Simon Keitch Photography Blog

Wilfred Emmanuel Jones; entrepreneur and founder of the The Black Farmer brand photographed for the What I’ve Learnt section of British Airways Business Life magazine.

A couple of recent portraits of artist (and former musician with Add N to (X)) Steven Claydon produced on location at Royal William Yard as part of a commission to document the British Art Show 7.

Portrait of Devon based ballet/contemporary dancer Victoria Sahakian Rogers, photographed on location at the Dartmoor National Park. Hair and make up by Josie Lock, hair re-styled courtesy of a 30 miles an hour south-westerly wind.

Mary Quicke - Quickes Traditional

Mary Quicke (MBE) of Quickes Traditional; the Quickes family has farmed at Newton St Cyres in Devon for over 450 years and are now the largest traditional cheese maker in the United Kingdom. While researching the subject I came across some pictures of their enormous cheese store and knew straight away it would be the perfect location for the portrait. When arriving on location without the benefit of a prior tech-scout things can often change completely; concepts originally thought to be possible actually aren’t, and new unforeseen opportunities arise, but on this occasion the final portrait looks exactly as I planned it thanks in part to a series of 360 degree panoramas I found on a food blog called FX Cuisine; you can see one of the cheese store HERE.

The store is pretty impressive and definitely one of the stinkier locations I’ve worked in for sure. It was a great pleasure to meet Mary whose love and enthusiasm for both cheese and farming is immediately evident and it’s no surprise that the end product is so good with that kind of infectious attitude. Check out Quickes Traditional online at www.quickes.co.uk where you can find your local stockist, or call in to the farm shop if you’re in the area.

Geoff Sayers of the Well Hung Meat Co – an online organic butchers – photographed on location in their meat locker at Tordean Farm in Devon. I wish we’d had a little more time to move things around and try a couple of slightly different options with this set-up but as it was I was grateful to Geoff for taking any time at all out from meetings to sit for the portrait. With only a few minutes with the subject it’s important to get to the location early, scout and set-up with a stand-in so you’re good to go from the second the subject walks in, and the meat locker is one of the trickier (and colder) locations I’ve worked in. The behind the scenes photo below of the set-up shows that it was a pretty small space, with a very low ceiling; the softbox on the key light is just small enough to be squeezed up between two of the bars against the ceiling, and the right hand wall is flagged off along with the back wall to stop too much fill coming back into the scene off the white walls.

The second light (closest to the camera) is aimed straight at the back wall – also white – to push some on-axis fill light into the scene which I could control, and I dialled this down enough to keep the shadows relatively dark while knocking back the contrast and preventing the shadows from getting too dark.

Like all of the businesses I’ve chosen for inclusion in this series Well Hung Meat are an independent company doing what they do with the best possible ideals and motives. Here’s an excerpt from the ‘values’ section of their website:

We believe in what we do: producing wonderful meat for as many people as possible to enjoy, when and where they want to. We think it’s a worthwhile way to spend our time, and we love it. Believing in this means believing in quite a few other things. They’re all part of why our meat’s so good, and our service so convenient.

We believe the best things in life, particularly food, are simple, natural and unspoiled. Organic meat produced in this way should be an essential, affordable and enjoyable part of home cooking.

We believe that if you want to eat meat, you should take some responsibility for the welfare of the animal and how the meat got to your table. We’re serious about our responsibilities – not just to our animals, but also to our farmers and staff, and the environment we all depend on. And of course we have a big responsibility to our customers too. We’re not stuck in the past. In fact, we’re quite a young bunch, and we run a modern business.

We believe that farming should work with nature, not against it – and we believe in this totally, especially when dealing with live animals.

We believe the whole experience of producing, cooking and eating meat should be a real pleasure. We want you to enjoy dealing with us, taking delivery of your meat, and then turning it into a fantastic meal to share with friends and family.

We think too many organisations seem to have forgotten how to behave properly, with kindness, generosity, consideration and honesty. We always try our best to be as good as we can. Being good also means always aiming to improve, in everything we do. We’ll keep looking for new and better ways to do things – like finding more sustainable packaging. Standing still isn’t good for anyone.

And amen to that. Check out the Well Hung Meat Company at: www.wellhungmeat.com

Julian Temperley of The Somerset Cider Brandy Co photographed in the ‘bond’ above on location at his farm at Burrow Hill in Somerset. This portrait is part of a series I’m working on of independent ‘artisan’ food producers across the South West Of England which I’ll be posting as an ongoing project here on the blog and eventually as a complete series. Julian produces cider brandies matured in those oak barrels for up to 20 years, as well as traditional cider and and apple juice, and Waitrose stocks their excellent ‘Somerset Pomona’ which is a great alternative to port as an after-dinner accompaniment to cheese. A couple more images below from the 150 acre orchard at the farm where apples have been grown for cider for at least 150 years, with the final image also featuring Diana Temperley, grandson Fox, and the family’s border collie.

Issue two of Privateer magazine arrived in today’s post and includes a feature I shot for them last year at the 2010 TransWales mountain bike endurance race; a seven day stage race in the heart of Wales. I actually shot this assignment just over six months ago so it’s great to finally see the photos go to print. In addition to producing all of the photography I also wrote the introduction for this piece which probably took me longer to finish than the time I spent on location in Wales… In the (paraphrased) words of David Sedaris: me write pretty one day.

The magazine is quite a thing to behold; more coffee table book than magazine, beautifully printed on nice thick paper stock and with each feature getting plenty of space (this one running a full 15 pages in total). Privateer is the sister publication of the now firmly established Rouleur road cycling magazine so if you’re at all familiar with Rouleur you’ll know what to expect in terms of style and quality.

Out-takes:

You can order a copy or subscribe to Privateer at: http://www.rouleur.cc/privateer

The new issue of FourFourTwo football magazine is now on the newstands featuring an article I shot for them recently about the Royal Marines Amateur Football Club. This was an interesting feature to work on; the RM AFC team’s home pitch is based across the road from the Royal Marines Commando Training Centre at Lympstone, close to Exeter in Devon although the team draws players from the camps at Taunton, Plymouth and Chivenor also, with a high player turnover as training exercises and deployments dictates a different line-up each week and a player pool of around 50 individuals in total. The assignment brief called for me to attend one of the team’s weekly matches, with a fairly long shot-list including a full team portrait and documentary images and while I’d ticked all the boxes, it wasn’t really working for me and I knew there had to be a better way to photograph this subject and so I arranged to meet up with Colour Sergeant Richard Hope a few days after the original photo-shoot to try a different tack. I set up some lights at the edge of the pitch and then we ran through a few different ideas; some keepy-uppy, some kicking the ball, and the static shot which made the final double-page-spread opener above. Big thanks to FourFourTwo designer David Robinson for assigning me plus Art Editor Anth Moore for doing such a nice job with layout and reproduction.

Out takes:

Long distance runner Jo Pavey photographed for the cover of Asthma UK Magazine.

My portrait of mountain bike importer/distributor Silverfish UK Ltd’s Managing Director Darren Mabbott features in the October 2010 (#104) issue of Dirt Magazine. This photograph was actually produced over two years ago on location at the Silverfish warehouse in Cornwall (original image below). Portraits tend to have a short shelf life so it was nice to get a stock sale from this one and good to have my work appear in Dirt Magazine for the first time also.