Worth a Look: Roy Mehta

Whenever I feel in need of inspiration, whenever I tire of the pictures I see in magazines or on the web, I invariably head over to Roy Mehta’s website to revisit his wonderful images. It must be almost 10 years since I first came across his work on the now largely dormant Fotonet-South website, around about the time he had completed his ‘Coastline’ series. A slim hardback book was published to accompany the exhibition. It's print run had sold out when I tried to purchase it, but I was fortunate enough to find a good copy at Abebooks.

© Roy Mehta

His work is always focussed on the personal, either in the form of calm, relaxed portraits, or in elegant observations of personal effects. He also produces beautiful pictures of nature, landscape and flowers, which too are very personal. The landscapes are of cultivated land, farmland and gardens; details of flowers and poppies are taken in these environments too.

© Roy Mehta

He concentrates on details, and through the use of close, low viewpoints, concentrates our gaze on these features whilst placing them against the wider background. Shallow depth of field too is used to draw the viewers attention to the detail and at the same reduce the clutter of the background.

© Roy Mehta

Some of his images are very sensuous. In this languid picture of a young woman on a beach you can almost feel the freshness of damp sand on the feet and legs, and the grittiness of the sand on her toes. You can feel the pleasure of being on the beach in the towards the end of the day.

© Roy Mehta

Mehta’s portraits are often shot on location, and often as double portraits. Fill-in flash is use to more clearly depict the face. The portraits show empathy between the photographer and his subjects; they look relaxed, the camera held close to eye-level.

© Roy Mehta

Mehta’s skill in mixed lighting carries over to his unpeopled photos. In this seemingly simple photograph, a discarded cigarette is energised by a small pop of a strobe, the wands of smoke alive when backlit. The intensity of the green in the grass and the purple of the sky suggest that Mehta has filtered the camera and gelled the flash to get this colour combination. 

© Roy Mehta

In this picture a falling leaf, like the smoke in the photo above, achieves a state of suspended animation through the use of fill in flash, whilst at the same time highlighting the yellow-brown leaves against the cold winter blue of the forest and sky.

© Roy Mehta

  Roy's photographs have been widely used commercially, for advertising, magazine journalism and for a wide variety of book cover. I'm sure you will enjoy seeing more of his work on his website, which he regulary updates with fresh, new, exciting work.