More experiments

Thursday i had a go at cutting down photo paper and shooting directly onto it, instead of 4x5 films. I was trying to get a feel for how my series for the dissertation is starting to look like. These are some really rough sketches of what came out - exposures guessed more often than not, the light meter didn't do a very good job there.

The Pirates at the Party

Had a shoot today with one of the members of the Pirate Party.

Goth Shoot - and thoughts

I decided that with the pictures i put i have to say a few words. The blog should not be treated like a trash bin. It is not what's there for. So, today we had a fashion shoot with a second year who (i am proud to announce) has changed in a little way how i see fashion people. How do i? Badly.

Nevertheless, we got to a church in front of Fort Amherst and started shooting. In one of the "intermissions" we made friends with one of the builders who managed to get us in the church. Sadly the floor had a thick crust of pigeon exhausts and could not be used for anything really. But it was still an amazing place to be in. And without further prolonging, i give you, the series (and some other side dish stuff too)

A day out

Some days ago i went to London for the Frieze Festival. It wasn't worth the trip. There was literally shit on a canvas sold. I have to admit that some art is intelligent and worth looking at. But some of it is just plain ridiculous. Not too mention not worth a penny. But here's the good side, some random shots on the day.








Some days ago i went to London for the Frieze Festival. It wasn't worth the trip but here's the good side, some random shots on the day.

Cabret Evening

The images are a little bit lighter than they should, but that's only because of the blog uploads. Imagine they are better in reality and that should do it.

Later edit: clicking on the images will show you how they actually look.

Experiments and their outcomes

This is the foundation of what will eventually be my final project. It's work in progress, but so am i. No photoshop.

The Hasselblad Workshop

Fine. I know it's late and i know i am incredibly lazy. I said i was going to put some images from the workshop but i didn't even manage to look through them today because i always found something better to do.

So, last Friday i was invited at a workshop organized by the company at one of their studios in London. We had a bit of a delay so o i arrived maybe 20 minutes late, due to the fact that i passed the big poster saying "Hasselblad Open Day" at least three times.



I got in and spent about two hours listening to a talk about Phocus - their dedicated software. I must note at this point in time that i find software lectures dreadful and unbelievably useless. You are meant to learn it by practice, not by staring at a guy. Strangely enough, the Hasselblad guy managed to teach us almost everything with regards to the functions of the software in those hours, and made it quite fun.



It was close to 12:50 when they noticed that people are getting a bit anxious about the whole presentation. Time to bring in the hardware. Lined up behind the 8-10 present photographers (which will be addressed from here on as "us"/"the lot")were ten shiny Penguin cases containing ten even shinier pieces of kit with various extremely shiny and sharp lenses. Let the fun begin.



All cameras had their own pocket wizard - type trigger attached to a big 180 umbrella from Pro Photo. Not going to go too much into details, just enough to say that i had the chance to play with the most fun combination of kit i have ever had the honor to see - the H3D II 50 Mpx, Tilt/Shift adapter with lens correction and the 35 - 90 mm lens. That was without a doubt the peak of the day.

You are the better one

You are the sharpest knife, you are the finest blade darling. Better than most of us, that much we know.

The Last Song

Books and failures

I started researching. Unbelievable. My room is indeed full of stuff - books, lenses, boxes and camera drawings. I am currently trying to design my own camera for this last project and no - it's not coming out right. I feel a bit like Daguerre. I still don't understand my excitement with using the most rudimentary tools instead of the normal things.

Still, my camera will be built in a very very little while and then it will be an interesting piece of kit.

Until then i researched a guy, Duchenne de Boulogne. He pioneered expressions in phoography, using electricity to stimulate individual muscles. His pictures are quite interesting and his research is odd to say the least. But his peculiar half-half portraits are worth a bit of attention.

For a good essay on him, look up "Ghost in the Shell" by Sobieszek.His book traces portrait photography over a period of 150 years, with three good essays on Duchenne, Warhol and Sherman as styles of photographing and repetitive patterns. Worth having a look.

On a similar note, i will put the Hasselblad Workshop images soon, but unforseen circumstances delayed the posting. Come Saturday will probably put them up!

Back in the village III

We're back in Rochester. Unpacking. Buying stuff. Getting really annoyed about the summer list, of which about half was managed. But the room is bigger. Whiter. Much more difficult to turn into a camera obscura. But it's all about patience... It's time will come.

Summer Portraits II

Summer portraits I

Her space

art·ist (är'tĭst) n.

One, such as a painter, sculptor, or writer, who is able by virtue of imagination and talent or skill to create works of aesthetic value, especially in the fine arts. A person whose work shows exceptional creative ability or skill.

One, such as an actor or singer, who works in the performing arts.

One who is adept at an activity, especially one involving trickery or deceit: a con artist.

[French artiste, from Old French, lettered person, from Medieval Latin artista, from Latin ars, art-, art.]

Bogdan

trust (trst)
n.

1. Firm reliance on the integrity, ability, or character of a person or thing.

2. Custody; care.

3. Something committed into the care of another; charge.

4.

a. The condition and resulting obligation of having confidence placed in one: violated a public trust.

b. One in which confidence is placed.

5. Reliance on something in the future; hope.

6. Reliance on the intention and ability of a purchaser to pay in the future; credit.

Adelaida

mem·o·ry (mm-r)

n. pl. mem·o·ries

1. The mental faculty of retaining and recalling past experience.

2. The act or an instance of remembering; recollection: spent the afternoon lost in memory.

3. All that a person can remember: It hasn't happened in my memory.

4. Something remembered: pleasant childhood memories.

5. The fact of being remembered; remembrance: dedicated to their parents' memory.

6. The period of time covered by the remembrance or recollection of a person or group of persons: within the memory of humankind.

Lavinia - ongoing project

"serendipitous"

/ˌsɛrənˈdɪpɪtəs/ – adjective

1. come upon or found by accident; fortuitous: serendipitous scientific discoveries.

2. of, pertaining to, or suggesting serendipity.

3. good; beneficial; favorable: serendipitous weather for our vacation.

The House of Chirstmas Past

We were coming back from the sea side a little while back and i had the sudden urge to drive off the main road. I thought i saw what appeared to be a street i used to know, in a village that seemed delightfully familiar. I found the house my grandparents lived in, just off the asphalt, on a dusty dirt road, falling to pieces under some apple trees.

Not much was left of what i used to call our country house and somehow, breaking the lock on the front gate - that hasn't been touched for more than 17 years - i felt some flickers of childhood lurking behind the fallen barn and the old rotting house.

I remembered its bright blue window panes, the two terraces where we used to eat water melons and my sister hiding under the table, scared of roaring summer thunders. I saw our old Skoda 120 parked in the garden and mother and father preparing salads.

Since the last time I've been there, the days have blown most of our feeling circuits, fried the childhood on/off button. Memories change and flex with time, like skin, and the reality is never the same as how it used to be. You romanticize on how lovely it used to be, how beautiful she was, how green the grass was but the truth is, it was never as good as you fantasize and all you'll do by returning is pay homage to yourself and be disappointed. All you really know for sure is how things changed you - for better or for worse. Or so we've come to notice.

Claudiu

Here's a few pictures from my last shoot with a friend. I also shot some tea pots in that weekend but somehow i don't find them overly interesting.

Obvious

I know half of what i think i know. And half of that is wrong. How the fuck can that not make you angry? Or disappointed.