Isle of Wight born Oscar May took to photography from a young page and over the years has developed his skills by capturing the extremes of image; still and serene moments true to life. He’s also UAL alumni – having graduated from London College of Fashion. I love the simplicity of Oscar’s images, has a real and raw feel to them. He focuses on fashion, portratire and music photography – you may have seen his work in Vogue – click here. BIG! I actually met Oscar at my office, he’s take some incredible photographs for one of our projects, Festival Annual. Right I won’t blabber on, get ready and drooling over the images above.
1. First of all, who are you? and what do you do?
I’m Oscar May, I’m a Photographer working in the UK, at the moment I am mainly shooting portrait style photography within the Music and Fashion scenes, I also do this at music festivals during the summer.
2. How did you first get into photography? What sparked the interest?
Coming from a creative family I’ve always had an appreciation for art and an interest in doing it myself but until I found photography I could never quite realise my own creative concepts and visions. To begin with I used to make image manipulations with Photoshop using stock-imagery, from there I started taking my own images to use in composites but after learning more about the technical side of photography I realised I didnt nescessarily need to use Photoshop to achieve my ideas so I started photographing more and photoshopping less, I found it fascinating how you can make things appear differently through a lens, and you can distort reality and using elements like angle, focal length, lighting and depth of field to create something new. Seven years later i’m still on that learning curve, I’m always trying to do more in-camera and less in post-production as I believe it will always look more effective if it doesnt need extensive retouching. My work is now a lot less surreal in their narrative as I have grown to see photographs in a more documentary way but I still enjoy trying to present subjects in a way that makes them stand out and will hopefully look different from other peoples approaches to photographing them.
3. When did you realise it was more than just a hobby and something that you could potentially make a living out of?
For me it was quite a smooth transition, I started doing the odd band promo shoot now and then when I was at art college and over time I got asked to do various other shoots, all sorts of types of photography but I’ve always found people photos the most interesting for me. By the time I reached third year of uni I had quite a lot of work outside of uni, mainly photographing events and also Jewellery. When I graduated I went straight into freelance work, it was quite hard to find regular paying clients to begin with but that’s always building and I had to realise it would take time.
4. How did you go about getting your name out there? Did you do any free jobs?
I’ve always mainly used social media networks and word-of-mouth. I began by using DeviantArt and then Flickr to get feedback on my imagery which led to recognition from other artists, then I went on to have a page on MySpace for my photography while it was still popular and then make the transfer to Facebook when that came about – I still keep my Facebook page up to date and also have my own website which I have a portfolio on.
I had to do quite a few free jobs to begin with, the majority of the work I did that I wanted to put in my portfolio I did for free, It’s hard when you begin, you need money to buy equipment, live, eat etc, but if you don’t have much experience people are reluctant to pay for your services, so it had to be done, and I did less interesting shoots to pay the bills, I did a lot of corporate events etc.
I still do some work for free, but only if I feel it will really benefit my portfolio, but I do now make sure I can have more control to make sure the time I spent on it isn’t wasted and the photos will be valuable to me. Quite often these kind of shoots are the most enjoyable ones which remind me why I love being a photographer!
5. Have you messed up any jobs? Were you left the client unsatisfied with your services, worst experience?
I came very close to messing up a lookbook shoot I did recently, my camera broke because a memory card failure, this happened just before we were due to begin the shoot so naturally I got really worried I wouldn’t be able to do the shoot after travelling 50 miles to the location! Fortunately on this occassion the camera decided to begin working again but it taught me that a back-up camera body is an essential!
I once had clients dissasttifed with my work after a shoot, although they really liked the images I had shot, they had expected something different, I had previously asked the clients what kind of thing they wanted me to shoot for them and they replied saying ‘Do your thing’, so I did, but apparently it wasn’t what they expected, this taught me to be a lot more thorough when finding out a clients expectations from a shoot, a valuable lesson in retrospect but at the time it was really frustrating!
6. What advice would you give to up and coming photographers?
I believe it is very important to do test shoots which may not have any particular purpose aside from being for the portfolio, I think if you are looking to be commisisioned to do a particular type of work then shooting exactly what your ideal commission would be is a very good start! I think its also good to show your work to as many people as possible to get their opinions and feedback, listen to it all but also remember some of the time peoples personal preferences inform peoples opinions so keep that in mind!
7. Tools of the trade, Mr. May. Every professional photographer seems to have an impressive range of cameras and lenses, what does your toolbox consist of?
I’m a Canon boy, I currently use the Canon 5D Mkii, a 50mm F1.2 L lens and a 70-200mm F2.8 IS L lens, a Canon 530EX Speedlite and a Metz CL-40 Flash and various light modifiers. The next lens I’m hoping to get next is the 24-70mm F2.8 L lens – after that I will have most focal distances covered which I think is really important when you’re sometimes shooting in locations that may be bigger or smaller than expected!
8. How would you describe your photographic style?
I think my style would usually fit into an environmental portraits bracket. In my imagery I always try and make the subject of the photo stand out from the rest of the image as much as I can but keeping the context of the image just in there, I often shoot with a wide aperture to achieve shallow depths of field which help to isolate the subject, I also using additional lighting to help separate the subject from the scene and also to present the person in a flattering light. The other thing I do which I think contributes to the style of my images is the colour manipulation in Photoshop afterward, I like to make sure the colours are interesting and suit the image content, I do often convert to black and white afterward, I’m a big fan of black and white imagery, I feel it usually makes the viewer think more about the subject of the photo as there is less distraction in the colours.
9. Ever thought about venturing into videography?
I have been experimenting in Videography recently, I have been shooting some acoustic music videos and have a music video for a band called Yours and Mine in progress at the moment. I have always been really inspired by film and moving imagery so it seems like quite a natural, albeit daunting progression of my work. I’m trying to maintain my photographic style in my moving imagery work which I hope will set me apart from other videographers! I’ve actually just begun a blog to share my experience of expanding into moving image – http://stillstomovies.blogspot.com
10. Your favourite photograph that you shot yourself? And why is this one special to you?
It’s really hard to choose just one favourite image but I think I’m going to go with this one! The girl in the photo is one of my good friends Jordan, taken when we were interrailing around Europe in 2009. I took this towards the end of our trip when we were in Paris and I thought it really captured her at the time, it seems like quite a timeless photo, I think the only thing that pinpoints it to a certain year would be the mobile phone. The photo seems to encapsulates one of the main elements that keeps me interested in photography, capturing a moment in history.
Feeling inspired? Go pick up your camera!
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