Brooklyn Production Stills
Great scripts are hard to come by. Brilliant scripts are about as common as unicorns.
Well, Rose Martula’s Brooklyn is a rearing, boisterous, gritty unicorn. One that is not afraid to make you laugh, make your heart race or leave you pondering the levels of the story for days.
But don’t take it from me, you can read review after positive review.
I had taken the time to get the script off the producer, Alex and read it before I took a single photograph of the production. I’m glad I did. As a photographer my job is to show moments of meaning in such a way that they can be seen by others and understood in some way. This is why I’ve chosen to poke around in the theatre world. There’s a lot of expression to be corralled into photographs, it’s a fun and enlightening process.
So, go see Brooklyn, the current run goes until the 26th of September and tickets are at www.cocktaverntheatre.com
See the photos below, check out my theatre portfolio page or read the previous post, showing off the ‘read-through’ images.
Disposable Camera – Wakeboarding
Stepping it up a notch from the last time I posted disposable pictures. This time with a twist. With the help of Adam from Brighton Watersports I was able to get some ‘alternate’ angles. Shooting only from the boat gets old fast. I love the raw, rough and ready look you get and there’s something special about bringing film to the lab, not knowing what the results will be.
As usual, just click on the photo to advance to the next one.
Juliette Lewis at Koko
I did a stint photographing Juliette and the band earlier in the year. With access to all backstage areas and Juliette asking me to shoot some ‘candids’, we had a ball. Juliette’s new album ‘Terra Incognita’ is out on the 1st of September.
I’ve seen Juliette perform several times and have fallen in love with her work. Be assured, the album is on my musical procurement list.
The plan had been to edit the photos, include captions and help paint a picture of what Juliette is like off stage and on. But the more I worked to figure out what photos to include here, the more I realized that Juliette is too expressive to be diminished by photo captions.
As always, just click on the large photo below to advance to the next one.
Big versions of these photos are here.
Hevy Music Fesitval 2009 – Bands
Hevy Music Festival wasn’t just about the atmosphere. There was also the small factor of the bands and the performances. As I said in my previous post, the festival had a variety of performances on offer, ranging from electro to punk to rock to metal. Everything in the ‘alternative’ music category was represented. There was even a folk band, replete with hippie hair (not pictured). My personal favorite, surprisingly, was Gary Numan. He somehow managed to paint full musical scenery around his set. I was mesmerized. Photographically ‘We are the Ocean’ really stood out for me. Those guys knew how to interact with the audience.
Were you there? Which act was your favorite?
Hevy Music Festival 2009 – Atmosphere
The inaugural Hevy Music Festival took place on the charming Folkestone seafront with headline acts Gary Numan, Ash and Feeder on the main stage.
At the request of Festival Director, James, I left the press pit for brief moments to capture a little bit of atmosphere. We had a bunch of rain that was most intense during Gary Numan and Ash’s sets but let off for Feeder. The crowd were soaking wet but still enjoyed themselves. The atmosphere was palpable. The festival site consisted of 3 stages on the beach. Scenic.
These images are a little snapshot of what I captured on the day. A bunch of band stuff will be in my portfolio at some point soon and I have a bunch more atmosphere that I’m not publishing as yet. I went for a variety of styles to communicate the variety of what the festival had on offer.
I for one hope the festival has an even better year in 2010, I can’t wait to hear what the line-up will be. If you were there, let me know in the comments below.
Kuchipudi Dance
I recently had the opportunity to photograph the very talented Arunima Kumar performing her craft, the Indian dance of Kuchipudi. The dance is focused on expression of emotions and has evolved from India’s equivalent of musical theatre, IE from story telling and acting mixed in with music.
How the artform has transformed since its formative stages is a fascinating story in itself. But lest I make this a wordy blog post, I’ll just say that photographing this dance is very much about capturing the meaning in each movement. Those moments are important and each describes a specific theme or part of a story. Kuchipudi is expressive, more so than many other forms of dance I have seen.
Arunima was kind enough to provide a little bit of background to what each pose represents. These descriptions are included in the captions below each photo.
I think its important to know that each truly skilled Kuchipudi dancer brings their own style to the art form. The hand movements, gestures and face movements are refined over years of practice and eventually become a quasi reflection of the performers own viewpoint on life mixed in with the artistic background and education. In that way, it isn’t dissimilar to photography, which I feel is likely influenced by the photographer’s own view of the world and other people. Subtle differences in hand movements can offer great insight into the performers style.
Click here for larger versions of these images.
Shooting with a disposable camera
With the advent of summer and my foray into watersports, I’ve taken to shooting with a waterproof disposable camera. I fall into the water far too frequently to take my DSLR anywhere near water.
There is something quite magical about purchasing a cheapo camera, snapping 27 exposures and taking them to the lab to get processed. The excitement we used to feel at getting film developed (or even finding an old roll of film somewhere) has all but disappeared with the digital revolution.
On my recent trip to Cambersands beach in the South of England, we took a batch of such photos. See the results below. Note the authentic ‘wrist-strap in front of lens’ look in a couple of these.
Blackheath Fireworks 2008
A couple of friends kindly invited me to the Blackheath Fireworks show, held this year on the 8th of November.
I ended up with my camera, the Nikon IR remote and a tripod to achieve the result below.
There were thousands of people at the event, so instead of trying to get right in close to the crowds, I set up shop a safe distance from the throngs of people. I set my camera’s shutter speed on ‘bulb’ and used the remote to open and close the shutter at will. To get nice crisp results I set the ISO at 100 and show at an aperture in the region of f8, manually set the focus. Then it comes down to timing. With fireworks you have to look for the rockets as they shoot up into the night sky, open the shutter just before they explode and then decide when to close the shutter. Firework bursts look pretty during their burst, but soon become fairly messy, the last bit of the light burst is often the bit you don’t want in your photo. I would ordinarily open the shutter as soon as I could make out a rocket shooting up and expose until just before the end of the burst. There was plenty of trial and error but I eventually got the result I wanted with consistency.
Update: Popular photography blog petapixel.com did a feature here on shooting fireworks and included the tip I provided via twitter.