I’ve been looking at old slides lately, thinking about the differences in taking photos 15 yrs ago compared with today, and I came upon this session from 1998. Shot with my Nikon FM2 and 35mm f2,8 lens on 100 ASA Fuji Sensia.
One thing I’d forgotten is how much I used to hunt for light.
The light here is all natural – just window light. It was a portrait in the workplace to go with an article, shot in half an hour.
Looking back to those days I remember I was always trying to find light. I spent much more time concentrating on where the good light was.
I was much bossier about getting my subjects to move in to the light. These days with digital there’s always enough light, and maybe that can make us lazy.
My favourite shot from the session is this one. There are lots of portraits on the net showing my subject (Meryl Tankard) being serious, but here she’s smiling.
I think this was because I’d convinced her it would be a good idea if she and I swung round dancing in circles while I tried to get a few shots with blurry backgrounds showing movement.
Her kindness in humouring this dumb idea shows through even after all these years.