While away in Kos Greece recently the first person I met on arrival at our hotel in Kardamena was this lovely character called Neofitos.
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I come from a family of car lovers.
As a child, my father owned various sports and prestige vehicles over the years BMW’s, Lotus, Mercedes, and a beautiful Concours condition 1969 Porsche 911.
1969 Porche 911
So it fair to say I share this family passion although there are no 911’s tucked in my garage just my 1969 Lambretta scooter.
I have fond memories of holidays as a child in Cornwall here in England.
As I grew those holidays continued with friends and I eventually found myself living in the area for a brief time.
It was around this time (the early 1990s) that I started a project to capture portraits and images of Cornish fishermen.
Lifestyle Portrait Photography, Capturing Mr Butt.
Mr Butt window cleaner Captured in Burnham On Sea Somerset circa 1993.
I can’t remember the exact year I did this lifestyle portrait but I do remember running home in excitement like a big girl to grab a 5×4 camera to do the shot!.
I had wanted to create a lifestyle portrait of this lovely chap for a while and I finally seized the opportunity.
I set up the large format camera hastily (well as hastily as you can with a 5×4) in front of what I felt was a perfect backdrop for colours.
A large-format camera is not something you would use for most of my work as a lifestyle photographer but the quality of tone and detail is simply amazing.
Location Lifestyle Portrait, Asur At Dawn
I’ve mentioned before that for 10 years I was fortunate enough to have a holiday home in Turkey.
On one trip while out shooting at dawn, I captured a location lifestyle portrait of this chap Asur Teber who was a security guard at one of the beachfront hotels in Gumbet.
He spoke no English but was more than willing for me to capture his picture, in fact, I eventually had to make my excuses to get back for my breakfast as he didn’t want me to stop !.
I arranged to send him a print as I always believe if people have given me their time and ask for a copy of the image it’s the very least I can do and always deliver on that.
Unfortunately, I mislaid his details so I decided to deliver the print the following year to the hotel he worked at.
I was told by the hotel that he no longer worked there, and he apparently lived in northern Turkey and they had no contact details.
I left the prints anyway in the hope they might one day find there a way to him.
Having once owned a home in Turkey I was privileged to have visited the country many times over a ten year period.
This as you would expect also meant I got to make friends with some of the locals and those who worked in the area during the busy summer months.
Hedo was someone I always knew would be in the same place on the beach with the same big smile selling tourists water sports.
I captured this image way back in the summer of 1992. I was enjoying the last few days of my summer touring the USA and ended it at Venice Beach in California.I spotted this lifeguard called Trec patrolling on his tower on the beach and politely asked if I may take his portrait. During the shoot and the usual exchange of polite conversation Trec with some pride told me he was 36 years old which as you can see from the image was a big surprise.
Today sees the sale of our home in Turkey finalised which to be honest leaves me slightly sad.We bought the property close to Bodrum around 8 years ago as an investment and, as a result, made many friends in the area and my many trips created many happy memories (and images) but it’s simply run its course and it’s time to move on.
It was only in September that I found myself on location shooting at the beautiful Hartham Park house near Bath.
This week I was at another beautiful historic house called Dillington which happens to be only a few minutes from the studio.
Dillington House
I had received a call from an online events company called Choose Your Event who needed some corporate Portraits for a magazine feature they where appearing in.
As CYE are based on the grounds of Dillington House (and a client of the company) it was arranged for us to use the house for both interior and exterior images we had planned.
Behind The Scenes
For the interior we chose one of the many rooms and it’s impressive fireplace to position the directors Ben & Simon Gray and to reflect some of the room back into frame and help set the scene.
When it came to the exterior we where once again spoilt for choice but I decided on a couple of simple set up’s one of which was to show the famous golden local Hamstone and windows of the property.
As with all photography the best images are often those that are kept clean & simple even if sometimes they are far from simple to produce.
Behind The Scenes
You can view the CYE Group website and their services Here
Jun
12
Most of the images I create tend to be fairly wide vistas with people (life) within them.
Occasionally however I come across someone who demands to be captured very simply up close with minimal fuss as with this gentleman.
It was while in Turkey that I came across this charasmatic chap attending toilets and just had to capture him.
As with all these type of shots I seek out open shade to provide flattering even light and drop everything but the eyes from focus.
