This story begins back in September last year. I was wrapping up a shoot with Elena and Tezz in Tuscany, Italy. The three of us had visited some incredible locations and had a great time taking pictures together. It was a true Italian photographic adventure, one that included a bonus visit to a hospital for me to get some stitches. Elena is a close friend but I hadn’t met Tezz prior to this trip. Not that it was needed as these two are thick as thieves, sisters separated at birth. A quality that had expedited our rapport and made the images more impactful.

Our final meal was a lot of fun, and it was agreed we should do this again. Tezz proposed that we visit her favourite island; Ibiza, a place she called home for nine years. She had spoken about the island so passionately, her descriptions were almost spiritual. It was also somewhere that promised a variety of otherworldly locations.

I had ceded any semblance of control when I left the hospital with a bandaged leg. They had been in charge since that moment and I had learned it was better to say yes. Besides, Tezz is one of those people who seems to have their own gravity, the ability to drag you into their orbit whether you like it or not. That evening we agreed some rough dates in May whilst finishing off the last of the Limoncello. 

I’m sat in my seat on the plane headed home after an amazing week in France, something that we did last year and I feel is becoming an annual event. My last plane trip saw me finish off my book, The Resonant, and my brain wants me to continue working on book number two, but my heart wants this story to be told first. So whilst I am staring at the same white page and typing on the same keyboard, I promise to use very different words.

I’ve already used the word, event, which could be a bit misleading. This trip was much simpler. By design it was a holiday with a camera (or in my case several). But it does take some advance planning. On the 28th of December last year my friend Dave announced he had booked a chateau in Normandy for the end of April. Believe it or not, this is not an unusual message, we’ve travelled a fair bit together and he has a thing for castles. Besides, you need a big space when you are hosting many people.

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.