afterDARK at the Botanic Gardens

afterDARK at the Botanic Gardens (the Australian National Botanic Gardens) is a series of night time walks through the gardens. Participants get to make their own tea-light lanterns and go on educational, guided walks with the rangers. I was commissioned to take some photographs this year of the evening walkers.

Future walks in the afterDARK series are being held on;

Special National Science Week events

Saturday 13 August - Book Now
Saturday 20 August - Book Now

Spring Scavenger Hunt Dates:
Saturday 3 September - Book Now
Saturday 24 September (School Holidays) - Book Now
Saturday 1 October (School Holidays) - Book Now
Saturday 8 October (School Holidays) - Book Now
Saturday 5 November - Book Now

Time: 7.00 pm

Cost: $30 adult | $25 concession

- See more at: http://www.parksaustralia.gov.au/botanic-gardens/do/whats-on.html#sthash.xriLxB4H.dpuf


Model Shoot: Casey Edwards

  • Model: Casey Edwards
  • HMUA: Deni Jordan Hackett
  • Styling: Lydia Downe
  • Photographer: Geoffrey Dunn

Shoot: Lisa Richards

The wonderful musician Lisa Richards recently engaged me to create an image for the back cover of her new CD release A Light From The Other Side. Lisa had seen a moody montage I published using a photograph of Marina ... she loved it and wanted something in a similar mood for the cover. I explained that it was a montage and I would be happy to shoot some studio images of her and simply place (I say simply but successful montages are never really ever simple) her into the existing montage. I had to adjust the document to fit in the dimensions provided by the graphic designer but we were very pleased with the result.

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And here's the completed cover.

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Since we were in the studio we took some publicity type pictures as well.

The album is pre-selling now. I really like it. Do yourself a favour* and grab a copy. Do visit Lisa's website too and have a listen to her previous work ... great listening :-)

 

*apologies to Molly Meldrum ;-)


Model Shoot: Deni Jordan Hackett

A series of images from a recent model shoot with model Deni Jordan Hackett. The shoot team was put together by HMUA Caroline Cresswell and was intended to feature a theme of 'Veiled'. It was a fun afternoon. I'm working with Deni again this weekend though this time she's doing creative ... can't wait, stay tuned.

The full team

  • Photographer: Geoffrey Dunn
  • Model: Deni Jordan Hackett
  • Make Up: Caroline Cresswell
  • Hair: Amelia Olsen
  • Creative: Caroline | Marina T | Geoffrey

2016 Lights! Canberra! Action!

So, following on from the success of being shortlisted for our entry in the 2015 Lights! Canberra! Action! Marina and I set about making an entry for this year's short film festival. The film is titled '237' (after the hotel key that must appear as one of specified objects).

The format of the festival stipulates that entrants have 10 days to shoot and submit a film. The film must contain 10 specified objects or places and be somehow linked to a nominated theme ... this year's theme was 'Chance'. The ten objects or places for this year's film were:

  1. A deck of cards
  2. PJ O'Reilly's - either southside or the city
  3. Weather Report 'Chance of rain' - this item can be audio
  4. Weetangera Cemetery - MAP
  5. A question mark
  6. The National Film and Sound Archive
  7. Dice
  8. The Police Box on Red Hill by Geoff Filmer - MAP
  9. A raffle ticket
  10. The key to room 237, Avenue Hotel

We managed to include all ten ... see if you can spot them!

Our movie is largely a meditation on the nature of freedom, it's a kind of love story and it's narrated beautifully in Italian by Marina.

And since we were shortlisted and made the Final Twelve we got to attend the public screening of all twelve shortlisted film at the Rose Gardens, Old Parliament House.

Here's a picture of Marina and I accepting our finalist certificates from Chris Bourke MLA

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Please let us know what you think of the movie in the comments below :-)


Pigman's Lament

Yesterday morning I shot a series of promotional photographs to support an upcoming production at The Street Theatre. The production is called Pigman's Lament and stars Raoul Craemer in a taxing solo performance. The story revolves around a man who is physically haunted by the memory of his dead grandfather. Raoul, who you may remember from the Beard/No Beard headshot series from earlier in the year, plays both roles.

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The brief for the promotional image called for the expression of the duality extant in the central character ... to somehow combine the rational present character with that of the man beyond the grave. I chose to take two shots and merge them together to form this dualistic one ... Raoul's hand reaching from behind his head and contorting his face emphasises the extension of this nasty force from the past. The picture will appear on all promotional materials for the production and I'll post a picture of the poster when it gets printed.

There were, predictably some outtakes too ;-)

 

The production details

Pigman's Lament - The Street Theatre - Early 2016

  • Starring: Raoul Craemer
  • Director: Paulo Castro (Stone/Castro - Portuguese National Theatre, Schaubuehne Berlin, Chunky Move)
  • Playwright: Raoul Craemer

 


New Show: Barriers - Break or Breakthrough

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I'm very pleased to announce my next show Barriers: Break or Breakthrough opens next Wednesday at the Belconnen Community Center. A collaboration between myself and Marina T, the show explores our different reactions to change. Our working proposal:

Change is a fundamental part of the human experience. Often our difficulty in accepting change can stem from our inability to understand it. Barriers explores the the transitional processes involved in interpreting change.

The exhibition revolves around the centerpiece of a glass-encased clay sculpture of a human skull, which acts as both metaphor and motif of change. Meditations upon the centerpiece take the form of sculptures, and poetry.

The skull, which we have nicknamed Eno was made by Marina, features in each of the photographs. Each of the photos explores a different emotional response to change ... these comprise Anger, Fear, Denial, Delirium, Mourning and Acceptance.  Here is a selection of the photographs from our shortlist for the show.

The show also features several poems written especially for the show and a number of new clay sculptures from Marina.

We made a flyer advertising the show too ;-)

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Along the way we have also established domain for our working collaborative artistic endeavours 2 Tens & A Tomato under which we exhibit and also produced a short film (shortlisted at the 2015 Lights! Canberra! Action! short film festival. The site is a little lean at the moment as we concentrate on getting things together for the show and really only shows a copy of the flyer for the show but please stay tuned on that front.

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Links

If you're in Canberra next Wednesday evening (18th November) at 5:30pm ... please come along and say hello to us :-)

If Canberra is simply too far to come ... please wish us well :-)

#gdphoto #2tensandatomato


Time-Motion Study: Dance

On Saturday night I had the opportunity to photograph some of the show events at the 2015 Canberra Latin Dance Festival. The festival organisers had engaged a photographic team from Sydney to do formal coverage of the events and dance exhibitions and I volunteered on the day to offer to take some creative arty pictures. The event started at 8pm and was very well attended. There was a stage and seating and a large(ish) (too large I think) area in front of the stage where no-one was permitted ... not even the formal photographers!

I had imagined that I would be able to get quite close to the action and to this end I had packed my Lensbaby and wider primes to get as you say creative. Seeing as I couldn't get close my wider selection was almost no us ... I mean I was simply to far away from the action. I did have my 70-200 with me and I ended up using this for most of the night. As I was taking pictures of the performers I began extending the exposure time to deliberately blur their movements and flow. I had my tripod with me and so I zoomed to an area of the stage with black background and set about tweaking until I got nicely lit 10 second exposures. I got a lot of duds ... but we won't talk about those today ;-)

I was impressed with the way they came out. The ones above show flow and transition and a closer examination reveals faces and hands and the ever-present specular highlights of sequin and spangle. It's almost as though you're capturing the essence or the spirit of the dancers with these ghostly images. I think I am going to have to do some of these ... perhaps under more controlled conditions.

Here are some featuring spins and twirls...

The conversion of some of these into monochrome lends an ethereal feel too I think.


Sydney Harbour - 5:50am

The view of Sydney Harbour from our hotel one morning this past weekend. I don't want you thinking I've become some kind of early-bird ... I mean you can if you want to but it's just not true ;-)

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This was taken leaning out of the window a ways to get the left pylon of the Harbour Bridge in shot. It's also shot handheld at 1/30th of a second with an aperture of f/2.8 and ISO 6400... I mention this only because it demonstrates my laziness in that I didn't use my tripod which was sitting on the table next to the camera ... mind you the tripod wouldn't have got the camera out the window so anyways ... err.. was there a point to this story?

Here's a second picture taken at sunset the previous afternoon from the ferry between McMahons Point and Circular Quay. There must have been a bushfire burning inland which brought the smoke across the sun and created the haze visible beyond the Sydney Opera House in the sunrise picture.

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In an interesting aside I posted this image on Google+ on Saturday afternoon and by last night it had been viewed over 60,000 times ... I guess people like it :-)


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 Box containing the camera and artists notebook
The Box containing the camera and artists notebook

 

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.


On the Inside Looking Out

I've written before about those special moments when a picture reveals itself right before your eyes. Some days when you're ready to take a photograph ... to capture something special a scene can prove elusive ... there are, I believe, times when it's almost as though you have to be 'open' to a photograph's materialisation. By that I refer to perhaps a process or state of mind whereby you as the photographer are open to the image that present itself to you. It's like realising there is an image waiting in front of you or even anticipating an image's appearance ... this one represents one of those moments

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A young touches her finger to the water wall at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne

Back story: A recent trip to Melbourne, Marina and I had just been to visit the Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria. Marina had wandered outside and I went to retrieve my camera bag from the cloakroom. As I walked across the foyer of the gallery toward the exit I noticed this young girl outside touching the glass of the water wall with her finger. I quickly reached into my camera bag, grabbed the camera and took a few pictures (before her father came and dragged her away from an anticipated episode of soaking). This one was my favourite... on the inside looking out.

The exhibition at the NGV is spectacular btw ... should you find yourself in Melbourne ;-)


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 :-)


Oh Japan 3 - Tokyo

Today I'm presenting some of my favourite images of Tokyo from a trip made in early July. This post is the third in my Oh Japan mini-series. First up some 'archi-stracty' and city based pictures. I loved walking around with a camera at night. It rained the first few nights were there and this made the streets nice and shiny and reflective ... perfect for neon colour goodness!

 

In terms of people pictures ... well my goodness there were an awful lot of people! In the picture below of the business man walking through an alley in Shinjuku, he may look like the only person around but, directly behind me was one of the busiest intersections in Shinjuku and there were literally three or four thousand people crossing and or going about their business!

Coffee started out being an issue upon arrival in Japan ... there was always Starbucks if things got desperate ... but then we discovered BOSS Coffee! Sold in supermarkets and as shown here in refrigerated vending machines everywhere, BOSS Coffee changed our Japanese experience utterly. Comprising one or two shot of espresso (with or without milk or sugar) in a little can ... these were fantastic! Can't find out how to buy them in Australia ... there'd be a massive market for them here.

BOSS Coffee!
BOSS Coffee!

 

And then there was the escalator wonderland underneath the Tokyo SkyTree! What an awesome space this was... like a drawing from MC Escher!

 


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.