AvEx Camp in Holzheim, Belgium
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After my return from the UK I had a wedding on Saturday, then the day after I crammed some outdoor equipment into my Lafuma backpack and headed North into Belgium. Each branch of our scout troop goes on a weeklong summer camp each year, and every couple of years the AvEx, the age group I’m a leader for, heads somewhere abroad. Holzheim is in the part of Belgium which used to belong to Germany (I hope I’m not mutilating histoy here…) and most of the people who live there speak German. We camped on a farmer’s field on a barrow. Fairly windy and no protection from the rain or sun – not that we had much of the latter; the camp’s theme was The 4 Elements, but water definitely dominated.
If any of the scout-photogs out there have pics of their latest camp, feel free to post links in the comments and let me know if you had more luck with the weather.
Broadstairs
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My dad and I went back to Canterbury for some days so that I could attend my graduation ceremony (Gloda, BA :P ). We visited Broadstairs and its beach to chill out a bit.
Dudelange on Wheels (DOW) 2009
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Dudelange on Wheels is a popular event among the skater community and photographers from Luxembourg and the Groussregioun. Like last year I spent a few hours on the Parc & Ride area to photograph the competitions.
Artsfest 2009
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Another year of great artists performing on ugly stages. I think those white tents kill all the atmosphere. Less photography for me this time and more hanging out; it was one of the last days in Canterbury for a couple of my friends.
World of Butterflies
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Alison found out about the MacFarlane’s World of Butterflies in Swingfield. We went there after exams, I played around a bit with the Ringlight adapter I bought recently and borrowed Alison’s 100mm Canon macro for some shots (that piece of glass has got to go on my to buy list). A pretty cool, albeit small place! The downside was that it was about 40°C in there. I waited for fifteen minutes until my lens de-fogged. (Temperature changes from cold to hot can result in condensation, which can lead to an early death for electronics. To avoid it on your camera just put it in a plastic bag, the condensation will form on the bag instead of your camera.) It was incredibly hot in there; we stayed longer than any other visitors. Fortunately they sell drinks and ice creams there. Even so nobody wanted to sit next to us on the bus back home…
Kew Gardens
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The Photography and Modelling Society‘s new committee scheduled a trip to Kew Gardens for the summer turn. About half a dozen photographers from the University of Kent got up at an insanely early time in the morning to spend a few hours amongst thousands of shrubs, flowers, trees, cacti and whatnot. You can tell that my knowledge of the botanic world is fairly limited. Until I saw the flower in the second but last photo myself, I thought it had been invented by THX.
Urban Glam
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The Photography and Modelling Society at the University of Kent organized a re-shoot of the Urban Glam shoot which was a bit too short seeing as it was followed by the society elections. This time we met in town and moved around a bit to different locations around Canterbury’s south wall.
Models: Christopher Willmott, Daniel Neighbour, Bekki Hawkins.
Mudam
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Alison came down to Luxembourg for Alain and Sté’s wedding. On the day before the wedding we visited the Musée d’Art Moderne on the Kirchberg before meeting some of my friends at the cinema. (Star Trek was quite good actually. Never liked the series, I’m a Star Wars geek, and the two are somewhat antagonistic.)
Angus
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Alain & Sté’s dog Angus has a surplus of energy. To let him burn off some of it, Alain, Joe, Tom and I went to take a walk through the “Giele Botter” in Pétange with him. It’s a nature reserve where a steel company used to mine for iron, it’s also where my scout troop is located, so it’s an area that’s pretty familiar to us.
Cazz Walker, Secret Agent
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Before the end of term, Cazz Walker, with whom I’ve worked before asked me for another shooting. I thought it would be cool to do something along the lines of the Bourne films and Max Payne comics. I scouted for some appropriate urban, shabby locations in Canterbury and previsualized some shots. At home I combined them into a storyline. Alison helped me during the shoot and lent me her Pocketwizards which I used for some of the setups, in others I relied on Canon’s ETTL in manual mode. You can look at the individual scenes in the window above or you can download the PDF, ready to be printed on A4: Cazz Walker, Secret Agent. The PDF is published under the following Creative Commons License: Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported.
Here are some of the sources I used for this comic:
The bar code font on the cover has been created by Anke Arnold.
The font used for the title is Adobe ITC Machine.
The texture used as overlay on the title is from gungetextures.com.
The font used in the speech bubbles is Anime Ace.
Photoshop Tutorial: Alien Abduction
If the last post made you think that I’ve joined the X-Files blogscene I have to disappoint you. I’ll stick to the visual arts. Today I bring you a Photoshop tutorial based on a movie poster mock-up I made back in Canterbury.
Hit the jump for a walkthrough of the shoot and a step-by-step explanation of how I used Adobe’s Photoshop to turn my friend Ollie into a Specimen.
(more…)
Keynestock 2009
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[Note: also check out photos from Keynestock 2008 and Keynestock 2007.]
Keynestock has by now become part of my yearly routine at the University of Kent and it’s become one of the defining events of the summer term for me. The Keynes Student Committee once again organized a well-rounded mini-festival with a great atmosphere. My personal favourites of the day were Andy Jeffs and Inertia. At every Keynestock a judges panel determines an overall winner who can then go on to play at Artsfest (which will be on the 13th June here at the UKC) and become the lead act for Keynestock the following year. The winners this time were Bardo Thodol, followed by Harvey Hyde & the Hecklers and Corduroy Fashion Threat. For some reactions to the judges’ decision head over and read the comments in the inQuireLive review.
Also check out the video from Keynestock 2009 on the University of Kent youtube channel:
Here’s the lineup of this year’s event. If you want to have a link to your bands website included drop me a message.
2pm – Budgie & Durex (Kent Factor 2009 winners)
2.30 – Kieran McGrath
3 – Andy Jeffs
3.30 – Firefly
4 – Bardo Thodol
4.30 – Harvey Hyde & the Hecklers
5 – Corduroy Fashion Threat
5.30 – Joel Williamson
6 – TECH BREAK – with music from Kent Tech
6.30 – History of The Trade
7 – Katy & the Thundercats
7.30 – Inertia
8 – Arundhati Riff
8.30 – Black Sun Down
9 – The Legacy
9.30 – Half A Crown (Keynestock 2008 winners)
Chartham Hatch
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After my return from Spain I spent most of my time backing up every single byte from my laptop. With me Murphy’s Computer Law has a habit of kicking in just before I cross the channel either way. Better safe than sorry. (And indeed as I type this on my acer, balanced on copies of Wild Fang and Gulliver’s Travels to let the air circulate beneath it, it’s overheating, the processor is running at 90% and it’s just a matter of time before it bites the dust. I hope the Macbook I’ve ordered will arrive soon…)
To counterbalance the IT frustration I got on my bike and visited the nature reserve in the woods around Chartham Hatch, not far from Canterbury. Turns out getting on the bike to go there was a dumb idea; you’re not allowed to cycle in the nature reserve. Even so it was an enjoyable walk through some beautiful areas, and I got the camera with the 10-20mm wide angle lens out of my bag more than once.
Madrid
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From the British capital to the Spanish one. I visited Gel for a weekend in Madrid. Gel is studying in Spain on her year abroad and this was one weekend were neither of us had classes to attend or essays to finish. We did all the touristy stuff (I even used my point&shoot all weekend long). We went to see the Royal Palace, the Cathedral and the Reina Sofía museum. You should have been there to feel the tension: everybody held their breath when a small boy was running away from his parents and at full speed towards Guernica. Priceless. (The painting too.) On Sunday we visited a huuuge market that filled about a dozen streets and three or so plazas. After listening to some traditional Spanish bagpipe players (wtf) in the Parque del Retiro we finished the day with some churros. They’re the most filling dessert you will ever eat. I thought I’d have to be rolled out of that Chocolatería.
London with Ollie
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My friend Ollie had to go to the University College London for an interview. Since a) you don’t pay £16 (or £24 if like me you leave your railcard at home…) to go to London for half an hour and b) it’s no fun to visit London on your own, I went along and we visited the National Gallery and the British Museum. In the National Gallery I had fun reverse engineering the lighting techniques of the masters, and I got told off for taking a picture of the cupula in the entrance hall when we were leaving (I had asked one of the wardens about photography restrictions earlier and what he said sounded like no photography of the paintings was allowed.) In the British Museum photography is fine, but it’s also one of those places that’s been photographed to death so it’s difficult to take something new there.
While Ollie went to his interview I visited Jacobs Digital Photo & Video where they had a pretty good deal on Manfrotto 5001B Nanos (I have no idea what the difference between those and the 001Bs which they replace is, they look the same to me). I had also planned a visit to The Flash Centre but by the time we got there they were closed. So we went to a pub instead.
Fashion Shoot: Third Eye and Punky Fish
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This is the last photoshoot I did for inQuire this term. The shops are Punky Fish for the girls and Third Eye for the boys, so the wardrobe was street/punk/skate themed. The decision to shoot outdoors in Canterbury’s less glamorous parking lot and warehouse areas was easy. The weather was dry but overcast, which is always a plus because it makes it easier to underexpose the ambient within the camera’s flash sync limit (the 40D’s is at 1/250th). Alison was there again to help me out. When you keep moving between locations and setting up new shots every ten minutes it’s good to have someone around who knows how I work and what I mean when I say ‘Drop the B slave by half a stop and flag it, I don’t want the rimlight to bleed into the exposure.’
Thanks to Laura for organizing the shoot, to Alison for helping me and to the models: Liam, Katy, Cazz, Sarah, Rosie and Daniel.
Canterbury photolocations
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One of the last meetings I organized as photography president of the University of Kent Photography and Modelling Society was an exploration of the places in Canterbury that would be best suited, from my point of view, for photographers to shoot, be it because they are worthwile in their own right or because they offer themselves as nice backdrops for photoshootings with models. First we went up to the Westgate panorama tower which is part of the Westgate Museum, as most participants had not yet been up there and it’s only around 75p for students to go. Then we made our way to Greyfriars, a former monastry which has its nondescript entrance in Stour Street. Some of the monastry’s walls still stand and it’s a nice park-like place to hang out and just read too. From there we went to Canterbury Castle, or the remains of it rather. It was used by a gas company decades ago and they knocked through some of the walls to get their pipelines installed.
While we were there the rainclouds which are inevitable when I organize a phototrip caught up with us and we returned to town centre to take shelter in Starbucks. — What? Which one of the three? :)
Über den Wolken
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Our flight route
Anyway, we drove to a field near Hivange, asked the farmer for permission and got ready for take-off. I had to help get the balloon ready so there are no pictures of that. We flew over plenty of small towns that I didn’t really recognize from up above, one of the places I did recognize fairly easily though was the Aire de Berchem (and in case you were wondering, no, the police car did not stop at the stop sign), the pig farm near the Kuelbicher Haff (the latter is hidden rather well in the woods) and the Mariendaller Haff, near which we landed gently in another field – this time we didn’t ask the farmer’s permission beforehand though :) And with gently I mean that none of my camera equipment got damaged when the basket tipped over during the landing. That’s all that matters, my head has seen its share of bumps.
The title refers to the song Über den Wolken by Reinhard Mey.
Richmond Park
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Back in March Alison, her cousin Lucy and I got up at 4am to take four London buses and reach Richmond Park before sunrise. My excellent sense of orientation got us there at 6.30 or so, a few minutes after the sun kissed the horizon.
It was good fun, albeit a bit cold. (Since lithium-ion batteries don’t like the cold very much, it’s a good idea to keep them warm and close to your body.) Richmond Park belongs to the royal family, and it’s a massive park (for my humble circumstances) in which deer can roam about freely. No fences between them and you. I remember that last time I went there with some photogs from DPChallenge we got a bit too close for the animal’s taste and one or two young bucks decided to attack us. No close encounters this time though.
I was a bit annoyed at someone else however: we had sneaked up to the group which you can see in the first picture and stayed at a distance (70-200 lens on the long end with 2x multiplier and crop sensor = 640mm effective focal distance) so as not to disturb the animals. Halfway through the two bucks fighting some random guy just walked right up to them with his camcorder and scared them away. Well done.
It was a really nice day in the end, and I didn’t fall into any of the lakes or rivers which is always a bonus.
[Update:] Here are some photos which show what happened to me last time I went to Richmond – and why it’s a good idea to keep your distance. One by Alan Jager and one by Manic.
180 Megapixel Westgate Panorama
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At the end of February I lugged my camera and tripod up to the flagtower of Canterbury’s Westgate. The tower isn’t accessible to the public and it took a while to get permission to shoot from this wonderful vantage point, which offers one of the best views of the cathedral and the city centre. So I climbed the metal steps past an owl statuette that’s meant to scare away the pigeons and got my tripod set up next to the flagpole. It’s not hard to tell why Westgate’s highest tower isn’t open for the average Canterbury tourist: there’s only about half a metre of space on any side of the flagpole and the wall surrounding it wasn’t very high either.
First off I took the above panorama looking south with the 70-200. It consists of 48 individual photos that were stitched together in PTgui. The resulting panorama had 180 Megapixel – with over 50’000 pixel length it was beyond the limitations of either JPEG or PSD files and I had to save it in Adobe’s large file format (PSB). The version above has been resized to just over 27000px wide.
After that I got out my trusted Peleng 8mm Fisheye lens to create a 360/180° QTVR image looking north onto St Dunstan’s Road, which you can see below. These panoramas are taken in the same way as other panoramas, except that the camera makes a full 360° rotation looking down, then straight ahead, then up. Unfortunately I don’t (yet) have a QTVR panorama head in my camera bag, which is necessary to match the camera’s nodal point with the axis of rotation. That’s why the panorama below has some rather ugly glitches – have a look at the stairs, for instance.
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Fashion Shoot: Unique
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For this week’s edition of inQuire’s fashion section we photographed clothes from Kent Union’s clothes outlet, Unique, situated on the University of Kent campus. Since the clothes are intrinsically linked to the student experience here at Kent campus itself seemed a suitable location for the shoot. We were lucky to have sunshine and tolerable temperatures for our outdoor shoot.
In technical terms, one comes closer to the limitations of flash photography with these bright conditions though. I wanted to shoot with a wide open aperture, but if I wanted to use flash without moving into Canon’s HSS system, in which a good deal of flash power is lost, I had to stick to the 1/250th sync speed of my 40D. Solution: I popped a .9 ND filter onto my lens. That way I could shoot wide open without having to reduce the shutter speed beyond the x-sync.
For some of the photos I also used a single reflector as a fill light source instead of flashes. Since we were shooting with more than one model, one of the others could easily hold the reflector for me.
Fashion Show 09 Photos
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My computer’s decided that stitching panoramas isn’t going to happen tonight. Instead, here are some photos from this year’s edition of the University of Kent Fashion Show, organized by the Photography and Modelling Society. We had guest appearances from the Pole Fitness and Capoeira societies. All the profit that we made has been donated to the British Heart Foundation. I still have to find out from our treasurer exactly how much that was but I think it’s something around £700.
This week will also be my last as co-president of the society, on Saturday we’re holding committee elections and a new team will take over. Ooh I’m getting all sentimental about it… :)
Fashion Show Poster 2009
UKC Fashion Show Poster 2009
I made this poster about a month ago, it has now been put up all over the University of Kent campus to advertise the annual Fashion Show. It’s organized by the Photography and Modelling society, of which I’m co-president, and full infos about the show are available on our website, here. I’ll say a few words about the poster.
We took this in the Templeman Library with permission from their administration. Mikey and Alison helped me set up the lights. We used 2 430EXs behind the models pointing towards the camera for rimlight and lighting the books. 2 580EXIIs were in the bookshelves to either side of the model. One 580EX was lying on the floor to provide some fill from below. One 430EX sat in a shoot-through umbrella just above the camera pointed towards the models. I used Alison’s Canon 5DMkII (its 21MP allowed me to print the poster on A3 at over 300dpi).
I took photos of about a dozen models and later on decided to go with this one, because the lighting, the pose and the dress came together so well. Then the editing started. For a before and after comparison, have a look at the two photos below. First I cleaned up the bookshelves and coloured them in after boosting the saturation on them. Then I got rid of the emergency exit sign in the ceiling and the chewing gum on the carpet. Next up the model (Carole Mathias) got a quick digital makeover. I made the colour of her dress more striking, cloned out some stray hair, and added some colour to her make-up. The title logo uses the font AvantGarde, on which the society logo’s Maple Origins is based. The waves in the background were made following a tutorial I found on psdtuts. After getting plenty of feedback from fellow photographers at Photogen, the text with all the information ended up at the bottom rather than in the shelves.
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Fashion shoot: BHS & Burton in Abode
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[The video may take a moment to load and contains strong language.]
The inQuire newspaper features a section on fashion. For this issue the focus was on suits, which we got from BHS and Burton Menswear. I met up with features editor Laura Harrison and five models in the Abode Hotel in Canterbury, who kindly offered us a common room and one of their regular rooms to shoot in. Alison Begeman assisted me for this shoot; since things had to move relatively quickly with changing models, scenes and clothes I needed someone to position the lights where I needed them and set the required power settings.
The common room had a great antique athmosphere to it. The furniture looked expensive enough to stop me from attaching superclamps to any of it. I was shooting with my 40D and the 17-55 at around 1/15-1/50 @ f/4 throughout the shoot to balance ambient and strobe light. I used an ST-E2 to trigger the flashes using Canon’s wireless system and the main flashes were gelled to make them match the colour of the ambient light. One of the advantages of the common room was space, I didn’t have too many problems putting the lights exactly where I needed them, albeit we moved some of the sofas out of the way. I used my shoot-through umbrellas most of the time, but I think it’s time to invest into a softbox to get a better control over the way the light spills.
As you can see in the video, the doors to the room had glass windows. A few of the guests that passed by the room stopped to have a look at what was going on, including one old lady who seemed to check out the models as they were changing… Still the audience was smaller than during the Varsity Poster shoot.
The second part of the shooting was in a regular-sized hotel room (the Cathedral-view room they were going to give us had unfortunately been booked that morning). With six people in that room space was more of an issue but I think it worked out alright. The only thing I’m not so satisfied with is the shadow that one of the flashes has cast in the mirror shot.