My Favourite Photographers 03: Rankin

Right then. Lara Jade and Kirsty Mitchell done, that's two down and one to go. I hope you enjoyed looking at their material as much as I do.

Part three of "My Favourite Photographers" is a man who most will potentially know of as you will probably have seen his images even if you don't know he was the man who took them.

He is a very popular portrait and fashion photographer by the name of Rankin and he has taken some of my favourite images ever...

Rankin
I first came across Rankin properly only a few years ago.

I store up pages from magazines sometimes if I find images I love or a technique I'd like to try working with, etc. as you might expect.

What happened was, I came across Rankin's website, when kind of just browsing through miscellaneous photographer sites one day and I found loads of my favourite images in his portfolio. These included this one of Florence Welch (of Florence + the Machine) which was my favourite image in my stack of magazine pages at the time:

I then got mad-obsessed and trawled though the whole website looking at all his images and with a child-like admiration for all the pretty. So much pretty.

You can see his work here (and in most magazines!):

www.rankin.co.uk

He's done some wicked work over the years and is a really likeable character as well which helps!

If you watch his videos, he's always laughing and joking around with everybody and is just, basically, a right geezer. XD

This is Rankin:

See! Top bloke.

All the celebrities seem to love him and get on with him on both a professional AND a personal level. They often raving on about how fun he is to work with and I find he always seems to have images of celebrities, including ones that are typically nervous characters, looking so relaxed and happy in his portraits...

You can see a load of his portraits here if you're interested in seeing what I mean.

One of my favourite images of Emma Watson is a prime example:

I love his use of light and contrast in a lot of his work. This is the kind of thing that I find particularly striking and is probably why I like his images so much, who knows:

His 'Beauty' portfolio on the whole is wicked...

Beauty

Speaking of beauty, he once did a wicked project called 'Ten Times Rosie' in which he photographed Rosie Huntington-Whiteley who is a STUNNING model and you may know her from her role as the new, less orange Megan Fox in the latest Transformers movie.
(missed a trick there though, Rankin. Could have called it Whole Lotta Rosie... Tsk.)

I love this collection anyway so I'm going to make you look at it...

... I might like Rosie Huntington-Whiteley a bit but don't tell anyone...

...

...

Anyway, finally, he's also got a magazine out now called 'HUNGER' which is a mammoth!

www.hungertv.com

Rankin seems a little bit fond of magazines. He actually sort of started out in fashion by launching a magazine called 'Dazed and Confused' with a chap named Jefferson Hack in the early 90's. They covered fashion, music and other media.

... And HUNGER is basically a monster-magazine. A bi-annual fashion/music/photography explosion.

It's currently in it's 3rd release...:

So that's kind of Rankin, really!

You can 'like' his Facebook page if you want to and you can browse his website for pictures of Dave Grohl, Scarlett Johansson, Kate Moss and Emma Watson...

Last little bit...:
Something that I find particularly inspirational, or perhaps re-assuring though... is that Rankin, is a fantastic photographer who has taken many fantastic images in his life... didn't pick up photography until he was 21!

This is a really great thing to learn when you're a bit of a late-starter like me and you're trawling through pictures that you can't even imagine taking. It makes you (it made me) realise that as long as the ideas and the passion is there, there's nothing stopping me becoming this good? Right?

I find myself thinking sometimes that I picked up my first camera pretty late, don't have a lot of cash to spend on the kit, don't have a lot of time to spend on the photography... but none of that matters because I love it. I love doing it. I would spend all my time taking pictures of people if it wouldn't get me arrested. Possibly even if it would.

Rankin has shown me that you don't have to pick up a camera from an early age and study photography through college and university to become good, you just need to find the passion.

Kirsty Mitchell has shown me that you don't need a lot of money to spend on kit to take breath-taking images, you just need to have some inspiration.

... and Lara Jade has shown me that you don't need to have a lot of time to do what you love... you just need to love doing it and you will make the time for what is important to you. You get the drive from wanting to do it.

Besides, I don't necessarily want to become world-famous...

... I just want to take fucking great images. ;D

House Of Hannigan: The Union Jack Dress

On Saturday 3rd March, I set off from Basingstoke early armed only with my camera, Simon's flashgun, a reflector and a TomTom (with car) and headed for Hammersmith...
... I arrived just before 10am at Christopher O'Reilly's house (where he was working from today) and knocked at the door. Finally meeting Christopher face to face was great. He's really very lovely. I stepped in, signed a few conditioning forms and he handed over a very large (but thankfully, wheeled) suitcase. Very exciting. :)


The sun was shining as I drove into Westminster and headed over to Abingdon Street car park (also known as the world's most expensive car park ever... I would imagine) and headed to Parliament Square with the dress in tow.


Where else would you shoot House of Hannigan's Union Jack Dress?


Everyone was due to arrive at 11am so, as it was only about 10:15, I had a little wander around, soaking up the sun, checking out my settings vs the weather and identifying some good spots for location.


First to arrive was my lovely model, Yaasmin. She fluttered up the stairs looking very lovely in her cream coat and then we were joined within minutes by my wonderful assistants! David Burch of Prime Exposures and Gemma Pink of Pure Curvation who had agreed to come along and lug things around (Gemma) and help with lighting (David) ...and then few minutes later, we were joined at last by Rosie Cerosio of Cerosio Makeup. This was our team.




Rosie and Yaasmin skipped off to the toilets so that Yaasmin could wriggle into the corset of the dress and Rosie could apply the majority of the makeup. After what was nearly an hour, they were kicked out by the attendant. Now I don't know about you, but if I had paid 50p to get into the toilets there, I would have wanted my money's worth! ... but I was assured that this was no time to kick up a stink. :D


We had photos to take!

 
Now then, at about 10:15, there was this lovely spot with a good view of about 4 red phoneboxes all in a pretty little row, which, apart from the tourists having their photo taken in them, were fairly un-busy.


At 12pm, this area was swamped. The whole of Parliament Square was swamped actually. Sheesh. Immediately, within seconds of unfolding the beautiful Union Jack Dress, tourists began gathering with their cameras and snapping pictures from every possible angle. But we soldiered on anyway!

Rosie had done a wonderful job of the make-up and Yaasmin was looking ready to be a public display, so for our first image, we went for something a bit like this...

As you can see, it was pretty darn sunny. But not a single tourist... ?

(I've photoshopped about 14 tourists and a big sign out of that photo...  True story.)
Next, we went over to The Supreme Court and used the courtyard area there. Which genuinely wasn't busy.

I love this building with all it's beautiful bordering.

This was my one of my two favourite images from the day. ^

 

Next we tried Westminster Abbey. By this point, there were tourists following Yaasmin with their camera phones and trying to get pictures of themselves in front of it! It was, at best, hectic as hell and if David and Gemma weren't there helping, I think I would have been flustered enough to give that special someone a nice big cup of punch-in-the-face.

But we got one good one there:

There were 23 tourists in the above image and some building work going on.


I ain't gonna lie here. I'm a-braggin'. That's some good editing. Matt Bryant would be so proud.

*toot toot* <- That's me tooting my own horn as usual...


We didn't stay here long before moving along to the centre of the roundabout in Parliament Square to frame up with ol' Big Ben.


Interesting fact: the clock tower we all know and love in London is not actually called 'Big Ben' as most are led to believe. 'Big Ben' is merely the name of the bell within the clock tower. Apparently that's not all that commonly known. Now don't say I never tell you anything.


Unfortunately, you are not allowed to take pictures here (WHAT? I know). So we were moved on by the Roundabout Police. (A childrens' programme? Unfortunately not.)


We headed instead to the centre of Westminster Bridge and got set. Rosie applied a bit more makeup here are there and we waited for the sun to remerge from the clouds. It had been quite hit and miss today.

And then it came out and I got my other favourite image ^ thanks to the expert reflector positioning from one David Burch.

 Well... there are the images.


We were lucky on the day that, although there were way too many tourists in the way, we had some sunshine, some great angles, a fantastic make-up artist, a beautiful subject and had the help of two very keen assistants! Honestly, I couldn't have done that shoot without David and Gemma. They carried stuff, helped out with the lighting and Gemma even offered to rugby tackle some of the London enthusiasts in the background with their cameras.




On the whole, it was a great day and the pictures are up on House of Hannigan's site today. Christopher seems pretty chuffed with them too which helps matters...


Check them out (and the others) here:

www.thehouseofhannigan.com/union-jack-dress-project-2012