Outdoor portrait sessions are probably my favourite ones. Obviously, you mainly focus on the person you photograph, but the surrounding environment is also very important. A day before the actual shoot I always visit the area I'm going to shoot in and do the location scouting – it helps pre-visualise the whole project and build some sort of structure for the session. This time it was especially exciting, because I haven't had a shoot in my hometown Riga for a while now. I absolutely adore the historical parts of town and the bits of old architecture – rusty bent gates, textured walls and wooden doors with some paint peeled off.
I wanted to do this shoot with Olga for a long time, but life kept getting in the way. We've been in touch via social media, and haven't seen each other in person for ages. Finally, we have managed to make the shoot happen and I'm very happy with the results – they are very close to the initial idea I had in mind.
Everything was shot on Pentax67. There are also a couple of digital shots I sneaked in – can you guess which ones? ;) Also, for the first time ever I have been using this film everyone is raving about – Kentmere 400. It provides fairly good results for reasonable price, so I would definitely recommend it to the black and white film shooters who are on the budget. Colour ones were shot on Kodak Portra 800 – the best film stock for portraits. Develop and scan done by Malvarrosa Film Lab.
