If you ever met him, you might think of 42-year-old El­liot Fran­cois as a qui­et man with a mis­chie­vous edge to his shy smile. The drum­mer in the rap­so band 3Canal cut + clear crew since 2005, as well as an ac­tor with a BA in the­atre arts from UWI, Fran­cois holds a day job as the con­tent man­ag­er for Me­dia In­Site, a me­dia mon­i­tor­ing com­pa­ny. For the past few years he's been ex­per­i­ment­ing with pho­tog­ra­phy, and his se­mi-pro­fes­sion­al por­trai­ture has been in­creas­ing in pop­u­lar­i­ty; he has a grow­ing fol­low­ing on his El­liot Fran­cois Fo­tog­ra­phy page on Face­book.

The Sun­day Arts Sec­tion asked him to pick a few of his favourite im­ages and share them with our read­ers, giv­ing some back­ground to the sub­jects and the tech­ni­cal as­pects of the pho­tos. (LAA)

SI­MON AT A FOUN­TAIN

SEVILLE, SPAIN

This im­age was tak­en when I was on tour with 3Canal. We went to a mu­sic ex­po called WOM­EX and it was a new ex­pe­ri­ence for me. I was us­ing a Canon Pow­er­Shot S3 IS. I didn't re­al­ly know too much about tech­ni­cal things in pho­tog­ra­phy but I knew a bit about com­po­si­tion, so I tried some things. This pic stood out for me. At the time I didn't know about depth of field. All I knew was the back­ground was blur­ry and I liked it. This is when I knew I want­ed to ex­plore pho­tog­ra­phy some more.

REINA

De­part­ment of Cre­ative and Fes­ti­val Arts, UWI

For a few years I used a Canon 10D that I got from my sis­ter's boyfriend. Years passed and I was try­ing more things with a re­fur­bished Canon 40D that my good part­ner Sel­wyn helped me get at THE pho­tog­ra­phy store in New York. My friend Reina and I had spo­ken for a while about do­ing a shoot and she oblig­ed. Sim­ple set-up: Flash on cam­era and a re­flec­tor. I was al­so ex­per­i­ment­ing with Adobe Light­room, which I learned about from Ja­son Ha­gley while we were room­mates in Spain.

PRIYA

PORT-OF-SPAIN

Priya and I met through her plan­ning the Red Earth con­cert in 2009, in which 3Canal per­formed, and we kept in touch. I want­ed to ex­per­i­ment more with light and shad­ows, as that is pret­ty much the essence of pho­tog­ra­phy to me. I used a 50mm 1.8f lens and the flash off cam­era to get the ef­fect I want­ed.

JOEL ST CLAIR

I met Joel through my friend Ray­mond, who asked me to do some im­ages of this young tenor to pro­mote his fundrais­ing show. Joel cur­rent­ly stud­ies in France, so I was think­ing about what im­agery would stand out a lit­tle dif­fer­ent­ly from what I've done in the past. I used the flash be­hind him to cre­ate a rim­light/back­light and en­hanced the am­bi­ent light in Adobe Light­room.

QUEEN'S PARK SA­VAN­NAH

PORT-OF-SPAIN

Peo­ple would some­times ask me why I didn't do land­scape and ab­stract im­ages. I just like por­trai­ture more. Then I thought maybe I should just go out and shoot things around me and went to the Sa­van­nah. It is a place in the heart of our cap­i­tal city and at the core of our cul­ture. So I told my­self, "Lemme start here." I walked to the mid­dle of the Sa­van­nah, away from every­one, and it is re­al­ly a love­ly place to be. I used my su­per wide-an­gle lens to get this shot.

My wife, Camille, has sup­port­ed me in this pho­tog­ra­phy jour­ney thus far, do­ing every­thing from pos­ing when I want to try out a new lens to tot­ing equip­ment to shoots. I am for­ev­er grate­ful.

I've got a lot of as­sis­tance and guid­ance in these few years from my friends/men­tors in pho­tog­ra­phy: Abi­gail Hadeed and Maria Nunes.

There's a lot that I still have to learn and ac­quire in the field of pho­tog­ra­phy, but I think I'm do­ing all right so far and I'm striv­ing to do much bet­ter as time goes on.