Portraits from a farmers’ market
Last weekend I covered the launch of a new weekly farmers’ market in St John’s Wood, London. There were a bunch of interesting faces there and a few of them made for some really nice portrait subjects. It was also a good opportunity for me to mess around with some grayscale aged film vintage retro crusty newspaper style (insert additional unnecessary adjectives here) processing:
Photo notes:
- It was a mixture of overcast and sunny at the market. When the sun did pop out it caused some harsh shadows on faces.
- In such circumstances the best thing to do is put your subject between you and the sun, so the sun provides some back lighting. You then expose for the face, which can result in blown highlights (which is not a bad thing by any means, so long as you are doing it on purpose).
- My processing is purposely overexposed, soft and grainy. I have this kind of image in mind when I think of farmers’ markets. No idea why.
- Out of the 100 people who I asked for permission to photograph, only about 3 said no. Mental note to self: ask more random people on the street who look bizarre or interesting if I can take their photo.
