04.07.11
David Handley: Photographing Children
David Handley is a children’s photographer based in London, UK, but working worldwide. He has specialised in children’s fashion for commercial and editorial clients such as Ralph Lauren, Boden, M&S, Next and Junior magazine for the past decade. He was named Sony World Fashion Photographer 2010, receiving the award in Cannes. David has also been doing some acting, with appearances in the new Robin Hood and Harry Potter films, as well as commercials.
David Handley is where most childrens photographer's aspire to be. He has spent the past 11 years travelling the world shooting for commercial and editorial clients. The biggest is Next, but he shoots for many British high street stores, as well as designer clients, including Ralph Lauren. He was hit by the recession, but used the time he wasn’t working to promote himself and enter photography competitions. It paid off as he won the title of Sony World Fashion Photographer 2010, receiving the award in Cannes in the south of France and having his work exhibited worldwide. “I’d had a bad year and was feeling generally despondent, thinking I might give it all up and do something else, but when that happened I was so chuffed; I felt appreciated. It got me back on track,” says David.
“I could never imagine myself as a fashion photographer. I loved all the travelling but not the cliques. I could never see myself as part of that, wearing the right clothes and saying the right things. It’s all too serious,” he says, talking about why he chose to specialise in shooting children’s fashion, rather than becoming a general fashion photographer, when he left the Manchester-based Photolink creative agency after 13 years to go freelance.
“I found that when working with children everyone has to get down to their level; there’s no room for egos. You make the shoot into a game,” he adds. Although it’s not a reason for his specialisation, David points out there is far less competition photographing children and babies than there is with adult fashion. “Everyone wants to photograph glamorous women. You do get a lot of big egos – models who aren’t as attractive once you’ve met them. At the end of the day you want to have fun and enjoy your work.”
Long-standing working relationships seem to be a trait of David’s. He has been working for his biggest editorial client, Junior parenting magazine, since issue three and they’re now on issue 135. “I saw the magazine while I was at Photolink and had already decided I was going to specialise in photographing children,” says David, who did his first piece for them on potty training and gradually got more freelance work, until he started doing fashion shoots. They’ve used his images every month since he first started contributing. His strikingly natural-looking photographs have become synonymous with the look of the magazine.
“I don't like big set-ups as they restrict you too much. If you have too much equipment and too many lights it can feel like you’re kind of imprisoning kids in one area,” says David, who uses natural light as much as he can and favours a fluid approach to photo shoots – letting children play and move, rather than telling them exactly where to stand and stay. David’s technique is to bounce light all over the house or studio that he’s working in, so that it’s soft and he has a wide area to work in. “I like kids to be kids and have freedom.”
Of course, there are occasions, for instance shooting for the Next Directory, when David has to conform to the single-area, studio-lights style of shots. He says toddlers are the least suited to this approach, because they don’t keep still. Just as David doesn’t like restricting himself to a small working area, he advises fellow photographers to be open-minded when it comes to camera angles and to break free from the standard viewpoint of the camera being level with children’s faces. David takes a camping mat around with him, as 80% of the time he’s either lying down or on his knees.
To bounce light around houses, David points open flash heads up to walls and ceilings. “If I’ve not been able to have a look around or see pictures, I take big white polystyrene boards with me,” he says, talking about his white wall substitutes, which lighting companies hire out.
“Generally my technique is not to point the light at the model, unless I’m shooting in a studio,” says David, who uses flash for studio work but favours HMI lights when shooting on location. HMI lights are used in films and are like tungsten lights but daylight corrected. David usually has HMI lights: one pointing to the ceiling, another to the side of the model and a third from near where he is shooting. If there’s a window which isn’t giving enough light he’ll put an HMI light outside to give the effect of light coming through it. HMI lights eat up power, so David always finds out where the fuse box is before he starts shooting. This, coupled with the fact that space is often restricted, means he generally limits himself to three HMI lights.
“As soon as you enter the room you are disturbing the picture,” says David, talking about the Heisenberg uncertainty principle in physics, which he applies to photography. It’s all about disturbing the moment, which is exactly what David tries not to do when shooting. Kids will be laughing and playing around, but as soon as a camera gets involved they freeze. To combat this, David’s technique is to make them feel comfortable and relaxed, creating as much of a natural environment as possible under the circumstances – working in a large, unrestricted area obviously helps. David has a regular assistant, which he feels is important; to get someone who knows how you work and is obviously good with children. “We often get dressed up too. It’s an opportunity to be a kid again. Shoots have a party atmosphere,” says David, who advises thinking up ways of distracting children from the photo shoot by wearing a wig and clowning around telling jokes or making silly noises. “Anything to bring you down to their level so they feel comfortable,” adds David, who often sends parents away, or asks them to watch from a distance. He finds most youngsters are more self-conscious when their parents are around and that some have trained their children to look straight at the camera with a wide grin, something which is easier to break free from when the parents aren’t there.
Most children’s photographers tend to direct the youngsters themselves, but David does the opposite. “My way is to get them to forget they are having their photos taken. I get someone else in my team to entertain the kids, doing something with them, so they forget what we’re actually doing and that leaves me free to concentrate on the composition and getting the shots.
Always have your camera ready, you just don’t know when the moment is going to occur with kids,” advises David who emphasises its importance when photographing children, as spontaneous yawns etc are hard to re-create. He will quite often shoot pictures without looking though the lens, something which British documentary photographer Martin Parr (www.martinparr.com) also advocates, otherwise by the time he has framed the picture the moment would have gone. “You can always crop afterwards,” he says, adding that you don’t have to be too precious either about how many pictures you take.
David shoots with a Contax 645 medium format camera with a Phase One P30 Plus digital back and owns the whole range of Contax lenses, although 80mm and 140mm are the ones he generally uses. “They are all you need with that camera,” says David, who also owns a Canon EOS-1Ds MkII, which he uses for shoots with lots of movement. If a higher ISO is required he’ll hire a Canon EOS-1Ds MkIII. He also carries his Canon PowerShot G10 compact, just in case.
David is enthusiastic about how much fun it is working with children. Personal projects, which include the self-explanatory UK Surf Kids, and Kidsville, where he photographs children at the Burning Man Festival in Nevada, USA, are testament to his passion for what he does. These are not easy projects – photographing children in public is never easy. “You can’t just turn up and photograph kids, you have to get the parents’ permission,” says David, who encountered a fair bit of hostility on the Burning Man Festival forum from people who felt photographing children was wrong, but in the end there were only two or three groups who didn’t want their children included; these projects need a lot of prior arrangement.
The Farm Kids series that won David the Sony World Fashion Photographer 2010 award was shot for Junior magazine.
“They gave me a suitcase of clothes and told me what they wanted,” says David, who shot the pictures in Cape Town. He organised casting for the shoot and had two contacts fly out to South Africa – a friend in production and a stylist. “I shot it in one day. I was happy with the pictures but it wasn’t until I got back to England and a friend retouched them that they looked fantastic. I had good feedback on that shoot, so decided to enter these pictures,” continues David, who until then hadn’t heard of the Sony World Photography Awards. “I couldn’t believe it when I got the phone call; I was very emotional. That night I just kept bursting into laughter every hour.” Arriving in Cannes, David discovered he had to make a speech at the awards ceremony, held at the Palais des Festivals. “I gave it my all. I taped together 10 sheets of A4 paper, said I’d just made a few notes and let the sheets fall all over the podium.” He decided to make his speech as humorous as possible, otherwise it might have been dull for the audience, as many of the photographers receiving awards spoke little English.
As there is less work to go round these days, David has found he needs to do more self-promotion, which included entering the Sony competition. “I had never done an exhibition, now my work is in the Sony exhibition, which is touring the world,” he says. One of his Farm Kids photographs is also in a static international exhibition, The Art of Photography Show 2010, in San Diego, California. “If I ever enter a competition, people always pick those, maybe I should do more like that,” he quips. David has also just exhibited in the Old Truman Brewery in London, as part of photomonth, the East London photography festival. Everything is looking up for David, who can also be seen on TV; he is a rambler in a Burger King advert and one of three workmen in a Strongbow advert.
David is self-deprecating when talking about his screen appearances, saying he would never refer to himself as an actor. A friend had told him about a casting for Robin Hood and he secured three days’ filming work, dressed up as a peasant and doing a few fight scenes. “The agency took me on and I ended up doing Harry Potter,” he says, talking about the last film in the series. “It was great, like getting paid to be a kid.” Most recently, David was in Greenwich, shooting Pirates of the Caribbean4, where he is an extra in a street scene, with Johnny Depp starring as Jack Sparrow. I ask him if he has aspirations to take this further.
“It depends how slow photography is this year. If it is, I might do an acting course.” Somehow I don’t think he’ll have the time to do that course – even if he needs it.
David is a born entertainer. He knows how to interact and entertain his young subjects, which is why he is armed with a suitcase of comic props. He may be worlds away from the on-set demands he would be getting from top adult models, but as he puts it, he is in the fashion business, albeit not the conventional sort, and in many ways his audience is a lot more demanding.
www.jackiegibbs.com/david-handley
Taken from the January issue. Back issues available online and by calling 01858 438832.
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