Fujifilm Professional Distinctions Award 2004

 

Portrait of David Cottam - Classical Guitarist

 

When I first moved to Devon in 2002, David had just retired as

landlord of my new local, The Lamb Inn, to concentrate on his

musical career, so I offered to do him a cut-price promo shoot.

A year or so later, having just recorded his new CD, David was

keen to see if I could produce something suitable for the cover,

so we arranged to spend an afternoon trying out some locations.

I told him about an old Tithe Barn behind the cottage of a local writer, Angela Perkins, who I had recently visited. The doors of

the barn could open either side, or top and bottom, originally to

allow the wind to naturally separate chaff from grain (winnowing),

but to my photographers eye, a perfect way of controlling daylight!

 

The end result was achieved by having only the bottom half of the

barn doors open, so that diffused light would reflect upwards from

the floor, illuminating Davids face and guitar, whilst the background

remained completely in shadow, creating a natural light gradient.

 

The shot was taken on my Eos 3 using Ilford XP2, a chromogenic

black and white film, pushed from its nominal 400 asa up to 1600,

giving a shutter speed of just 1/30 second at f4.5 (hand-held) at a

focal length of 100mm for minimum depth of field, thus ensuring

that the main focus of attention was on Davids face and fret hand.

 

The Fujifilm Professional Distinctions Awards are an ongoing

quarterly competition open to UK professional photographers only.

Since it all began in 2002, there have been over 22,000 entries!

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