Seven Days of Self Day 07 — Motion: So you might be a little confused… there is no motion in the picture above or the one on flickr. This is because they are only a preview of the image you can see the motion in the image below. I’ve wanted to do a cinemagraph for a while & thought this would be a pretty good opportunity. Unsurprisingly they are quite tricky to produce as a self portrait. I am sure I’ll be doing some more of them though. Glad I’ve got through this project finished now normal service can resume (Read: Photos of coffee & other, more interesting, people).

The Motion

Seven Days of Self Day 06 — Desire: de·sire — /dəˈzī(ə)r/ — A strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen. Yep I think that describes how I feel about coffee… Mmmmmm coffeeeeeeeeee…

Setup Shots

Kit Used

Seven Days of Self Day 04 — Wet: Thanks for voting wet for todays photo guys… I think we all knew where that was going…  I didn’t wanna pussy out and go all half assed like Ash did. I was really hoping for it to be chucking it down with rain tonight but for once it really wasn’t. So I improvised a little & used a hose pipe… fuck the ban. I got soaked to the core but I kinda like this sot so it’s worth it!

We still need suggestions for themes for the next 3 days of self portraits! SO GET SUGGESTING!

Seven Days of Self Day 02 — Apocalypse: Since the epidemic things have got a little interesting around here… ahhh well at least I’ve found something I’m good at. I’m now heading for the city, ground zero, I want a god damn twinkie…

This shot took a bit of editing, it’s about 5 photos blended together so I could make it look like a hoard of zombies instead of just a couple. Keep your suggestions coming in for themes for the rest of the week!

Concept Art

Comic

My friend Daniel was one of my zombies today and he’s also a pretty awesome illustrator so he did a little comic about the blood I made them get covered in while I was editing! Awesome!

We’ve both done this project before so we wanted to make it a little different this time round. So this year we need YOU to come up with a theme for each day. We’ll be accepting suggestions from now until then end of next week. Each day Ash & I will select 4 of the best suggestions & getting people to vote for the best via a twitter poll!

So hit us with your suggestions in anyway you can, comment, facebook, twitter, post, shout at us in the street — however you like ! We’ll be running the first lot of voting tomorrow night for our first theme on Monday.

I’d seen a few people hacking old cameras around to make them into lenses for shiny new cameras around the internet and I wanted a slice of the action. I picked up a Vest Pocket Kodak (circa 1915) from eBay for about £15, I grabbed some M42 extension tubes & a cheap M42 to EF adaptor. Getting it all together was pretty straight forward, the old Kodak had a window on the back that popped right off & you can see right through to the lens. I grabbed the skinniest of the three extension tubes, lined it up & glued it right on the the back! BOOM! That’s pretty much all there is to it — let the glue set, screwed it onto the adaptor and sliped it on my camera.

The Video

Been playing around with After Effects a bit more recently — still rough around the edges but I am getting better at it. My main problem is, waiting for shit to render makes me die inside.

Tools

First Shot

Kinda hard to believe that this shot was taken with a lens that’s around 100 years old… it’s remarkably sharp & even the colours straight out of the camera were pretty good. The bellows give it awesome macro powers too. Honestly though, I was expecting a photo with a little bit more of a ‘vintage’ feel…

They’ve got a bunch of really nice interviews on their, you should check them out. Some of my favorites:

• Rosie Hardy
• Siebe Warmoeskerken
• Garrett S Meyers
• Kevin Russ

Final couple of images from when I shot Leah (See the previous shots here & here). Went super gritty/dirty/noisy here. Mmmmm good.

Another small set of Leah from yesterdays shoot, but with a really different feel. I used two softboxes almost paralel to the wall, this gave me a really large spread of soft light. I then shot along the wall to get a profile with lots of depth & contrast. That helped to bring out a lot of detail & give the location some verticality.

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve done a lit portrait, so I text my friend Leah & arranged something for today. I’ve had this location in mind for a while but hadn’t had the chance to use it. It was a good job I had a torch with me because we couldn’t see a thing in there. We were pretty much shooting in pitch black, it made focusing a challenge but I still got a bunch of nice shots out of the evening. Enjoy these two, I’ve got some more to edit & I’ll post later this week.

Setup Shot

Alternative Shot