken and was very patient in signing all my books!
David Bailey (taken on Olympus OM-1n 35mm)
“The most important piece of equipment after the camera is a good pair of shoes”
David Hurn
David Hurn is a self-taught photographer who began his career in 1955 working as an assistant at the Reflex Photo Agency. He has a longstanding international reputation as one of Britain’s most influential reportage photographers and gained his reputation as a photojournalist for his documentation of the Hungarian revolution in 1956. Hurn eventually turned away from coverage of current affairs preferring to take a more personal approach to photography and became an associate member of Magnum in 1965 and a full member in 1967. He is a big supporter of the Martin Parr Foundation and we’ve had the pleasure to meet him on a few occasions when we’ve been visiting the Paintworks for talks.
David Hurn (taken on Olympus OM-1n 35mm)
“I am what I photograph”
Martin Parr
Martin Parr is a British documentary photographer and photojournalist who has a very distinctive and garish style, consisting of busy frames and often bold colours, which are down to the film stock and digital processes he uses. Recently he has been using amateur film such as Fuji 400 Superior, and Agfa Ultra or Fuji 100 asa film for the ring flash and macro lens. The combination with the flash gives a high colour saturation therefore no photoshop required. His photographs offer the public an opportunity to see the world from his unique perspective.
Parr has been researching leisure, consumption and communication on his worldwide travels over several decades. He enables us to see things that seem familiar to us in a completely new way and creates his own image of society. He presents and publishes the same photographs in the context of art photography, in exhibitions and in art books. Parr is now a member of Magnum and his instantly recognisable style has gathered him many admirers.
Martin Parr (taken on Olympus OM-1n 35mm)
David Hurn, David Bailey & Martin Parr
Jethro
Jep is a very talented actor based in London and I have been great friends with him for over thirty years. We grew up next door to each other in the same Somerset village where our parents still live and from time to time we manage to meet up. Taking his photograph has always been a complete joy especially as he has, dare I say it, an amazing characteristic and handsome face but also it’s a great opportunity to have a long overdue catch up! Having always had a deep interest in the theatre and live performance (and yes, can you believe it, I have a qualification in performing arts!) I thoroughly enjoy hearing about what Jethro is up to in the world of theatre, tv and film. In 2012, I went to the Globe in London to witness Jethro star alongside Stephen Fry, Mark Rylance & Roger Lloyd Pack in Shakespeare’s Twelfth night, little did I know that one of my favourite photographers, Mary McCartney, was photographing them back stage! These head shots were taken just before we went into lockdown in Jethro’s parents garden, little did we know then what a strange six months would be ahead of us…
Dawn & Ron
We had the real pleasure of photographing a particularly special wedding. Dawn and Ron got married in the beautiful setting of Kings Weston House just outside of Bristol. The house is situated looking over the port of Avonmouth which holds a very special place for both Dawn and Ron. The couple celebrated with their nearest and dearest and we had the most wonderful day witnessing such a happy occasion.
Circus Funtasia
We love photographing weddings, portraits and live events but nothing hones your photographic skills quite like a circus. The lighting is always hard, everyone is moving rapidly and events happen in the blink of an eye, but the sheer exhilaration and the personalities on show make it a unique experience.
For the Christmas period, the team who run Cirque Du Vulgar put on a family friendly spectacle and we were invited to photograph the event for them.
Fuji!
For a long time now, we've been using a range of cameras from a couple of camera systems for our wedding photography - we have used the canon 5DIII, the canon 7D and a pair of Olympus OMDs. We've got quite an extensive range of lenses for both systems...we used the same collection of kit for our event and gig photography too
At the end of last year, we decided that in order to make our workflow a little easier we'd move to a single manufacturer and have matching cameras. Well, it's not quite worked out like that, as I'm very attached to my OMDs and Em still loves her very well worn canon.
But, we do have a pair of spanking new Fujifilm X-H1s that are now our main bodies for all our weddings.
We picked Fuji because their cameras create beautiful images in both colour and mono, while having an extremely well designed interface with all the settings you need immediately available on the camera. It's great to see all the settings immediately without having to delve through menus.
It helps that the cameras are very handsome to look at and have a classic analogue look to them.
We're also very impressed with their lens line-up, which caters to professionals with their xf range, and the set we have are the XF WR R - Fuji love their letters!
The XF range are their premium lenses, the WR stands for water resistant and the R means that the lens has an aperture ring on it. When the lenses are on our X-H1 cameras, you can actually run them under a tap! We've not tried this...
We've been using the system a couple of months now and we're very impressed. We're especially impressed with the quality of the images we're getting.
Things we love about them:
They are quiet. We didn’t realise just how quiet until we shot a wedding with them this month. I’ve previously favoured my Olympus kit during the ceremony as they are much quieter than a traditional SLR but the X-H1 has been designed with a damped shutter mechanism that makes them almost completely unobtrusive while still having a satisfying noise that tells you you’ve taken a picture.
They can shoot in very low light. We shoot in a documentary style, sometimes resorting to flash for the dancing, to add a little excitement to the images.
They’re pretty!
This shot of Frank Turner was taken at the cavern in Exeter last week. The venue is very small with a capacity of about 200, it was dark and crowded with hot spots in the lighting.
We are currently processing the shots from our latest wedding and will post samples when we can.
Gig Photography - Reef
We’ve got quite a large portfolio of gig photographs and we thought it would be interesting to show a collection of our shots from a single gig. On this occasion it was reef at the cheese and grain in Frome.
Some were shot by Em in the pit, and others were shot by us from the audience to give a wider perspective - you generally only get 3 songs in the pit so you don’t block the audience for the whole gig!
Notting Hill
When we set off for a trip to the Tate Modern, we didn’t actually realise that the bank holiday weekend of the 28th of august was the time when London was hosting the craziest and largest street party around. We noticed lots of people dressed in feathers and it slowly dawned on us that we needed to head over to Notting Hill to see what it was all about.
Em had her huge canon camera and I was travelling light with my tiny Ricoh GRII street camera.
I think we managed to capture the mood of the event, although there are no pictures of the terrifying crush we got caught in - we actually feared for our lives; not from any threat of violence, but from the sheer mass of people who at one point stared to panic and push. It was an experience to say the least. Don’t let this put you off going though - it is a truly amazing event but next time we go, we will avoid the mayhem on the bank holiday Monday and perhaps not move into the streams of people.
The following is a sample of pictures from both cameras from that day.
