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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Hairdressing Photography with Louise Chrystal

The first time Louise Chrystal and I worked together was years ago, on a shoot for a make up artist. Louise was styling the hair to compliment the make up looks. I instantly saw that she had an eye for what would and wouldn't work in camera. Since then we have kept in touch and finally we got the opportunity to plan a shoot.

Louise currently works freelance and was looking to produce some new images to use as promotional material to show a more creative side of her work. When we asked about the planning behind her shoot, she told us she was looking for photographers who specialise in hair photography, rather than general photographers who 'give it a go' with little knowledge of the hair industry or how to create a professional hair photograph.

Knowing that Louise had an early passion for architecture, I expected nothing less than a structured avant garde look. She delivered exactly that, and produced fantastic looking hair that I couldn't wait to wrap my lights around. This particular look was inspired by retro 80's pop culture with a contemporary up to date feel. The make up (by Margaret-Anne McKay) complimented this look perfectly with this seasons metallic hues.

Although the model has dark hair, we decided to photograph her against a dark charcoal background. Having worked with many hair models over the years, we know that lighter tones of backgrounds can wash out depth of colour within hair and can dull down highlights.

The model was shot against a charcoal wall in our studio. We placed a background light on the wall down low, creating a gradient effect from light to dark, we then used a blue gel over the top to tone the wall with a blue tint. We placed a snoot in from the left hand side of the shot. A blue gel was used on the snoot to create a highlight down the neck of the model, and to throw some blue highlights into the hair itself. This again, was to add to the 80's pop feel - the technique was used a lot in old school music videos as well as stills. A second snoot was positioned in from the right hand side to give the band of shine around the hair. These concentrated lighting techniques show off the over all structure of the hair style, and define the face from the background. The warmth from Nicole's natural skin tone was toned down in post production as a cooler skin tone worked better with the cold blue lighting effects.

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