Provenance
Painters, Printers, Sculptors, Photographers, Sound Engineers and Poets ... we can often become familiar with artists' work but not the indivuals themselves.
With Provenance I wanted to create portraits of artists behind the art. I chose to present them decontextualised from their art practice so as not to influence or distract you, the viewer, from the presence of the person in front of you.
The portraits were created through a combination of medium format film photography and modern digital techniques. My first major show for 2017 is on now at the Huw Davies Gallery, Manuka Arts Centre until the 10th of September. Thank you to everyone at PhotoAccess who has been fantastic in the preparation for this show.
The Portraits
The Artists (and the Backs of Their Heads)
The Invitation
Shoot: Lisa Richards Live
On a ridiculously hot evening in January I had the pleasure of photographing Lisa Richards at Smith's Alternative in Canberra City. Lisa was promoting her new album A light from the other side and playing songs from her multitude of other, excellent releases. Astute readers will know that I contributed artwork to this album along with a number of other professional media photos.
Lisa was joined on stage by Matt Nightingale on double and electric bass and Jeannette Bradley on banjo and fiddle. It was a lovely intimate performance and well suited to the Smith's Alternative venue.
Lisa's album (and her other releases) are available from her website.
Shoot: Cell Block 69
Cell Block 69 ... 80's synth-pop masters and mainstays of the Canberra and Sydney music scene are once again gearing up for their annual 'Final Show Ever!' series of 2016 gigs. I had the great privilege of photographing their promo shots for this year. Featuring a Delorean (complete with a functioning Flux Capacitor) and the use of my new studio space. There were two basic outfit changes for this shoot... the first was a future-tech white series.
The second, denim, denim and still more denim ... double denim too. There were the studio shots in a Calvin Klein inspired wall shoot.
And the series featuring the Delorean. That car was hot! Literally hot as the polished stainless steel threatened to peel any bare skin laid upon it. Thank you to Callum for loaning his car for the shoot!
I also did a series of individual portraits of the band members.
Some blurb from Moshtix where you can purchase tickets for their end of year shows.
69 is number 1! Let the nine Corey’s of Rock (and to a lesser but not to be undermined extent, synth pop) take you to the year Two Thousand and Nineteen Eighty Sixteen for a performance of hit songs of unfathomable proportion.
Always surfing on the curtails of their latest dazzling Rock (and to a smaller but not to be undermined extent, synth pop) stadium performance extraordinaire, CELL BLOCK 69 return to the recently voted most playable city in the world, Canberry.
Duanne Le Corey-Michaels and his 8 Coreys of Eighties Awesomeness, return direct from generic Europe for their annual "Final Show Ever ". CELL BLOCK 69 are number one and they will show you why.
Read more at http://www.moshtix.com.au/v2/event/cell-block-69/89523#z8B2Mk0ExKBD1Zke.99
Tango!
Tango!
I was fortunate to be given the opportunity to photograph the bi-annual Tango in the Spring event held over last weekend at the Albert Hall. The event, which runs over four days, attracts some of the top Tango dancers from around the country. There are workshops and Practica each day and a Milonga each night. I photographed the main dance (or Milonga) on the Saturday night.
The lighting was very dim and I was shooting at the far end of practical for my camera. This was great for the atmosphere of the dance but it was tricky to photograph in. To give you an idea I was frequently shooting at ISO 10k+ at f/1.6 and f/2.8 and just managing 1/60th of a second exposure. I had to learn how the dancers moved to be able to anticipate where they would be and when. Also, the colour of the lighting (apart from being dim!) was orange and I had some tricky manoeuvring to do in post to pull out something that resembles a white-balanced image ;-)
It was a great night and the dancing was superb!
Links
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.
And here's the completed cover.
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
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 ;-)
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.
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 :-)
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
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 ;-)
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.
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.
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
Oh Japan
Oh Japan indeed! In the first week of July I took a spontaneous trip to Japan. When I say spontaneous I mean that it was less than 24 hours from deciding 'hey, let's go to Japan!', booking tickets and driving to Sydney at 2am to catch the flight! It was a blur but oh so rewarding. For reasons unbeknownst to me I have waited nearly four weeks to share this and some of the images from the trip.
We flew from Sydney into Narita, Tokyo and spent the first 3 nights in different districts of Tokyo - Asakusa, Ginza and Shinjuku before taking the bullet train to Kyoto and spending time in and around Arashiyama and the city of Kyoto. I have long had a fascination with Japan, the culture, food and design all have special places in my heart. Also the idea of being immersed in a place that is so foreign to my own. Oh and I love neon lights and the cities did not disappoint ;-)
I took loads of pictures, some of which are presented below and some which will be posted in future posts. Those of you with whom I communicate regularly will know I have been in somewhat of a creative doldrums of late ... personally I blame winter(!) but there are deeper reasons than things seasonal. I'm bringing you some pictures today from in and around Arashiyama, a smallish city northeast of Kytoto.
This first picture was taken at Arashiyama Station at sunset as we arrived back from a day in Kyoto.
This next picture was the view from the balcony of the traditional Japanese-style place we stayed in in Arashiyama ... sunsets eh? The place was amazing and we had shared some very special moments here.
Arashiyama is famous for, amongst many other things, it's giant bamboo groves. This place, like so many others in Japan was bristling with people but there weren't so many in the frame when you turned your gaze upwards ;-)
There's a river (the Hozu-gawa River) that's simply beautiful with long boats used for cormorant fishing and of course ferrying visitors around.
Anyways I hope you've enjoyed this little photo tour of this part of Japan... I'm currently working out how I can get back there :-)
I'll be posting more pictures over the next little while (now that I appear to have released myself from my writer's block!) so please stay tuned :-)
Have you been to this part of the world? Did you like it? Have you never been but always wanted to go? Do tell me in the comments below :-)