Flour Girl

In order to have a moderate chance of achieving some useable photos from a studio shoot involving flour you need to a) plan in advance and workout how you are going to get the shots you want ; b) find an enthusiastic and willing model; and c) in the case of this shoot, find a studio where you can make a huge mess and the owner doesn’t mind!

…so to business…

The Plan

I went to the Festival Européen de la Photo de Nu in Arles last year and the main poster promoting the Festival was of a nude model spinning, in what the photographer, (Frenchman Olivier Valsecchi), called “Dust”.   He had a set of 10 large square-framed prints in the exhibition and to put it mildly I was inspired…however I wanted to do things slightly differently.  My images, below, were shot in a 3:2 ratio, thus allowing more left and right movement for the model; and rather than having an out-of-shot assistant throw “dust” at her, she herself grabbed great handfuls of flour and threw it as hard as she could as she spun round the studio.  And rather than one single overhead light, I used two lights: on her right side was big beauty dish 7 foot above her, pointing downwards at 45 degrees and the other on her left was a 6 foot tall softbox with a very fast flash head in it.

The Model

The model was/is Raphaella McNamara, a 5’ 6” bundle of fearless and undying energy.   She worked and worked…. and then some….  Being a ballet dancer she moved with all the skill and grace that a trained dancer has in spadefuls.  Thank you, Raphaella, for your spirit.

The Studio

I used The Works Studio at Croxton, (on the A428 15 miles west of Cambridge, UK) and the owner, Martyn Rayner, was really kind to let us make such a mess.  There was only two bags of flour involved and I managed to sweep up 95% of it quite quickly….but.. the other 5% was everywhere and took an hour to hoover up.  It gets everywhere, hair, clothes, camera, shoes, walls, ceilings etc.

Was it worth it? Absolutely – click on the images and see them larger.

Flour Girl – 1

Flour Girl – 2

Flour Girl – 3

Flour Girl – 4

Here’s a link to Festival Européen de la Photo de Nu and here’s a link to the Works Studio.

Somerset House – Strange goings-on!

We were in London about ten days ago, staying in a hotel opposite the illustrious Somerset House (SH), which amongst other things, is home to the Courtauld Institute’s fantastic collection of paintings.  However, one of the reasons for visiting SH, was to see the winning entries of the Sony World Photography Competition.  The exhibition also included a tribute to William Klein, the American photographer/artist.

I was not disappointed with the exhibition – as you’d expect there wasn’t duff photograph on display.  And many were just brilliant – they were exemplary in terms of content, style, message and execution.  The images were superbly presented and set out in a wonderfully well lit space.  I hope some of my RPS colleagues went and took notes on how to curate such a diverse set of photographs.  The web and a computer screen do not do the pictures justice, but here’s a link to some of the entries: click here.

But…there were two strange things about SH.

Firstly, no photography was allowed at the Sony World Photography Exhibition.  “….huh…you what? But I can see the photos on the web – even download them, but I can’t photograph the exhibition?”.  “Correct” said the ticket lady with a crooked grin.

And secondly, not one, but two SH security guards stopped a couple of photography students, plus a fashion model, from shooting in the enormous SH piazza.  It seems they had not obtained permission first. “…….put yer camera away and sling yer hook….”.  What’s really strange is that the SH guards didn’t care about the hundreds of people who, like me, were taking pictures with their point-and-shoots.  We were invisible – clearly a point-and-shoot is not a camera.  I felt like going back to the Sony Exhibition, paying another £15 and trying my luck.

So I proudly publish and dedicate these two images, taken with my little Canon IXUS 210, to the seemingly crazy rule-makers at one of London’s premiere centres for the arts and culture.  Quite.

Somerset House Piazza – 1

Somerset House Piazza – 2

In Time

A single second in photography is a long time. Most of my images are shot with a duration of less than 1/80th of a second and sometimes as fast as 1/1250th or even 1/3,000th of a second. But around one second, the element “time” can be introduced and with it, movement. On our photography holidays in France I’ll be teaching you all the tips and tricks of how to remove camera shake and get your photographs to pass the 100% zoom test. However, there’s a difference between “camera shake” and “motion blurring” – and as regards the latter, I’m not talking about that Photoshop filter!

To add drama and movement to a photograph, you need a tripod, a shutter release, a big fat f/stop, say greater than f/16 and a time value of around a second or more. And in the case of these three images, you and your model need to be able to count to three! Why? Well…you need to know when she’s gonna start her movement and she needs to know when you’re press the shutter release and she can close her pose.  Simples!

During our workshops and photography courses at Studio Lavalette here in France, I’ll also be demonstrating how to use studio lighting and long exposures to capture that drama of movement.

Take a peak at our course dates and availability for next year, 2013?

In Time - 1

In Time - 2

In Time - 3

Blue Door and Handle

There’s something about the aging of wood that adds to its visual interest. And when the paint on it also starts crackle and split, then the surfaces really begin to excite me. I know this all sounds a bit daft, but bear with me!  So often the photography you see in the media thrusts the ‘shiny-new’ at you and more often than not that ‘shiny-new’ results in a bright, ageless, plastic finish – it’s all a bit in yer face.

This blue door and handle, (shot near our media centre for photography holidays in France), is the antithesis of the ‘shiny-new’ as it perfectly describes the aging process, or rather the passing of time.   It’s current state of repair, or disrepair, is not what the maker originally intended, as time and the elements have taken its toll.

A photograph of a brand new door and window would look like an advert for a building supplier, as there’s no narrative, whereas this has a separate poetry and tells quite a different story.  I’ve included the “before” to show you that that story is there even before I started to edit it.

Blue Door and Handle - Before

Blue Door and Handle - After

Step by Step Guide to a Black and White Conversion

This is a Step-by-Step Guide as to how I go about making/editing “my” particular style of soft, or even whimsical, black and white images.  The idea in a lot of them is to try and get the viewer to look longer and ask questions of the piece.  In this I wanted a profile portrait, with lots of space in front of the face/model and unusually I wanted the mouth open: is if she’s talking to someone outside the left edge of the photo.  Who’s she talking to, what’s she saying?  Well, that was the idea!

Step 1 – this is the original photo, shot with a 50mm prime Canon lens using a single Speedlite, mounted in a softbox and placed high and to the left. I am also using my secret light diffuser!  If you want to know more, you’ll have to attend one of my photography courses in France at Studio Lavalette!

Step 1

Step 2 – My secret light diffuser has the habit of scrunching-up the histogram, so using a Curves Adjustment Layer I’ve fixed it and it looked like this:

Step 2

Step 3 – Now, using Silver Efx Pro (a Photoshop plug-in) I converted it to monochrome plus an orange filter and with a sepia tone:

Step 3

Step 4 – Here I’ve applied another Curves Adjustment Layer, just to turn-down the sepia effect so that it’s almost, but not quite, a black and white image:

Step 4

Step 5 – In this step I’ve applied an olive/green layer and blended using the Soft Light mode at 15% – it’s hardly visible but it is a very subtle change from Step 4, above:

Step 5

Step 6 – In this final Step, I’ve removed, what I consider to be, the untidy light on her hair.  This has the rather strange effect of now making all her hair look flat and two dimensional, yet the face tells you otherwise….if you follow my drift.  Anyways, here’s the final image:

Step 6

And that’s that really!

Antelope Slot Canyon, Arizona

In July 2011 I was fortunate to steal time and visit the Arizona/Utah border. I had decided to eschew Grand Canyon et al as they have been photographed to death. My first destination was going to the lesser known, but just as magnificent, Antelope Slot Canyon.

You book and pay $60 up front and for that you get a Navajo Indian who drives you out to the canyon in a truck acts as your guide. Well, you don’t really need a “guide” as the canyon is more or less in a straight line, but a) you do need a driver, b) someone to co-ordinate with the other tour parties and c) someone who can hide behind a rock and chuck the fine sand up into the shafts of sunlight! See the first photo below.

The canyon has been formed by rainwater flowing through it. There’s something like a 20mile canal at one end of the canyon and when the rains do fall, (and it really really rains), water hurtles through it carving these wonderful shapes out of the canyon walls.

Antelope Canyon - I

Antelope Canyon - II

Antelope Canyon - III

Antelope Canyon - IV

Dust Storm at Horseshoe Bend

The other reason for going to the Arizona/Utah border was to photograph Horseshoe Bend; where the massive Colorado River makes a complete 180-degree turn.

In the parking lot there’s a sign that says, weather conditions can change very rapidly, so if you see lighting or hear thunder get back to your car: and fast!  It was a sunny afternoon, so I started the 1.5mile trek with camera and tripod. With about half a mile to go I heard thunder behind me.  I looked back to see the sky darkening, but it was darkening very quickly.   I made the correct decision to go back.

Well…as I shut the car door the heavens erupted and dust flew all around me. The hire car literally shook and rocked from side to side. Never one to miss a photo opportunity, I positioned the car at various angles and jammed the camera in the bit between doorpost and the window and took over 70 pictures.

These six photographs below tell the story of the final build-up, the main part of the storm and the sky after it passed. In all it took about 90minutes from start to finish – quite an extraordinary event.

As I had to leave early the next day, I never got to shoot Horseshoe Bend….!

Dust Storm at Horseshoe Bend - I

Dust Storm at Horseshoe Bend - II

Dust Storm at Horseshoe Bend - III

Dust Storm at Horseshoe Bend - IV

Dust Storm at Horseshoe Bend - IV

Dust Storm at Horseshoe Bend - VI

Café Life

There’s something quintessentially French about the chairs and small round tables you see on the pavements outside bars and cafés. The empty ones, as in this photograph, call at you to plant your bum down and order something cool, which of course is exactly what we did: right there, at the bar on the corner of the rue 26 mars 1944 in Ribérac.

Why don’t they have them in the UK?  The best you get are those ghastly wooden trestle tables with bird poo and lichen stuck to them, dumped round the back of the pub beside the other detritus, in what the landlord rather poetically calls his “beer garden”.  Beer, yes; garden, no – well, not with uncut grass that’s intermingled with nettles and thistles.

And having found a table, you then get splinters from the cheap pieces of wood used to make the darn things or worse, there’s chewing gum underneath the table top – don’t you love it when the gum gets stuck to your trousers.  There’s also that pervasive smell of creosote.   You also don’t get table service from a nattily-dressed waiter with a white pinny and a waistcoat with seemingly hundreds of pockets  – no, you have to stand in line inside and if you’re in luck, the bartender might grudgingly offer you a filthy tray to take your drinks outside.  Then the wasps arrive….

No, give me a cane chair and a small round table on the pavement in Ribérac. and I’m sold.

If only the French sold cask conditioned ales, now that would be heaven!

1 Table and 2 Chairs, Riberac, Dordogne.

Spot Healing Brush Tool

Several years ago I was presenting at a Royal Photographic Society (RPS) event in Rugby, (UK).  I fell into conversion with a lady member – no names to protect the innocent.  Loosely, the conversation went like this:

Me:      Do you use Photoshop?

She:     Yes, use it all the time

Me:      What’s its best feature?

She:     The crop tool  – I use Photoshop for the crop tool.

Me:      What about the layers and ….

She:     I only use the crop tool

Me:      …”only”?….bbbbut it has many other features…

She:     It’s simply the best crop tool around.

Me:      …have you tried usi…

She:     I like the way the bit you’re cropping goes grey before you accept the crop.

Me:      …but there’s a stack of other funct…

She:     Look, it’s the best crop tool and that’s what I use Photoshop for.

Me:      …so are you saying you paid six hundred quid for a crop tool?

She:     Yes and let me tell you, young man, it’s the best crop tool by far.

Then she walked off.

Well dear blogster, you could have knocked me over with a feather. Incroyable – as they say round these parts.

This Step-by-Step Guide might read a bit like the conversation above, but a) I wouldn’t shell-out £600 for piece of software that only offered one feature; and b) I do know how to use all the functions that Photoshop has to offer  However…the Spot Healing Brush Tool, to give it its proper title, is bloody wonderful and as I’ll show here, it got me out of a serious piece of bother for this picture that I wanted to include in my, (successful), RPS Licentiate submission.

Step 1 – Here’s the original photograph of Reckless that I shot in Amble, (Northumberland), in September last year.   It’s got all the ingredients I was looking for.  The rope leads the eye in: there’s the sweeping hull: totally brilliant name for the boat: two yachts under the rope in the middle distance: lots of puffy white clouds: and the landscape is about one-third up the frame etc.

The only fly in the soup of goodies, is the carcass of the blue and white dinghy, bottom right.  It leads the eye straight out of the shot. Not good.

Reckless - 1

Step 2 – I reached for the Clone Stamp Tool and made a big mess – my edits looked too obviously cloned.  I then tried the Spot Healing Brush and set the Brush size to about 275, placed it over the wretched dinghy and clicked.   It didn’t work the first time as the Brush cut into the shoreline; the second time it cloned-in the buoy from the adjoining boat (under the rope); but…several goes later it worked, perfectly….as you can see below.

Gawd bless the Spot Healing Brush.  For the photographer it is one of Photoshop’s more useful tools and I use it more than any other tool it has to offer.  But I’d not pay £600 for just that one single function!

Reckless - 2

Step 3 – Standing back, or rather zooming out, it seemed as if the whole photograph was leaning, ever-so slightly, to the right.  To fix this I simply rotated the image gently to the left using the Transform function. Simples.

Reckless - 3

Step 4 – Using Silver Efx Pro, (a Photoshop plug-in), from those masters of B&W conversion, Nik Software, I turned the photo into a monochrome image I also added a red filter during the conversion process to darken the sky a bit.

Reckless - 4

Step 5 – To end with I used a Level Adjustment Layer, just lighten the overall appearance.

I should point out that when applying for a Licentiate Distinction the RPS Assessors are not looking for anything artsie-fartsie, what they want is a set of 10 technically great photographs, with all the content crisp and sharp.

Reckless - 5

The Orthodox Church at Grassac, Charente

About 17kms (10miles) from Studio Lavalette, is the hamlet of Grassac – it’s just a simple run-of-the-mill place.  Nothing fancy.  But, just outside the village, set back off the road, in what looks like a field, is a tiny, (and I mean very small), Russian Orthodox Church replete with an attendant monastery.

Now there’s nothing wrong with a multi-faith society, it’s what makes the world go round, or not, but it is slightly strange to see a church, let alone a Russian Orthodox one, nestled in the French countryside all by itself.  And that’s the really odd thing, it’s totally alone: there’s no obvious sense of being a part of anything or anybody.  It’s as if it has landed from space and might take off and leave at any moment.

I need to investigate it’s history and report back, in the meantime, here’s three pictures of what Orthodox-World.org calls, Our Lady of Korsun, Grassac.

Our Lady of Korsun - 1

Our Lady of Korsun - 2

Our Lady of Korsun -3