Ben

I’d say I’m about halfway through shooting the portraits for my exhibition at the end of March…writing that has made me reach for my organiser, only to realise that’s less than five weeks away. Perhaps I will have some wine tonight after all.

The weather has been a massive problem over the last few weeks, or actually since I started the project, and that is something I hadn’t really factored in. I’m trying to shoot everything using natural light, not just outdoors, but indoors too, using windows as light sources and walls as reflectors. But natural light is something that’s been lacking here on the Isle of Man for quite some time, there are younger children that run back into their houses, terrified, when the sun comes out…

This week I had my good friend, Ben, in my ‘daylight studio’ (or ‘back lane’ if you want to be more accurate). Ben will do anything, and I do mean anything, I ask him to for a photo, he’d even strip naked in public…in fact he has stripped naked in public for me to photograph him. For the image above we used flour, but I’d experimented with it beforehand and it didn’t stick to the skin the way I wanted, so we coated him in baby oil first. This is one of the shots, my second favourite, I’m saving number one for the show.

Also this week, I swapped my iPhone 4s for a Nokia Lumia 1020, a move that has caused some negative disturbance amongst some of my Apple friends. This is the camera phone I’ve been waiting for, and I think the results speak for themselves..