The One Project
Toward the beginning of the year I had lunch with my friend Hilary Wardaugh, an accomplished photographer around Canberra, and she described a project she was putting together. Hilary explained that she had a Nikon FM-2 manual film camera with a 50mm f/1.8 lens laying around and was planning to load a film into it, compile a list of photographers and pass the camera to each photographer and ask each one to take a picture. Once the picture has been taken, it became the photographer's responsibility to contact the next person on the list and arrange to get the camera to them. At the end of this process, about 3 months, Hilary will get the film developed and scanned. Each photographer will their digital negative and can process it as though preparing a print in the darkroom ... that is curves and levels and filter colours but no pixel based PhotoShop edits et al. The processed negative will be passed back to Hilary who will then arrange printing of the image for the purposes of exhibition. Two shows are currently lined up for the prints, one local (at the Huw Davies Gallery in Manuka) and one in Sydney (as part of the Head On Photo Festival).
The camera travels in a box containing the list of photographers, a cable release and a book in which the photographer is encouraged to write a short piece about their picture. The project is called The One Project.
So far so good... the only stipulation was that our picture had to be a portrait!
No pressure... it's only a single frame... I mean it's not like the other twenty-odd photographers are all accomplished photographers (they are!) and will be doing their very best as well... reading through the book I smiled when I saw that everyone else was obsessed with light, exposure and focus ;-)
I wanted my portrait to be of my artistic collaborator Marina. I have photographed Marina extensively over the past two years and together we came up with the idea that often you only have an impression of someone through the images you see of them. So I put together a grid of photos I have taken of Marina and projected them digitally across her face and arms and splashed across a dark background the pictures resemble stained glass. I set my digital camera to emulate the manual settings of the FM-2 and to act as a light meter for correct exposure. The effect is one of an essentially dark shadowy image with bright pictures shaping contours but ... visible upon closer inspection ... you see Marina illuminated and looking out from the shadows. It looks great.
Then it was swap the camera over on the tripod, recompose and recheck the settings (and recheck them again!) ... I re-posed Marina and got the composition right and while she was looking perfect I felt it was right pressed the shutter release ... pa-tchang! Done! In my excitement however I had failed to warn Marina I was about to take the picture and she thinks she may have blinked but can't recall where the blink may have been in relation to the exposure. I'm sure it'll be fine! I do feel like a goose though! My main concern is that given the dark nature of the photograph (light-wise not emotionally-wise!) and the different response of the film to shadow and highlight my contribution to the project may in fact just turn out to be a black frame! But then that's the risk you take in trying something less safe I guess :-)
The photos I took with the digital body look great and I would include them in this post but I don't want to publish anything until I see how the film version came out which won't be until November. I'll do a contrast and compare then as a separate post :-)
But I would like to thank both Hilary and Marina. Marina firstly for being my muse and sharing her art, ideas and vision so freely with me ... my world simply wouldn't be the same without her in it. And Hilary for coming up with the idea of The One Project and making it happen, for the necessary artistic angst and discipline (well OK maybe I didn't take home all of the discipline lesson) this project inspired in me.
Barriers: Skull with water drops - Series One
He's back on the drops again! This time in experimentation for a show coming up in November with my artistic collaborator Marina Talevksi. The show is to be called Barriers: break or break through and features a skull or representations of a skull or many skulls or many representations of the same skull ... we haven't quite decided yet ;-)
Barriers will be our second formal exhibition together after 2 Tens & A Tomato in 2014. Suffice to say that the show features skulls and in preparation for this I experimented on the weekend with some waterdrop refraction images featuring a skull... trying to get an image of a skull to refract in a water drop. It was tricky but I'm rather pleased with these initial results. You can check out my other forays into drop refraction photography in my WaterPlay gallery :-)
Projected
I have, for many years, wanted to play with a photographic technique called 'Projector Photography'. This is essentially where a light source (in may case a digital projector) is used to throw patterns or other images upon a subject and the results captured in the camera as a photograph. I know it's all been done before and this technique has been around since the very beginning of photography but I'm thinking the important thing here is that it hasn't been done by me yet ;-) and to further this minor notion of inflated self-importance I recently obtained a digital projector (a little XGA Epson) and began to make some experiments ... the first of which I'm happy to present here.
For the technically minded: For the pattern I created a vertical line image in Photoshop using the pattern editor and transferred it to my laptop connected to the projector. I was running the image through Lightroom in fullscreen mode. This enabled me to play with the image size (and hence the width of the stripes) and also apply a hard vignette to make the projected images smaller and circular. The images was captured using a Nikon D600 with an 85mm f/1.4 @ f8 and ISO 640. At these settings the exposure time was around 1/6sec and so I had to remain quite still ... excepting the frame where I took advantage of the slow shutter and deliberately moved my head from side to side. These setting also showed that I have plenty of light to play with using increased ISO settings on the camera.
All in all a successful first experiment I thought ... can't wait to put my favourite model in front of it :-)
I have many ideas for patterns or images to project ... spiderwebs, water, fire ... I'd interested in any ideas you may have for the technique.
Published :-)
In other news one of my photographs, part of a series I did for local poet P.S. Cottier for her little poetry collection Paths Into Inner Canberra, has been published in The Canberra Times newspaper and syndicated to The Age online site ( the newspaper sites are syndicated so they appear kinda the same ;-) )
Links
Lime Marmalade: Sunshine in a Jar
One of the advantages of working with folks who enjoy a bit of gardening is the seasonal produce brought into work when there's an overflow in production. Last week, John brought in a big bag of fresh limes ... mmm limes! ... and Lucy promptly took a small bagful and turned them into lime marmalade which she brought samples of into work a couple of days later. I adore lime marmalade ... to me it's like sunshine in a jar. Spread on hot buttered toast ... delicious! Tangy, clear, zesty and not too sweet. Well done Lucy :-)
I took this photo just before I cracked open my jar. I thought, as I was munching on fresh lime marmalade toast, that perhaps I should have included a fresh lime or two in the picture ... oh well, too late for that now I thought soonly thereafter ;-)
And, in case you wish to make your own sunshine in a jar here's the recipe :-)
Ingredients
- 1kg (about 11) Limes
- 2l (8 cups) Cold water
- 1.7kg Caster sugar
Method
- Halve and juice the limes, reserving lime halves. Place the juice in a glass jug. Cover with plastic wrap and store in the fridge. Trim the narrow end from each reserved lime half. Place in a large bowl. Cover with warm water. Soak for 6 hours or overnight to soften. Drain.
- Cut each lime half into quarters and thinly slice into 2mm-thick strips. Place the lime strips, lime juice and cold water in a heavy-based saucepan. Bring to boil over medium-high heat. Reduce heat to low. Cover and simmer for 50 minutes to 1 hour or until rind is tender.
- Add the sugar and cook, stirring, for 10-15 minutes or until the sugar dissolves. Increase heat to medium-high. Boil, stirring often, using a metal spoon to remove any scum that rises to the surface, for 45-55 minutes or until marmalade jells when tested (see note). Spoon into sterilised jars. Store in a cool, dry place or the fridge once opened.
Enjoy, I know I am! :-)
Website Blues
Oh I've been suffering the website blues ... for some months now (actually pretty much since I launched the new website!) the site has been been performing very poorly. By poorly I mean it took an inordinate amount of time to load and in some cases refused to display anything once it had loaded. I found this having a let's say 'detrimental' effect on my posting rate as I was constantly trying to improve the delivery of content rather than actually creating any! Thank you to all the people who took the time to let me know that they could not access the site and the blog! I mean what's the point of having a photography based website/business if no one can see your work!
I had tried optimising all my images, streamlining the code, caching plugins and even dabbled in some CDN (Content Delivery Network) action but nothing seemed to make it go faster. To cut a long story short I got in touch with the techs at my hosting provider (VentraIP) and asked if they could investigate this for me. They found some incorrect setting in my PHP version which, once corrected, made the delivery hum right along. A few more tweaks including updating the way my site caches content and delivers it has really increased my delivery speeds to a fraction of what they were before. Now that the site appears fully functional I have been inspired to update some of the image galleries and overall appearance parameters to make the site a more streamlined experience. Do please give it a go if you find yourself so inspired and let me know if it's not behaving itself! I will have strong words with it ;-P
Website blues? Not as blue as this Koi I captured at Taronga Park Zoo in Sydney turned out ... but still it's a pretty picture ... so pretty I had it printed up large and it now hangs on my wall. I'm thinking of doing a series of them and getting RedBubble to make some cushions and tote baggy things for sale.
Masked
So we made this little movie ... an arthouse piece in a world that plainly isn't. In the movie, we're wearing masks ... well, in the latter stages we're wearing masks plural seeing as we had only one mask when we began filming and had to share it. It wasn't until I came across a supply of masks in Chapel Street in Melbourne over the final weekend that we were able to appear together both wearing masks. But that's an aside.
It's a strange feeling to be wearing masks in public, on the street, in coffee shops and shopping malls. Noone seemed to think it particularly odd, we didn't get asked to leave anywhere and anywhere people did look a little alarmed we just assured them we were "making a movie" and everything was fine! One thing I did notice though was that when I was masked, people I was flashing a reassuring smile to as they walked past or lingered couldn't actually see said reassuring smile; just some nodding weirdo in a mask.
I did take the opportunity to take some stills as we were shooting but likely nowhere near as many as I perhaps should have :-)
Here's a few.
You can watch the movie here
Lights, Canberra, Action!
Well, we didn't win any prizes at our inaugural LCA film festival ... but ... we did get our art piece This Too Shall Pass shown to a rather large crowd and people were coming up to us after the event and saying how much they enjoyed it and how good it was to see an Arthouse film make it into the finals ... so it went pretty well really. We're now planning our next film project and that's kinda exciting too :-)
Hot Baby (Take 2) = much happier baby
Back in December I did a baby photo session of then four-week old Bjørn. That sunny Sunday reached 39°C in the afternoon … and little Bjørn was a hot baby and hot babies tend to be a little cranky. I got loads of lovely pictures of Bjørn but they were largely split into two groups … peacefully asleep or grumpy 
Now, I do know that parents love pictures of their children looking happy and smiley so I undertook to do a second session to capture some of the said happy and smiley pictures. Fast forward through the 4-week blur that is Christmas, travel, new year et al and little Bjørn is not so little now ... well ok he's still pretty little ... just not quite so little ... anyways on with the pictures! :-)
We met up at the Botanic Gardens on a Sunday morning and I foolishly wore a white shirt and as I lay on the damp dewy grass in amongst the wallaby poo ... this became apparent ... this foolishness. My shirt looked as though it bore external witness to a coffee drinking problem ... which is quite untrue ... like really.
Pocket Places: Paths into inner Canberra
Ever shot a poet on a bicycle? No? Well neither had I until week before last. Canberra poet PS Cottier (whom you may remember from this shoot) got in touch with a fun request:
"I just found out that I am having a small chapbook published about
riding the bikepaths of Canberra. It has some autobiographical
elements and is a prose piece in a series called Pocket Places. The
publisher asked if I have a suitable colour photo of myself on my
bike. I said I have some lovely photos with a parasol (and we may
use one from that session) but none of me riding my bike."
So, after a glass of wine at local pub/cafe The Front we set off on a little soiree on the bike paths of the Inner North. Here's a selection from our wander.
The book will be called Paths into inner Canberra, to be published by Ginninderra Press of South Australia. (GP began in Canberra 19 years ago but moved to Port Adelaide in 2008.) It will be part of their new Pocket Places series, and will be available here for the enormous price of $4. It will be about 24 pp in length.
Links
Shoot: My first Greek Orthodox Christening
Not only my first Greek Orthodox christening but my first photo shoot of a Greek Orthodox christening to boot. Not one but three babies, all cousins, were christened last weekend at St Nicholas' Church. Not being a regular attendee at church services, I took the opportunity to read up on the ceremony before the day arrived ... to get an idea of who would be standing where and what the different components would entail. I even visited the websites of photographers specialising in christenings to see what sort of pictures they got ... research I believe it's called ;-) and I'm very glad I did. I got to the church well before the ceremony to check out the light and to speak with the Fathers about where I could and could not go ... '...anywhere but the steps up to the sacred place!' ... no problem ... anywhere but the steps up to the sacred place! Got it!
It was very interesting day and also a very hot and humid one. I had a great time, took some lovely photographs which the families are very pleased with and hope to do it again.
Headshots: Raoul Craemer 2
As promised back in this post, I present the clean-shaven headshots of actor Raoul Craemer...
Raoul certainly looks different sans beard and though he wanted the shots to be simple and neat, the photo where I asked him to mess up his hair has an edgy look to it that I just love. That one is easily my favourite of the session. I like it slightly more in monochrome too.
Here's a contrast;
It's likely a little too late now, but I still think the beard works. What do you think?
Hot Baby
On the same weekend I took photos of actor Raoul Creamer, I also did a baby photo session of four-week old Bjørn. Turned out that Sunday morning was hot and sunny ... it reached 39°C in the afternoon ... and heat tends to make for a hot baby and hot babies tend to be a little cranky. So I got loads of lovely pictures of Bjørn but they were largely split into two groups ... peacefully asleep or grumpy :-)
Here's a selection of the more peaceful ones ... I particularly like the one where he looks like an old-school Soviet Premier ... you'll know the one (it's the not-so-peaceful one) ;-)
I've arranged a further session with Bjørn, who will hopefully bring his happy smiling face along, next week. Parents and relatives do appreciate pictures of happy, smiling children :-)
Headshots: Raoul Craemer
Raoul Craemer is an actor currently based in Canberra. Raoul has recently signed with a new agent and asked me the other day to take some fresh head shots of him. An added bonus is that the role he's currently engaged with requires a beard and so we're doing two sessions ... one with beard - Voila! ... and one next week when his role finishes and he shaves the beard off.
Personally, I quite like the beard on him.
Oh and Raoul's current show is called A Scandalous Boy by David Atfield and is showing at The Street Theatre until well, yesterday ;-)