Projects, Faces and projects about faces!

I’m working on a number of personal projects at the moment and I think the time has come tell you about them. This will be a brief intro to them as I plan to devote a blog post to each one individually very soon.

Familiar Faces
This is a long term project I’ve been working on for quite a while now. I’m attempting to take close-up black and white head shots of everyone I know! They will all be photographed in a similar style, lit in a similar way and shot on medium format film that I am developing myself. The idea is to produce a book once the project is finished… whenever that will be!

Un-familiar Faces
As photographers we all see people in the street that we think has ‘a face that should be photographed’. But it’s not the easiest thing to just go up to strangers and ask to take their photo. That is the challenge I’ve set myself! Having spent a while on ‘Familiar Faces’ with it’s rigid set style I’m thinking this project will be photographically ‘looser’, and probably shot on a variety of different cameras, film and digital.

12Faces
Because ‘Un-familiar Faces’ will be a bit of a challenge as far as just approaching strangers, I have decided to set myself a little one day pre-project. And because Un-familiar Faces is a kind of sister project to Familiar Faces, 12Faces is a pre project to a sister project of a longterm project!!!

The idea for 12Faces is to go into my local town one Saturday and photograph 12 close-up portraits of strangers, develop the film that day and post them all, right here on my blog, before the end of the evening. Why 12? Well, I’ll be using the Holga lomography camera and that takes medium format film which gives you just 12 shots.

Zarology
Those of you who are familiar with my blog will have noticed I take quite a lot of photographs of one particular model. And that models name is….. Zara. One of the reasons for this is that I have been planning to put a book together for quite a while now. That book is called…. ‘Zarology’. This is another fairly long term project, though not as long as ‘Familiar Faces’ I hope, and is basically a study of Zara. I’ve been photographing her for a few years now and in a variety of styles and on a variety of formats, holgas, polaroids, digital, medium format, 35mm, vintage cameras to high end pro Nikons, you name it. I think it will make an interesting book/exhibition.

As well as all those I’m also working on a more commercial creative portrait project involving lots of local business, which I shall say more about in the next few weeks once it gets going properly.

So, lots to get my teeth in to!