Australia Day
Last Saturday was Australia Day in the Venue. I had a good time and didn't have to dodge too many drinks with the camera. Above are some of the pictures I took that evening, for the other 300 or so visit live2flirt.
Varsity January 2008
Every year, Canterbury's two universities, the University of Kent and Christ Church University compete against each other in a series of sportive events. In terms of photography, the event is challenging in a number of ways. First of all, it's impossible to cover all of Varsity alone, as almost all of the over 30 games happen during a single afternoon at different venues. I decided to stick to the events happening in the University of Kent's sports halls: Dodgeball, Netball, Basketball, Badminton, and Trampolining. Fencing, which I was looking forward to, was cancelled. The next problem is linked to the venue: the main hall is terribly lit, much darker than most sport halls. Which means that I had to push my new Canon EOS 40D all the way up to ISO 3200 at an aperture of 2.8 to get a decent exposure at around 1/400th of a second. I think the new sensor did a pretty good job handling the noise. And then there is the daunting task of covering sport events for seven successive hours. Again, the 40D surprised me, it seemed the battery could have provided power for the camera and the lens's autofocus all day long. I did charge it once in between though to avoid unpleasant surprises.
CSR FM Birthday Celebration
One year ago, Canterbury saw the birth of CSR FM, 'the first ever community FM radio station in the UK run exclusively by students'. I had then covered the launch party for inQuire. This time CSR asked me directly to cover their celebration party in Kent Union's night club, the Venue. The line-up included DJs from the station itself, the upcoming band Touriste, and a group of breakdancers that performed on the dancefloor - or tried to do so: it seemed to me that they were not too happy with the DJ's choice of music. I've seen their amazing moves last year and was rather disappointed that the act was let down by a DJ who at that point didn't seem to notice what happened around him.
With this post I've also updated the appearance of the blog galleries in which the pictures are displayed. I think it integrates more smoothly into the rest of the site now.
Photographers and Models @ UKC
Yesterday the Photographers and Models @ UKC society, of which I am now vice-president, had its introductory meeting. Rather than just talking about what the society's plans for the year are we jumped right into the action with a spontaneous session of what we call Speed Photography. Every photographer worked with a number of models and vice-versa to capture a set of given emotions. I've uploaded the pictures from the models I've worked with. After that we initiated models and photogs to the versatile Painting with Light technique. By accident Dave and I bumped into a few fire artists next to Rutherford college, so we put the technique we taught earlier into practice right away.
I'm looking forward to the next sessions with the society.
UKC Freshers’ Ball
There's no freshers' week without the traditional Freshers' Ball. For this year's line-up, Kent Union managed to get hold of BootyLuv, Scouting for Girls, xFM and the Venue's resident DJs.
The Union decided to make some changes to the Venue over summer and I have to say that I love their new light equipment. Makes for some nice photographs :) Now I can't wait to see their interactive dancefloor in action.
If you want to see the photographs in print, be sure to grab a copy of the next edition of inQuire, out across campus on October 23rd.
Fresher’s Week Sports Day
A few days ago the Park Wood pitches at the
Dance robot, dance!
Yesterday, Keynes College at the UKC organized the world's largest robot dance. 276 people dressed up as robots performed a choreographed dance and broke the world record. The event was witnessed by representatives of the Guinness Book of Records and covered by local media.
Artsfest 2007
Yesterday the Canterbury Campus of the University of Kent saw another edition of the popular Artsfest. I was taking pictures for inQuire and tried to be everywhere at the same time: there were four stages hosting acts such as the Makeshift Minstrels, the UKC Dramatics, the UKC Concert Band and Big Band, and the winner of Keynestock, Elena Goulding. Students and families enjoyed a sunny day of entertainment, face-painting, food and drink, and, after 10pm, the ‘Big Bang’ – fireworks overlooking the Canterbury Cathedral. (As a photojournalist, I had to find out that even being persuasive doesn’t allow you to shoot from the library roof when nobody knows where the keys are.)
