The lifecycle of a Banana. 2nd February.

Bananas grow, ripen, get picked, are sold, sit in fruit bowls, turn brown, become compost.....

www.ruthjones.org

A Simple Portrait. 2nd December.

Just Sitting, Dolls, Orange Walls, and Speedlight Love. 27th November.

I recently bought an off-camera cable for my Nikon SB-700 speedlight, I am loving using it as it is giving me so much more creative freedom than having it sitting on the top of my camera. I also decided to play about with the filters which came with it, I have an orange wall in my house, but it's not vibrant enough to come out in photos, so I used the orange filter and it gave this lovely sepia-tint to the whole photo! 

Definitley think I am going to be using flash a lot more than I used to! Who needs £5k ProFoto lights when you can just use a Nikon speedlight ;)

Ninth day at Rankin... and a few photos of Kentish Town.. and a dog! 8th November.

Took a few photos around Kentish Town today (well, between Kentish Town West station and the Studio!). It's a nice little walk as there are loads of quirky houses which hint towards the fact that you are in the borough of Camden!

It was a very busy day in the studio, we were preparing sets for a portrait shoot and video interview in the morning; so that included a lot of painting (from painting the floors to touching up on the large woorden flats), lighting candles, steaming creases from cloth/linen, and a whole menagerie of other things! Our portrait sitter and interviewer arrived and we all jumped into gear, working as a team to make the interview as effective as possible!! After the interview the portrait sitter went into styling for a few touch ups and everyone prepared for the first set by testing the lighting, finishing the set up, and tidying things up... this process repeated throughout all the sets we used. This shoot was probably one of my favourites, one of the reasons is because it was portraiture (I love a good portrait), another reason is because I've finally started to get my head around all the kit and how a shoot runs... so I think I was quite helpful in my assisting! And another reason is because the photographs from this shoot were AMAZING! 

It didn't just finish at the shoot today, we then had an opening for an Exhibition by Rankin called "Bear Faced". This series is where Rankin photographed women, who are seen by many as beautiful, without any makeup on.... except a small pawprint. This is to raise awareness of a campaign to raise money for children in need.. the campaign encourages women to go without makeup for a day, have a small pawprint on their face, and raise money for the charity through this. The exhibition was great, and there was a great vibe in the gallery as people arrived, viewed the work, and connected with each other.

(Met this dog called Twinkle Toes on the tube today, she was lovely and I had to take a quick snap!).

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Wind turbines on the riverside. 28th March.

I have been taking photos today, but sadly I do not have anything to show you as I've been shooting on film... so I've uploaded an iPhone snapshot of a river which I drive past all the time (I didn't photograph this whilst driving though). I have been in the studio with a few other photographers and we were shooting a number of portraits with a few different cameras; we first shot with the Holga, a camera which I have a love hate relationship with depending on the quality of the Negatives, I then used the Bronica, a camera which I love using (although I prefer a Mamyia and it's 6x7 negative format), and then I did a shot on the 5x4 pinhole camera. Developing these tomorrow and hopefully scanning them too, so keep tuned to see the results!

Duncan. 16th March.

Today I was carrying on the portrait project which I started yesterday. A subject which I found today was a man called Duncan, he was quite interesting to photograph and he even gave us a small rendition of his favourite song to sing at Kareoke!

Ric. 15th March.

I have been rather active today! I was with fellow photographer Jac Rudduck and we were working on a portrait series. This series captures people we meet on the city streets, one person we met today was Ric, we talked to him and bought him into our studio and then took a number of portraits of him. He was one of the most interesting people and it was a pleasure to photograph him. I'm going to be out doing this tomorrow too, so I'm definitely looking forward to meeting even more people!

http://jacrudduck.blogspot.com/ 

The Facade. 2nd March.

I shot for a portrait series titled "The Facade" today. Each of my sitters had a piece of glass infront of their face, this glass represents the shield that people put up when they are infront of a camera or around people who they are not comfortable with. I asked each of my sitters to draw a face which represents the facade they put on when they are in uncomfortable or unfamiliar situations.

Thankyou to my sitters:

Tara Tilley: http://taratilleyphotography.blogspot.com/

Joanne Cream: http://joannecreamphotography.blogspot.com/

Chloe Baronowski: http://chloeamberbaronowski.blogspot.com/

Jac Rudduck: http://jacrudduck.blogspot.com/

Crystal Brook: http://www.artbreak.com/crystalbrook

The Street Studio. 24th February.

I was in peterborough today with a group of other photographers. We decided to set up a studio on the streets, we used the sun as our light source, a couple of photographic flags, a reflector and a camera (of course!). We spent about an hour on the streets asking people if we could take their portraits, it's quite surprising to see how many people are wary of you when you have initial eye contact with them. Quite a few people were up for having their portraits taken, it was quite and interesting excercise, definitely one which I shall try again!

Jac. 10th February.

This is Jac, he's a fellow photographer, I decided to take his portrait today as we were both working in a studio. Check out his blog, he's a great photographer: http://jacrudduck.blogspot.com/2012/02/dead-town.html

On the Rocks with a Twist. 5th December.

I was working on a little project today and yesterday, I had seen some amazing photographs of flowers in Ice and I was inspired by them. So yesterday I bought a few different things (flowers, fruit....) and froze them in blocks of Ice, today I spent the morning in the studio shooting the blocks of Ice. It's not something which I normally photograph, but I really enjoyed it and might have a go at working on it even more to produce even stronger images. More photos can be found here: Facebook

Inside on the Outside. 4th December.

I am starting a new fine-art based project, I'm not really a fine-art photographer, but it's a challenge which I am excited to accept. This photograph is a slight test shot for what I want to do, I want to produce a series of images which show how people showcase their personalities through their appearance and what they wear. I am not going to include people in this, but I am going to base the project on people who I come across and how they like to portray themselves!

I am also shooting a studio piece tomorrow, I won't say much about it...but I will say that it is rather chilly!

Hair. 18th November.

Today I did a Toni & Guy hair shoot with a group of other photographers. It was great fun and we got to be creative with it within our plans for the shoot. This photograph was one of my favourite pictures from the shoot. We had a great model and her hair was styled beautifully, our make up artist worked really well with our directions and she was great to work with. (Make up artist can be found here.). 

The Bronze Man. 31st October.

Today has been full of essay writing! I do the silly thing where I intend to get everything written at the start of a week, but I leave it right until the end to do it! Anyway... back to today's photograph! I was asked to photograph this Bronze Statue, so I photographed it today, experimented with using a white backdrop whilst keeping a lot of contrast within the photograph, quite a lot harder than I thought it was... but it was a good learning curve! I am starting to really appreciate product/still life photography and I am considering buying some studio equipment (the equipment I am currently using is on loan). 

In other news I'm off to London tomorrow (again!) I will be working on an architecture brief, but I may be able to get some more photography on the Occupy London Stock Exchange Protest... depending on time etc... I have also started to become interested in the Critical Mass movement, basically once a month a group of people meet together in cities around the world and travel around the city on self-propelled transport. 

Pharaoh. 22nd October.

This week I have a portable lighting kit set up so I can work on my Toy soldiers project. I decided to have a little fun with it and photograph an ornament I found in my house of an Egyptian Pharaoh-type man! I do quite enjoy photographing still life pieces and experimenting with lighting and I took this photograph to test my set up! I shall most probably be doing a little bit more still life work over the week, watch out!