Faces : Jane Bown

Jane Bown is a celebrity portrait photographer for the observer and has been photographing celebrities for over 50 years. Now I have have mixed feelings about celebrity photography because I quite often find that the pictures don't always stand up on their own, but not so with Jane's portraits.

I'll admit it I'm a real sucker for black and white portraits, shallow depth of field, close cropping and plenty of dramatic shadow is what I want. This book delivers it in spades. Jane shoots exclusively in black and white, using only continous light. This sometimes means that some of the shots are a bit blurred or not as sharp as some people would like, but the composition and character that she captures overrides such onsiderations and the images remain powerful.

The attraction of this book for photographers, is that each picture has a short paragraph or two detailing the conditions of the shoot, giving an insight into the work of a celebrity portrait photographer. Sometimes it will be about how she thought about the composition, or it might be about how she got the light she needed. There are a few neat tips in the book and you don't get to travel much lighter than with a camera a couple of lenses and a 150W bulb for emergencies.

It doesn't come across as an instructional book, more of a genteel conversation from one photographer to another, with many very fine pictures. The print quality isn't the best but then a lot of these images would have originally been newsprint, so they reproduce quite well.

Hey maybe I should give out marks for these reviews? Or maybe not? Its a good book. Check it out if you see it in the book shop.

The Moment It Clicks

I would pretty much guarentee, that if you are subscribed to this blog, you have probably bought this book or are thinking of buying this book but I'm going to review it anyway.

There are plenty of books that follow a similar format to this. A picture, an anecdote and some information about how the image was taken. Micheal Grecco's Lighting and the Dramatic Portrait is a good example of this style of book. Those of you expecting detailed recipe's with lighting diagrams will be disapointed, the technical information is light but gets to the heart photo. This is by no means a criticism, The Moment it Clicks is absolutely jam packed with great photos, entertaining anecdotes and pithy quotes.

Joe's writes as though he's sitting next to you in a bar, talking in a what I assume is a New York accent, there's even a chapter dedicated to bar talk. Unfortunately, I'm unable to do accents when I'm reading to myself, so it comes across to me like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins, but no matter, every page jumps out at you, and a lot of the insight he dishes out, will stick with you for life. The pictures, as Joe would say, are all shot with available light, any &*%%@^ light thats available, so there's plenty to excite strobists and strobophobes alike.

Did I mention that this book was packed? I have never seen a book of this style so packed with material. I was about half way through the 240 pages and thinking that this was incredibly generous, I would have been satisfied with half the amount of content.

The geardos among you will drool over the photos and lists of Joe's kit, which get a full four pages towards the end of the book and there is a colourful glossary of terms full of explanations of photographic terms and slang, as well as footnotes on the pages where the terms are used.

You just know you have to buy this book don't you?

I'm back

Ive been a bit quiet of late because I've been busy getting married up in Scotland and then my current wife and I headed off to Iceland for our honeymoon. We took nearly 3000 photos in scotland and Iceland and our wedding phoographer gave us a CD with 300 images, so we have been busy sorting them into albums and making a slideshow for the wedding party this Saturday. No doubt I will be taking loads of Photos at the party too. After the party is over that will be it until the sordid affair and a messy divorce

(only kidding).

I did start drafting a blow by blow account of our trip to Iceland but after writing 2000 words about the first couple of days, I thought it would be extremely unlikely that anyone would read the whole thing. So you are going to get the abridged version.

Iceland was brilliant, it was a shaky start, there was a lot of rain for the first two days and we didn't get to see the best Reykjavik had to offer, but the Blue Lagoon made up for it, we were blessed with an amazing sunset and the place was quite magical.

We went on a jeep safari after it had started snowing and we saw loads of amazing landscapes. We tried to get up on a glacier, but the weather was so bad that it was impossible to continue and the snow made it very hard to get a decent photo because it kept getting on the lens and with white sky and white land it made the photos a little flat looking.

On our final full day we went on a golden circle coach tour and it was spectacular, the weather was great. Lots of blue skies and we experienced some amazing sights. Chief among these were the Gulfoss water fall and the Geyser.

It is very expensive to eat in Iceland but the food really is very good. We recommend Vin & Skel on the main shopping street. Everything we had was cooked to perfection and it only came to about 11,000 Krona for the two of us. Considering the standard of the food was so high you would quite easily pay similar prices for food of that quality in London.

But for a real budget eating experience, the hotdog stand by the Radisson Hotel does great hotdogs for 210 Krona. Bill Clinton had eaten hotdogs from the very same stand. I have to admit, the thought of Clinton clutching a hotdog made me feel slightly queazy, but I got over it.

I want to go back to Iceland as soon as possible, who wants to join me? Icelandic strobist meet anyone?


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