I had an assignment shooting some collateral stock photos for the IPC cycling health and lifestyle magazines a while back (Cycling Weekly, Cycling Active and Health and Fitness for Cyclists) and this one is the first to go to print and my first Cycling Weekly cover. A little different for Cycling Weekly I think and a sign that perhaps natural light images are coming back into fashion. The model is James Scawn who manages the Cycle Scene bike shop in Plymouth and the photo was shot near Postbridge way up on the top of Dartmoor.
Hi Simon,
Before I fork out on a Quadra rig myself, do you think that good natural light is coming back into fashion?
I’ve been following your work for a few months now and as a cyclist and a photographer I’m very jealous! Keep up the good work.
Cheers
Paul
Thanks Paul. The trend for over-lit and over-produced images is definitely over the hump; good natural light (or flash that mimics it) and more natural processing is certainly coming back into fashion (and film is making a big comeback right now too).
Right then that’s it, I’ve got a Ranger Quadra kit and a D700 for sale. I’ll do a straight up swap for an F2 and a few rolls of Velvia. Any takers?
If I were to play devils advocate I’d ask:
What makes you say that flash is on its way out? When only a month and a bit ago your great portraits of Robert Gesink appeared in a very similar mag?
And.. what makes you say that film is making a come back? Do you mean for magazines? I find it difficult to believe that magazines would ever go back to the cost and time consuming use of film, unless it was a photography magazine trying to illustrate an article about using film maybe. Not that I’ve got anything against it, I just think that production time and costs involved in film are too much of a hassle for a picture editor to deal with now that they’re used to receiving digital, which even though faster and in some cases probably cheaper than delivering/processing film, some of the time can’t happen quickly enough as it is.
And what about servers? Will they be replaced by boxes full of negs?
But only for the sake of banter of course.
Andy.
@Andy Smith
I suggest you re-read my post… I did not say that flash is on its way out, simply that more naturally lit images are coming back into fashion, and that applies to both lit and ‘available light’ photos. I love flash and enjoy working with a broad palette so I use flash or available light as the situation requires; the Gesink article featured seven of my portraits and four of them were lit with ambient (window) light only. I guess what I was really referring to is the ‘Dave Hill’ style; when you see a company like Kelloggs using that kind of look it’s obvious that it’s had its day.
Digital definitely isn’t going anywhere; the new digital bodies are amazing tools and film isn’t of interest to most clients but there are commercial and editorial photographers still shooting film and a few big advertising campaigns have been shot on film recently (Levis springs to mind off the top of my head). No-one accepts analogue submissions anymore though so the negs need to be scanned and submitted as digital files by the photographer which certainly is more time and expense (and film processing is more expensive than is used to be).
Livebooks blogged on the film comeback recently here: http://blog.livebooks.com/2010/03/this-year-in-photography-film-makes-a-comeback/
Gotchya, my mistake.
I never used film professionally as a photographer. I did work on the receiving end of it and spent many long hours retouching hairs, bubbles and dust out of the digital files because the trannies hadn’t been flush to the drum scanner. Don’t miss that.
Have you used medium format digital? I asked at the Flash Centre last week, out of interest more than anything, how much the MF digital kit was to rent – £195 a day excl. VAT. Expensive way to get familiar with new gear but tempting when you look at portraits that have been shot using MF digital. There was series of portraits of soldiers in the Times magazine last year that were incredible, I can’t find them otherwise I post a link.
I’ve had my eye on the Hasselblad H3DII 31… Amazing quality but hard to justify the expense over the new 35mm bodies.