Back in the saddle ...

Yep, it's been a while.  Again.
Partly because of some turmoil in my personal life and partly because writing about shoots that I do or other photography related subjects usually involves mentioning people and it's not always positive or of interest to those of you who read this blog and speaking about people in less than glowing terms can also attract more turmoil!  But enough of this.  I don't live in Syria.  I don't have a mortgage.  I have a few genuine friends.  Etc.  So happy days.

The photograph above has been in the planning stage somewhere in my complex brain for over a year.  It's probably not art or acceptable by those whose photography seeks to represent something esoteric but it's mine and I'm happy with it.  Could it be improved?  Of course, but first let me tell you about it.

I had the idea in my head (as I said) over a year ago.  The idea sprang from me falling into the trap of 'judging a book by the cover' on a few occasions - something I always tried not to do had felt like I had let myself down when I did.  I have judged a few people without actually knowing the truth.  However, to my credit I hope, I had allowed that my judgement might need to be adjusted and it had, and I did.
I wanted a way to show this in a photograph and a humorous version of it germinated in my brain where the people who 'judge' would be represented by pink, clean, elegant ballerinas and the person being judged would be the antithesis represented by a Goth or a punk who had a desire to dance but retain their individuality.

I had lined up a number of 'girls' (anyone younger than me is a lad or a girl) to do the shot.  Unfortunately whenever I tried to organise the shoot there were always a list of excuses - not reasons - for not doing it.  I couldn't get them to let me know what leotards, tutus, ballet shoes they had so I could co-ordinate the colour.  Organising everyone to be free at the same time was almost impossible.  Looking for a place to shoot was similarly almost impossible.  So after several failed attempts I decided to stop frustrating myself and park it away for another day.

Recently, a girl I know (Rebecca Flynn) who is not only a ballet dancer but also teaches ballet asked me if I would take photographs for her website.  We agreed a deal part of which involved me being allowed to take my 'ballet' photo at the shoot.  We discussed what kind of shots she and I wanted from the shoot and then the logistics began.

A shot like this is 90% technical and logistical and 10% photography.
We knew the shots we wanted.  Some were rejected because they relied to a large degree on the beautiful location for effect.  The ideal setting for the shot would have been a dance studio with white walls and dance bars and maybe mirrors.  The reality was that the ones that were available cost more than we were prepared to pay or were too far from the majority of the children's homes.  So, eventually, Rebecca found a school hall that more or less met our compromise of the ideal.

Next was my gear.  I needed a white background.  Luckily I have a Pro360 kit that consists of two stands and 4 interlocking poles that form a bar that a large background roll can fit on with room to spare.  I also had a cheap roll of whit background purchased from Poland that is a curious material.  I haven't quite figured out what it is but it looks like a weave material that has been plasticised.  It behaves more like a bed sheet than paper or vinyl but at about €10 a roll I can afford to throw it out and get more if it tears or gets too dirty.

I have 4 Bowens units.  1 x 750, 1 x 500 and 2 x 250.  I also have a range of umbrellas and softboxes as well as a few other reflectors.  For this shoot I used the 250s with shoot-through umbrellas to light the background.  I pretty much crossed the units - aimed the flash at the opposite corner of the background to provide more even illumination.  The use of the brollies gives soft even light but the position of the brolly on the unit is important.  If you install it too far away from the flash tube you can get direct (harsh) light spilling forward onto the floor and your models.  You can see this in the picture below.

Moving the brollies nearer the flash tube means the tube is more or less behind the brolly and most of the light that is important to the shot is diffused.  You can see the difference below.

I also use the 250s at full power.  I set my camera at ISO 160 and want to have my background almost at complete white (255 in binary).  That is assuming I am shooting at f8 to f11.  If I take a reading with my flash meter at the background it should read f16 which is about 1.5 to 2 stops overexposed in relation to the aperture I'm going to shoot at.  I have two ways of checking my background exposure besides using the meter.  One is a feature on the Canon camera that, when switched on, will flash alternately black then white if it's overexposed.  This can be useful even when you've used the meter because there may be a hotspot you haven't seen.  The second way is more related to the model.  I ask him/her to hold a piece of white towelling, make an exposure and check it on the view screen on the back of the camera, zoomed in as close as it will allow to see if the towelling has texture.  If it's overexposed the texture will be missing.  If it's correct it will be white but with texture.  Simples!

So the two units at the back are lighting the background and some of the forground.  Now I use either the 500 or 750 with an octobox.  Because of its size it gives a lovely soft light and virtually no shadows but I don't normally use this as a key light.  I treat it as a fill.  My key light will be either the 500 or 750 with a beauty dish.  This reflector is somewhere between a harsh reflector and a softbox.  It consists of a slightly matte surface (probably sandblasted) reflector but also has a second small reflector that is situated in front of the flash tube.  This prevents a hot spot and harsh light getting to your subject and reflects the light into the matte surface of the larger reflector.  I sometime use this on a flash unit in front of a large softbox when I'm doing a portrait.  The combination gives me soft light with areas like the nose, cheek bones, collar bones, etc., given a 'pop' by the beauty dish.  So the octobox and beauty dish are both set to give me f8.

This arrangement worked well for me.  I also got a bonus from the setup.  Because I had 4 units all pointing at a white background I now had a giant softbox.  I didn't realise this until I turned around and found a group of the children were lined up along the opposite wall watching what I was doing and interacting with each other.  I wondered .....   I increased the ISO to 400, took a quick shot and, based on the histogram, increased the aperture to f5.6.  Later I adjusted the exposure in post processing by 1/3 stop but not bad.
The shots have a warm tone to them that I like (luckily) and I think it might be a reflection of the wooden floor.  Extra bonus.

So, my shot.
I needed a small group of scared ballerinas reacting to the presence of a scary ballerina and one of the little girls pushing her somewhat reluctant adult teacher to make her leave.  The first hurdle was the background was not wide enough but I knew that I had figured on making two exposures.  The point to watch out for here is perspective.  If you shoot the two shots from the same point it will be wrong.  The brain will know it is wrong even if it doesn't understand why.  If the people in the shot are 20-25 feet apart (about 8 metres) the angle you shoot the people on the left will be significantly different from the angle you shoot the people on the right.  So when you're doing two exposures you need to compensate by shooting the 'left' people from the right and the 'right' people from the left.  Confused?  Take a look at the diagrams below.

The ideal situation

The diagram above shows the ideal situation.  I'm using cubes with a groove in the top surface in place of people.  The background they are sitting on is as wide as I need and the three views below the camera show what the camera would see.  from the viewpoint of the camera, the groove face of the left block is on the left and the right block is on the right.
But unfortunately my background paper is not wide enough so I must shoot in two stages.  To maintain the correct perspective above I must shoot to maintain the point of view the camera had above.

So with the real size of background I shoot the left and centre block from the correct angle to mimic the ideal setup and ......

shoot the right and centre block from the opposite angle.
That means when I put the two photos together I have the correct angles of the subjects that obeys the laws of perspective.


The second hurdle is to NOT rely on your subjects understanding the technical logistics of what you're attempting to do.  Explain - yes.  So I needed interaction between the children and the baddie.  So when I was shooting the children and the adult ballerina (Rebecca) I asked Kay to stand off to the side of the background so as to give them something to react to.  Similarly when I was shooting Kay, I had Rebecca stand in so Kay had somebody to play to.

Posing and knowing when to stop is the next hurdle.
Originally I had the child pushing Rebecca and Rebecca was stepping forward as though she was really being pushed.  I changed that to her being anchored to the floor as though she too was a little scared of Kay and was resisting being pushed into a confrontation.  Rebecca (I believe) is used to taking direction and was a pleasure to work with. The little girl doing the pushing was brilliant.
The other girls were grouped in a circle (my instruction) and it looked static so I asked them to pretend they were afraid of Kay and hug each other in fear.  Born actresses!
Kay is performer and also a model so is used to posing.  She listens to what I say, takes it in and gives me more poses than I ask for.  All I had to do was tweak the pose I wanted and she nailed it.  Attitude!

I later took the two selected shots, put them together separated by space I wanted and then blended the hard edge using a layer mask filled with a black to white gradient.

No, it's not art.  It's a picture that has produced raised eyebrows of delighted surprise and smiles.  It's an original idea (for me) and it took planning, expertise and hard work.  Could it be improved?  Of course.  I'm satisfied ....... for now.

Imitation or Inspiration

As many of you know already, I am a big fan of Vincent O'Byrne's photography.  His fantasy images prompted me to experiment in Photoshop (Elements) and produce images of my own.
I first saw him in Drogheda Camera Club where he gave a presentation.  His opening words (and I paraphrase) were something like: "If anyone has any problems with nude images or images portraying religious content then they should leave now."  Nobody left and I was intrigued.

He showed us a series of stamps he had created that he used as a cathartic tool to purge his angst about the religious community and his school time.  On their own, the images were incredible.  When he explained that he had hidden relevant texts and symbols in his images and went thorough some of them, I was blown away.

He was also generous with the technical aspects of how he had produced his images.
He showed how he extracts a subject from his original image for use in other backgrounds.  He also showed a simple technique for creating a glowing mist around a person in an image.  I did some searching on the Internet after that and learned more about him.

The first image I created from scratch is the one above.  It was the first time I had imagined an end image and planned how I was going to do it.  At the time I was aware of several guys I knew who had been dazzled by new girlfriends.  They had changed completely.  It was almost like they had been infected by the love bug.  And that was my inspiration for the photo above.

I bought a mannequin head, borrowed the daughter of a friend of mine and went to work in my kitchen.  Then, days later I emerged from my computer room with a print in my hand and a proud look on my face.  In hindsight, the photo is not brilliant but  I had used a myriad of new techniques I had never used before including making the mannequin change its expression to fear and inserting my own eyes in place of the blank ones he had.

I printed it, mounted it, titled it "Love Bug" and entered it into a competition in Drogheda Camera Club which was judged by no less a person than Sean Casey.  All the photos were arranged around the meeting room while he went from one to the next and made his comments on what was right and wrong and how improvements could be made.  When he got to mine, he stopped, paused for a while and said "I have no idea what is going on this photographer's mind", scored it low and moved on.

Yep, I was a bit deflated.

In the years to come I did more in the lines of stage, portraits and art nude photography but I always hankered to do some fantasy work.  I don't know why I didn't.  It might have been that remark that Sean had made - I don't really know.  I did some setups with models but nearly always fell short of producing anything because of lack of backgrounds or ability.

Earlier this year, I was asked by a member of the DCC Council who I would have on my wishlist of  guest speakers.  Vincent O'Byrne was top of my list.  In May my wish was granted and Vincent made his presentation about how there was a formula that guaranteed success in creating winning photos.  It was a brilliant night.  Superb images, witty conversation and a great insight into the creative process he uses.  From that night on, I had in the back of my mind to 'do' a VOB fantasy photo.  So recently, a friend of mine Lily Greibere who works as a MUA but also works with me to produce some art nude images was happy to pose for this shot I wanted to do in Vincent O'Byrne style.  The photograph was based on one of his classic images - you can view it on his Model Mayhem page.
As usual the image from the shoot was left in cold storage for a while but I dug it out and started work.

Lily was shot in the Dublin Camera Club studio on a black background, a hard floor (sorry Lily) and a large softbox on a boom (mine) directly over her.  In the original her hand and her feet project beyond the paper and there are two light stands plainly visible.  The background is a shot taken from my bedroom years ago with my Canon 10D of a sunset.
I used a slew of techniques to produce the final image that are too complicated to explain here but they included masks, gradients, dodge and burn, 'screen' layer blending and more.

I also did a version in monochrome with a warm tint:

Yes, it will definitely be going into the Dublin Camera Club monthly competition (December 2011).  The only question is which one - colour or mono?

I wanted to make it viewable to a wider public but because I have more or less imitated Vincent's photo I felt it would be unfair to make it public without reference to him.  Making reference to him required me to contact him and let him know my intentions and ask his approval.  Recent acts of plagiarism that I am aware of have generated severe reactions and a lot of debate.  I would say it would be almost impossible to take thousands of photographs and not find someone somewhere else in the world had a similar idea. 

So I sent him a link to the photos and an explanation and asked for his approval.
Then I sat back and waited ......
But not for long.  A couple of hours later I checked my Facebook mail and got the following:

"Hi Paul, no problems whatsoever.  Delighted that some of my images in some way inspired you to create ths image. It is quite beautiful. Off you go...the very best, Vinnie"

So with Vinnie's approval .....

Jerry Springer the Opera part II

So ........
Last Sunday I went to the Helix to the Jerry Springer the Opera rehearsals.
I had been asked to take a photograph of the cast and not to make it look like a school hall group shot.  It turned out to be a long day.  The rehearsal went on and on and on and on .....
Eventually at about 7pm (5 hours later) and the exhausted cast had just finished a half hour later than they were meant to, I got to set up my photo.  Hmmmm.

It was quick.  Helped by Lily Greibere, I set up two shots.  They weren't quite what I had envisaged but time wasn't on my side.  I set up a large octagon in front of the stage and set the power to give me a meter reading of f16 so as to get enough depth of field.  I was using a 24-70mm lens but couldn't be quite sure what focal length I'd be using because of the number of people that would be in the photo.
I had Lily hold a 'speedlite' set manually to a narrow angle and at a power to produce f16 to add a little extra punch to Simon Delaney (who plays Jerry Springer) who would be the centre of attention.
In addition I put two more 'speedlites' on either side at the back to give some lighting to the heads.

I asked the chorus not to look at the camera but look at Simon but to give me some attitude hence the facial expressions and the single and double-finger salutes.

The shot was not how I had envisaged it.  I had figured Simon to be more prominent in the photo and the chorus to be all behind him.  Logistically this was almost impossible in practical terms due to the number of people - luckily some of them were missing!  If I had tweaked it the way I wanted it I probably would not only have lost more the chorus but also Simon as well, but to be fair everyone was very co-operative.

Having shot the chorus, I then wanted a setup with the principals.

Again, time had its way and one principal had to leave early.  I quickly tried to set up the characters to represent something of what they did in the opera but without any help from anybody knowledgeable this was kind of sketchy.

The picture is far from perfect.  There is little dimension to it - flat lighting.  The trio on the right are much nearer to the camera than the group on the left and so dominate the photo instead of Simon.  It can be hard to manhandle people!
I did have flare from the two 'speedlites' in the shot which looked okay on the back of the camera but there was a significant gap between the one on the left and the girl which made the shot look unbalanced so I had to crop the one on the left out of the shot.

So what did I learn?
When I'm asked to do a shot like this by another group I will ask to have the shoot put in the schedule with time alloted.  I do shoots for two other companies and they always treat my photography as part of the production.  Time is needed to do the shoot and modify it until it's right.
Discuss the ideas for the shoot beforehand so that there is a definite plan of what the pictures are to achieve.
Get the producer (and maybe the choreographer) to lend assistance to organising the people.

And to finish, here are some of the other pictures I took of a previous rehearsal .....



Jerry Springer the Opera

I've been taking photos of rehearsals for the production "Jerry Springer the Opera" over the last couple of weeks. This is a controversial 'show' based on the Jerry Springer Show that caused enough outrage in the States when it was first aired and is still generating anger amongst some since the program is still running.
The script of this show is set in Hell and there are appearances by (people playing the parts of) Jesus, Satan, God and Mary to name a few.  Needless to say the four-letter words and their relatives are sprinkled liberally throughout and even mixed in (comically) with music.

The first session was in the 'Blue Room' at the Helix.  First impressions?  There was virtually no light.  There were some lights but they seemed to directed towards the walls so the lighting on the people there was reflected.  I like to blend into the background when I photograph rehearsals and flash is out of the question.  So I was left with no choice but to shoot at high ISO speeds.  I started at 1600 ISO and found I was running out of aperture or shutter speed.  In my attempts to keep on top of the changing lighting situation I gave up shooting manual, bumped the ISO up to 6400, set the shutter speed to 1/125 sec, changed to mono (still in RAW tho') and let the aperture float.

Some of the results are below ....

This is one of my favourite shots.  I was using the mirrors to reasonably good effect but there were distortions and joints so not perfect.  I saw the cast line up in front of the mirror wall and had taken a shot from behind ...

.... that I did like but wondered what a shot from the side would look like.  Ideally I would have liked it better if the Producer (standing) and the choreographer (ironically sitting) were reversed.  This would have had more of the people, including the choregorapher, looking in my direction.  Still, I'll take what I can get.

Another shot I got involved the mirror and as far as I know the subject wasn't aware I was taking it.  The other person in the photo obviously was!

Note the tried and trusted camera hold guaranteed to assist the IS capabilities of the Canon lens.  However this requires liberal use of anti perspirant on at least one armpit!  :-)

And my last favourite shot of the producer (John Donnelly) and 'Jerry Springer' (Simon Delaney) having a laugh together.
More shots are available to view on my Facebook page.  So how would I judge my own photos?  They wouldn't do well in a competition.  Blown out highlights, blocked up blacks, high contrast, noisy.  All the technical ingredients that would put them at the bottom of the pile.  Very few would stand on their own without context.  But .... while I was taking the photos for my own portfolio, the style suited what it was - the gritty background to putting on the magic of a stage performance.  I'm glad to say that the 'style' also impressed the producer and graphic artist and a selection of photos will appear in the programme.

More photos to come.  I've done a second set of rehearsal photos and I have to take a shot of the whole cast (50+) and not make it look like a 'school hall photo'.

It's all about me!

It's October and in the Dublin Camera Club this means the start of the Winter League where members are invited to submit 2 colour prints, 2 mono prints and 2 digital images (colour or mono) each month until February.  There are three levels - Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced.

In each month, the entries are judged by an external judge and points are awarded out of 50.  At the end of the competition the person with the most marks wins!  Simples!
The club retains the top 10% of each month for a "best of the best" in March.

The competition attracts a lot of entries and is keenly followed by all.  I have done well in the past especially when I was in the Intermediate section.  There's some new blood in the club these days and they are stirring the status quo.  It's amusing when some of the judges remark that some entries in the beginners' section would have beaten those in the advanced.

I was a bit pushed for time this month but still managed to enter in all three sections.
I had one entry in the mono section and two in the digital section.  The judging of those two sections was last Tuesday and I scored two 42s and one 47.  I wasn't overly surprised at the 42 marks but was secretly chuffed at the 47 since it was a self-portrait.

I had been in the studio waiting hopefully for my subject to turn up but, because of some communication confusion (mainly my fault), she didn't turn up so I spent a few hours tidying up the studio and 'playing' with the studio flash to educate myself.

On previous studio session I had been know to use 6 studio flashes - too complicated!  I decided I'd go back to the old army adage KISS - don't just keep it simple; Keep It Simple Stupid.
I went back to one light and a reflector.
Here's the setup ....

One Bowens unit on camera left with a 'kill-spill' reflector and a shoot-through umbrella.  On it's own there was two much shadow on the far side of my face so I set up a reflector of sorts - in this case a softbox that I positioned pretty close to my face to get the balance between the key and fill to 2 stops difference..
I kept the key light pretty close to me so that the light falloff at the white background was almost black, actually a dark grey.

I'm not advocating that everyone should adopt this as the standard to use but I'm thinking that it's not a bad place to start to build on.

Facebook deleted me!

I've been a user of Facebook now for a few years.  It has been the only social network Internet site that I could relate to and felt comfortable using from an intuitive viewpoint.  I had dabbled with Bebo and one or two others but couldn't get to grips with them and the interfaces felt "amateur" - as though I had created it myself!
I became a member of Flickr (still am) but got tired of the constant use of superlatives on EVERY photograph regardless of quality and also found out a few people had deleted "friends" from their lists if they said anything remotely negative.  Might be good for some sheep but I'm an individual who doesn't like plámás and likes to speak my mind.

Two Facebook friends of mine were recently deleted.  Both women.  Both very nice people.  Both very much individuals.  Both progressive and positive.  One was deleted for having risque photos of herself on Facebook. It was, and is, part of her business and lifestyle but it appears someone didn't like her and her photos and was determined to have her punished.  The fact that her business depended to a significant degree on her Facebook page didn't seem to matter.  She found out how to contact Facebook personnel and despite repeated requests for reasons for her account being deleted and an appeal to have her account reinstated she was more or less ignored.
My second friend found she had been the victim of a sordid piece of work who hired models for art nude work - mainly for sketching/drawing - but was secretly making videos of them.  It also happened to a friend of hers.  She used Facebook to warn others.  She reported it to the Gardai.  Guess what?  The Gardai gave her the run-around for a week or so before telling her they "couldn't do anything".  And Facebook?  Her account was deleted.

So ...... me?
Every time I photograph a model I ask her to allow me to take a photo of the two of us standing side by side.  Initially it was for my private portfolio.  I'm 64.  I have more days behind me than I have in front of me.  At some stage, whether due to age or finances, I may not be able to take photographs of models and this would be a nice collection to look back on.
I give them the option to pose with me me nude or full-clothed.  Most have posed fully-clothed.  Some have posed nude or nearly nude.  Recently I took some of those photos that had a humorous touch to them and started to post them (with permission) on Facebook as my profile pics.

The photo above was one of my first.  As usual I poke more fun at myself than anything else.

The next one (above) was a little more daring.  The idea came from requests in the Dublin Camera Club (where I am a member) to sit in on my art nude shoots.  I felt that these requests were coming from people who were nervous about a naked woman standing in front of a guy with a camera and not getting his face slapped.  The atmosphere at these shoots is anything but tense.  It's very clinical and relaxed and any sexual tension would come about after the model puts on her clothes!

Anyway, 2 of the 3 models knew that I took shots of 'me and the model' and I asked if the three would agree to a funny twist on a threesome art nude shoot where they were in the background and I was oblivious to them, on the phone - probably to my wife telling her I was still busy at work.  They agreed.  We did the shot.  I posted it on Facebook.  It got a few laughs.

Tuesday of this week (September 6th) I had a great shoot with a UK model called Ivory Flame (real name Holly) and told her of my humorous 'me and the model' shots.  Would she be up for it?  I gave her my idea.  She gave me hers.  Hers was better so we went with it.  The idea was that she is famous for being an art nude model and I was being portrayed as being very nonchalant about having her draped on my shoulder.  If you had seen the 5 minutes before and after the shot it was no more exciting than watching the news!  Holly checked the shots after we had done them to be sure they would be Facebook friendly - no female bits on show.

I posted it (see below) yesterday as my profile picture and got great comments.

This morning I was about to go through 240 photos I had put in a private album for an entertainer to make choices from when my account just disappeared.  No warning.  Just left me with a login page.  I'm kind of used to this.  Facebook dumps me out of its pages and I have to log in again.  I always thought this was something to do with privacy or security so this time I thought it was the same.

Nope.

I got warnings.  Optimistically I figured there would be a path to Facebook personnel somewhere along the line where I could question the account deletion and also appeal it.

Nope.

Nothing.  No avenues out of the situation.  Just dumped.  What I found even more disturbing later was that all traces of me seem to have vanished as well.  My comments on other's pages - gone!  Like I never existed.  I'm assuming anyone who used some of my photos for their profile pics will find them gone as well.

The realisation of what that meant began to dawn on me.  I could live with losing all my private messages, friends' list, and most of my photos but some people had based their work schedules on me and Facebook was a big part of that.  So my immediate reaction was anger at the arrogance of them.  Very dictatorial.  Reminded me of '1984' and 'Enemy of the State'.  With the lack of responses from Facebook in these situations there lie the seeds of rumour and for people to make unchallenged statements.  One of the reasons often quoted for deletion is that someone has complained about a page.  I find this more realistic than the idea that there are Facebook police trawling the pages looking for illicit material. 

What's bothering me is that I can't find any rules governing what is allowed or not allowed on Facebook.  If it's there it is well hidden. I have found a few Internet sites but again, there's a lot of hearsay on forums which is not definitive.

I realised from my two friends' similar situations that there was little point in ranting about it and wasting energy in futility so I took the opportunity to create a new profile and do some friend-culling along the way.  Ha ha!  Facebook got me again.  I added a few friends pretty quickly and that generated a list of possible others.  I thought this was briliant.  Facebook was making it easier for me to build my friends' list.

Nope.

I got a new warning that I was sending unsolicited friends' requests and there was reference to "not knowing them".  While I was wondering how I could ask people to be my friend Facebook issued me with a 2-day ban on sending friend requests.  I can't be sure - from a fear of causing me more penalties - but I think the ban may also include sending messages.  Bummer.

So beware fellow Facebookers.  They (whoever 'they' are) may just be worse than most people paint those secret government groups.  God, I'm turning into a 'anti' person.

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Postscript.

What started off as a really bad day got worse when I almost alientated two people I know.  Totally unintentional and I put it down to the bad karma that was around.  But it got better.  My friends rallied around and a particular friend of mine (Jen Murray) started the ball rolling by initiating my friends' list. After that, the word spread and things got better.  The cream on the cake was a trip to see a new company called Abstract Theatre Group who put on a musical called "Rent" in the Mermaid Theatre in Bray.  An outstanding night.  Brilliant show (parallels with La Boheme) and a wonderful cast.

So Facebook, I'm back!

A good day

Today, or to be more precise - yesterday, I had a good day!
I've put off updating this blog for some weeks now because it was to part of my website reconstruction (a big thank you to Bonnie Cullen) and also because I was so busy and didn't want to dash something off just for the sake of putting words here.

Early morning saw me up at 5am-ish.  Takes me a while to get up and even longer to wake up.  It takes 2 hours and a bit for me to approach human status where I won't take your head off.  :-)
Visited my new Urologist in Beaumont - a long story that would bore you and gross you out at the same.  Suffice it to say that everything is working pretty well and there will be a few (unreported) tests in the coming weeks to verify that status.  The reason I mention him at all is that my experience of consultants (and I've had a few in the last 20 years) have been quite negative for the most part.  This morning was an exception.  Friendly, courteous, not patronising, helpful, educational.  So the day bode well.

My next event for the day was a  photoshoot with a girl called Ivory Flame (real name Holly) who is just exquisite.  Her name describes her perfectly.  Red hair and alabaster (perfect) skin.  Holly is a very experienced art nude model from the UK who is very aware of how lighting works and how her body works with the lighting and camera.  I had photographed her once before at a workshop and was bowled over by how relaxed she was with 6(?) guys in the studio with her and how pleasant and friendly she was, on top of how she seemed to defy physics (including gravity) with her poses.

She had sent me an e-mail letting me know she was coming over to Ireland for the week and I jumped at the chance to book her for a 4 hour session in the Dublin Camera Club.  I was not the only one!
I had also had a chat with my friend Lily and asked her to come with a special makeup for Holly.
Did the session go well?  I don't know if most photographers have days where the images in their heads refuse to translate into images in their cameras and studio flashes seem to produce results that are completely foreign to what they had expected.  It seemed that was happening to me.  I persevered on a few shots and stopped altogether on others because they weren't working and I didn't want to get frustrated and have it affect Holly.
The amazing thing was that Holly actually guided me on a number of occasions into getting the best shots of the day.  This should be one of the reasons any photographer who is considering art nude shots should get a professional because, like the ad says on TV, they're worth it.
Lily did an amazing job on the special makeup. I'm amazed at innovative she is and a lot of other virtues that I won't mention here 'cos she will be embarassed and then not talk to me.  I'll stop now before I start gushing.
The shoot ended with me having several serviceable shots for the future competitions in the club and my portfolio.  Happy chappy.

The last part of the evening was somewhat special as well.
I had been asked on a few occasions by members of the club if they could sit on one of my art nude sessions.  Afraid not.  They asked about workshops.  Thought about it, discussed it and said no.  I wasn't trying to keep secrets but it seemed to me (and another member in the club) that an art nude shoot was 80% about the model and 20% about the photography.  Unlike portrait photography there are no defined lighting setups (that I know of) and it's a question of deciding what your want and figuring it out.  Also, you don't just take a girl, professional or amateur, and plonk them in a studio, tell them to strip and shoot away with a camera.  You will just record a naked model.  If that's your bag then you're set but you will become know as the "guy with the camera" not a photographer.

You need to do your homework.  Choose the model to suit what you want to do.  Approach the model (usually via email) and ask if she works with amateurs, where she is located, is she available, what her rates or conditions are, etc., etc.  There can be pre-shoot meeting where you can show her the types of shots you want to do and she can show you her work and both can discuss what's on and not on.
Communication is important.  The day of the shoot has its own protocols and so the list continues.

I felt that the reluctance of a lot of members to organise their own shoots might be down to fear of the unknown.  When you think about it, asking a girl who is a relative stranger to take her clothes off in front of you will probably get your face slapped.  Nakedness is also associated with sex - strippers, Page 3 girls, etc.  Remember the model is putting herself into a vulnerable position and it is the photographer who has to instil confidence in her (or him) that he (or she) is trustworthy and serious.

I had a chat with Sarah Burns who is not only a great model but I like to think is a friend of mine.  I wondered if she would give a presentation to the Dublin Camera Club about what it's like to do art nude from a model's perspective.  We worked on the skeleton of the presentation together and Sarah created a well thought out presentation and gave a friendly and warm talk to the members who in turn had plenty of questions for her.  I was delighted on two counts - I'm hopng more will venture into art nude shoots now that they realise the models are human and they have seen the ptifalls that can befall the careless photographer and that the shoot is normally quite clinical and does not reek of sex!
I was also delighted for Sarah to have a wider audience to see the great standard of work that she does.

Yes, I know.  There are no links and no photos.  It's late.  The adrenaline that was keeping me going has started to fade and I think I might be able to go to bed now and sleep.  Links and photos will probably appear over the coming days but don't hold your breath.  I still have a lot of work to get through.