Dancing Inspiration

On the invitation of my friend, Sabine, I last night visited the 'Dance For Camera' event in Manchester, which is part of the 'moves08' festival.

Now I love dancing in the 'regular' sense, I'm even learning 3 different styles at the moment, but dance for art and performance art is something I've never managed to fully get my head around.  The world in which it revolves seemed to me to be quite elitist and less accessible than the genres in which I usually work.  A world where you had to know about and understand the whole history of where a performance has developed from.

However, this brief event has been somewhat of a revelation to me, and today I have found myself listening intently to the sounds I make as I wander round the house, opening and closing doors, tapping away on this keyboard, and its like the quiet but powerful rhythm that we all move to.

During the evening we were able to see snippets of some finished work by a couple of artists, Simon Ellis and Rachel Davies, and be part of a discussion about their work and how it was viewed.  This got me to thinking about my own work, particularly our early film, 'The Lonely Walk', and the way some people loved it but others were quickly bored, which I had always understood but found slightly frustrating.

What really interested me though, was the second half of the event, when things became much more heated and debate ensued.  Andy Wood was showing some rough cuts of a dance piece he had filmed a year previous and wanted to get feedback from the audience on how they viewed it.

These short sections of film brought strong debate on factors that had completely passed me by a first viewing...  How the characters interact with the camera and with each other, whether they even acknowledged it existence, the clothes that they wore, the style of the dance (which was compared to a style from the 70's that hadn't progressed), the views of the author and his methodology of working, and his ideological stance (or lack thereof).

This stuff surprised me and yet I could value all of the points that were being made.  It just goes to prove that in our creative fields there is always so much that can be read into an image or a piece, whether it was consciously injected by the author or not.

I would also like to present a beautiful piece of work by my friend, Sabine Klaus, and invite you to view more of her work at www.creationeditor.co.uk

New Shoot - Michelle

Some new images from a shoot with Michelle Robinson.

Self Portrait Tests: DIY Ringflash

Here are a few self portrait images from one of my first test shoots with the home-made Ringflash.

As you can see, it works, and pretty damn well at that.

For the photography geeks amongst you, I can get up to f/16 out of it at 1/125 sec. (Not bad, eh?)

DIY Ringflash

Photography equipment is so expensive, especially when you are trying to start a business and have a lot to buy.  So when I can, I feel its worth investing a bit of time and creativity and seeing if you can improvise a solution.

Having spent a couple of weeks building and modifying a basic ringflash, I decided to take my lead from Chase Jarvis and let the good people of the world see what is possible with a little ingenuity.

My initial attempts began with a design for use with my Nikon Speedlight.  As you can see I built a cardboard frame that would sit on the head of the flashgun and bounce the light up into the ring.

For the ring I got hold of flan/cake tin for about £10, which would allow for the necessary hole in the centre.  In order to create a space for the light to flood in though, I would have to use a saw to cut out a rectangle from one side, making sure to leave the metal flaps (edges filed) to use within the cardboard for support.

(P.S.  If you are going to try this I take no responsibility for your skills with a saw, get a professional to do it if necessary!)

So, as you can see I then needed to bounce the light around the ring as much as possible and this would prove to be the trickiest part.  On properly manufactured adaptors they use prisms to do this, but this would be far to complicated and not at all in the spirit of things...bring out the tin foil.  This is 'Blue Peter' style!

Unfortunately, the tin foil alone was not going to get the light bouncing around enough, so I decided a mirror (or bits of it) might aid my cause.  I only hope this does not bring the 7 years bad luck on me.  You can see though that it has helped to get the light moving around a bit.

...Add a layer of baking paper and the light is spread even more...

And so to my initial tests, and you can see that the system works...wahey!

The above picture was taken with the speedlight at full power, which has produced quite a nice shot, but you can see in the catchlights that there is still a fair bit of fall off in the light being produced from bottom to top.

Also, I was only able to get about f/4.5 at 2 ft from the subject.  Nowhere near what I wanted for the studio.  So I set about modifying the cardboard frame to now fit my Bowens 500 studio flash head, or more specifically, the 14cm spill kill.

This modification actually proved to be far more complex than the speedlight framework, as I had to build a support ring within the framework that would sit on top of the spill-kill/reflector, and convert it to the octagonal shape that I had based my frame on.

With the setup built I could see if it would actually work.  There is always going to be concern over the stability of something that is purely using gravity to hold it in place, even though I had made sure to design the framework to fit very snug to the reflector.  I found though, that I was able to incorporate the screw fitting, used to hold an umbrella, to in turn hold a bar which would stop the whole system from rocking off!

Trying to get the light more even is a case of trial-and-improvement again, as I found that layering up the greaseproof paper, as natural ND's could help to even out the inadequacies. 

And there you have it...the final product in all its glory!!

...It should however be noted, that it is best to turn off the modelling lamp entirely, as this is what quickly produces heat, and it has nowhere to go but up.  Plus, this thing is made out of cardboard and tape and I am not being held responsible for any houses being burnt down.

As you can see the heat of an initial test has frazzled the gaffer tape.

Use it sensibly and have fun with the new possibilities!!

Spring/Summer/Winter??

What is going on with the weather? Two weeks ago I was out photographing spring, and all of a sudden we hit April and it snows again.

Good for picture taking though!

Photos on the BBC website

Hello hello,

I have just found out that I have photos on the BBC website.

It is in relation to the 'Not Part Of' Festival that is happening in Manchester this summer.  The photos are from the 'Not Part Of New Year's Eve' Festival that I photographed for Gareth and Beth McCann back in January.

Check the BBC page out here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/manchester/content/articles/2008/04/04/040308_not_part_of_feature.shtml

New Shoot Images

Here are a few images from a recent shoot.

Model: Martina Goodman-Withers

Make-Up: Michelle Robinson

The great new world of pseudonyms

So then, this is my first post on the newly created blog....

Why is it, in our great new technological world, that we have to spend the first half hour or so, before we can start to do anything, trying to think of a progressively more outlandish way of representing ourselves to those who wish to find us?

The amount of times I have sat at the opening page of web service, typing out my name in different formats...put a number here, a symbol there; switch a couple of letters round...but then you realise you have come up with a new name for yourself that nobody is going to remember and has no relevance to who you are!

But then here we are, in our brave new world, where I can send pictures to my brother in Australia in the blink of an eye.  There's a lot of people on the doorstep now, not only competing for your name but that great job too...

...and so to the purpose of this new endeavour of mine.  I ramble on a bit from time to time, put up some new work as often as I can, and you get a feel for who I am and what I do.  Then you say, "Snapz! I wanna work with you, come and take my picture!"  (Or something like that).

Its a blog about life, creativity, travel...and doing your darndest to get a business up and running in a competitive industry.

I hope you enjoy it.  Buckle your seatbelts.  The journey starts now...

(Oh, as for the name - 'snapztalks' - bookmark it, its gonna be good!)