I love location portraits; the diversity of the assignments and the perpetual challenge of creating great images anywhere from a company boardroom to a remote backcountry location are always hugely rewarding despite the headaches that inevitably arise. I really felt up against it on Friday night however when I was assigned to photograph two local cyclists (James Smith and Rob Willcocks) for an interview in the next Shred West magazine. As instructed I met the two guys I was to photograph underneath an overpass of the A38 in Plymouth; they were only available for the photo-shoot in the evening and the location was in complete darkness when we arrived, not to mention the wind and rain blowing through. We found a good looking pillar covered in graffiti that was relatively shielded from the weather to act as the backdrop and drove a car in to throw enough light onto the scene from the headlights to see what we were doing. We kept the lighting simple to give the dark, gritty look that the editor was looking for and the subjects were kept to the right of the frame to allow for text to be laid over the left of the image for the final layout.
James Smith and Rob Willcocks for Shred West
December 7th, 2008 § 0
