Portraits Archives - Simon Plant Photographer

Jun

Life In A Somerset Landscape Photography Project

A Somerset Photography project started back in 2012.

I started Life in a Somerset Landscape as a personal project with the aim to capture various people and wildlife in the Somerset landscape.

The images are inspired by the county I grew up in and in which I learnt my craft starting back in the late 1980s

I’ve always been drawn and somewhat intrigued by the history of the land and the people who work it and wildlife that lives there so the project simply evolved from that.

The images are approached by me either simply documenting what I discover while others are created to produce a vision I have for that particular location or person within it.
The project is ongoing as I have time to pick it up and continue.

View project Life in a Somerset Landscape

Do you know of someone or somewhere in Somerset that you feel should be included? Please email me and let me know. [email protected]

Mud-horse-fisherman-Hinkley point

Swan Flying Over Somerset River

Banjo player maize field

Mar

Thinking On Your Feet, Football Portraits

The biggest part of what I do when commissioned is to problem solve.

When my regular client Yeovil Town Community Sports Trust who are the charity arm of Yeovil Town Football Club asked me to shoot (no pun intended) the Directors,Coaches and other staff there where several things to overcome.

The aim was to produce stylish images with continuity so that they looked like they where shot at the same time even though in fact they might (and were) shot weeks apart. I also had to work quickly as the Directors and Coaches both where very busy plus it was pretty cold to be standing around for too long.

I decided to use a small strobe on a pole off camera that would not only give a stylish lighting signature (& continuity in the look) to the images but also be quick & portable to use anywhere I might need to go.

Unusual for me I suggested we drop the colour from the images to avoid the distractions of various clothing people would be wearing and go for a subtle duo tone.

For the image below I composited the background to add to the football theme but the finished client images shown Here where left a simple clean black.

May

Turkish Tony & Friends

In Turkey checking our Villa and catching up with friends like Fatih Touran aka “Turkish Tony”

Otten Local Businessman

May

Turkish Tony

Here once again in Turkey checking on our villa and catching up with some old friends.
I met Fatih Toran or “Turkish Tony” as we refer to him some 7 years ago and has become a good friend.

Another guy we have known for several years is Otern who is a local guy with fingers in many pies !

Jan

Ryan

As I mentioned in my last post about shooting new images of people in the landscape here is an image I shot a couple of weeks ago and finished retouching this week.
The image here shows Ryan White who’s a talented young cyclist and member of Somerset based “1St Chard Wheelers” cycling club.
Ryan has gained much success in his chosen sport including coming 4th in the National under 12’s Road Race Championships and is currently 3rd in the national rankings which is very impressive seeing he’s only 13 !
In terms of the photography as always I wanted to show my subject within the landscape rather than shooting just a formal portrait.The background plate is of St Michaels Mount in Cornwall which I captured on a beautiful spring dawn several years ago.
The shoot was completed in around 30 minutes which I captured images of not only Ryan but his cycling partner dad David too.
Retouching the image was also pretty swift & straight forward taking me about 6 hrs to complete to the the high standards I require.

Ryan