Phil­lip Simpson: Portraits

Phil­lip Simpson.

We like a good por­trait here at ProDesign, and over the past dec­ade or so Phil­lip Simpson has shot more than his fair share. Simpson is a pro­fes­sional pho­to­grapher who gained much of his inter­na­tional exper­i­ence in the UK, before return­ing to NZ in 2006. He says he's per­haps best known for cre­at­ing "con­tem­por­ary images of people, within care­fully con­sidered loc­a­tions". As you'll see from this line-up, his care­fully com­posed, intriguing and at times quirky images have a cine­matic qual­ity. We asked Simpson to cur­ate a gal­lery of some of his favour­ite images and write some accom­pa­ny­ing notes to give insight into the pro­cess of each shot. Enjoy.

Har­land Miller, UK author and artist, Lon­don. Cli­ent: Time Out magazine, UK.

"This was shot on Tot­ten­ham Court Rd in Lon­don, at the height of the so called 'Cool Brit­tania' period and has remained one of my favor­ite por­traits, des­pite Eng­land hav­ing entered a far more sober era of late. The loc­a­tion is com­monly mis­taken for New York. It’s some­thing about the illus­ory impres­sion that those build­ings are taller than they are and the ambi­ence of the park-life in the back­ground. Mr Miller sure knows how to strike a pose and comes over as a cross between Bowie and a '30s movie star. He’s often mis­taken for Ewan Mac­Gregor in this por­trait. Beneath his cool façade he is an intel­lec­tual indi­vidual with a real pas­sion for art and lit­er­at­ure."
http://the-artists.org/artist/Harland-Miller

Dou­gal Wilson, UK music video dir­ector. Loc­a­tion: Auck­land, NZ. Cli­ent: Cre­ativ­ity magazine, USA.

"I love work­ing col­lab­or­at­ively with other cre­at­ive pro­fes­sion­als, so it was with great rel­ish that I met with lead­ing UK music video dir­ector Dou­gal Wilson, to make a series of pho­to­graphs of him defy­ing grav­ity. The images were shot for a fea­ture on the worlds top dir­ect­ors, for New York magazine Cre­ativ­ity and this one made the cover. In order to cre­ate as much of the shot in-camera as pos­sible, this decept­ively 'spon­tan­eous' moment involved sus­pend­ing a glee­ful Dou­gal from a crane, using har­ness and sus­pen­sion wires, while CO2 was pumped through the jet­pack from out­side the frame. Who says work can't be fun?"
http://creativity-online.com/
http://www.colonelblimp.com/music/view-work/item197/Dougal-Wilson/

Liam Finn, musi­cian, Wel­ling­ton, NZ. Cli­ent: Spin magazine, USA.

"Shortly after my return to New Zea­l­and from Lon­don, I was com­mis­sioned by Amer­ican music magazine Spin to shoot a por­trait of Liam Finn in Wel­ling­ton. I had grown up there and remembered these old World War 2 gun emplace­ments on the hills over­look­ing the city. I found that omit­ting the office build­ings below the scene and includ­ing just a hint of the sur­round­ing land­scape gave the image a slightly sur­real feel­ing, which people often mis­takenly assume res­ults from a com­pos­ite of mul­tiple images. The chal­lenge here was find­ing a pleas­ing bal­ance between my flash light­ing and the poten­tially nasty mid-day sun. Liam shoots a lot of imagery him­self, which he uses in his music videos etc, so he was very inter­ested in my pro­cess and was a great col­lab­or­ator."
http://liamfinn.tv/blog/

'Dig­ger Mech­anic', Bris­tol, Eng­land. Per­sonal work.

"I’d packed away most of my gear at the end of a com­mer­cial shoot near this spot, when I noticed the fant­ast­ic­ally filthy wall and the equally grubby mech­anic work­ing nearby. The lines, ran­dom objects and muted col­ours struck me as per­fectly bal­anced, so I made this fairly spon­tan­eous por­trait. Using only avail­able light, which is unusual for me, I shot three frames and was gone. The fact that this guy remains frozen in his slightly self-conscious pose, rep­res­ents the power of pho­to­graphy for me. I remain intrigued by the little details in the pic­ture, like his curi­ously white thumb­nails and the almost fluor­es­cent hints of red that seem to emerge from all the crap splattered on the wall. The moment of cre­at­ing a strong visual bal­ance from dis­par­ate ele­ments, still has the power to excite me even after work­ing pro­fes­sion­ally for over 15 years. My ulti­mate object­ive is to make very dir­ect por­traits, in set­tings that feel like they belong to a movie you never saw."

Mark Borch­ardt and Mike Schank, Amer­ican inde­pend­ent film makers, Lon­don. Cli­ent: Time Out, Lon­don.

"One from deep in my archive — These guys were in the UK pro­mot­ing their cult film Amer­ican Movie, so Time Out magazine asked me to choose a loc­a­tion that felt like a scene from an Amer­ican film. I like the sense of isol­a­tion that diner cafes can evoke, so I used the booths as a device to shoot the film-makers together, yet sep­ar­ated. As bona fide 'dudes' they were slightly shell shocked to find them­selves out of their home envir­on­ment of Mil­wau­kee and thrust head­long into the Brit­ish PR machine. This worked for my pur­poses because it feels like the viewer has intruded on their space rather than the other way round. At one point I real­ized Mike had heavy metal blar­ing from his head­phones, ren­der­ing con­ver­sa­tion vir­tu­ally impossible. He clearly had no desire to remove them, so I took him by the shoulders and phys­ic­ally moved him into pos­i­tion. As a pho­to­grapher I find I can some­times take liber­ties that would earn most people a punch on the nose."
http://www.americanmovie.com

'Man Walk­ing Dogs', Dun­ge­ness, Eng­land. Per­sonal work.

"One of the high­lights of my career in Lon­don, was an invit­a­tion by Jona­thon Ellery at Browns Design http://brownsdesign.com/ to exhibit my ‘Glow’ series. This pro­ject explored the envir­on­ment and com­munity sur­round­ing the nuc­lear power sta­tion at Dun­ge­ness in South­ern Eng­land and com­bined por­traits of those who lived near the nuc­lear react­ors with land­scape images of the unique envir­on­ment. The cre­ation of this par­tic­u­lar image involved a com­bin­a­tion of plan­ning and good luck. I loved the bleak­ness at the end of the street and decided to set up a cam­era and light­ing, on the off-chance that someone inter­est­ing might come by. Clearly it’s an under­pop­u­lated area, but des­pite the odds, my patience and con­vic­tion were rewar­ded when this man emerged from the house on the left and agreed to stand for a por­trait with his lap­dogs."
http://brownsdesign.com/

Julia Deans, New Zea­l­and musi­cian, Auck­land, NZ. Cli­ent: Pulp magazine, NZ.

"In 2009 I approached Pulp magazine with the idea of shoot­ing a series of fash­ion por­traits of iconic New Zea­l­and musi­cians. Julia is a bit of a no-nonsense rock chick, so when I told her I had a pink loc­a­tion in mind, she was none too impressed… until she saw it. The suc­cess of this pic­ture lies simply in find­ing a great back­ground that com­pli­ments the sub­ject, care­fully con­trolled light­ing and good hair and makeup. Strik­ing the right bal­ance between real­ity and arti­fice is what I'm con­stantly striv­ing to achieve, whether I'm work­ing for magazines, design­ers, advert­ising agen­cies or shoot­ing per­sonal work."
http://www.myspace.com/juliadeans

Share/Save