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.


This Too Shall Pass

UPDATE: Our film has been shortlisted! It will be screened this Friday Night at the Senate Rose Gardens as part of the Enlighten Festival! Woo-hoo!

Last year, about this time, my artistic collaborator Marina and I attended the screening of the 12 finalists in the Lights, Canberra, Action! short film festival. We thought that next year we'll make a film and enter*. Well 'next year' is now 'this year' and the film festival is on again.

Essentially filmmakers have the better part of a week to write, direct and produce a film of no more than 7 minutes duration. All shooting and production must occur within that time. There's a theme (this year's was 'Swings & Roundabouts'). Another twist is the inclusion in the film of items or places provided, scavenger hunt style ... I've included this list below.

So, true to our intentions ... we made a little film together under our arty-collaborative umbrella 2 Tens & A Tomato. The film is titled "This Too Shall Pass" and runs for 6m44s. It's presented in black and white and is a boy meets girl story about passing through a dreamy world of isolation and longing to find intimacy and hope in a roundabout way. Music was produced and performed by the wonderful Charles Sage (Hessien and The Rothko Chapel) solo project y0t0. His moody atmospherics work so beautifully with the film.

Anyways ... here it is. Would love to hear what you think about it. We're kinda a little proud of it and reckon it turned out alright considering we had next to no idea what we were doing.

*We also thought "how hard can it be?" ... the answer as it turns out is "quite hard really" ;-)

List of Items (see if you can spot them all in our film)

  1. A swing in a park
  2. A road roundabout
  3. A set of scales (for weighing)
  4. 'On the Road Again' sculpture by Ann Ross at Lyons Shops
  5. A ferris wheel
  6. The Mandalay Bus (in Braddon)
  7. The gold tiles outside the ACT Legislative Assembly
  8. An underpass
  9. The Chess Pit (Garema Place)
  10. The High Court (exterior)

An eclectic set of items and sites as you can see.

Lights, Camera, Action! is part of the Canberra 2015 Enlighten Festival and sponsored by artsACT.

Links


Back Study

Somewhat wordless - Back Study (bedroom blind with street light)

I like their somewhat grainy Gothic feel ... like the cover for a This Mortal Coil album or something designed by v23 Envelope.


Zoologica I - selection and hanging

OK so I have been putting together (what I realised is my first) solo show ... titled Zoologica: a photographic study of life through death. Exploring zoological specimens, the works encourage you to ponder the nature of scientific collection, death and preservation. The series comprises 12 monochromatic prints, printed on Canson Baryta Photographique by Stephen Best of Macquarie Editions in Braidwood. The final series of 12 is shown in the gallery below. I've gone with hanging the prints unframed using linen hinges and small tacks. I'm really impressed with the printing quality and the light curl of the paper really adds to the apparent depth of the images. It's a great feeling when you see your own work on a wall ... and a real buzz when there's a series of your own work up like this.

I hung the show yesterday with gallery owner Michael and it looks fantastic ... it'll look even better when fully lit.

The opening is Wednesday evening at 6pm and I'm rather looking forward to it :-)


Wordless: Up in the trees

Wordless - I have no words today...

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The Enchantress

image

From the water she rose
hands like whispering flame
a face in shadow
elsewhere perhaps
ripples spread circles
the enchantment begins

One of a series of pictures from a session in the Adelaide hills last year.

This is also the first time I've posted wholly using android on my new tablet. Lots to get used to but I think it will work :-)


From here they arced across the sky - Mamiya 645 Super


I recently 'inherited' a Mamiya 645 Super medium format camera. I just got my first negs (and medium resolution scans) back from the lab. I took a roll of expired Ilford SFX 200 to see if the beast still worked. It did but the battery died about two shots before I took this. I remembered that the camera will shoot even if insufficient power is contained in the battery but that the shutter speed is fixed at 1/60sec. So this one's fully manual and literally a straight scan from the neg ... ooh I'd forgotten how negatives are just the most beautiful things.

From here they arced across the sky