Our second day back to Wakefield College to start our second year of the course ended up with a change of plan. During the morning lesson Amanda came in and offered us and our teacher Tony the chance to go to Dewsbury Kirklees college to see a talk and demonstration on lighting techniques in a studio environment. This was being presented by practicing professional photographer Steve Howdle. He had presented a talk in the morning so as we only arrived there at 1pm he just spent 5-10 mins giving us our own introduction to who he was and a catch up of what he had been on about in the morning.
We learned that he was mainly a hair photographer and after just 5 shoots - not even hair shoots! - he had landed a contract with Babyliss. He has also dabbled in some fashion photography also. He showed us some of his work, which to be honest wasn't to my taste but for others in the class they found it interesting.
For me his work was very dated looking, almost looking like it came from the 80s with very soft edges, a cloudiness which looked like a smoke machine had been used and strange hairstyles nobody would normally have. I found them very dated also considering Steve told us he had only started photography in 1999 and had worked through the start of this decade. I have never been a fan of hair photography in general really. For me the genre and style of every picture turns out the same and no matter what the hairstyle or model is to me it looks dated and cheesy. He also told us that he does hardly any editing to his pictures but as you can see from the first image above this is clearly not the case.
However I thought I would get use of the studio session as up until now although I am comfortable with studio lighting I tend to use the same set up for most things so I therefore thought I could gain some knowledge from the demo.
There was a model waiting in the studio, with her hair and make up done. A girl from Dewsbury college volunteered herself to take photos as nobody else in our class wanted to. Steve showed us some different pieces of equipment, such as the beauty dish, and how he goes step by step though and how each addition of a light will change different aspects of the picture. I found some things he said useful such as when he was talking about a lightmeter - although at the end of it we thought he was trying to sell us them!. It was interesting to see how he sets up one light at a time where as we tend to dive in and throw all the lights on.
To be honest at the end of it all he had 5 lights on the set and the model but the end picture looked just like he had one big softbox at the front. It didn't look anything like his pictures lighting set up and I was a bit dissapointed that he didnt take any photos himself of the situation for us to see how his would turn out.
As research before writing this post I also had a look for his webpage. For someone who has won a few photography awards and is apparently well known in the industry his website is frankly dissapointing. It looks like an amateur photographers website and wouldnt intice me to use him as a photographer.
This is the website here : http://www.thorntonhowdle.com/
We learned that he was mainly a hair photographer and after just 5 shoots - not even hair shoots! - he had landed a contract with Babyliss. He has also dabbled in some fashion photography also. He showed us some of his work, which to be honest wasn't to my taste but for others in the class they found it interesting.
For me his work was very dated looking, almost looking like it came from the 80s with very soft edges, a cloudiness which looked like a smoke machine had been used and strange hairstyles nobody would normally have. I found them very dated also considering Steve told us he had only started photography in 1999 and had worked through the start of this decade. I have never been a fan of hair photography in general really. For me the genre and style of every picture turns out the same and no matter what the hairstyle or model is to me it looks dated and cheesy. He also told us that he does hardly any editing to his pictures but as you can see from the first image above this is clearly not the case.
However I thought I would get use of the studio session as up until now although I am comfortable with studio lighting I tend to use the same set up for most things so I therefore thought I could gain some knowledge from the demo.
There was a model waiting in the studio, with her hair and make up done. A girl from Dewsbury college volunteered herself to take photos as nobody else in our class wanted to. Steve showed us some different pieces of equipment, such as the beauty dish, and how he goes step by step though and how each addition of a light will change different aspects of the picture. I found some things he said useful such as when he was talking about a lightmeter - although at the end of it we thought he was trying to sell us them!. It was interesting to see how he sets up one light at a time where as we tend to dive in and throw all the lights on.
To be honest at the end of it all he had 5 lights on the set and the model but the end picture looked just like he had one big softbox at the front. It didn't look anything like his pictures lighting set up and I was a bit dissapointed that he didnt take any photos himself of the situation for us to see how his would turn out.
As research before writing this post I also had a look for his webpage. For someone who has won a few photography awards and is apparently well known in the industry his website is frankly dissapointing. It looks like an amateur photographers website and wouldnt intice me to use him as a photographer.
This is the website here : http://www.thorntonhowdle.com/
