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.

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.

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

One of my band portraits of the Plymouth based group Brotherhood Of The Lake made it into the current issue of Rock Sound Magazine available now from all good newsagents… The band’s new album ‘Iron Sails” will be released on June 28th 2010 and gets a glowing write up by Rock Sound, stating: ‘we promise you won’t hear as many records as good as this in 2010…’.

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.