Reportage photograph of a knife being forged on an anvil in a small workshop on an island in the Thames. Photo by Douglas Kurn
The photographs in this gallery are environmental portraits and reportage images of Tim, an artisan who hand makes knives from recycled metal, in a small workshop on an island in the River Thames, in London, England. Tim also collects plastic that has ended up in the river and then recycles it to be melted down and used to make handles for his knives.
This particular studio had no natural daylight and to help me to get a good angle and position my own flash lights we had to remove the window from the frame in the workshop. This allowed me to light the subject and to get my camera into angles that wouldn't have been possible otherwise.
The use of flash enabled me to freeze some of the sparks flying off the knife blade as Tim was forging it into the correct shape. By using small battery operated flashes I can access some really small environments and spaces to create a focus on my subject, and that has lead to me creating authentic portraits in artists studios as well as bell ringing chambers.
