Yep, it’s time for another Tech2 Tips and if you think they’re coming thick and fast at the moment then you’d be right, and you can blame that pesky little critter COVID-19 for it. Unfortunately, thanks to the Corona Virus, and the virtual lockdown and travel restrictions in place to reduce infection rates, my workload has, like many photography and video suppliers, pretty much dried up, with little relief in sight until later in the year. That means I have a bit of rare downtime, and, whilst I’d normally be out shooting personal projects, staying safe and practicing social distancing means I have time to write a few more blog articles.
If there is one photographic technique that stands out as my absolute favourite, it has to be contre-jour. I first fell in love with the dramatic imagery created by this type of imagery when, as a young child of 5 or 6, I was first exposed to the masterful work of the Victorian photographic pioneer Frank Meadow Sutcliffe. Sutcliffe worked in the seaside town of Whitby, on the north-east coast of England, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, capturing stunning large-format, wet-plate images of the local people and places. His beautiful, sepia-tinted prints won photographic awards all around the world, from Tokyo to Paris, during his lifetime and have become an eternal reminder of life in that period of history. The small gallery that sold prints of his work on the steep, winding cobbled streets of Whitby was a favourite haunt of mine during family holidays and I became increasingly fascinated by his work as I developed my own passion for image-making.
Sutcliffe's image of a stranded ship during a storm at Whitby ©The Sutcliffe Gallery
Sutcliffe was a true master of his craft and his body of work is exquisite, encompassing the genres we know today as landscape, portrait, documentary and street photography. His images, in general, are superbly exposed and full of detail but there are also those that exhibit experimentation with techniques and styles. For me, the images that had most appeal were his darker and broodier seascapes, with sailing ships standing stark against the sky, images that were full of harsh contrasts and deep shadows and, as I delved more deeply into the art world, I discovered this technique was known as contre-jour.
Contre-jour means, quite literally translated from French, against the day and basically means placing the light source (most often the sun), behind the subject of the image. This creates deep shadows in front of the subject and can create silhouetting when the ratio and positioning of light is right. The style was already popular amongst painters when photography arrived in the 1850s and early practitioners, relying on more primitive methods of measuring exposure, discovered that it could have significant impact on photographic imagery, creating drama within a scene and helping to focus the viewer on the intended subject.
Having identified what it was that so attracted me to Sutcliffe’s imagery, I began to practice contre-jour shooting at every opportunity. Fortunately, growing up in higher northern latitudes meant I had plenty of opportunity to practice, with the long winters creating plenty of low suns to shoot against. However, as a young teen in the early 1980s, buying film and processing it was an expensive business and, not having access to a dark room, required careful husbandry of my limited resources. Despite this, I did manage to capture plenty of shots I am still proud of to this day.
The Palace of Westminster and River Thames from Westminster Bridge - October 1983
Street Scene - Bath - August 1984
The High Street - Yarm - February 1986
Whilst professional film-based photography tended to be rather stilted (you usually had only a very limited number of shots to get creative with), the advent of DSLRs meant professionals could really let loose and begin to experiment with our imagery again. I began to capture much more contre-jour imagery and I was pleased with clients’ reactions to the dramatic and memorable moments it can create, particularly as stand-alone art pieces.
Hannah & Michael - Woodlands of Marburg 2009
Fast-forward to the present day and contre-jour continues to play a big part in my professional repertoire and is a significant element of my “style”. Indeed, many of my favourite images (and, more importantly, those of my clients), are ones that feature contre-jour lighting techniques. New technology, particularly bright, portable LED lights; hugely improved area-metering on cameras; massive leaps in the dynamic range of camera sensors; and the development of sophisticated HDR (high dynamic range) software have all combined to make contre-jour shooting ever more exciting and more popular than ever.
Of course, contre-jour techniques aren’t for everyone and there will always be a place for perfectly exposed imagery captured with the light in the traditional place over the photographer’s shoulder. However, if you’re looking for lighting conditions that are a little more challenging and that can create stunning effects like lens flares, sunbursts, hairlights and silhouettes, then next time, when you’re out shooting, try pointing your camera towards the big flashbulb in the sky – you might just fall in love with the results too.
In my own work, I'm going to keep #channellingsutcliffe
Next time in Tech2 Tips we deep dive into Dave's secret obsession...