Rachel Newton - Portrait Photography

Rachel is launching her debut solo Album 'Shadow side' in the Autumn / Early Winter and by Christ it's a sterling effort. I heard the pre-master before the shoot and it definitely set the tone of the images. Rachel is probably best know for being part of The Shee the all girl contempo-folk band. The Shee are a stunning bunch of musicians, composers, singers and all round performers and have made pretty big waves in the folk scene over the years. Rachel's album presents her talents in a very different light, the mood is brooding, brutally truthful and completely un-compromised. I thoroughly admire this approach to making music, to be bold and not dumb down your music to suit the audiences or critics taste takes balls and although Rachel is clearly a fine specimen of the female race, I'd say she's got a right pair on her. ;PWe wanted the images to reflect the honesty of the music, so we elected to use minimal make-up very small embellishments were employed like false eye lashes and the odd piece of jewellery. However in the main we just shot Rachel as she is. I used a pretty strong side flash in an almost completely dark room, I under exposed in the camera using pretty small apertures and my vintage meyer optik 50mm. In some cases I used three flashes although you wouldn't know it. I did this because I wanted to get the ultimate sharpness I could whilst retaining the dark and shadowy feel. The final images are completely untouched apart from a small amount of split toning and some very minor exposure tweaks. Although I'm a great fan of digital editing often employing vast amounts of effect, this shoot required a more purist approach and I was determined to get results from nothing but subject, light and optics.Portrait Photography can be a cruel mistress especially to those being photographed, fair play to Rachel this was not a comfortable shoot. The darkness contrasted by the extreme flashes made for a pretty oppressive environment, my eyes certainly took a beating and I was a bit dizzy and seeing stars when the main lights were switched back on.I'm dead chuffed with how these have come out, the album sounds and is amazing and I'm pretty convinced that in time it will be considered one of the seminal Scottish albums of our time.