Photographer: Rob Payne

Our first Spotlight is focused on client and longtime favourite of the studio Rob Payne for his Landscape series.

Rob left college in 1999 and moved to London to start assisting, by 2006 he had his own agent and has now been shooting professionally for ten years. He shot this series over a number of years, with the earliest dating back to 2003, when he was still assisting and managed to get some time for himself to shoot once the job was done. The series includes locations from all over the world and focuses on natural beauty as well as as man made structures and the interaction between them. There is something truly mesmerising about a seemingly endless forest or a view mist of covered hills that stretch in to the distance – sometimes it is easy to look at photos like this and feel nothing as we’ve seen it all before however Rob has captured these scenes perfectly and held on to the magic of experiencing them.

We spoke to Rob about this series which he tells us was was shot predominantly on a Linhof 679 with large format film and at locations all over the world including China, Sweden and New York.

The body of work started organically as Rob made the most of his spare time shooting between assisting jobs or off the back of his own commissions, Rob considers himself fortunate to have travelled extensively throughout his career and always makes the most of any trips he takes, his favourite so far being Rio. Besides this he regards shooting in the USA really rewarding and feels that ‘there are photos to be had on nearly every street corner’

When asked about his equipment he explained that he’s an ‘old school’ photographer at heart and stated that he loves to shoot on film, “especially 5×4, I just love the process of shooting in this way, you become much more considerate as to what your’e photographing.” He continued to explain that shooting on film commercially isn’t a practical for him anymore but loves to shoot it for his personal work and will continue to do so with this series. Although he can’t tell us exactly where he is off to next we are certainly excited to see where he takes this series and can’t wait to see more!

Photographer Spotlight is our new series of  blogs aimed at highlighting the work of the fantastic photographers working in London at the moment. We will be focussing both on emerging talent as well as established professionals. Helping to expose the work of our clients, great London photographers and anybody else with fantastic work to share is our prime concern.

Submissions
If you think you fit this bill then please do send an email with some of your recent work and a bit about yourself and we’ll be in touch.