A Portrait of Nottingham

A photographic series by Fez Photography

Welcome back Steemian's! Thanks for taking the time to view my work. I hope you all enjoy the images, as much as I enjoyed creating them.
The project called 'A Portrait of Nottingham' was given to me as part of my M.A. studies. The task was simple. Create a portrait of the city of Nottingham, now this 'portrait' was open to our interpretation, but had be recognisable as Nottingham.

Now I consider myself to be somewhat of a people person, (which I should be as my photographic specialism is Fashion & Portraiture)so obviously, I was going to take a more literal approach to the title. After all, a city is only as good as the people in it.
The idea for the project came from several existing projects. *Portraits of Syrian refugee families by Mitidieri, as well as a series photographed by Echaroux.
So I had seven days to plan and complete the project. Out of those seven days, I had one that I could actually shoot on one, due to various other commitments including family and work. I organised an assistant for the day, a friend at university kindly volunteered to be executive background holder for the day. The night before I packed my equipment.

The equipment had to be kept to a minimum as I was commuting to Nottingham on the train (could you just imagine me piling on a train with a studio's worth of equipment).
So for the day shooting the kit was as follows;

• Canon 5D Mark II
• 85mm EF 1.8 Lens
• 5in1 Photopro Collapsable Reflector
• Godox Speedlight
• 120cm Octobox Softbox
• Light stand
  This isn't as much as it may seem, especially for me. The kit I use isn't the latest and greatest but the results prove you don't need the latest camera to achieve great results.

I set up my mini studio in Nottingham centre and then harassed the locals. I expected it to be quite difficult to approach people and get them to agree to have their photographs taken. I was surprised by just how warm, friendly and receptive people were to the project. I had taken 12 different people photograph with the space of an hour, which for anyone that's tried anything similar will know, is unheard of.
I feel like you can really get a sense of the people's personalities from these images. Hopefully, you agree with me.

I really feel like this project not only helped me as a photographer but personally too. We often try our hardest to ignore the people around us on the street, avoiding eye contact and never communicating with each other. I realised that these people we pass on the street aren't monsters to be avoided and there's nothing to stop us from saying hello, as we pass someone on a daily basis or at the very least smiling at each other as we make brief eye contact. So if you see a grinning idiot saying hello to strangers on the street, be kind it might be me.

I am looking into taking the mini-project and creating a larger series of images. the project will involve taking portraits of strangers in 12 cities around the United Kingdom within each city I will create portraits of 12 people at 12 key landmarks within each city. The project will culminate in 1,728 portraits, each one featuring a different person.

So that's it! I hope you've enjoyed reading this post and enjoyed my images.
Do you have a favourite image?
Please leave a comment below, let me know your thoughts on the project and if you have any questions, I would love to hear from you.
Thanks again!

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