This story started when Taj, the man behind The Rakish Gent, a Birmingham-based menswear and lifestyle blog, emailed me some inspiration images to suggest the direction in which he would like to take our urban portraits session. All of them had a distinct street style feel and clean editing, and utilised natural light locations with light smoothly finished sandstone masonry blocks, archways and columns and visually interesting door frames. Sort of Victorian/Edwardian city reference with a modern twist…

As the city centre has been taken over by Frankfurt Market and craft fair stalls, Brindley Place was a contemporary location alternative as it had some traits citing Victorian and Edwardian urban public architecture.

As usual, I am splitting the photos from Taj’s urban session into mini sets. In Part 1 we explore some aspects of the street style sub-genre Cycle Chic, a trend involving bicycles and bicycle accessories, and associated with wearing everyday clothing in a stylish way. Fashion photographers were quick to appropriate Cycle Chic  shifting attention to model/clothes and using bicycle as a set prop really, to engage without actually riding it.

Below is a selection of urban portraits featuring Taj wearing a stylish dark blue suit and sunglasses, with a bicycle as an accessory and against the clean graphic lines of light sandstone masonry.

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