Photographing Drew Forsyth

Continuing my involvement with the Urr Historic Landscape Project, I was asked to photograph Drew Forsyth. Born and raised in the village of Haugh of Urr, he left the area to pursue a career as a joiner and cabinet maker. Eventually he returned to the village when he retired.

Behind his house is an old stone building. Not only did it contain all the usual garage and shed kind of things - lawnmowers, old bikes and bits of plastic tubing etc - it also had a workshop area. Every other available bit of space, it seemed, was piled up with various chunks of wood.

It was quite dark, so I set up the off-camera flashes, much like I had with Adam Booth (see Photographing a Blacksmith), but try as I might, I wasn't happy with the results I was getting.

However, there was a window in the south wall and the sun was making a rare appearance, so I decided to see what I could do with just the available light. The downside was I had to greatly increase the ISO - which for those less familiar with the technical sides of photography, means the images tend to be noisier, or grainier.

Despite this, the results were considerably better, and once I converted them into black and white on the computer, I was quite pleased with the results. Below are the best of the bunch.

As always, feel free to click on the images for larger versions.