This month, as we open the edition up to guests, I want my post to be brief and to the brief.
Surface:
I scratched around for two hours. Took shots of tables, grass and sleeves.
Ultimately, I didn't need to look too far. These are the faces for me, sir (tenuous, I know...I'm trying).
I asked them to think of something for me to photograph. Something related to "surface". And they both closed their eyes, lost perhaps in childhood ideas and ambitions.
My job, then, was done.
Surface.
An estimated 28 million passengers pass through Glasgow Central Station every year. From locals to tourists, business professionals to immigrants, old married couples to brand new couples meeting for the first time. I met my wife on the concourse (above) of this amazing station. Although we were born 7200 miles apart, fate (for want of a better word) brought us together 12 years ago in this station. In a sea of travellers on an extremely busy afternoon, I saw a rucksack move through the crowd as though it was floating on air. Then I saw her black hair swaying from side to side under the weight of her heavy rucksack and the rest, as they say, is history.
Central Station was opened on the 31st of July 1879 and is the largest building in the city. The glass roof is the largest in Europe and consists of 48,000 panes of glass. During the first world war the dead would be brought down below the platforms for relatives to identify and collect. It was then up to the deceased’s love ones to carry the body up the stairs and to get their husband, son …etc home.
The gate (above) and railings nearby are painted red because this area was dedicated to the Royal Mail. In August 1963 the regular mail train left from Central Station to deliver mail and a vast sum of money to London. A gang of 15 robbers tampered with signals on the track, attacked the train and got away with 2.6 million pounds (equivalent to 50 million today). In the course of the robbery, train driver Jack Mills was beaten with an iron bar and was unable to work again. He died 7 years later. This is known as The Great Train Robbery, one of the most infamous crimes in British history.
A tour beneath Central Station is now available HERE which I highly recommend taking if you visit Scotland or even if you live here. A huge thanks to Paul Lyons for his vision, wit and enthusiasm. Paul is one of the best story tellers I have had the pleasure of listening to and delivers his fantastic knowledge of history with tremendous passion.
Returning to old textures from a new life is a little discombobulating.
Was this couch always so slouchy, that serving bowl quite as large?
"When I was a kid the tractors were harder to drive."
Random memories fall out of boxes; an old rifle emerges from the top of a bookshelf in a cloud of dust. Old pictures in an assortment of rectangularity suggest something about life when their subjects were 10, 15, 32, 45.
And around them, the dwelling that holds these suspended memories breathes in its collective of rough-weave drapes, linoleum flooring, smoothed old leather, and the cheeriness of approaching Christmas.
Outside, lichen, a luminous green, clings to the bark. Trees sway in the winds of the shifting seasons.
I've tried moving through layers, stretching beyond a liquid life. Head bobbing at times, struggling to catch my breath. I've tried mimicking the colours of joy and lust and sorrow. I've fallen and I've returned from the fall. I've stood again, reborn.
The days we have, these lines in the sand...the surface of things remains
unbroken, until the crashing waves.
Sometimes the surface is transparent and allows you a look at what's behind. Sometimes the surface is a flagrant, carefully constructed lie. But mostly it's a bit of both.
I have no interest in the surface itself, it's just there to provide the spark that makes me want to discover what's behind it.
Miroir sensible, fragile surface. Figée, elle nous offre sa clarté, sa poésie picturale. Un souffle et l'image s'anime, se trouble, se déforme sans limites aux frontières de l'abstrait puis lentement se dessine à nouveau clairement... le félin s'éloigne.
This final part of Tommy Smith's Modern Jacobite CD shoot was a straight ahead portrait gig to produce pictures for promotional use. I used a Westcott Apollo Octa with a Yongnou 560 IV for the main light and a smaller inexpensive Octa (from Amazon) with another 560 IV for the fill. A 12' roll of white seamless was used for the background and a large piece of tuffened glass for a reflection on the floor.
This shoot was mainly for promotional pictures, but at that point it could have yielded something for the CD cover if the castle shoot hadn't worked out. I was using two X-T1’s, but ended up shooting mostly with one body and the 16-55mm f2.8. I have two 560TX wireless transmitters for the Yongnuo flashes (one for each body), but I have to make sure I adjust power settings on both units simultaneously, so it makes sense using the zoom and shooting mostly with one camera.
Peter Johnston (tailor) of Edinburgh had made a suit for Tommy, the same one used for the castle shoot, so it made sense to use it for the promo stuff too. The suit is grey, very James Bond (Daniel Craig era) and unbelievably well made.
Tommy has been the subject of countless photo shots over the years, which can be both good and bad. He knows how to pose for sure, but how do you get something different? I shot with two lights for a while, letting the background fall to a mid grey and looking a little more interesting than white seamless. We ran through a series of poses and then Tommy lifted the sax over his shoulder and pretended to throw it. Maybe the shoot was taking longer than expected, or he was fed up being blinded with flash guns, but I'm glad he didn't actually through it at me...Selmer mkVI saxophones are expensive and getting rare :o)
Shooting with one light on Tommy and another one facing my lens at 45° gave me some interesting bubbles in the pictures. I'd love to say this was intentional and pre-planned, but I had moved one of the light stands to the side and forgot to switch the flash off on the commander. But I like the effect and I will definitely use it again on a future shoot.
I added a couple of lights facing the background to blow it to pure white and shot a few pictures of Tommy in various poses. Then we carried in a leather Chesterfield chair to use as a prop. I moved the chair into position and asked tommy to sit down, but when he did, he had brought a tiny cup. He actually had a few of these, one of which his teacher had given him many years before. Again, it seemed to work as a prop, so why not.
Jazzwise magazine wanted to do an article on Modern Jacobite and seemed to take a liking to this picture (above) straight off. I wasn't sure if they would use one of my pictures on the cover or send one of their own photographers to shoot it, but I was pleasantly surprised when I saw the final cover on the Jazzwise website just before it went on sale. A good selection of the pictures were also used inside the magazine and for a full page add for the CD too.
Modern Jacobite has been a great project that has spanned three styles of photography. From the first session at rehearsals with Tommy and The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, shooting old school documentary pictures and listening to this amazing music as though it was my own personal soundtrack.
Then an outdoor location shoot with a mixture of flash and ambient light. A freezing cold day, but one that thankfully produced the goods.
And finally a studio shoot using 100% controlled lighting. It's good to specialise, but it definitely pays to be proficient in various styles of photography.
When I look back on this project, I have a thought that keeps running through my mind. I wish I had allowed myself to take in more of the performance on that first day, and I wish I could go back and shoot for one more day with the orchestra, knowing that I had enough shots already in the bag.
As Bill Murray said in an interview with Charlie Rose " I'd like to be more consistently here.....I‘d just like to really see how long I could last at being really here...really in it...really alive, in the moment!"
Click HERE to buy Modern Jacobite. Click HERE for part 1 of this series, or Click HERE for part 2
Robert Catto | Fuji X-Pro 1, 1/1600 at f/1.4, 800ISO (XF 35mm f/1.4)
Derek Clark | Fuji X-Pro 2, 1/125 at f/1.2, 500ISO (XF 56mm f/1.2)
Flemming Bo Jensen | Fuji X-Pro 2, 1/1900 at f/3.6, ISO 4000 (XF 35mm f/1.4)
Charlene Winfred | Fujifilm X-Pro2, 1/550 sec at f/5, ISO 500 (XF 23mm F2)
Bert Stephani | Fuji X70 1, 1/900 at f/9, 200ISO
Vincent Baldensperger | Fuji X-Pro 2, 1/200 at f/2, 200ISO (XF 56mm f/1.2)
Kevin Mullins | Fuji X100T, 1/125 at f/2, 500ISO
Patrick La Roque | X-Pro2, 1/220 sec at f/4, ISO 200 (35mm f/2 R WR)
By Patrick La Roque
