Pro Wrestlers, Office Humans and Battered Old Men

NO IT’S NOT A TYPICAL NIGHT OUT IN {insert name of town with struggling economy, populated with a significant percentage of people living on or below the poverty line, pause for laughter}: it’s a list of things I have been capturing recently, using my sparkly camera box.

As I often yap on about in my posts, the main reason I love freelancing is the variety of the work. I get bored very easily, so freelancing is perfect for me, because I’m always doing something different. It’s also great for improving my images, because I never get too settled into one style of photography. This helps me grow creatively, like a beautiful photo-crocus. A Photus. Or a Phocus? Let’s go with Phocus: multiple levels of wit in that one. Granted, it’s still not funny, but let’s just try to ignore that.

As a freelancer who works from home and as a dad, there is the odd week where I barely see other human beings and spend a large portion of my time being overexposed to kids’ TV. This results in my brain slowly but surely being tenderised into a sort of primary coloured, fine mist. To combat this cheery decline in my basic brain functions, I like to get out of the house and remind myself that the world is not populated exclusively by bizarre, colourful creatures who leap around the place, shouting catchphrases and falling over.

What better way to do that than by attending the always incredible Lucha Britannia? There really is nothing quite like shooting wrestling: it is hot, sweaty and intense (phwoar). Keeping up with the pace whilst trying to take interesting shots is a real challenge and leaves me mentally and physically buckaroo’d. I used to shoot wrestling with my sports photography head screwed on, waiting for action shots and timing the capture accordingly. I now take quite a different approach, which is to look for individual shots that tell the stories being played out in the ring. A good wrestling match is a performance where a story plays out – that is, of course, true of all sports to a lesser extent – but pro wrestling is special. Essentially, you’re watching a series of highly physical, semi-improvised mini-plays. It’s something unique to pro wrestling and that’s wonderful, both for the spectator and the photographer.

REMEMBER TO CLICK WITH YOUR MOUSEY POO TO ENLARGE ANY IMAGE THAT TICKLES YOUR PICKLE

You really, really should go and see Lucha Britannia, even if you don’t like wrestling. Why? Well, there’s a bar, for a start, and the barman even gets in the ring and has a match, before returning to his duties. Being the man who gets you drunk, he is somewhat of a fan favourite.

A few days later, my ears still ringing from the best Friday night in London, I found myself in the peace and quiet of a web designer studio. Yes, I know it’s not as exciting as latex-clad ladies and zombie weddings, but such a shoot actually requires a similar approach, except with less shouting and beer. I’m really not selling this one, am I?

Web Designer magazine contact me once a month for their ProFile shoot, which is where they interview a Web Design studio and go behind the scenes. I am tasked with popping along and documenting the office before taking portraits of the interviewees.

Although the pace is completely different, I am still doing the same thing: I am telling a story and showing off the space in which these web wizards work. More often than not, there are interesting bits and bobs to display (hashtag euphemism) and I get a kick out of finding interesting compositions and shapes within the environment, because I’m a gigantic photo-nerd.

The important thing to remember with shoots like these is that people, and interactions between people, are always interesting to shoot. Interesting and creative shots can be found in any environment where there are people, you just have to tune yourself in to it.

Finally, the end of the week saw me shooting for another of my regular clients, Greasepaint – a hair and make up studio and school. Some days we shoot lovely hair and makeup and, on other days, we shoot studio images of people wearing blood and gore special effects.

Some of the makeup artists are so good at fake wounds and bruises that they look pretty real and it’s actually a bit creepy spending three hours looking at beaten up people and gleefully taking their photograph. It’s when you’re two hours in and you’re saying “that’s it, turn your head and show me that cut. Oh yes, that’s Loooovely” that you realise this is quite an unusual situation you’ve found yourself in.

The focus for this stuff is more on the lighting, as I’m not trying to capture something of the real person as such – it’s more about the physical appearance. Essentially, it’s headshot photography, except with mashed up faces, and who in their right mind doesn’t love mashed up head-tography?

Well, that’s your lot. I can’t think of a good way to round all this up, to be completely honest, so I’m going to add a poll. Please use your favourite social media machine to spread the word about how I am brilliant at pressing a small, plastic protrusion located on top of a larger, cuboid-shaped clump of metal, plastic and glass.