Permanent Tourist

WordPress development and photography by Mark Howells-Mead

Posts about portraiture

  • Thanks so much to everyone who turned out yesterday on the ETH campus in Zürich, for a great afternoon’s photography, teaching and learning how to effectively use off-camera flash and achieve both dramatic and interesting portraits. A surprisingly and gratifyingly high number of photographers attended – almost 20 in the group, if I remember correctly…

  • I had the chance to take portraits of my new team colleagues this week, for the new website we’re launching soon, so the portrait gallery here at Permanent Tourist has been updated.

  • We’re planning a day/afternoon of photography on the ETH Campus at Hönggerberg in Zürich, on Sunday 21st September. We’re planning on separating into a couple of groups, with one or more experienced strobist photographer/s with a group of people eager to learn. We’ll set up a couple of shots, explain the lighting setup and then…

  • Tea Dressing

    I bought Jo this dress last weekend. It’s lovely; a modern tea dress reminiscent of years gone by. Jo’s figure and style is greatly flattered by dresses like this and where it comes and goes from fashion listings (so I’ve read: don’t think for a minute that I have any idea of women’s fashion), Jo…

  • Choo Choo

    This is my favourite of the shots I took of Berner band Choo Choo this weekend. The complete set is now online at Flickr. You can also see photos by Nick and Beat at Flickr.)

  • The Autofriedhof (car cemetery) is an extraordinary collection of rotting cars, dumped by a spare parts salesman on land behind his workshops since the 1930s in Kaufdorf, between Thun and Bern. The cars, in varying stages of decomposition, have remained untouched since they were abandoned in the woods and are now mainly collapsed hulks. The…

  • We were in Thun this past weekend, with a couple of friends from Zürich who’d come down for a day of “strobism” (the art of non-studio-based photography using portable flash units for illumination). As well as locations in Spiez and Gwatt, we sneaked into the dilapidated Selve area in Thun, where old factories, once converted…

  • Going against the “no photography” rules in the National Portrait Gallery, I simply had to ask this man to pose for a portrait. As we walked down the stairs together, he told me that he had stopped off in London on his way home to America after a month-long tour of India, where he had…