Archive for April, 2010
Bond Bad Babe
Another from the session with Barbara Lanik on Wednesday. Note this is not a 365. It is nearly 9:30pm and I still haven’t got that done yet. I was thinking if I post this I might be let off but that won’t cut it so I’m going to have to find a shot somewhere somehow with someone. It’s gonna be hard to match this so don’t get your expectations too high!
Saying Goodbye
I’ve been working flat out proceesing all the images from the session on Wednesday with Barabara Lanik. This is from that session too so it isn’t a real 365 shot. That means I’ve failed. Wanna make somethin’ of it?
I’m really happy with the images we got on Wednesday. Barbara is so easy to work with. It felt like she could see the shots from my viewpoint. She worked really hard for nearly eight hours.
Barbara
This is Barbara who acts, sings and models and who lives in West Sussex. Today we worked together for about 8 hours and made several like this and others with a little film noir flavour. I love the pinup pictures of the ’40s and ’50s and so does she so we had a lot of fun dreaming them up and getting them done.
Business Card Design
This might just be my next business card.
Pretty Blossoms
Trees with blossom on the West Hoathly Road near East Grinstead in Sussex. A nice peaceful scene. Hard to imagine the b*****d who drove by so close as to almost knock me down as I crouched at the side of the road to get this.
Pupak
Forest Row artist Pupak Haghighi-Brinch. This is the second session with Pupak. I could do many more.
I wrote some time ago about shooting portraits and at the time I pondered the idea of making one ultimate image that would be the last word on that particular person. Today that idea seems even more ridiculous to me than I thought at the time of that writing. There are so many people I could spend hours shooting just because I like them as people and want to make interesting pictures of them. Part of it is making pictures and another part is getting to know someone.
London Bus (RM Type)
Fortunately I had a meeting in East Grinstead today. If I hadn’t I wouldn’t have known about this bus being there in the old High Street. There were a bunch of different vintage busses and a larger bunch of enthusiasts taking pictures and buying toy busses and postcards.
I love these busses. They remind me of an age sadly gone from England when the people themselves were responsible for their own health and safety. And I of course love this particular bus for the ads.
Hillary
Hillary is a teacher. She is staying at ARTS House for the weekend up from Devon. At first she approached the sitting with all the enthusiasm of a trip to the dentist. So we chatted about teaching and football for a bit and she relaxed considerably and I got this which I’m really pleased with. I hope she will be too.
I processed it to adjust the palette and contrast
Chair
You might not believe this but this pic took about 5 hours to make. If I had set out to make the image above it would have taken maybe half an hour. But this is in fact a failure. Of great magnitude.
I had set out to make an experiment. It was to be an image that would have allowed you to zoom into it and move around in a similar way to how you can zoom in and move around with Google Earth or Google satelite maps. It began with 23 separate images. But I won’t bore you with the whole story. Suffice to say that Photoshop crashed several times in trying to merge those images properly and that in my haste to get an image up I selected the preview jpg images instead of the raw files to get the job done. The preview images were only a fraction of the size of the originals and so it turned out to be far too small for zooming around in.
But I still like it. I made a painting in 1988 that was very similar. I can now add chairs to my extremely short list of things I love to shoot. So the list now consists of people and chairs. I’m sure someone will see a connection even if I don’t.
trampling corn
Went for a walk with Aled and Rosie in Turners Hill today. He wanted to trample over the farmer’s crop so I got this as evidence.
Dude Let's go bowling
I was in Tescos in Forest Row and saw these skittles. For some reason they called to me so I bought them. Then when the person I had wanted to shoot today didn’t get back to me in time I thought “Let’s go bowling Dude”. Seemed appropriate at the time.
Susanne Lawrence
Susanne Lawrence is an artist who lives somewhere between East Grinstead and Tunbridge Wells.
Sarah and Rebecca
I was just testing how the camera worked when tethered to a TV. Sarah and Rebecca are always up for a shot and I liked the result. So there.
Count Baron Von Alucard
This is a portrait of my father the Count Baron Von Alucard. You can find out more about him on his website.
7 hours looking at this
Thanks to those who wondered what had happened to me for the last three days. I’m happy to say I’m alive and survived them.
Friday night was not that interesting. I set off from East Grinstead at around 6:00pm on my way to Westcliff-on-Sea in Essex. This is a journey of around 60 miles which normally takes an hour and a half at worst. This was not to be a normal at worst occassion. I came to the rear of the jam above at around 6:30pm and moved about 1 mile in the next 7 hours.
I got to my parents’ house at about 2:30 and would have made this post then had I remembered to bring my laptop power cable. Without the cable I couldn’t edit or post as I can connect with my blog only via the laptop as that is the only place I had the password saved.
So the lesssons learned in this experience;
1. It is always a good idea to have at least enough fuel to complete your journey.
2. It is always a good idea to have some snacks of some kind hidden away in the car somewhere. (I didn’t)
3. It would not have been bearable without an mp3 player.
Liz Lets Loose
Yesterday you saw Liz on one of her few and far between better days. Today I’m aftraid she reverted to form after drinking some camomile tea.
And today is day 50 of the project. It has gone remarkably fast. I’m very glad I started the project. It has so far been the very best creativity exercise I’ve ever done. I am much more familiar with my kit and with the whole process of image making. It is amazing how fast I can now go from the idea to the shot in the can. I can place lights and get their settings right in about the same time a waiter can lay a table with cutlery. Well maybe a little slower but not that much.
I have learnt many things in the last 50 days. One of which is that I am pretty much uninspired by inanimate objects. I can shoot them but I have to work at it. Whereas with people it comes very easily.
I have also found that scenes are a lot of fun. Noir lighting is great fun. Lighting on two or more planes in the picture gives great depth and separation of image elements. I often like to restrict the colour palette and go for comic book type images.
If you’re a shooter and have wondered about doing a 365 but haven’t I can heartily recommend it.
Edit: Just found out that 48/365 was chosen as 1 out of 2 favourites for the month on the Digital Photo Experience blog. The guys that run that blog are way up there so this is a pretty cool thing for me. You can see the post here.
The Flower
Liz wanted a picture showing this plant that had suddenly flowered after years of not flowering. I wanted to do more lighting on different planes similar to yesterday’s shot of Dave Press. This was the result.
Dave Press
Dave Press is an amazing guitarist. I am proud to say that this is the first shot of a series I will be making over the coming weeks that will amount to the first of my unusual local people projects. The idea of the project is to create a feature type profile of local people that interest me.
This picture wasn’t shot in the store room of the local guitar shop but in Dave’s living room. He has quite a collection that aren’t all shown here. But more interesting than his collection is his playing. He is a virtuoso in many genres of music. Go check out his website or better still catch him live.
The Season's True Colours
I heard there were manisfestos being published. Thought I’d try and help out by putting the main three parties intentions into one succinct image. Yes I have used the same image before but not with quite the same text.
Wolfgang
We had just done a fairly standard, safe, profile portrait and then I switched the lighting and props around so as to get this. Quite like it.
Pupak Haghighi-Brinch
This is Pupak. A very interesting lady who got a group of local artists in the Ashdown Forest area together and helped them form a group to facilitate collaboration and help each other with marketing and such. We met today and had a talk about how we might help each other. There will quite possibly be more to come on this in the coming weeks. Then we made some pictures. This is one of my favourites.
Leaving The Scene
Conceived and lit in about three minutes. Then about 45 minutes to process. Some people think it all happens in a snap.
Crumpet
I was advised that if I wanted to get more readers then this was what I had to do.
Today’s picture was a hard one to come up with. I’ve found more and more that I am easily inspired to shoot people or dogs and possibly other critters but other things are very hard work. I had no one else around and I didn’t want to use myself again, even though I had a recent shot featured on Don Giannatti’s site again (thnks a lot Don).
So there I was without an idea and thinking that I just did not want to do this today…. but I am committed to doing it. So I knew I had to. So I had to come up with something. The result isn’t exactly as I had conceived it. I might have got there after a couple of hours but it had already taken about 30 minutes to get this. It is very difficult to get a playing card in just the right spot as the flash fires. This was about the 100th attempt and was the best I had.
And there is a lesson here. I know that if this was for a client I would have continued on until I got it perfect. Or I would have figured out another way to get it perfect. It wasn’t so I didn’t. But maybe I shoulda…
Cards in the Hat
There is nothing, although freshly ground coffee comes close, that is quite like the smell of a humidor full of quality cigars.
Smoker's Porn
Saw Max today. He begged me for another portrait. I eventually gave in. Then he spent an hour and a half in make-up and another hour getting his hair just right.
At the end of that he was so excited he just wouldn’t keep still. So I told him to meditate on the meaning of his life. After about 15 minutes he settled into a contemplative mood.
We exchanged some thoughts on philosophy and then listened tothe radio for a bit. We heard about the election being announced today and Gordon Brown saying “the future is within our grasp”. Max was immediately gripped with the profoundness of this thought. And I got this.
"The future is within our grasp"
Bogie Man
Had to be done. What else can I say?
Selma is a guest in East Grinstead from Holland. Her mother recently featured here and her father may do as well some time soon.
Selma
The family are staying at the best guest house in the East Grinstead area, ARTS House, which also just happens to be where I live.
The shot was made with an SB24 flash at camera left. It was snooted and aimed at the side of her face. The window at camera right provided the fill. There was some work in photoshop to limit the palette and bring out the colours.
At Desk
Look I know what yer thinkin’ but I had to do it. Every time I have a pic of myself the stats go up and for the last few days they had dipped. What d’yer mean what stats? The site visit and subscription stats. Would I lie to you?
Okay. Well even though I spent a good part of the day with a beautiful female model in East Grinstead all we did was talk and plan some shoots while all my gear was no more than 100 yards away in my car. There are some very interesting shoots coming up.
I know promises promises. But you’ll see. Really you will.
Promise Of Spring
Weather still quite cold in Sussex but there are signs of spring all around. Spotted these along the A22 today between East Grinstead and Forest Row. Actually there are lots of them around but these were nearby to where I could park up.
I wanted to have them backlit and ideally without having to setup light stands and flashes but the sun was behind clouds. It was too cold to stand around and wait so I decided to sit around and wait in the car. Only took about two minutes and the sun was poking through.
I love the brightness and enthusiasm of those yellows.
If you are an East Grinstead resident you are probably familiar with this place on West Street. In fact you are probably one of the many reasons I have to queue whenever I go there. I think it is one of the best fish and chip shops in the country and I’ve sampled quite a few.
the fish and chip shop
Very close to the East Grinstead Rubgy Club lives a man who, well, let’s just say lives a man called Andy. I want to keep this site family safe.
Andy
