[Music]
I've done it since I was 11. That's when I first picked up an SLR and I was hooked.
I've just done it ever since. I've never stopped taking pictures.
I started shooting Ilford film straight away, black and white film.
I went to college. That lasted about three weeks.
I went on my lunch hour. I'm still on it. I never went back.
Growing up and working in photography, I've done a bit of everything.
My first love was always portrait.
I was always drawn to the old films as well.
That's why I shoot black and white.
And I'd always shot film.
It just took a bit of a back step when digital came out.
But then I went back into film doing it properly.
That's when I just got my love for photography back again.
About six, seven years ago, I just realised that's what I wanted to do,
so that's when I really knuckled down, specialised in it,
got back into shooting black and white analogue portrait work.
Today we're in NQ Studios in Northern Quarter, Manchester.
I really like it because it's quite scruffy and you can really work here,
you know, you're not worried about stepping through a cove or tearing some paper.
So it's just a good creative little place really.
The big improvement in my work came when I started shooting medium format.
It really slows you down, on this you've got ten shots per roll.
Perfect.
And that's another roll.
I'll be shooting with the RZ67.
This is a 6x7 medium format film camera.
I always keep the waist level finder on.
As a portrait photographer you can kind of
engage with your sitter, you're not hiding behind it.
In a studio setting, I don't think anything beats this camera.
The 110 lens is stunning.
I don't like a long focal length for a portrait.
I like to get in close, I like to work closely with people.
And in a slightly wider lens, it can distort a little bit,
but that adds to the quirky kind of look of my images
and the people that I'm shooting.
The only other essential piece of kit when
you're using stuff like this is a good light meter.
If you're not metering correctly, the lighting is irrelevant.
You've got to learn how to meter so everyone should have one of them.
Even if you're shooting digital, there's a lot of cameras
with built-in meters that will give you an average reading.
If you're getting an average reading of the
light then you're going to get an average image.
So I've started using continuous light more than flash.
So we've got a softbox as the main light<
and then I've just got a simple light there
to highlight the kind of silhouette so it doesn't fall into shadow.
This is called winging it, basically where I just
try and find a little corner of a studio and just...
see what I can get really.
Just throw some light into a corner and often
these shots are the ones that really really work
so you can get quite a cinematic look on some of these.
Especially in the studio it just takes it away
from that sterile studio backdrop kind of look.
You just see through the viewfinder what works and what doesn't straight away.
[MUSIC]
A strong portrait comes from the connection with the subject and the camera,
not so much with me.
When I'm searching for people to shoot, I tend to look for quirky people.<
So if I see people in the street that look particularly arty or odd or weird,
I will generally ask them.
If someone's a bit nervous, you can kind of disarm them,
you know, start shooting with your lens cap on.
So they just think you're a doofus and then the next thing you're like,
"Oh!" But it chills them out, it disarms and ready for the shoot.
I've metered from that direction which is where most of the lights coming from.
So we've got a 250th at 2.8 which is fine for
hand holding and it should look quite cinematic.
You do look like Vivian Mayer.
Matt can we borrow your camera? Just pop it round your neck and just...
And so you'd be like looking down it like that and then just look up at me.
That's cool.
The lights changing so quick.
125th... 250th at f6.
I'm generally looking for pockets of light, small
shafts of light so that I can get that contrast in the image.
It's in and out today so it's difficult to find them and get them to stay that way
so we're just having to make doing as best we can at the minute.
When we got into this location, it was
quite dull, there was a bit of rain in the air,
metered for it and it was about, it was looking
like I was going to need a 400 or a 125 ISO film.
Now the sun's come out, Pan F would have been fine
so, but that's just the joys of shooting on analog.
That's cool, lovely, hold that.
And then looking through the camera, camera,
yeah looking like you're using it, like you've
seen the scene down there. Yeah not mine, yours.
That's it yeah. So like I said it's waist level,
that's it, perfect. Looking straight down
it, everything dead straight, think symmetry
and then eyes up to me.
Perfect, that's another roll.
One of my favourite shots that I've ever
taken, which I think spurred me on to do more,
was a shot of Jack Francis Johnson.
I was shooting a campaign for Didsbury Gin, and he was one of the actors on that,
and we just hit it off.
Got him in the studio,
and we just produced some really beautiful imagery.
Okay I'm just going to shoot quite a tight headshot which hopefully on
Ilford Pan-F should have a lot of really nice detail on it. This light's
really soft so it should show a lot of detail. That's cool, chin down a little.
Eyes right into the bottom of the lens.
When I arrive on set I never know what I'm going to shoot or how to pose them
because some models work better than others doing different things.
Obviously with Jack I've shot him before so I know he's got good bone structure
so I know really that's what I'm looking for, I'm looking for a graphic image
rather than the record of a face kind of thing.
I still shoot film primarily for my own personal work.
I do occasionally take it on jobs. It is the tactile nature
of film that I still love. It's the fact that when you see a portrait in the
National Portrait Gallery, that might have been took 50-60 years ago
but that image that was the shot on that day,
and I think that's why I still shoot film just for that reason.
I think every photographer should shoot personal work.
If you don't love it, if it's not your hobby,
I don't think you should be doing it professionally.
So you have to pursue your own dreams and passion within it.
On commercial shoots, I'm pretty much given a free reign,
so I can photograph who I want.
So if that's a member of the crew or whatever,
while I'm waiting for a model to get made up, then I will do it.
The dynamic on shoots has changed,
especially on sort of like an e-com shoot
or an influencer shoot.
The emphasis is not so much on the photography anymore.
I think people think that photography, anyone can do it.
Which they can do a lot of e-com photography
and fast fashion and digital stuff.
A lot of people can do it. You could shoot a lot of it on your iPhone.
But that's why I went back into analog, because I just...
Not everyone can do that.
Not everyone can even open it.
So, yeah.
In terms of post-processing for the film images,
I'm generally really excited.
So whatever time I get back home,
quite often I will develop them that night.
People are often amazed how quick I turn around the analog shots
and not the digital.
The digital can be on a hard drive for three weeks.
Because I do get genuinely excited.
I will develop them that night sometimes, so that they dry overnight
and then I can scan them the very next day.
I still love the whole process of a portrait,
from booking a studio to getting them in,
watching them in makeup if they're getting makeup.
Actors are the ones that really gets me excited
If I can shoot a really good actor.
And it's not for the reasons you think,
it's just because if someone's well known,
you know that that image is gonna get more traction.
So I photographed Bill Nighy on a roll of FP4,
which is basically my staple film, it's always in the bag.
It was a bit of a milestone in my career.
That was just a really nice moment
where everything I'd been shooting
felt like it'd been appreciated, recognised and seen.
And it was just a really nice job to get.
I was umming and ahhing whether or not to take this.
The camera bag was open the night before.
And at the last minute, I threw it in<
and I put a few rolls of film in
and I shot a few digitals against the studio backdrop.
And I just said to him,
"Is it all right if I just shoot one roll of film?"
And it was an ice breaker as well
because he was asking about the camera.
But I quickly fired off 10 shots.
And you just know straight away you can see it in the viewfinder.
I knew I'd got it, so I was really excited about the film shots.
One of them made cover of Sunday Times Culture magazine as well.
Growing up as a kid, Sunday Times, Observer magazines and stuff like that,
Sunday supplements, they're the things you want in your book.
I'm always excited when I'm driving home and I know I've got the shot in the bag
and when you're washing the film in the kitchen
sink and you know the fix has finished and you've
run a bit of water on it for about five minutes
and you think I can check that. So you just lift<
out the reel and you can just pull it off a little
bit and you can just see that there's an image there.
So the way I decide which film I'm going to shoot is basically the studio.
It's either Pan F or is nearly always FP4,
simply because it's just the mid-ground.
And I do like the look of it, the contrasts good, the blacks always come out nice,
The shadows, that's generally why I'll choose that.
And then the scanning starts and that's laborious and I hate that.
I use a DSLR macro lens method.
Because I want the film edge in, I had to build my own.
And it's only just thrown together out of mount board,
diffusing paper, tape, glue.
It's dead simple.
But it allows me to wiggle the negative around
so that I can shoot the entire edge.
So I tend to shoot six sections of each neg,
each six by seven neg.
And then in Photoshop, I'll stitch that all together.
I use that method mainly because I love a big file.
It's just that, that's the only reason why
you don't necessarily need it,
especially when you think
most stuff just goes on Instagram.
We've shot how many times have we shot five times now?
Yeah, but over...
... years.
Over many, many years.
I do want to produce a book or a zine.
That pose is perfect.
Just hold that for when I've reloaded.
I do want to produce a book or a zine
because we have produced so much cool work.
She's a consistent pain in my arse.
I am.
But for some bizarre reason,
we seem to produce really nice work, don't we?
So we keep going.
You know then, just then when you were
talking to me, just keep talking into camera. Quite
animated because it just looks kind of cool
and nice and relaxed. That's nice, looking down.
Just flap your wings. That's cool. Nice.
I'm just going to shoot some Delta 400 because
we're shooting continuous light. I think with
400 I can just get a little bit more depth of
field, that's all. I've just feathered that
softbox ever so slightly off to the right,
mainly because Elise's hair, if she's in a hot
spot, it might just bounce back at me. She's quite
fair-skinned as well. So that feathering, it just
softens the shadows, softens the lights somewhat.
I'm shooting at 125th of a second at 2.8. So,
and I'm keeping it on the tripod today as well
for no other reason than it just helps me compose, I think. That's nice.
So I've feathered that light off just to that
side. It just softens the shadows, the fall off
and the shadows on her face. It pushes this into shadow quite nicely.
In terms of direction for models or actors
or whoever you're shooting, for me it's always
a conversation.
It's never too much about directing them.
If you can spark up a conversation it can be about anything.
You're using that as a kind of carrier so that in
between the conversation you can just, you know, "chin down".
It just disarms the people that you're shooting, I think, so they don't look at the
shoot as almost like "I've got to do what he says."
It's just, as you'll see with Elise, it's just,
it's a conversation with a few little guides, really.
You have to immerse yourself in it, you have to be obsessed
by it and you have to live it and think about it all the time.
Because that's the only time when I've noticed with my work, it's always the stuff
like that where I've really immersed myself in it that it's been successful.