all that jazz
Funky and far out and… Fellowship! Martin Roffe turned up with what he thought was an Associateship application. It passed, with flying colours, to the extent that the judges decided to award Hornchurch-based Martin his FMPA.
M
artin Roffe, from Horn- church in Essex, has been an MPA member
since 2010 Focus on Imaging. He joined as a Licentiate on the basis of a panel of scientific images.
“I have been involved in taking scientific slides for an agent”, he explained. “My main business is commercial and sporting events; I do a lot of professional golf events round the country.
“I was fortunate enough to win the Science Award in the 2010 Master Photographer of the Year. I walked into the Hilton in Birmingham and MPA’s staff and executives greeted with me ‘hello Martin’ – they knew who I was, which says everything you need to know about the association. “In those awards I gained six merits from eight pictures entered, two certificates of excellence and one trophy. “I had intended to do the Associateship, and planned to enter a scientific panel. But I realised I had completely differ-
ent work waiting in the background. “Back in 2007 I met a girl called Zoe Doman, a Goth model, and did a few shots for her portfolio. She had the most beautiful eyes so I had to get some photos of her eyes and face. I wanted to move on from this and to work on the images. I had taken the photos, paid the model fees but I still asked her if it was OK because of the effects which would be used.
“It probably took me 20-30 hours for each image, using many different programs – Adobe Photoshop CS5, Corel Paintshop Pro X3, Serif PhotoPlus 4. I have onOne Suite 5 for additional effects, but did not use that much.
“From the raw photo of the model, with or without a musical instrument, I had to make a decision how to see it – what I wanted it to end up looking like. “I was mentored by Desi Fontaine, and sent her a whole set as 6 x 4 inch prints
MASTER PHOTOGRAPHY 20
to see which ones she liked; I chose the final 20 from over 40 prints, made from in excess of 1800 original photos. “Each image is based on one photo only, always the raw file – I have tried JPEG or TIFF to work from, but you lose so much. Some of the effects were done during raw conversion, the rest in 16-bit colour. Some of the shots were digitised from 645 negatives using an Epson V750 scanner.
“I’ve got rid of the 645 camera now, but I would like to buy another with a high resolu- tion digital back. Even so with cameras available now with 24 million pixels I’m not sure that is needed. I have a Nikon D3X. “The images were printed on Fotospeed NST Natural Soft Tex- tured and High White Smooth papers, both 310gsm, put into double mounts with a white top matte and black inner. I printed them on my Epson 3800 with Epson inks. I also have a 4880, both are calibrated for the same papers, but the 4880 does not produce as good results as the
3800. I also use some Permajet papers such as their Oyster and also the Tecco paper called Silver Iridium.” When looking at Martin’s images, we commented on how closely cropped they were, which could restrict the way they are used in something like a magazine. “I close in tight, and I do when I’m shooting wildlife or sporting events”, Martin said. Desi Fontaine has suggested they could make good decor for hotels, Henk agrees; clearly in this application, the tight crop to the edges of the image is no issue.
Martin has a new website under construction which he hopes can help market these prints. Although he photo- graphs events, he’s never yet used on-line proofing or image file storage sites which allow pictures to be ordered directly, and prefers to work for clients directly. – DK
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