We often walk through St Paul’s Square in Jewellery Quarter on our way home from the city centre. My photographer’s mind keeps taking these mental snapshots (neurograms, as Sue Bryce calls them) of urban locations that may look great for a portrait or fashion photo session. And it’s not only architectural details that I notice but also quirky trees, flower beds, boats, water locks and canals, and many other random places. They are all set in the city, which makes them kinda urban.
St Paul’s Square and the surrounding area rank high on my scouted locations list because there is such a variety of structures, colours and textures there. When Chante’ whom we met when she modeled at at Joseph Chamberlain College fashion show kindly answered our callout we decided to meet up for our photo shoot there.
Part 1 is set at the small island of palm trees behind the church – it gave the scene an exotic jungle vibe. Chante’ brought a suitcase of clothes for us to choose from. I like her urban camouflage shirt – as you remember from my Bullring catwalk photos it’s one of the key fashion trends of the autumn-winter 2013 season. The greens of the catwalk set envoked natural environment and inspired me to pose Chante’ against palm trees, thus ironically returning the ‘urban’ camouflage trend to its original reference point.
The thing is – camouflage as an urban outfit looks good but it is irrelevant. So we tried to find spots (such as palm trees, lavender field) right in the middle of Birmingham to ‘activate’ its function – sort of. It’s a semantic game via photography. More about it in Part 2 of this Birmingham photo session.
Many thanks to John who helped me with a silver reflector to give Chante’s skin those characteristic specular highlights.
