About Me - In Depth
The Personal Biography - Daniel Briant
Photography for me started in the mid 1990’s. My parents would take me to events like air shows and allow me to use their manual focus Film SLR camera. That was my first taste of photography. I loved viewing pictures, especially those taken by me.
Then in the late 1990’s I was given my own mini film camera. It was a very basic camera, just had a button to turn on the flash and a fixed 35mm lens. It was your average budget late 1990’s film camera. I continued to use that until around early 2000. As around that time digital point and shoot cameras were becoming common place. The joys of using a 2 mega pixel camera and being able to choose what images you keep on the camera and to view the images on your computer was amazing. As time moved on so did digital cameras, and it was not until 2003 that I was finally able to have a fairly decent digital point and shoot camera. It was a Konica Minolta 5 Mega Pixel camera and it was amazing.
The Konica Minolta got me through till around early 2006 when I finally decided to purchase my own Digital SLR camera. It was a very expensive jump, but I figured as I loved photography I should purchase it. So I went out and bought a Nikon D50 camera and starters kit, which included a bag, 18-55mm lens and 55-200mm lens. With that camera I was able to experiment with different techniques and styles, such as long exposure images. My very first images taken with that camera were at an air show. I then continued to work at my photography, sometimes experimenting with long and short exposures on objects up London.
My first photography job was a concert in late 2006 that was a major learning curve for me, having to master different light changes and such was tricky, if not hard at times for someone who is getting used to the art of digital photography. None the less I completed my job and was proud with my images. I continued to experiment with different lighting and shadows on my images.
In the summer of 2007 I took a trip to a private animal park and took some stunning photos of tigers and leopards, one of which was published on national geographic user’s gallery site.
As I progressed through photography I found my D50 to be rather limiting in what I could accomplish. So in late 2007 I decided it was time for an upgrade. I spent ages thinking what camera I should get. I finally settled on the D200. Going from the D50 to the D200 was a massive jump. No longer was the camera in control of white balance and colour balance. At times I got frustrated but I progressed on, and continued to master my new camera.
My D200 finally came to some good use when I was invited to help out at a local schools media event in late 2007. There I had my first photography studio experience. I successfully ran a studio photo shoot countless times, ever more gaining experience. I was then invited back to photograph a studio setup for a drama production, and to help out on their open day. I also ended up teaching people the basics of studio photography and Photoshop editing.
Then in early 2008 I finally decided it was time to pursue the purchase of some flash guns. These would greatly help me further improve my understanding of lighting and its uses in photography. I ended up purchasing two SB800 flash guns. These allowed me further control over my photography and would really help me in photographer later on in the year.
Then in late 2008 when I was working for a school as an IT Technician, I put forward the idea of taking class photographs that could be put into an album and given to the headmaster who was leaving. This idea became a reality and I was given a total of a day to finish my work. Everything was done and the children loved it, best of all so did the headmaster who was leaving.
Since then I have always continued to improve my photography technique, through photo shoots with my friends, Alex, Zoe and Jerrie. Countless times I have photographed them and had fun doing so, trying out new ideas and moving forwards with my techniques.
Then in early 2009 I was finally given a chance to show case my photography work. I was asked by a small clothes company to photograph their current line of clothes. This was done very well, matching the natural fibre clothes to a location and shooting them. In the end I ended up shooting them in the woods or at Crystal Palace.
The real challenge for me in photography was the fact I was never schooled in the art of photography. Everything I know is all self-taught, either through reading books, looking at photographers work or from trial and error photography. As originally I am trained as an IT Technician. So I have no formal qualifications in photography, all my qualifications are based around IT, such as Cisco CCNA, National Diploma in Software Development. So I really had to use as many resources as I could to try and educate myself in photography. Some things I still don’t fully understand and that’s where my many friends who were schooled in the art of photography help me out. I mean no one is perfect, we all need to learn and improve, and that’s what I aim to do.
I suppose my main inspiration comes from a well known photographer called Annie Leibovitz. She has photographed many famous people. The reason I like her work is because in her photographs the subject is not centred in the picture, it’s normally offset either to the left or right of the picture. Also it’s her use of very bold colours, lighting and poses that kind of helped me learn a few things. But her main influence on me was some of her poses, without this mix of new influence I suppose my work would have been somewhat different than it is today.
My other form of inspiration comes from friends, most notably my friends Zoe and Alex. Alex helped me out a lot with my photography. The reason for this is because she is a model and photographer. She has done loads of modelling work for many photographers and has built up an incredible amount of knowledge. She was able to help me improve my knowledge of poses and working with models. She also influenced me in image composition.
Zoe’s influence was more on the style and location of images. She was able to give me understanding of matching model to scene. Zoe also helped me out a lot with image composition. The reason these two people helped me out a lot is because they were schooled in photography.