If you have just found your way here through a search, or if you have us bookmarked, you may notice there's not a lot going on right now. Well that's because we have moved.
Go to our new site here, the blog and site are all integrated now so you won't have to keep shifting around.
Best wishes
Steven and Josh
Fine Art Studio Portraits of children, families, men and women made at our studio in the heart of the English Lake District.
Sunday 1 January 2012
Monday 1 August 2011
Web site facelift
As part of the relaunch of our portrait business we have been working on our web site. We've got a new logo for Steven Taylor Portraits and we have some colours to work with. Laura Burns has been working with us to design our new look.
We did a great shoot with Evie (Beans) last week and we really liked a couple of her pictures so she is getting pride of place on the new site.
Have a look at the site here.
We did a great shoot with Evie (Beans) last week and we really liked a couple of her pictures so she is getting pride of place on the new site.
Have a look at the site here.
Thursday 28 July 2011
We're all grown up now.
When I first moved to the Lakes in 1989 I went to work as the Photographer-in-Residence at the Brewery Arts Centre in Kendal. One of the first people I made friends with there was Lou George. He worked in the Box Office then and went on to become the Film programmer working with distribution companies and the BFI. Back then we were young and a little bit reckless. Yesterday Lou brought his beautiful daughters to meet us. Fabi is 8 and Betsy is 6. They chose their outfits, very fashionable young ladies they are and we made some stunning portraits of them. We are making these three to display here at our studio.
You are very welcome to come and look at our work and have a chat about having a portrait made without any obligation to book. We don't have a shop front though so we ask that you make an appointment. Please call us on 015394 454 83 and we can fix a date for a chat.
Monday 25 July 2011
Breathing new life into an old project
As a photographer of many years standing I am constantly torn. I began my career at the studio of Ray Vincent in Suffolk. Ray was, what we called in those days, a GP. That meant he took on all types of work. He did weddings (in a very formal style, very different to the way we do them now), he did commercial work for all sorts of businesses and industries and he did studio portraits of children babies and families. I learnt the craft in a number of separate disciplines.
Over the past 20 years I have had success as a photographer specialising in documentary wedding photography and studio portraiture. The two areas of photographic practice are almost at odds with one another. As a documentary wedding photographer my whole philosophy has been to work as an impartial observer, to watch events unfold and to record without interference. As a studio portrait photographer I am in total control of the image. I arrange the background and any props, I pose and light the subject and, usually the subject engages the camera. I think, when you look at work from my two areas of interest they appear to be by two different photographers. The two disciplines also often demand a different mindset, separate marketing effort and alternative equipment.
Between 1996 and 2007 I had a portrait studio in Kendal. I did documentary weddings from that studio but the fine art black and white portraiture I did was very popular. In those days I was still shooting on film and hand printing the portraits in the darkroom at the studio. When we came to our premises in Bowness we made space for a studio. Over the last two years we have been quietly making black and white studio portraits of babies, children, families, women and men in our Bowness studio. Now I make the portraits digitally but we still think that portraiture works better when it is black and white. We make the prints for our portraits on sumptuous fine art paper that is very similar, and has equal archival qualities, to the darkroom prints we made in Kendal.
Because we have been so busy with weddings we haven't really promoted our portraiture as we should have, in fact we stopped posting on this blog at the beginning of 2010, but that is about to change. So, this is the revival of our portrait blog. We have bought some more studio lighting and the picture of Josh below is my first experiment with the new gear. We are intending to re vamp the portrait site , we will launch a new Facebook page (more about that later) and we intend to advertise in the local press. Watch out for us at some events over the coming months.
Over the past 20 years I have had success as a photographer specialising in documentary wedding photography and studio portraiture. The two areas of photographic practice are almost at odds with one another. As a documentary wedding photographer my whole philosophy has been to work as an impartial observer, to watch events unfold and to record without interference. As a studio portrait photographer I am in total control of the image. I arrange the background and any props, I pose and light the subject and, usually the subject engages the camera. I think, when you look at work from my two areas of interest they appear to be by two different photographers. The two disciplines also often demand a different mindset, separate marketing effort and alternative equipment.
Between 1996 and 2007 I had a portrait studio in Kendal. I did documentary weddings from that studio but the fine art black and white portraiture I did was very popular. In those days I was still shooting on film and hand printing the portraits in the darkroom at the studio. When we came to our premises in Bowness we made space for a studio. Over the last two years we have been quietly making black and white studio portraits of babies, children, families, women and men in our Bowness studio. Now I make the portraits digitally but we still think that portraiture works better when it is black and white. We make the prints for our portraits on sumptuous fine art paper that is very similar, and has equal archival qualities, to the darkroom prints we made in Kendal.
Because we have been so busy with weddings we haven't really promoted our portraiture as we should have, in fact we stopped posting on this blog at the beginning of 2010, but that is about to change. So, this is the revival of our portrait blog. We have bought some more studio lighting and the picture of Josh below is my first experiment with the new gear. We are intending to re vamp the portrait site , we will launch a new Facebook page (more about that later) and we intend to advertise in the local press. Watch out for us at some events over the coming months.
Monday 4 January 2010
Update for Will, Vick and Ed
We hope you had a lovely Christmas and the photographs have been a real addition to the family home!
Update for Eve
Update for Eve, we hope you are enjoying your pictures and had a wonderful Christmas!
Christopher and Pam
Quick update for Christopher and Pam, we hope you enjoyed your photographs over christmas!
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