I was up and out at 4.30 last Sunday morning to take an early morning sunrise photograph of a chap called Jason down on the seafront for my "I Am Lyme" project.
Jason runs The Beach House Cafe right on the front, and he's down there every single morning setting out the tables and chairs.
I've seen him loads of times, always a “Good morning”, and the odd bit of chat, nothing much more than that, but I've wanted to photograph him for a good while.
Turns out somebody else I'm shooting for the project soon had already mentioned it to him. So on the Saturday, when I was out with my friend Steve Healy and we happened to see him, we got chatting about the project and I asked him there and then. He was more than happy to be involved, and it was Jason who suggested six o'clock the following morning. So that's what we did.
Sitting down before picking the camera up
I got down there good and early and was set up by 5.30am, and before I even picked the camera up we sat and chatted, talking about all sorts.
That's when he told me he isn't originally from Lyme Regis; he's from Southampton, and a few years ago he was cycling round the world, all over India and Thailand, and he was making his way round the UK when he stopped off here and never left. He got the job at the cafe pretty much the next day and has run it ever since for the elderly couple who own it.
At one point in the conversation he also opened up about some fairly serious medical problems he's had to deal with in the not too distant past. It's not my story to tell so I'll leave it there, but it really struck me … you just never know what somebody has been through.
Taking the portraits
Once he'd finished setting up, that's when we started taking some portrait shots; all very slow paced with no rush at all, which was lovely.
It was genuinely a completely relaxing experience and that's exactly what I'm loving about the "I Am Lyme" project, much the same as I did with the veterans work. By sitting and chatting with people you get to know them a bit, you understand them a bit more, and I genuinely believe that comes through when you take their portrait.
The thing that really got me though was how many people said good morning to him while we were stood there. I honestly lost count. Everybody knows Jason.
The kit I used
Nothing complicated, and nothing I haven't used a hundred times before:
Fujifilm X-T5
Fujifilm XF 33mm f/1.4 R LM WR
Westcott FJ800
Westcott Rapid Box Switch Octa, 3ft x 4ft
Westcott XT-1M remote trigger
Tethered into Capture One Mobile on the iPad
Settings were ISO 100, f/4.0 and 1/125 sec.
TTL to manual, and why I keep banging on about it
The flash side of it is the bit worth explaining, because it's the thing that makes a shoot like this so much calmer than it sounds.
It works like this.
I set the flash to TTL and take a frame, and the flash works out for itself what it reckons is the perfect exposure. All I have to do then is nudge it up or down on the dial on the remote until it's where I want it, and use the TTL to Manual function to lock that power in.
That's it. Pretty much one shot and the flash exposure is bang on and we're good to go.
From then on the flash fires at exactly the same power every single frame, so nothing is quietly drifting about while I'm working, and that's really the whole point of it for me. It keeps the technical side of the photography simple and quick, so as a portrait photographer my time gets spent engaging with the person in front of my camera instead of being distracted by the tech.
For anyone who's been put off by the idea of manual flash, it's a lovely way in as well, because you're letting the flash do the maths and then simply keeping the answer.
The ambient was the interesting part that morning.
The rising sun was over to camera right and it kept appearing and then going back behind the clouds, so the light was changing every couple of minutes. Rather than chase it, I set my camera for the ambient with the sun behind cloud and then only took photographs when it was behind cloud. Wait, shoot, wait again.
It sounds like a faff but it isn't. It meant the ambient light was consistent, and because the flash power was locked in manual, that was consistent too. Same background, same light on his face, frame after frame.
The print
I'll be getting Jason's print to him in the next few days, which is the bit of this project I look forward to most. Handing somebody a print of themselves in person is a very different thing to sending them a file, and it's become the part of "I Am Lyme" that I wouldn't skip for anything.
I’ll make sure to grab a picture of Jason with his print and share it.