the night portraits

I love low-key photography and we had another opportunity to hone our skills this week at Photo Social. I much prefer black and white to colour for this type of portrait, it brings a rich luminescence and a wide range of contrasting tones.

We were using a large ring-flash provided by our wonderful tutor, Kate Green. It produced unusually sharp highlights in the eyes.

I've called this series of photographs. 'the night portraits' as to my mind they have a dream-like quality to them.

 

 

 

dull photographs no. 3 - extracts from the second bottom drawer of our freezer

There is a grey hinterland to every freezer in which slumbers joy and horror alike.  Chilled, stiffened and inextricably dull.

faces in the smoke

carnival of souls

the opium den of kubla khan

in the dark ...

 

 

dull photographs no. 2 - the humble paper-clip

Consider this, the small insignificant curl of drawn metal that is the paper-clip. How dull, I hear you say. But yet ...

Take a piece of blank paper and a pencil.  Now write down in two minutes all the uses to which you could put the humble paper-clip. Turn the paper over and take one more minute to write down all the things you could not use it for.  

And now the final part of the exercise. Turn the paper over once more and in thirty seconds add to your existing list any further uses that have come to mind.

The humble paper-clip. Dull, yet strangely worthy.