Photography has always been a mix of science and soul. This post is about what happens when you strip the first away and leave only the second, a simple black backdrop, natural light, and the quiet dialogue between photographer and subject.

I don’t think I’ll ever know which came first, but I have always enjoyed black and white and strong contrasty images. The two go together hand in glove. Part of that has to be down to my formative days, printing in my darkroom when you brought your own photographs to life and that, for me, created a bias towards black and white images. But I was also working in the industry assisting other photographers at a time when black and white photography was a singular art form and the models were treated like royalty. The nineties were chaotic, but looking back they were also golden. Plus the decade had a great backing track of some of the finest music.

It’s 4:30am and I’m laughing as I clumsily navigate my luggage past the street lamps along the narrow side road. I’m walking to Paddington to catch the train to Heathrow. My backpack has been all over the world with me, USA, Dubai, Australia, the Canaries, Jordan and much more, but this is the first time that I’ve taken a bag with a background stand and backdrop on a photographic adventure. Who does this? I say to myself with a chuckle as I climb on board the train like it’s perfectly normal. I’m headed to France for two weeks of photography with friends old and new and travelling to several new cities. I love to travel, but in many ways this is a little unusual for me, of late my idea of a photographic adventure is to head off into the unknown, a desert or dormant volcano to capture the beauty of the human form in an otherworldly location.

But on this occasion I will be staying and shooting in two rather grand looking chateaus. The black backdrop slung over my shoulder will be used to stage a studio like scene juxtaposed against the grandeur of a chateau, or at least that is the idea.