Ray Smith

Sandymere, Westward Ho!, 20 July 2026

Seven photographs exploring the temporary structures, workers, visitors and rituals that shape a British seaside summer.

The series began with the sight of a man eating an ice cream beside the beach. That ordinary moment drew my attention to the temporary summer world around him: the ice-cream van, the lifeguard hut on the pebble ridge, warning signs, access routes, information boards and people moving through the landscape.

Moving between rescue and refreshment, work and leisure, the seven photographs turn the familiar machinery and rituals of the British seaside into something isolated, monumental and faintly surreal.

Archival pigment prints on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308gsm

Seven-photograph series Edition of 10

A blowfly rests on the remains of a rose, its iridescent body set against the collapsed petals and darkened centre of the flower.

Photographed at close range on a Panasonic Lumix G2 using a ×10 close-up filter, the image holds beauty and decay in the same frame. The fly appears almost jewel-like, while the rose has passed beyond bloom into something darker, richer and more physical.

Reworked with heightened colour, deep shadow, grain and distressed Polaroid-style edges, the photograph transforms a chance garden encounter into a study of attraction, deterioration and the persistence of life.

Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308gsm Digitally reworked Edition of 10

Flowers, grasses, nibbled leaves, seed heads, roses and fruit transformed through pale foliage, pink light, deep blue shadows and flashes of gold.

Pale foliage, pink light, deep blue shadows and flashes of gold turn the familiar garden into something less certain — part botanical study, part dream.

Infrared Study / Lumix G2

I’ve been looking again at my archive — not simply to reproduce old photographs, but to use them as material for new work.

Here, an image of the Skern becomes the backdrop: the estuary, exposed mud and gathering storm already carrying their own atmosphere. Into it, I have brought together the buzzard and a reimagined fashion figure, allowing separate photographs and ideas to meet in one new image.

The backdrop is no longer just scenery. It becomes part of the narrative — place, subject and memory working together.

A raw, poetic exploration of historical subversion, casual indifference and 1990s British romanticism.

THE CREDITS

Photography: Ray Smith Photography Styling: Sharon Hilton Fashion: Vivienne Westwood archive — historical silhouettes and textured knitwear from the Anglomania era Model: New Face from Models 1 — and a full-time skateboarder Location: Sharon’s garden, North London Camera: 1947 MPP 5×4 Film: Polaroid Type 55 positive/negative film Colourised

THE STORY

Shot quietly on a Sunday afternoon, this editorial channels the spirit of Vivienne Westwood’s design language: historical tailoring, British subversion, romantic texture and a refusal to behave politely.

The model had recently come through Models 1, but she was far more interested in skateboards than fashion or the scene around it. That detachment became part of the pictures.

There were no synthetic backdrops or high-fashion pretences. Westwood’s theatrical, textured clothes were placed into the honest landscape of a North London garden — overgrown hedges, weathered brickwork, a domestic washing line and found objects.

The Type 55 negatives had to be kept wet in a tank full of clearing liquid, all the way back to my darkroom in Brighton. They were later printed by Jono at Jono’s Darkroom.

The clothes, the model, the location and the pale London light did the work.

1990s, North London Roof of the stylist’s house.

Original black-and-white Type 55 photograph shown beside a later colourised interpretation.

Shot on a 1947 MPP 5×4 using Polaroid Type 55 positive/negative film, then printed by me as a silver gelatin print.

The colour version is not the original capture, but another reading of the same image — keeping the old border, rooftop atmosphere, sheer dress, white socks and pale London sky.

Seeing these pages again brings back great memories of assisting Rohn Meijer on this Ritz Newspaper fashion shoot at Lipstick Studios, working with the wonderful Ritz team, Alan Strutt and everyone at Lipstick, along with Ceta and JB. Rohn shot it on a Pentax 6x7, with separate Polaroids.

Your social media feed should not just be a gallery of finished images.

It should show clients why they can trust you.

A strong photograph proves you have taste and technical ability. But clients are also buying calm, confidence, organisation and a smooth experience.

They want to know whether you can handle difficult light, make nervous people feel relaxed, work under pressure, communicate clearly and deliver the result without making the process stressful.

That is why photographers should show more than the final edit.

Show the setup. Show the location. Show the problem you solved. Show the before and after. Show the client reaction. Show yourself at work.

People book photographers they trust, not just photographers they admire.

Your feed is not decoration.

Some people photograph well because they are polished.

Others photograph well because they are real.

That is the kind of portrait I am interested in.

Faces with character. Eyes that have seen things. People with humour, style, history, work, scars, confidence, doubt, oddness, beauty, awkwardness, strength.

Not perfect faces.

Interesting ones.

I am now booking portrait sittings in North Devon for people who want something more lasting than a phone picture.

A sitting is simple. You arrive. We talk. You settle. I photograph you properly.

No forced posing. No fake lifestyle act. No trying to make you look like everyone else.

The aim is to make a portrait that feels like you — but stronger, clearer, and worth keeping.

For artists. Writers. Business owners. Local characters. Couples. Families. Founders. Performers. People with a story.

Studio-style or location-based.

If you have ever thought, “I should have a proper portrait taken,” this is probably the time.

Message SITTING for details.

A bus shelter on a quiet road. A pavement bending away. Winter trees. A road with no traffic. A structure built for waiting, but with nobody waiting.

That is what gives the picture its charge.

It is not dramatic. Nothing is happening. And that is the point. The image sits in that strange pause between arrival and departure, between village and edge-land, between use and abandonment. The shelter is meant to be ordinary, helpful, public — but in this light it becomes something else: a small stage, empty after the actors have gone.

The misty softness gives it the feeling of memory rather than documentation. The road curves away like a half-remembered route. The branches close in from the right. The shelter itself leans slightly into the frame, almost like a witness.

This was taken in Appledore in 2013, years before “liminal spaces” became a thing people talked about online. But the instinct was already there: finding the oddness in the ordinary, the melancholy in useful places, the poetry in something most people would pass without seeing.

It is not a picture of a bus shelter.

Northam Burrows sits where the Taw and Torridge Estuary opens out toward Bideford Bay — a place of sand, salt marsh, old stones, big sky and shifting ground.

These were taken around The Skern, where the tide fills and empties the mudflats and the land never feels entirely settled. It is beautiful, but it is not soft. Deep channels, wet mud, fast water, and that strange estuary silence all remind you to watch your step.

I took these with one eye on the photograph and the other on whether I was about to sink into the mud.

The reward was that extraordinary North Devon light: hard, silver, bruised by cloud, turning the beach, the bike, the rocks and the coast path into something half real, half remembered.

Worth the risk.

This was taken during a feature shoot about a boxing club member who had received an MBE.

Nigel wasn’t the award story — but perhaps, one day, he should be considered too.

He was helping me build the studio environment inside the club: a canvas backdrop on freestanding light stands, crossbar support, a studio softbox from above, and a Nikon 250mm giving that compressed portrait feel.

But the technical setup is only half the story.

Nigel is one of those people who quietly does a lot for others. He takes people to hospital who might not otherwise get there. He helps where he can. He turns up. No fuss, no grandstanding — just a good egg doing good things.

Sometimes the best portraits happen just outside the planned frame.

Taken this morning in beautiful 82° sunshine at 09:00 — a lamb close to his mum, with the rest of the family scattered across the hill behind them.