[Finally] announcing my Actors' Headshots service

I've shot quite a few actors' headshots over the years, along with bunch of more corporate headshot work, but I've never officially offered actors' headshots as as service; those shoots have always been on an ad-hoc basis.

But headshots are right in my wheelhouse: simple portraits that have to connect with their audience whilst allowing the subject to express a range of expressions. And I love working with actors: they're such versatile subjects, and are used to taking direction.

So I've decided it's finally time to offer a headshots service specifically targeted to actors. You can read the full service page to learn more about what I'm offering, but it breaks down to three packages:

• Express session — 45 minutes, 1 final image, £74.99
• Two-hour session — 3 final images, £179.99
• Three-hour session — 5 final images, £249.99

I can't wait to start working more with local actors and actresses, and making amazing headshot portraits with them.

Do something, do something different

Without wanting to put a jinx on it, I think we're finally coming out of The Winter That Would Just Not End. Maybe. It's time to start doing something. Anything would do, frankly. It's also time to start making new stuff and updating promos and sending stuff out and making people aware that I'm alive.

Which is the most exhausting thing ever and something that I'm really not all that good at. In fact, putting it bluntly, I absolutely hate the self promotion aspect of photography. (If there's anyone out there who wants to become my marketing consultant in exchange for free corporate headshots and the occasional pack of Jaffa Cakes, do yell…).

Thankfully, it's also the time of year for the stuff I'm good at: shooting pictures. As the winter weather starts to turn to spring I can finally get out of the studio and start shooting on location, and refresh my portfolio a bit. Or at least, that was the plan.

I put out a call for folks to shoot with on Instagram and Twitter (my general loathing for Instagram does not extend to not using it when it's useful, it turns out). Leona replied, and we quickly set up a test shoot. We wanted to shoot entirely on location, but in the end, thanks to the Manchester weather, that didn't work out. Leona had also wanted to shoot something in her red suit, so once we'd brought the shoot into the studio I set about trying out a couple of ideas that were in my head.

The first — at the top of the page — was to shoot the red suit on a red background with some kind of over-the-top facial expression. The second, below, was to shoot the red suit on something close to a complimentary colour so that the red really popped.

Looking at my portfolio page, there's not a lot of bright colour there. I tend towards darkness and shadow, even when I'm using coloured light. I want to expand my range a bit, so pushing myself to use bright colours is a nice change. The portrait-on-colour-with-silly-expression has the potential to be a portrait series, I think — maybe I'll shoot some more of those just to get a consistent set of looks that doesn't completely clash with what's already in my portfolio. I love that red-on-red image, but it doesn't fit with the rest of my work right now.

Creating more stuff that doesn't fit in my comfort zone is one of my goals for 2018, so this shoot is a good start.

Finishing subject|object — seeking subjects of colour

It was 2015 when I started the subject|object project. Or maybe it was even 2014; I don't really remember. All I remember was coming up with the original brief:

Each subject is photographed twice for the project: A head-and-shoulders portrait (“object”) and a full-figure nude (“subject”). The two images will never be displayed together; there is no link between the “object” and the “subject”.

With the “subject” are displayed the subject’s details: their name (or pseudonym), age, profession, and their thoughts on the objectification of people in the modern world.

The “object” images are displayed alone, to allow viewers to have their own thoughts on the person in front of them

Since then I've photographed 35 people, and I'm getting to the point now where I'm getting ready to put the project out there in the wild. At the top of this post are some of the "object" images — the portraits. I haven't yet worked out how I want to display the nudes, at least on the web (though you'd think I'd have figured that out after a couple of years).

Overwhelmingly, the people I've photographed for subject|object have so far been white. I really want to change that before I wrap things up and start preparing for a gallery show. Britain is a wonderfully diverse country, and I want to photograph way more people of colour before I call the project done.

So, if you're a person of colour, and you're within reasonable travelling distance of Manchester — or you know someone who is — please don't hesitate to get in touch. I'd love to photograph you for this project. If it's going to be about the way that we, as a society, objectify each other, then it should be made up of a representative cross-section of our society, don't you think?

That's not to say, by the way, that if you want to be part of the project and you're white, I won't welcome your participation — I absolutely will; I just really care about this project being as diverse in its participants as possible.

You can get involved with the project by filling in the form on the subject|object project page.

Can we shoot something cool together in just 15 minutes? Come and find out!

One of the biggest joys in making portraits, I find, is getting to meet interesting people. And the truth is that everyone is interesting in some way. I've yet to meet a truly boring person in my career as a photographer.

But here's the thing: when you work a lot with models and musicians and people with a media profile to project and maintain, you encounter a lot of artifice. Not always deliberately; there's rarely a moment that a person decides "I shall pretend to be someone else in front of the camera," but often: The band who want to look like hard-core rockers, and who are completely different when the camera is off them. The model who is painfully shy until the camera points their way.

For my latest project, I want to do something different. I want to work with people who don't regularly sit in front of a camera for a professional portrait. And I want to push the boundaries, creatively, of what I'm able to do: with lighting, with sets, with props. I want to make portraits that are weird and wonderful and different.

And because I like to make my life harder, I'm giving myself only 15 minutes per sitter to shoot a portrait. 

Here's how it works: the sitter comes to my studio in Manchester, we have fifteen minutes to shoot and chat. We pick a few favourite frames together, then we're done. The selection of the final portrait is mine, and because I'm limiting the amount of retouching I'm doing, the sitter should have their image within 24 hours.

For all of this, I'm charging just £30 per sitter. That's a fraction of what I'd normally charge for a shoot. Why? Because I honestly believe that people want interesting and different images of themselves, and £30 is not a high bar to clear for most of those people.

If you're in North-West England, come and be a part of it all. You can read a bit more about the project and book a session over on the 15-minute portraits page.

I can't wait to work with you!