July 2023 update
Photography is slowing down as I’m busy with my consulting client and also managing free time for planning, building/sourcing and editing. It’s usually better weather for shooting out in the hills, but has been pretty wet recently. I don’t mind rain, but it’s not fair on a model unless we’ve agreed to go a moody, rainy shoot. I also draw the line at lightning storms; I’ve never fancied being the tallest thing on a hill, especially if I’m waving a lightstand around. It sounds like a recipe for disaster. Recently, I’ve had a number of shoots, including more fine art…
May 2023
It’s been a busy time recently. While I’ve settled on sharp, large print creative photography and creative portraits as being the main focus for Silk Hat Studio, I’ve been exploring other styles. This was partly to understand the limitations of other techniques. partly to knock a few items off the ever-growing projects list and partly to get out of my comfort zone and explore. The project list now has over 130 projects and is my default go-to document when someone asks to collaborate and they have no idea what to shoot. It’s also what I keep in mind when I’m…
November 2022 – An update in Sheffield; medusa, dancer, influencer and retrowave
This has been a quiet month with 4 shoots so far and one workshop to come. All the shoots this month have occurred in Sheffield. Much of them have taken place in the Zavod Studio in Sheffield City Centre and one on location out near the Peak District. Gorgon and the Stones The first this month was a shoot centred on the Medusa myth. That suited me right to the ground. I’ve wanted to explore mythology themes for a while and have steadily been working towards that. That has included researching the themes and the stories, sourcing outfits and props,…
October 2022
It’s been a full 12 months. …not since I started. I first picked up a camera somewhere around age 7. An old Halina 110. Awful but fun and gave me the bug. I remember it had a normal and telephoto option and advancing to the next frame was a pull-out, push-in manoeuvre. From that, I moved on to Rollei SL35 E. …not since I started taking photography more seriously. That happened on a photography trip to Helsinki back in 2019. …not since I started to shoot people properly (as opposed to studio shots with friends and family). That happed in…
2022 Update
It’s been a while since I’ve posted here. Mainly because I’ve been focussing on photography itself, amidst moving house and town/city, rather than keeping the website up-to-date. That’s changing. I’ll be catching-up with publishing some of the session images here over the next few weeks. In parallel, I’m planning a number of shoots with a mixture of in studio and on location across a number of themes. 2021 saw me exploring different styles of shoots and images, understanding what I’m interested in progressing further. I’m trending towards dramatic portraits that feature colour heavily or black and white, with not much…
Film Noir Project
First set of images of a story inspired by film noir stereotypes.
Definition of Artisan
I’ve been to a few artisan markets recently and wondered how many of the stall-holders would be suitable for the Artisans of Great Britain photography project I’m working on. So I’ve put 4 slides together to attempt to highlight the differences and the focus. I say “attempt” because it’s not a clear line. I’m not going to exclude anyone, but I will focus more on some than others.
Haworth Steampunk Weekend October 2019
I spent a fair amount of time this last weekend at the Haworth Steampunk Weekend in Yorkshire, England. There are 2 albums from that event on Silk Hat Studio’s Facebook page. There will be a few other images that didn’t make it into the albums on the Instagram page. Haworth Steampunk Weekend Album 1 Haworth Steampunk Weekend Album 2
Contactable
Silk Hat Studio is now on Instagram and Facebook. You’ll see different images on those, where I’ll keep this site more as a portfolio and blog. To get in touch, DM on one of those sites.
Artisans of Great Britain
The Artisans of Great Britain is one of the four main themes of my photography. This presentation, hosted on SlideShare gives a brief overview of the aims and outputs of this project. Artisans of Great Britain from Alan Ward