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Hello there
We’re welcoming on-board this month quite a large cohort of new readers who have found their way here by downloading our two free e-books, Burgundy and Dereliction and Decay. Please stay! There’s nothing more demoralising first thing in the morning than an email from Mailchimp telling you that a bunch of readers have unsubscribed.
More importantly, there is always the possibility that one month, you will stumble across something in one of our newsletters that acts as a springboard for the next stage in your creative journey. I remember very clearly in 1997 seeing a photograph in Photo Technique Magazine showing a Corisican hellebore backlit against a pure white background. That image, ten years later, was completely to change the trajectory of my photographic work. The image, the concept, had lodged in a tiny crevice of my imagination and remained there in a dormant state for 10 years until digital photography provided it with the right medium in which to germinate and grow into the new discipline of field studio photography. And 18 years later, this is still a core part of my creative practice.
If this can happen to me, it can happen to you, too. And that is an exciting prospect.
We hope to see you soon.
Charlotte and Niall
March 2025 Chez-nous
Recently, we welcomed Ann and Bill from Arizona for our first Chez-nous Retreat of the spring. This had been on the cards for a long time, Ann had taken classes on-line with me but it was a change of jobs for Bill that provided them with the window to make the long journey from Prescott (“Prezkit”), AZ to Saint-Seine (“San-Sen…”) 58.
As we discovered a short time before their arrival, this was to be more than simply a relaxing, if intensive, week of photography and books and food. Bill intended to propose to Ann and we were honoured to provide the setting. We set a table in our meadow, chilled their champagne then left them to it. And the answer…yes! So, with the proposal accepted, and the appearance of an eye-catching tourmaline stone on Ann’s left hand, we settled into the week’s other main business; food and drink photography.
Charlotte recently bought me two books on food photography to add to our already burgeoning library. I was struck that both authors eschewed the use of flash in their work in favour of daylight. On the one hand, I think this gives encouragement to new photographers who can see that high quality work absolutely does not need flash to shine. Yet… through my own practice, I’m also very aware of how just one remote strobe head, diffused and flagged properly, can provide a depth and clarity to the lighting that is hard to replicate with daylight in all but a dark room with a single door or small window. (If you are reading this, Linda, du är i en liga för dig när det gäller att ljussätta med naturligt ljus och detta gäller inte!)
This is the set-up for the boeuf Bourgignon photo, using my folding “dark space” to prevent any overall reflections from affecting my exposure. While I used a gridded Elinchrom flash head, the same results can be achieved with a small strobe with the zoom head set to about 90 mm, at a similar distance from the diffusion plastic over the opening of the dark space.
Daylight becomes even trickier to manage when shooting bottles and drinks. The key light for this shot came from a flash in a long narrow “strip” box which itself is fired through a 2 m high diffuser. This is what is typically used to create the gorgeous long catchlight evident on bottles less rippled that the Hearach whisky one shown here.
Fortunately, from a styling perspective, we already owned the Harris Distillery’s beautiful tumblers and cocktail glasses made by the Wrześniak Glassworks in Poland. There was, however, still the quandary of needing to show “whisky” and “gin’ in the glasses while leaving the bottle seals intact. In the picture’s story, it’s a clear inconsistency but visually (and I hate to say, by convention) half-empty bottles don’t work.
The gin and tonic was easy to substitute with sparking water but it took several attempts to create the whisky’s stunt-double - in the form of cold tea.
In the past, I would have contrived to light the whisky bottle label with a small torch or reflected light. Nowadays, it’s much simpler to throw a radial gradient around it in LR and lighten to taste.
We tried to shoot this Pavlova, made by Charlotte, using the dark space and daylight but the result with two small strobes (one of which was behind the dessert, inside the set) provided more shapely lighting.
To be honest, if I were starting again, I would use continuous LED lighting rather than flash, for food photography at least. There is no substitute for seeing just where the light falls and how your modifiers are changing the look of it. But with just a little extra work, that unloved flash at the bottom of your bag could transform your still-life work.
We love it when guests give us well-defined goals they’d like to achieve during a Chez-nous. Bill wanted to marry Ann - but he did the work for that himself - and Ann wanted to recreate and photograph her grandmother’s cookie recipe- which we could help with. If you are keen to do this sort of thing yourself - or better, with us! - always bank on taking much more time than you think you will need, especially at the styling stage. Beth Watson, who helped us on a number of trips and tours while at university, once reported back to her parents that, “Niall has spent the whole afternoon in his shed photographing a tart.” A statement like this is open to misinterpretation. It was a leek and gruyère tart, for the record, and they are notoriously difficult to style…
But it wasn’t all about food photography. We worked on field studio images, gathering elements to make into finished images, such as this one of pasque flowers. As I worked on this picture over a four hour period (after the Retreat), it occurred to me that creating composites like this is akin to styling a food photograph. We start with a blank page (or table top) then move the elements we introduce many dozens of times until their relationship with each other feels just right. It needs patience and honesty about the value of each element, but if you get it right, you will have created something unique to you.
While a lot of the week’s programme kept us busy indoors we did head out to make some photographs of the local villages and towns, including Saint-Seine, above, and the backstreets of Beaune, below. This is the beauty of a Chez-nous Retrea; you call the shots as far the schedule and programme go - and we work to help you meet your goals within the time allowed.
We can’t think of a better way of combining “holiday” with “learning” and, as Bill so kindly put it, “You make us feel more special that we really are”. Well, if you think that, then we have done our job - and taken pleasure in doing it.
Our new photography space
Just before our first Chez-nous of the season, we completed our new photography space. “It’s a polythene tunnel.” Well, yes, but it’s not for growing food in. "It’s still just a polythene tunnel. It’s not like a proper studio.” Well, I think that kind of depends on the scale of things you are photographing. At 6 m x 4 m with a top height of 2.4 m it’s comfortably big enough for seated portraiture, field studio work, food photography and anything else that benefits from diffused light and shelter from the wind and rain. Add to that that it’s typically 4 - 14 degrees C warmer than outside, making it a comfortable shoulder-season writing and eating space, too. We fitted additional cross bars, not to support tomato plants but to clamp lights and backgrounds to. While an excess of light can be a problem, that’s easily dealt with using panels of dark fabric.
We’ll keep you posted as the poly-studio reveals its usefulness in the months ahead.
If you’ve not yet taken the opportunity to enjoy these free 😳 e-books already, click on the button to access them.
There’s no doubt that direct, on-line teaching was at its peak during the pandemic. But even then, there were very few photographers able or willing to spend 6 or 8 hours over several lessons with one other photographer to help them to master, or at least to get to grips with, an application or technique.
We did it, lots of times, both with Charlotte teaching baking and chocolate skills and me on the photographic and design side of things. And even although we are in an inter-pandemic phase at the moment, we think that need hasn’t gone away. I wish when I was starting out that I could have short-circuited a long and expensive self-teaching route to speed up my own progress.
If there’s one course of ours I’d specially recommend, its the one on Affinity Publisher, the application that will enhance the presentation and improve the visibility of your work above all others. It’s SO much more than just a page layout programme and one, I believe, that should be part of every photographers tool kit. It does a LOT so ahead of your first lesson, we have a Zoom call so I can figure out what you want to use the application for, then I prepare a template to take the grunt-work out of getting you where you need to be.
Hop over to our site to learn more by following the link above or send me an email, below.
This picture, shot in 1995, takes me back to near the start of my “career” as a professional creator (“creative is an adjective, right?) The picture was the result of lying (as I could in those days) for an uncomfortably long time a few metres from a rabbit burrow down which a whole nest of youngsters had disappeared a couple of minutes before. This was the first to raise her, or his, head above the parapets. Pre-autofocus, pre-digital and with only 200 ASA, it was a miracle in those days that we got any wildlife properly sharp.
While I still enjoy the sense of proximity in the photograph, it’s not one I would invest time in making these days. Like most traditional wildlife photography, the shot has been out-performed for years by lily-guilders who are skilled at making refined versions of old tropes. In your own photography, don’t give in to the belief that it has to be better than others’ work; it just needs to be different. Difference, after all, is the midwife of innovation and, ultimately, innovation will trump refinement. Just be prepared for a lengthy delivery.
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Our best wishes, Charlotte and Niall
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