The last few portraits I made at the Oxford Beard Festival 2022. Thank you to everyone that stood very still for me. I’m pleased with how the portraits turned out.
[Tech info:] Sinar P 10×8, Dallmeyer 3A lens, f8 3D printed Waterhouse stop. Fomapan 100 (expired 2017) ISO 50, Kodak HC110 1+63 10mins.
The first and only time I photographed the Oxford Beard Festival was in 2015 – you can see those pictures here. Ever since then I have been thinking about and this year I finally managed to make it there again. This time I wanted to use a 10×8 large format camera but the slight hiccup being the weight of my kit was far too much for me to carry on my back and the venue for the event was a pub on the river without any access by car. I decided the only way to do it was to transport my kit in a borrowed wheelbarrow and it worked like a charm albeit leaving my arms feeling 3 inches longer by the end of it.
[Tech info:] Sinar P 10×8, Dallmeyer 3A lens, f8 3D printed Waterhouse stop. Fomapan 100 (expired 2017) ISO 50, Kodak HC110 1+31 6mins.
I must admit I’m not a huge fan of shaving and usually go a few weeks between shaves whenever possible. When I found out about the Oxford Beard Festival my first thought wasn’t about entering, it was to make portraits of some of the competitors in a formal portrait kind of way. It took me a while to decide on which camera to take and in the end I opted for my Graflex Super D which is a large format SLR allowing me to shoot 5×4 inch sheet film. For this event I packed 12 sheets of film and used one sheet on each person below so making mistakes wasn’t an option. After arriving at the venue (The James Street Tavern) I scoped out a place to set up that would be both out of the way and would also give me consistent lighting during the afternoon and managed to find a nice shady spot in the corner of the beer garden. It was a fun event and I enjoyed photographing such a variety of beards but this was more than just about beards, I could appreciate the thought that had also gone into the clothes and styling for a lot of these guys and that made for better pictures in the end. My thanks go out to all of these guys for being so patient and for sitting very still for me.
[Tech info:] Graflex Super D 5×4, Pentac 8inch f2.9 lens, Ilford HP5 film processed in Kodak HC110 1+31 for 6 mins.
Behind the scenes shots of the camera I used and some of the sheet film hanging up to dry.
