Portrait Photography

Both Kyle and myself (Louise) have had a passion for portraiture for as long as we can remember. Kyle takes an illustrative approach to the way he produces work. Initially Kyle had an attraction for capturing interesting textures. This evolved into using textures as part of a series of creative portraits, combining the human form with naturally decaying textures.

Below is a perfect example of one of his well known pieces called 'Within'. Many more can be seen in our fine art gallery on this site.

Traditionally the portrait and the texture were shot separately on transparency film. The slides were then placed one on top of the other using the sandwiching technique. A cibachrome photograph was then produced with the 2 images printed as one final portrait.

This particular image won overall in the British Institute of Professional Photography International Photographer of the year, in 2001.









The style of portraits that I enjoy capturing are those precious family moments. We are often asked to photograph family members as a surprise gift for a relative. The feedback and reaction to receiving something so sentimental is really rewarding.

Spending time with families and capturing family portraits, especially of young children, is an area of photography that I especially enjoy.  It is lovely to see families returning for future shoots as their little ones grow up and new additions arrive. 

Now and again we get the opportunity to capture more creative baby portraits. This cute little line up was a group of 9 new Mum's who were all close friends. The studio was pretty crazy that day! 

We offer our portrait services from newborn babies right through to the great grandparent generation. For more information about booking a portrait with Hamilton Kerr call us on 01575 573 052 or leave us a message below.

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1920's Style Photograph

We were asked recently to produce an image with a very different kind of feel. The brief was for a 1920's style, with an up to date, fresh feel. The hairstylist producing the hair and headpiece was Louise Chrystal. She layered up the floral head pieces and created a shape similar to that of a traditional synchronised swimming cap, typical of the era we were aiming for. The different size and texture of the hair pieces added great shape and tonal value to the over all feel. We initially began setting up the studio as you would for a standard white background shoot.

Red gels were added on either side of the back lights. Initially these created a deep red, not what we were looking for, but it made for a funny test shot - this is Kyle at his best!

After a few tweaks we matched the tone nicely with the models skin tone and generated a lovely peachy/pink tone. The background could have been dropped in later in post production, but when working on a shoot like this, we aim to get the photographs as close to the brief as possible in camera.

Traditionally, make-up of this era was quite heavy and chalky. We asked the Make Up Artist Margaret-Anne to use an old English rose colour palette but with a fresher dewy finish instead. The rose pink cheeks and pale undertones work really well with the over all style of the image. Everything came together nicely.
I converted the file and only did a very small amount of post production. Whilst initially we were happy with the way the image was shot in camera, when I had processed it, I thought that perhaps it would look better desaturated to produce a more vintage tone.

The Saturated Image

This is the original photograph as it was shot to let you see the lighting techniques and the balance between the  background and the model.

The Final Image

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