Rankin (wiki), celebrity photographer extraordinaire, embarked on a very ambitious project earlier this year. Having photographed the likes of Lindsay Lohan, David Bowie, Hugh Grant, Britney Spears, and other mega-celebs, he opened up his photography services to the British public. A paltry fee of £50 would get you fifteen minutes with Rankin and a print of your final photo, with all the profits going to Oxfam.
There’s a site, of course, and you can find some of my favourites from these sessions below:
Back in 2005, I embarked on a project where I tried to photograph 100 people in two months. It didn’t work out, but I ended up with one slightly Rankin-esque image from those sessions, well before I even knew who he was. Overexposure and desaturation are the keys here, but there’s still far too much colour in the skin compared to Rankin’s shots. I shot this with one hotshoe flash in an umbrella, directly in front of the subject, about six inches above my camera and angled downwards:
