#172 SOULFUL CELEBRITY PORTRAITURE
A two-parter across today and next Wednesday; Danish photographer Søren Solkær known for his creative portraits of music stars, celebs and more latterly his incredible artistic studies of Starling murmurations across Europe talks about finding your photographic roots, which for him was travelling on a budget! We talk of first breaks and how his approach to portraiture has undoubtedly been shaped by his life experiences behind a lens.
Patron of the Day is Michael Beecham. We talked yesterday on MORE Photography Daily which is the Tuesday and Thursday edition over on Patreon, about photographing in a time of Covid. I was wondering if my new found favourite length of 85mm was a result of distance, whereas if you’d asked me to pick only one lens to take with me everywhere in the past, it would most certainly have been the 35mm focal length. Michael dropped a line after the snapshot episode with the following; “Neale, I've found the whole 'photographing in a time of Covid' an interesting driver to creating some of my most-satisfying work to date. The first lockdown drove me to create a body of work called 'The Sanity within the Stasis' which was, really, an effort to keep some of those mental health issues in check. It was all shot around the house and back garden, but shot with the same settings every time, and using cling film over the lens (a creative choice). But it was, in some ways, a project which saved me when I couldn't get out over the hills that surround my home. Were it not for the camera, I'm not sure how I would have coped.” Intrigued, I went straight to his webpage for this project and oh… my… word… what an incredible study, linked above. This is the kind of work I labour over in a gallery.
Today’s show is also supported by mpb.com who are the number one people for buying, selling and trading used gear on line. It’s that time of year where many photographers are trading; moving into something new, trying say mirrorless… so if that’s you, then MPB is a site to go visit if you’re in the States or Europe.
Photographs copyright Søren Solkær. Not to be reproduced or used without express permission of the photographer.
