Brutalism and Winter Sunshine
A curse (or maybe it's a blessing) of being a photographer is that wherever I go there is always a part of my brain on the lookout for good potential shoot locations. I have folders on my phone with thousands of images in them of potential shoot spots, all over London and farther afield, because you never know when I might need a great basketball court in an urban setting, or an alleyway that looks just so.
I'm not a fan of visual clutter, and so my absolute favourite type of architecture for photo locations is concrete brutalism. The uniformity of colour and the simplicity of the structures really appeals to my minimalist taste. Luckily for me, after large parts of central London were bombed in WW2 great swathes of brutalist concrete buildings were constructed in the 50's and 60's.
For this shoot with Kamira and Gabriel I used a spot I had found location scouting, a tucked away service access road round the back of Blackfriars Station. Great backgrounds and very little through traffic, a perfect shooting spot. We also got lucky with the weather, one of those beautiful sunny winters days with very low, bright sun, which lifted the otherwise drab and somewhat depressing concrete setting and highlighted every bit of detail and texture. It also gave me a very powerful main light source, and all I had to do was fill in the shadows and balance up the tones with my flash.
For me, this shoot highlighted the fact that great images are a result of several factors coming together at the same moment. Geat models, great styling, a great location AND great light combined into striking images.
