A while ago I was asked what my favourite black and white photo that I had taken was and I knew instantly what my answer was. Black and white images aren’t that common for me - my images use colour to compliment the product I am shooting. Also, products are usually designed with colours in mind - so it's not right for me to then remove them by making an image black and white. So, with this in mind, the image is inevitably one that is out of my usual genre of photography. It is this image below:
I saw this corridor while I was in New York which was the entrance to a restaurant - the glass on the left is the wine cellar - and I saw this host stood at the end of it. I had my Leica M6 with me (with HP5 film for those who are interested) and I went to set up the shot and just as I was about to shoot it, she walked off. I stood there for about 3-5 minutes just waiting with it all composed, leaning up against a wall to stay out of the way, with other people coming in and out of the frame. The scene then all cleared perfectly in time for her to come back from the left hand side behind the glass. She spun around to the little podium she was working at and this made her dress flick out slightly adding a subtle amount of movement to the image, and there is a tiny gap between her arm and body which gives her body shape to the viewer.
Something that I hadn’t seen at the time of shooting is how her reflection is then distorted in 3 different ways - a very clean but broken reflection in the glass on the left, a wavy slightly lighter reflection in the floor and then one that combines these two.
As soon as I clicked the shutter I knew I had captured something and I spent the rest of the trip excited to get back and develop the rolls of film so that I could see the image. I remember developing the film and just pulling out the film from the spool and just looking for this image and being so happy when I could see it had come out. I then printed it in the dark room the following week and the print was stunning, it now hangs proudly in my dad’s house. This Christmas, I gave another print of this as a gift which is what prompted me to write this.