vintage twist
Joining his wife Pippa Mackenzie’s brand-intensive studio, Ian Hearnshaw offers his own specialisation of vintage Hollywood-style portraiture. This, along with his child portraits, earned him a Licentiateship at the Focus on Imaging judging.
A
fter training for a career in graphic design and photography, Ian Hearn- shaw was thrown into many different rôles during the 1990s. He became part of TV and short film crews, managed computer networks for one of the world’s largest oil companies, travelled the world and in 2002 moved to lead an in-house graphic design studio for one of Britain’s big- gest law firms. In the meantime, his wife Pippa Mackenzie was building a successful photogra- phy business. Whilst shooting corporate and commercial work for his employer Ian built on the cinematic lighting techniques learned from the film world. In 2009, he was able to join Pippa’s business full time and import two decades of training and experi- ence from art college to interna- tional boardrooms.
His knowledge of branding, graphics and website design has no doubt helped Pippa Mackenzie Photography; check the websites out, which Ian designed and built, and you’ll see just how clearly each photographic product is promoted and distinguished. One of Ian’s own spe- cialisations, which is virtually a separate product on its own, he calls ‘Twisted Vintage’ and it’s a black and white style using Hol- lywood lighting techniques, dark backgrounds, and a fairly low key tonality. Top-class make-up, styling, fashion and accessorizing is needed to make the images convincing. The black background is essential for this – just as it is for the simpler one-light ‘Photo Noire’ concept originally named by Kenny Martin. Ian’s vintage look with a twist can use more complex lighting, movie-set style. His typical kit consists of three Bowens 500R studio flash heads with honeycomb, snoot and barn door control to keep the light strictly under control. It
is often directional, casting firm shadows, and does not imitate window light. It’s meant to look like traditional tungsten light on real film. This is a premium of- fering, and Ian also shoots more routine sittings. For his successful Licentiateship (gained at Focus on Imaging) he presented two sets of five child portraits, five of the Twisted Vintage shots, and five other prints including two loca- tion portraits.
All the studio work used dark backgrounds – mostly pure black. “I want to develop a dramatic style of portraiture using mainly low key lighting”, he said. “With this in mind, I have taken the decision not to use any white backgrounds. The idea behind the sub-brand called Twisted Vintage has grown out of my love for old movies, and my love of black and white photography – to create stunning vintage-style portraits for clients who want to become someone else for the day.” It’s interesting to note that Ian, at 40, entered the industry with a BA Hons in Design and Media Management from Thames Valley University. From 1993 to 2009 his career could be defined as media and corporate, a door opened by the right degree two decades ago. In the early 1990s it was still unusual for photography graduates to consider the social photography sector. Today, Ian has moved over to that side – and so have new graduates, with portraiture and wedding photog- raphy now considered a ‘better’ career then ever before. Ian understands the need to diversify and keep things fresh. Living near Goodwood, he has just launched his own website of- fering “car portraits” for the own- ers of classic cars and supercars. See:
pippamackenzie.com twistedvintageportraits.com ianhearnshaw.com
Á MASTER PHOTOGRAPHY 21
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44