I'm busy - or at least trying to be - with portrait shoots of friends. I'm trying to push boundaries; my own and also theirs.

Recently I photographed my friend and clothing designer, Sheila-Madge Bakker. You can read about it over here.

I had also been tossing around another idea to have a portrait sitting with my friend Dietmar Gerber. The idea behind it was from the film, Bronson; based on a true story. Dietmar kind of reminded me of Tom Hardy's character in the film and I wanted to recreate the imagery from the film.

A happy accident, whilst testing my lighting.

Earlier this week when our schedules finally aligned we met up at StorySpace to make some images.

I started off with him in a suit and tie, to just get some sort of flow going and to get comfortable; we had some time, otherwise I would've gone straight into the setup like the one above.

I like these images, but they weren't the end goal. I wanted grittier, darker, harder light with an element of intimidation to it, so we moved on to the next setup and got out the body paint. I believe in the film he might've used shoe polish, but I wasn't going to put Dietmar through that much hell :)

I want to reiterate how great it was to have Dietmar as a subject and how he took what input and coaching I gave him and ran with it. Especially in the final image I wanted him to give me a scowl, however to make it come across as real I asked him to laugh almost maniacally.

It's always gratifying creating new work and I need to keep reminding myself of that; to create more often, practice this craft, become better, get off my ass and get the f*ck to work, like Zack Arias would say. So that is a bit of a call to you reading this; friends, strangers. Let's get together, conceptualise and make images and get to work!

Thanks for reading,