The blog of photographer Kim Ayres

Dr Megaphone

Dear Kim

I'd like to have an interesting headshot for professional purposes and I'd like to get a non-boring portrait of my ten year old son.

Would these be things you could do?

I love emails like this!

We met up for hot chocolate to discuss what non-boring might look like, and during the discussion it turned out Dr Ian Johnston also has a touring show of science, music and entertainment, along with his son, Sandy, and local musican and songwriter, Alan McClure. So a publicity shot for “Dr Megaphone” would also be required.

Ideas were bounced around and we settled on the concept of the three of them standing at a table with various bits of science equipment on it, possibly with smoke or bubbles coming out of jars.

Shortly before the shoot, another email exchange:

IAN: I have just ordered 20kg of dry ice which will arrive with me on Friday and add eerie mysticism to our get-together on Saturday.

ME: I hope you know how to use it - I never have…

IAN: How hard can it be? I used to use liquid nitrogen in work, by the gallon. Dry ice is warm!

I also invited make-up artist, Jade Jamieson, who worked with me on the Manga and Comlongon Castle shoots last year. She set about applying a blackened face look on Sandy to imply he’d been exposed to explosive experiments.

It was a lot of fun. Bottles were filled with water and food colouring and then a few seconds before each shot, cubes of dry ice were poured into them, with an extra large scoop into a cauldron of water up on the shelf behind them to add an extra bit of atmosphere.



Once the photos were edited, I alerted Andrea Thompson of Dumfries and Galloway Life magazine, who then arranged an interview which has now appeared in the April edition:



It's shoots like this when I'm reminded why I decided to become a photographer.

7 comments

Alan McClure said...

It was, always, a treat to work with you, Kim!

Kim Ayres said...

Thanks Alan - always fun to work with you too :)

hope said...

Your job is definitely more fun than mine. :) It looks like fun was had by all.

Pat said...

Decidedly non-boring. You didn't say who's who but I'm quite clever like that and spotted the son and the musician so the third man has to be himself. I hope they were pleased. They should be.

Kim Ayres said...

Hope - it was a fun shoot! Not everything about photography is wonderful, but more of it is than any other job I've had :)

Pat - your deductive reasoning is second to none :)

neena maiya (guyana gyal) said...

When you have fun with your job, it shows!

I can't wait for the big mags to discover you, Kim.

I hope you remember us, your little blogger pals :-)

Kim Ayres said...

Neena - I learned a while back that even if you suddenly get "discovered", it tends to be fleeting, and once past, you realise it means very little compared to your friendships. If you have a the time, you'll find more back in a post I wrote about 8 years back when I was briefly a "blog of note":

http://kimayres.blogspot.co.uk/2009/10/fleeting-fickleness-of-fame.html

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