Music From Rainy Skies

A few new developments since my last post, most importantly I've begun shooting for a music magazine in Manchester. The magazine is called Music From Rainy Skies and its proceeds will go to the Frances House children's hospice. My first 2 shoots were of Manchester bands Dutch Uncles and The Paris Riots.

Dutch Uncles.


Turned up at the venue (a church) and was immediately struck with an overwhelming feeling of dread. "Is this all the lighting?" I asked the sound technician. "Yeah, but we have a few desk lamps around the band" was the reply. I can hardly see the band on stage with my naked eye, so how the hell is my camera gonna pick them up?    FLASH TIME !
Now this isn't ideal, a lot of bands don't like you using flash but it was a case of no flash no shot. I shot the gig and hated that my ISO had to be at 1000 and my camera struggled to cope in the dark and to top it all half way into the show my flash dropped off a pew and smashed the radio trigger to bits. All in all a nightmare gig. On a brighter note (I needed this brightness at the venue) I have worked a difficult gig and survived. I still want to shoot bands and I haven't been put off. Hopefully a sign that I am doing the right thing. I have left my automatic answer to the question about my career path behind and am exploring my options better.

Here are some images I managed to get out of the gig.

The Paris Riots


This gig was a lot more straight forward and went smoothly. There was no crowd though. It was a bit of a strange one in that respect. The event was a corporate invite only party to celebrate the launch of capital radio nationwide. By a stroke of luck my part time photo booth job took me to the event, funny how things happen.

Here are some of the shots.

Stop motion fun.

Part of my course involves a small amount of video editing. Today it was creating stop motion video with my DSLR.
24 frames a second is quite exhausting after 2 hours of tiny movements.
Anyway thought I'd post the results of todays experiments. So here it is, Enjoy.

A Bit Lean!

One month since my last post and not a lot of photography has happened. This is mainly because researching other peoples work has taken up most of my time.

Amidst the fun of endless hours researching I attended a Halloween party. RIGHT! I have at least half an opportunity to take some photos.

 Attempting to make a creepy set of images in a terrace house in Stockport was a challenge with only a flashgun to hand.

Here are a couple of examples of the photos I managed to get.



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spooky?......        Fingers crossed I can get some proper work done soon.

 

What the hell am I doing?

I had the first session with new tutor Dave Gee today. He is covering lightroom, aperture and moving images. Being the first day he asked the group where our interest lay in terms of photography and what career path we were focusing on. I answered the question with a sentence that has almost become a template for me when asked this question. Without even thinking I answered "commercial and advertising". This answer and idea is based upon an article I read in a photo magazine about 3-4 years ago. The fact that this one article affected my focus so much is bizarre, maybe part of the reason for this was having people assume all photographers do is weddings (no offence meant to wedding photographers, some wedding photography I've seen is stunning and truly creative).

This repetitive opinion expressed in conversation as a vehicle for small talk in social situations starts to grate after the 100th time of hearing "What, like weddings and stuff?" Back on point though, I have developed a certain taste for music and documentary photography over the past year and have researched these styles much more intensely than commercial or advertising photography.

So what the hell am I doing? Surely I should be spending my time finding out what sells in the commercial world and how the advertising world works, but I'm not and it doesn't fill me with fear that I might miss out on my 'dream' job. Could it be that I have created this job role as just an answer to a question I think I should know? Probably, the truth is that what scares me most is a lack of direction in my work. I need to shake off my automatic answering machine style answer I always give in response to the illusive question "What photography do you want to do?" and search for what I love doing. If this leads me back to my original answer at least this time I will know why.

Year 2

Today I started the second year of my degree in  Photography and Digital Imaging proper. As usual for the start of an academic year it was a slow start (no doubt this will change pretty quickly).

Starting research on social issues for the first unit tonight, nothing like the prospect of child slavery research to inject a heavy dose of negativity into your day.

Needs must.