A fresh start.

Been a long time since I last posted on here, as well as this being a medium for my research part of my uni course I wanted it to be a way of documenting just me to be honest. Well that really hasn't happened....

I've realised that despite the fact that I've only concentrated on becoming a true photographer for not even a year I'm already taking this all farrrr too seriously! I'm constantly stressing about not getting any paid work and I'm only really taking photos on shoots with people who have approached me. So this is going to be no more, although obviously I'll welcome any paid work at all hehe, but I'm going to start just taking photos whenever I get an idea - I would do a 365/52 project but so many people have seen it turn into a chore which I don't want at all.

I don't quite know what I'll do yet, something I'll have to think about - so I'll keep you posted! Maybe just do a 365 but not every shot has to be a perfected set up image :)

Reconstructions

Copies

Final Images for Environmental Portraiture

Spanner in the works :(

Cause I was ill today I wasn't able to go to the tattooist to get photos :( and my deadline is tomorrow! Although my tutor gave me until Monday for the photos I won't be able to get to photograph a tattooist as I had to book in to go there today :(

I had a think, and I thought that maybe I could do something similar to tattooing but on the other end of the spectrum of 'urban art'. Photographic makeup is a highly successful craft and in my opinion is just a less taboo, and permanent version of tattooing!

For a photoshoot that I did the other week, I worked with a makeup artist called Emily Johnson and a model called Corrine. The theme of the photoshoot was a 'rock' theme which is how I've tied it to the urban side of the project. The images I will use are the behind the scenes shots that I took whilst Emily was doing hair and makeup. I will edit them in the same way I did for the graffiti artist.

Still so bummed about the tattooist though :(

Half way!

So I took the photos yesterday of the graffiti artist! As he wants to remain anonymous he shall be known as Dave. The location was absolutely amazing so I decided to do an establishing shot for the project, this is something I intend to do for the tattoo artist as well to keep it going as a flowing sequence. 

In the images I kept Dave anonymous, as to his wishes obviously but also found them to look more intriguing then having a clear view of his face. I think this is because unless you are a close friend of the artist, you don't know who has done that piece of graffiti so can only admire. This can also be said for tattoos, unless you either know the 'tattoo-ee' or go up and ask them then you can only admire the artwork really.

Right, so onto the actual images I took. I attempted to try and recreate Keegan Gibbs style where the subject had slight motion blur but obviously this was difficult without a tripod (the location involved a lot of climbing which meant it was tricky to take one with us). I then found this brilliant filter from a company called 'Alien Skin Software' called 'Exposure 3', it's something that I've wanted for a long time as I love the look and feel of traditional film but just haven't had the funds to buy the film and develop it commercially. 

So here are my two attempts to try and recreate Keegan Gibbs motion style.

To be honest I'm not 100% sure whether to discard them or not, any thoughts?

Then there was one that I really didn't like cause of the composition really...

I also found MASSIVE problems with focusing. My D3000, as much as I love it, just won't auto focus with my 50mm 1.8 which is soooooooo frustrating! So I found it very difficult to distinguish whether Dave was in focus or if it was the wall behind him. (You'll be able to see from my contact sheets Mike!)

For editing my chosen images, I used a technique that one of my favourite photographers Rosie Hardy talks about in a recent 'Wedding FAQ' post on her blog. She uses the free software called GIMP but from using both Photoshop and GIMP myself it was capable in both. Rosie talks about what she uses to control the tones and colours of her photographs,

"For tones, I just stick to curves. For colours I use curves too - occasionally, occasionally I will dodge/burn at a very low opacity with a large fuzzy brush but mainly on the BWs. I make selections, feather them and adjust them separately rather than adjusting the tones on the image as a whole. It gives you more control over how the picture comes out and allows you to create some depth."

I took this idea of making selections of separate elements of the images and adjusting the tones of them and found, although it was time consuming, it gave me so much more freedom to show what I want the viewer to look at and concentrate on.

I also used the Exposure filter in order to add some grain and 'roughness' to the images. Here are some before/after shots.

Oh yeah, I also did one last shot to show the final outcome, this is again something I hope to capture at the tattooists (or the stage its at when the client leaves at least).

Any feedback would be great! Thanks!

Project update.

Will be shooting my graffiti artist this weekend! (with a camera...)

And have booked to go and take photos of a tattoo start to finish at Boneshakers in Louth on the 14th... but I'm considering going to find somewhere in Lincoln as a back up seeing as though it's the day before my deadline!

Hmm.

Keegan Gibbs.

Well, while looking around for people who photograph graffiti and such I stumbled across this guy...

Keegan Gibbs is an american photographer, he photographs a variety of different subjects but has a huge chunk of his portfolio dedicated to photographing graffiti and their artists at work throughout city settings. Near enough all of his photos resemble a high iso/saturation almost lomography style (oooh, a possible style to look at?), although I haven't been able to find out if its through post production or that he is actually a fan of traditional film cameras.

As you can see, his photographs are fairly grainy, which adds to the atmosphere of the photograph in my opinion and I actually quite like it (although I think I will add grain and this general effect in post production so I can have control over it)

Not only do I absolutely love his graffiti work, but just the style and composition of the rest of his portfolio really inspires me. He keeps generally with the idea of capturing candid moments, like Rosie Hardy which is something I want to shoot rather than posed shots.

He's even done some tattoo shots!

So yeah, here's his blog as well.... his blog!

Just to finish off with a quote that I found while researching Gibbs, something that I would really like to relate to.

Civil:How would you like to be remembered…?

 Keegan:As a good friend. As a photographer I want to be remembered as someone who was able to shine light on subjects in a direction that was never seen before.