Sussex Photographer Bernie Greene scratching out a tune while trying not to fall off the roof

Guru Rob

One of a set of three pictures for a website made today. The eye is a bit better today. Thanks for asking. What d’ya mean you didn’t ask?

Watching

Yes this is late. It was shot at about 11:00pm last night and processed immeditaely. At the time of the shoot my right eye was streaming tears. With every flash it was like a needle poking around in my eye. Somewhat nasty. Then I had to remove said tears in Photoshop. This was very hard as I could only see out of one eye. By the time I finished I couldn’t look at bright areas of the screen so I decided to not try and get it uploaded till today. The eye is still painful and streaming but not as bad as last night.

Not asking for sympathy here just letting you know the dedication I’m giving this project!

I’ve been asked how I manage to compose these shots. Well it isn’t as hard as it might seem. I pretty much know what I’m after before I set up so I set up to get what I’m after. I think that is the secret of all photography.

So here I have the camera on a tripod and the lousy model in a chair. Before the camera is mounted I focus on the tripod from the chair and roughly set the frame size (I’m using an 18-70mm lens here). Then I set the lights. Then I make some test shots and adjust position and lights accordingly.

For this shot I wanted the background to be dark. There was a room light on so the flash I was using had to be set to a high enough level to completely overpower the room light. The flash output was restricted by a snoot which meant the light would be in a tight beam. So I had to sit where I could see the flash knowing that if I can see the flash then the flash can see me too.  I also wanted the hat down over the streaming red right eye. This is also totally uncropped. What you see in the picture is exactly what the camera saw. So now you know how it doesn’t seem quite so remarkable eh?

Bram

Not Stoker, although he does have some similar characteristics such as getting a bit flappy late at night. No this is Bram whose surname I don’t know. But he is a Dutchman currently staying at ARTS House near Sharpthorne and thus has fallen victim to my way with a camera.

First CS/5 Pic

Working on that Bogey grimace.

Back to shooting the same lousy model again. Sorry about that. But hey. This was processed using Photoshop CS/5. Not that there’s any difference from what would have been produced in CS/3 as I didn’t use any of the new features. There is some processing but what you see was mostly done in camera.

Well I needed to get the processing finished on Barbara’s session and I had a bunch of other non photographic stuff to get out of the way. All of which left me without having made a 365 pic for today. I could still do one but it is now 2:00am and I don’t have anyone else around. I will continue tomorrow.

So these are all from the session last Wednesday.

Chesterfield

I have this affect on women.

Hat and Mac

I like the movie scene quality of this one.

Smoking

She can be ice cold and totally hot at the same time.

Golden Mac

Love the colours of this one

A New Hat

I can just imagine her walking into Raymond Chandler’s imagination.

Head Shot

Loveable or what?

Head Shot

And then came Joey…

The Boyfriend

… and then came …

Barbara and Joey

and that was that.

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.