Painting with Light

Photographs by Luke Denny

DON ABBOTT

LUKE DENNY Untitled 2020
Digital photograph

Downtime and a new city spurred Luke Denny to start a new photographic project at home. Newly returned to his birthplace of Christchurch, with experience in the fashion industry, he relied on his own resources to create a series of portraits that draw on colour and photographic techniques to evoke mood and emotion.

Each shot required a small investment of time to achieve: taking the photograph, experimenting, trial and error, review and self-critique, reshooting. Denny used the project as a way to push his limits and test his proficiency with the equipment and the medium, and have fun along the way. Throughout, his wife Su modelled for his finished images, and their experimental precursors, patiently, and sometimes grudgingly, posing as he tried various options before the right result was attained.

He combined a range of lighting effects—both continuous, coloured and strobe lighting—as well as camera techniques—double and long exposures—and camera movement. Continuing the legacy of the New Zealand shed, he created the series in his own garage,‘as good a studio as any’ he maintains. He relished the amount of control he was able to wield in such a domestic space and also the immediacy of the process; commercial photo-shoots are notorious for the amount of people involved and the time taken to get the perfect shot. With just Su and he in the garage at home, the project became an intimate pas de deux and an exercise in self-sufficiency, each image a negotiation between photographer, subject and the equipment at hand.

Making a reality of the maxim ‘painting with light’ was one of Denny’s prime objectives, and a strong palette and tight focus on his subject allows him to do this. All the effects are created in camera; there are no computer-based touch-ups or adjustments. What you see is what was taken.

The series started as a means for a photographer to maintain his skill levels once he moved away from his professional base, and formed part of the process of self-redefinition in a new town, as he sought to test himself, both technically and artistically. He created a moody, many-sided portrait of his partner, and a short essay in colour and emotion. His lesson is also a universal one, in how to rely on those closest to you, and how to repay them in kind.

LUKE DENNY Untitled 2020
Digital photograph

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