Stitches and Stubble

Here's the round-up and the wind-down for our shoot from Major Friday last week. But where better to start...than where i started? How Drole.
Iceland this summer brought forth many amazing experiences to my head. Some, including my lovely colour prints and perhaps some of the traditional cuisine, i'm still digesting. New experiences, however small have a tendency to precipitate a changing of tastes. And no where have my tastes changed more in the last year than on the subject...  of menswear.
How convenient eoin. Anyway, during our meanderings around a balmy Reykjavik, Sola brought me into a grey basement of some old mall. "...maybe this place has a toilet" I was thinking out loud, when she led me by the hand into one of the greatest treasures and possibly the last bastions of gentlemen's fashions anywhere along the Mid Atlantic Ridge. This is of course the noble Herrafataverslun Kormáks og Skjaldar emporium. (Go on, say it.) Here they all were, the man's best friends. Cuff-links and canes, top hats and tailoring, modern cardigans and creaking old tailcoats. Wonderful stuff, crammed full of old typewriters and mannequins,  any kind of vintage prop you care to name. Brilliant colours aglow all the way down to their range of socks. And if the décor wasn't enough, some eyewatering intricacies will bowl you out of those old jeans and right into some tweed. There is a resident barber complete with candy-striped gilding and a chair of red leather so barberish - your hair would shape itself just sitting in it. On top of this, if ever you were to treat you and your generations to come to a fine new suit, your purchase will be announced to a glass of whiskey. And this is only because recent legislation forbids them offering you a cigar!


Out in front of the shop I encountered some mystifying photography. The man responsible is Baldur Kristjáns. A renowned and ingenious Icelandic photographer whose calender with the shop sparked off all manner of experiences and taste-changes in my head to say the least. And they have happily lay dormant until our first studio session last friday. IT did get me thinking about photography and passion. When there is so much fashion around, and so little menswear by comparison. And even less again are they wearing any shirts, and smaller still are the few wearing full breasted finery, and then only the microscopic few represent the gentleman of old. Eccentric but elegant; poised, purposeful and madly pedantic. Not a ripped bulk of bagels and buns with an aircraft-carrier chin, any guy, with morals and a moustache. BRILLIANT.
To my help came Edinburgh's answer to gentlemanly retail - Walker Slater Victoria Street. They took the time to show us around, find our right style and fit us up with some handsome stitches and some razor brogues. For the ideas... well i wish i could be more helpful. I know if i was transported back to the studio with the same materials, everything would be completely different. Which is refreshing actually, because that is exactly where i would like to go.


But not before:

And all that is left is to go step by step through my lighting diagrams and equipment...Only joking, its nearly 2 in the morning. 


But i wont hesitate to expose those behind the seeeenz

Special thanks to Haig and Andy for their efforts and a huge thanks to Hank and Burden for forcing me to stay put and let them do all the running around. Saviours! What a team effort

e

Til hamingju Ása og Garðar

I wanted to give this magical event a space of its own, while it was just part of our trip to Iceland it was also the main reason we were there! From a photographer's perspective, I am one very, very lucky guy. The run-up: perfectly relaxed. With 3 days from our arrival (and after the gut busting stress of my gear making the ballistic expedition through a cargo hold) we had the leisure of meeting our bride and groom for a delicious coffee and a catch up, having a good scout of some nice locations for their photos after the ceremony and we got to sit in on the rehearsal. This is preparation, and if one thing can be crowned the great asset of the day then the pre-think and the schedule is what would be. Oh, but there was also this: The weather. Perfectly perfect the whole way through. Blindingly sunny but omnisciently overcast when I really needed it.  And it was this sun that captured the spirit of item number 3: The location.

Iceland and a festive Akranes. For our photos we wanted something very simple but true to the home town of the couple. After having a nose in a few spots we settled on a cove hidden past some of the coastal dunes. Towns have an affinity to their mountain (they all have one), and Akrafjall, the twin-peaked beacon for Akranes, proved itself as the most formidably breathtaking backdrop we could have wanted. The other more notable eccentricity of Iceland was something i should have but didn't really expect. Its weddings, and im not talking about the ceremony here, are infamously lively! The boisterous merriment started after 7 and after speeches, balloons, food, games, speeches, songs, speeches, food, speeches, C A K E, games, slideshows, coffee and a speech, we were finally ready to start the partying. I however, was ready to drop dead. But a brisk disappearance to secure the camera and back everything up saw me fighting fit in comfy shoes an hour later to be welcomed back as a guest. A cold, earned beer in hand, it was one of those moments. Even at 5 in the morning, with the sun fully up for another long summer day, I was feeling the bliss.

But who for the major props but the missis herself: cake maker and waistline shaker! Some serious amount of chocolate gorging. ALL Sola's doing. (even the leaves, which while i like to maintain in my head, do not grow on trees)

sjö klakka

The most remarkable thing about Iceland has nothing to do with road coverage, national dishes or ludicrous linguistic whimsy as Icelandair were nodding along in their in flight promo. Sure enough, by the time you land you are prepared for something like an Arctic Australia. An echoing landscape filled with listless acres waiting to  welcome you with its gratuitous eccentricities and a meaty handshake. Not an accurate likeness exactly.  Not in its seasons and sunlight nor in the all year round yearning for icecream and liquorice is it most remarkable. It is anything to do with its petrol stations. It is in how subtly and inexplicably different a place it is from anywhere else that makes it remarkable.

And the effects are felt! When people talk about Iceland they can't help but draw comparisons to other places. Its like a Scandinavian chimney! Its like a ground-floor America! Its a really hard place to figure out. Its modern but dated, large and very small. Its familiar and hugely unfamiliar, magnificently remarkable yet perfectly dull. It is after all, a way of life. And it is contagious.

Maybe because i was on holiday i will admit. Having the longest hours of the day to squander away at leisure. The sun never set but just did golden laps of the mountain tops.  Bookshops with cafes that allow infinite swagger as you read their books cover to cover.  Infernally portioned ice cream, any time of day, with pretty much any coating you can care for.  Sights, sounds (or the absence of sometimes) and the air. With hidden boutiques and shops in Reykjavik existing as an exhibition in themselves, selling the fruits of the maddened  craftsmen and women of the country. The national slogan could literally be "BIG on creativity, SMALL...on population." People are up for it, ill put it that way. There seems to be more museums, theatres, music schools and performance centres than administration buildings. What is acutely obvious is that all this modernised luxury is new and exists within a very old civilization, itself unchanging for generations, who had it very, very tough and got very good at taking nothing for granted. Being cheek and jowl with an old culture was the right measure of humbling and recharging.

And lo the photos!  Me and Sola were in no shortage of company and fun. There were lunches and coffees and daytrips galore and, im quite pleased to say, i recorded most of it on film (still in the lab though). Tourism can be a trial enough when you are surrounded by cameras and you too want to take photos. There is a deflation seeing 4 other people hold their camera up to the same scene and there is that sheepdog instinct to want to crop them out, "preserve" the attractions.  Well there was none of that this time!

And i would be greatly overselling myself if i didnt mention my sidekick.

And i would be greatly evasive if i didn't at least pretend that i still have to mention this

Kvaer kvedja og bless:-p