A Week at Bleeding Heart Yard: London, 21st–27th July

I am back in London for one week this July, the 21st through the 27th, and the studio at Bleeding Heart Yard will be open for the duration.

There is a particular pleasure in photographing in London that I never quite shake. The light here behaves differently — softer, more conspiratorial, forever threatening rain. It suits the way I work. I have spent the better part of my career chasing the kind of light the Old Masters understood instinctively: a single source, a deep and forgiving shadow, a face emerging from near-darkness as though it had decided, of its own accord, to be seen. Caravaggio knew the trick of it. So did Rembrandt. The shadow is not the absence of the subject; it is the thing that gives the subject weight.

For this week I am offering three things, and three things only.

Headshots. The professional sort — for actors, executives, barristers, founders, and anyone who has looked at their current LinkedIn photograph with a quiet sense of dread. These are not the flat, over-lit, faintly hostage-like images the genre has come to be known for. They are portraits that happen to be useful.

One-to-one tuition. A full session, just the two of us, building light from a single head and working outward. I will not hand you a list of camera settings and send you on your way. We will talk about why a face reads the way it does, where the shadow wants to fall, and how to make a sitter forget there is a camera in the room at all. Bring your own kit or use mine. Bring questions. Bring the things you have been getting wrong; those are usually the most instructive.

Portraits. The longer, more considered work — the sort of sitting that takes its time and tends toward the painterly. If you have a face you would like rendered in the tenebrist tradition, this is the week for it.

Who these headshots are for

These sittings are for people who have decided that "good enough" is no longer good enough. Actors who need a frame that casting directors will actually remember. Executives and founders whose public face ought to carry some authority and some humanity at once. Solicitors, consultants, and academics who would rather not look as though the photograph were taken under duress at a passport kiosk. And photographers — working or aspiring — who want to spend a focused hour learning to light a portrait properly rather than reading another forum thread about it.

The week fills quickly and the studio is small by design. If you would like a slot, write to AL@RORYLEWIS.STUDIOand we will find you a time. General enquiries to RL@RORYLEWIS.STUDIO.

I shall see you in Farringdon.