Tattoo Convention: Sparks Will Fly

I lied, I'm a liar. I thought I had posted all the Tattoo Convention photos I wanted to but this one was half finished in Photoshop.

I've added some of the sparks on the right of the photo as they were only heading in one direction, I reduced the exposure on the crowd behind her until they disappeared and I've added a red-green-yellow colour dodged gradient which has added the teal and rose hints to the photo.

Gradients have been featuring a lot in my post production experiments, sometimes they're very obvious (example 1 & 2). Sometimes I will use a layer with a gradient map and they're a bit subtler (example).

I hope you like them all and my experimentation is working.

 

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Bestival Festival 2011: Enjoy The Sunshine But Prepare For Rain

How very British!

 

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Bestival Festival: Colour Chameleon

I was not the only person at Bestival with a camera, there were lenses of all different girths and lengths and on more then one occassion I found myself staring with mouth agape due to lens envy. There was even a young man with a vintage large format camera exposing one large frame at a time in a wooden camera on a wooden frame.

I'm not sure what Ms Boy George (above) is lining up in her viewfinder but she was crouched long enough for me to take a few shots and didn't notice me snapping away. I wonder if anyone took any sneaky pics of me... please, no, not on fancy dress day!

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Bestival Festival 2011: Tamer and Lion

The theme of this years fancy dress was Superstars and Popstars, but the theme isn't strictly enforece (nothing is strictly enforced at Bestival) so you will see all sorts of fantastic costumes.

These ladies, I can only assume (because I can't remember what they told me), are a stylish lion and a lion tamer, nothing to do with the theme at all, but they look great.

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Bestival Festival 2011

I'm getting around to this quite late, Bestival was some time ago and although I did the dutiful thing of updating Facebook, tagging friends old and newly made in the haze of my festival days, I neglected my blog and flickr, I can only appologize it's been a busy few weeks.

Well, here's the first in a series of photos from the festival:

Bestival is a four-day music festival held at the Robin Hill country park on the Isle of Wight, England. It has been held annually in late summer since 2004. The event is organized by DJ and record producer Rob da Bankand is an off-shoot of his Sunday Best record label and club nights.^[1] The initial Bestival attracted 10,000 people, growing to 55,000 in 2010. In 2006 it was voted the Best (Medium-sized) Festival at the 2006 UK Festival Awards, and it was voted the best major UK festival in the UK festival awards 2010.^{[2]...Read More}

- I took this photo while waiting to watch: Beardy Man - Watch his 2009 performance here.

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Aenigmate Per Speculum

I know! I know that I've used this title before, but I like it, I feel the phrase adds foreboding and mystery. Unlike many photographers I do believe that a title affects the reading of a photograph. It can encourage further interpretation or it can simply tell the viewer how to interpret the photo bluntly and without subtlety.

For a title, take your time and consider it or take no time at all and forego it.

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Notting Hill Carnival - 2011

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Living Fast, Brick Lane

I enjoy a stroll down Brick Lane every once in a while, it's interesting to see just how much it and the surrounding area changes and how rapidly those changes occur.

The people seem to stay the same though, the same age, the same fashions and the same modes of transport.

During a coffee stop I practiced panningand got these shots. I hope you like them.

See the full gallery on Posterous

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Whitstable Days & Nights

I don't often just take a day off work and go visit some distant place (not distant) but when a antipodean friend visited our fair shores I decided to take a days holiday and visit Canterbury Cathedral. None of these photos are of the cathedral by the way, because my plans, made out of sand as they were, changed after I had spent time under the lofty roof of the cathedral and then become thirsty.

Where better to have a drink on the one sunny day we've had all year (not bitter) than then seaside? No where, that's where. So I and my friend went to Whitstable, drank wine, ate cheese (please visit The Cheese Box if you ever go), chatted and took photos. Here are four I hope you like.

See the full gallery on Posterous

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Photographic Assignments: Book Cover Project

NB: There are a lot of grouped images in the post and I recommend that you view the original post, here, for an easier read.

 

My photographic partner in crime, Monica, has been suggesting that I join a photography Meetup from the website Meetup.com for a while now but the idea of going on someone else's photowalk has never appealed to me as much as organising my own. However, when Monica told me about a Meetup group where people were mentored by a professional photographer on how to handle the photographic assignments you may get as a freelance photographer, then I was intrigued.

The idea of this Meetup, Photographic Assignments, is that each week we meet and reply to a brief set by a fictional employee. The first assignment was to create a book cover for a new Anne Rice book, a sensual vampire horror book, set over decades with a story that centres around London's financial district.

There was a fake Art Director (the Meetup's organiser, Pete) who requested that the image did not have any people in it and that it clearly contrast old London against new London as well as having the other themes of the story in it too.

Here are my efforts, there are several iterations of each attempt as well as the original images for each and a brief description of what I was trying to do.

 

See the full gallery on Posterous

The main character of the story lived on Kings Road in the City, and this building is 20 Kings Road. I've cut the building in half and then mirrored it so make it look more pleasing, I dropped in a more dramatic sky and darkened it, upped the contrast and made it blue. In one version I've placed the Gherkin in the background and made it the same colour as the sky so it didn't detract from the building in front, I lost this in a later version as I'm not confident that it adds anything. I then dropped a aeroplane in.

Wild Animals on The Banks of the River

See the full gallery on Posterous

 

 

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Kid-A

Kid-A - Radiohead

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5 a Day Challenge: End, Normal Service Will Resume Presently

Facebook friends, Twitter followers, Flickr visitors, Blogger buddies and Posterous dropper-byers, thanks for your tolerance with what became a campaign of sustained and relentless spamming. You will be delighted to hear that I return to the nine to five tomorrow and instead of two to three posts per day you will probably only see a couple a week, if that.

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It's a bit of a relief for me too, and it's not that I ever tired of taking photos, but with my only self imposed rule being that I post five photos a day I found that I felt undirected and as a result there's little cohesion in what I've shown. The trouble is, and I may have stated this before, that when one is required to take a photo or a set of photos everyday they end using their routine as their inspiration, and sometimes the minutia of your own life seems to familiar to truly inspire.

Also, this blog isn't meant to be a personal journal, but instead should be about photography. 

Anyway, here's the last #5adaychallenge post, a challenge which I failed by the way, I missed a couple of days… hokum.

 

 

See the full gallery on Posterous

Back to the grind tomorrow... Enjoy May Day.

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The 'Can I Take Your Photo' Game

The rules are as follows:

Approach a person and ask if you can take their photo if they allow you then snap away, if they say no then go away. You can not take a photo of a person you haven't asked permission from and you can not the same gender for a photo consecutively i.e. boy, girl, boy, girl.

Post all the good ones, ditch the crap ones.

See the full gallery on posterous

 

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New Outlook

"So many fail because they don't get started - they don't go. They don't overcome inertia. They don't begin."

- W.Clement Stone

Welcome to London.

 

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Looking to the Past | Fizzy Phones

I was asked the other day why do I use my iPhone so much for photography and will I be taking 'proper' photos again at any point soon. I answered that I really enjoy the effects and treatments that apps like Hipsarmatic and Instagram add to photos and suggested that this may be because I have never had a collection of photos with that kind of feel to them, that seemed like they were from a particular period of time.

Photos from my mother's albums or my grans all have an unreal quality to them, like looking through a filter that blurs and discolours them but also unites them through a common 'feel' in a way that a skilled photographer would unite their photos in a particular style.

Of course that supposition, that I liked the aforementioned apps because they hark back to a halcyon time when photos were automatically united with idiosyncrasies and quirks, which appealed to me because I missed this time myself, is probably incorrect. It would be more truthful to say that as a child of the 1 hour lab and the compact 35mm camera, I'm used to not quite framing correctly, not knowing immediately how a photo is going to look (now I have to wait an agonising 10 seconds for a Hipstamatic 'print') and I'm used to the permanency of my efforts.

What my apps offer me is surprise, nostalgia, fun and of course off kilter images. Using an app is a different discipline but it can still produce 'proper' photos as well as eliciting skill and attention from it's user.

 

The above photo was taken using a Canon 400D and not an app, and then the effect was created through post processing in Photoshop. I was going for a retro look, inspired by the subject, but wanted something of higher quality than the files produced by an iPhone. It's an unfortunate restriction that Hipstamatic is bound to a subpar camera and I'm looking forward to the day that Cannon, Mamiya, Nikon et al have App Stores and bespoke camera apps too. Imagine if, instead of RAW and JPEG you could choose RAW and Hipstamatic, wouldn't that be cool?

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Angel in Southwark

Last month, or maybe the month before that I revisited a spot in Southwark that I had first been to on my very first Photowalk. The place is an underpass where people are invited to grafitti and do so without fear of prosecution. There is some great work there, it's diverse and interesting and I really do suggest you take a look some time (find the map at the bottom of this post).

I visited with my cousin, Angel and she was gracious enough to let me take some shots of her.

View Graffiti Spot in a larger map

London Photowalks: Notting Hill

Notting Hill is a really interesting place and shooting it was great fun. A big part of the fun was the company.

My hope for these events is that they create an opportunity for people to be creative, to learn, to meet people who share and encourage their interest, whatever level they're at I hope they can be inspired by the places we visit and the people we meet.

I know that this time round I really was inspired and I'm really looking forward to the next Photowalk.

I wanted to take a pic of this building, I forget why, but on getting the pic home and then seeing it on my computer I realised that it was really dull! So I changed it up a bit and created something I'm far happier with.

I love this car and wish I had done it more justice, this is the better of three pictures I took.

I'm really happy with this shot, I had the aperture too wide and was feeling a bit rushed because my model was posing grudgingly, but I'm sure she's as happy with this shot as I am.

Trelick Tower... one day I will shoot this from a helicopter, but for now, just an interesting shot from street level would do. Maybe this isn't the shot I wanted.

I'm happy with this one as well, I spent some time in Photoshop with it, making the light stuff darker and the darker stuff lighter. Perhaps I should spend a little more time dotting the i's and crossing the t's... one to revisit.

Leytonstone

There will be more and more pics of Leytonstone gracing this blog. I live in this wonderful part of London now, right on the edge of Epping Forest. Here are two images that I took using my Nikon FE and messed around with in Photoshop.

The Albert Hitchcock



The Flats and Max

Had a cheese party!

One thing I miss about my life in Japan would have to be the impromptu, enthusiastic and awesome parties. JETs really know how to throw down! But, why can't I keep partying as if it were 2007 (Miyazaki style) for the rest of life? If I learnt anything in Japan, and it's questionable whether I did, then I learnt how to P A R T Y.

So, I thought I would throw one... First I needed a theme, CHEESE, need a location, MY LIVING ROOM, need music, CHEESE! Oh, what is this? I have the starting of a party here my friend, maybe not a rager, maybe not a carnival, not an orgy of debauchery but a soiree of a more quiet nature.

Some dancing on the couch, some splits performed to pick cardboard off of the floor with one's teeth and a bunch of sing-a-longs later and I realised that 'quiet nature' had gone out the window... it seems that Cheese + Red Wine + Cheesey music = rocket fuel.

It seems that people can throw down in little ol'Blighty, we had a right ol'knees up and then some, and after a hard few weeks of bitter cold, commuting and well... life, what else do you do for fun? Fondue of course!