Little Red Ride
Above is a behind the scenes video for a fairy-tale themed photograph I took of my red Ford Focus (2011, Titanium). The video explains how I turned the Little Red Riding Hood idea into an image, from the two-hour shoot with Olivier Kerschen to the six-hour editing process in Lightroom and Photoshop. The two photographs below show an unedited picture with nothing but ambient light and the final edited image.
The same video is also available in Luxembourgish.
Wedding: Jacky & Steve
Jacky and Steve’s wedding in September was the last one I covered in 2009, and oh boy, it was great to be there. Alison had come down to be my assistant for the day. We started the day with the couple shooting in the park in Colmar-Berg. It offers some gorgeous backdrops all along the shores of its lakes. On the technical side, I finally got to make proper use of the PocketWizards’ full potential. Their high sync-speed capabilities made it easier to balance the flashes against the full daylight and generally made using the lights more practical. The shoot in the park was a lot of fun, and the atmosphere just carried on right through the rest of the day.
The ceremony was in the town hall in Vichten. Their ceremonial room upstairs was very interesting in terms of lighting, the mix of indirect sunlight from the windows and artificial light sounded like it was going to be tricky, but it turned out to make for some great sidelight and colour contrast which gave the whole ceremony a very warm character.
The reception and dinner were back in Colmar-Berg. We had already briefly visited the area for some architectural elements in the couple shoot. The dinner hall was nice because it offered such an open space and a lot of room for the dance floor. I actually asked Alison to film Jacky and Steve’s first dance with her 5DMkII while I was taking photographs. I think the short clip makes for a nice moment in the slideshow. The evening was marked by some crazy games for the newlyweds and their guests and an all-round festive mood – definitely an awesome evening for a very cute couple.
Speedlinks May 2010
- London, Geotagged. Which bits of London get photographed the most? Eric Fisher has collected data from a couple of photo sharing sites to create a map overlay which reveals London’s most photographed areas.
- The Battlefield Pinhole Camera records photographs on three strips of film roll simultaneously. Pretty cool. The site has a writeup on how to make one yourself if you’re in the DIY mood.
- findexif.com If you need to check the EXIF of an online image on the fly, tell findexif the URL and it extracts the info for you. No download required.
- Things We Love. Mediastorm has posted a new selection of their favourite multimedia projects out there, including some breathtaking short films.
UKC Fashion Show 2010
Design: Alison Hollis
Yesterday the Photography and Modelling Society presented the Annual Fashion Show in Eliot Hall at the University of Kent. Each year, the society organizes this event, in which students from the university get on the catwalk to present clothes from local shops and designers. The sets for this show were Slaters Menswear, Kaliko Minuet, Bhs Casual, Animal, Fancy Dress, Recycling, Noa Noa, Fat Face Streetwear, Bhs Bedwear, Fat Face Summer, Punky Fish, Unique, and Armoire. The show also featured guest performances from the UKC Capeira Society and the UKC Circus Society. The proceeds from this year’s show went to Save the Children’s Haiti campaign.
Hit the jump to see the footage of each set. (Fair warning: there are over a dozen embedded videos.)
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Impressions from London Zoo (Film)
Last week I posted photographs from London Zoo that I took in October, this time I would like to share with you a short film I made in the same zoo last weekend. The trip was organized by the Photography and Modelling Society. I had about four hours during which I could shoot. Some of my favourite enclosures, including the rainforest indoor area, were closed to the public, and somehow I ended up shooting birds more than anything else.
Around 20 minutes before we had to catch the train the delivery guy showed up with my new LCDVF as well! I had been thinking about buying a Zacuto Z-Finder, but since they are sold out pretty much everywhere and cost 2-3 times as much I had ordered the LCDVF from lcdvf.pl. (The buying part was a bit tricky since the payment instructions got lost in translation, but I called them up, got everything sorted out and had the parcel within four days.) I might write a short review of the LCDVF, but in a nutshell, I prefer it’s 2x magnification to the 3x of the Zacuto (which I tried briefly at The Flash Center), and the magnet mount they use seems like a good solution to me. Having the LCDVF with me was really helpful for focusing, especially as most of the animals kept running or flying around. The experience is definitely very different from shooting stills! I had taken my tripod with the Manfrotto 808 head with me. There really would have been no way around a tripod, at least for the telephoto scenes: I used the EF 70-200 2.8L IS lens with both the Kenko 1.5x and Canon 2x Extenders on it, giving me an effective focal length of 210-600mm, and without the IS the footage would have been fairly shaky even on the tripod.
For the wide angle shots I used the Canon EF 24-70 2.8L which was attached to a shoulder mount. This helps to distribute the weight of the camera a bit, but I had to find out that it’s not very practical to use it whilst carrying a backpack.
Unfortunately Canon won’t release the new firmware for the 5DMkII until later this week, so I still had to shoot at 30p rather than 24p. I hope the video doesn’t look too choppy! I also think that I’ll have to invest into some kind of external microphone sometime soon if I ever want to make anything that isn’t overlaid with music. Here I mixed the song with the ambient sounds, but I was fairly limited even with that, since the camera picks up the noise from the IS as well as the wind and the noise when I touch the camera.
If you’re interested in the music, the album by Denis Richard can be downloaded from Jamendo.
London Aquarium
I visited the London Aquarium and decided to film a bit rather than take photographs. I lost quite a few takes because somebody bumped into me while I was filming… The place was really packed with people.
The video is CC-BY-SA.
UKC Summer Ball 2008 Promo Video
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The Fashion Show promotional video which Lee Francis filmed for the UKC Photography and Modelling Society got quite a bit of attention. As a result, he was recruited to also film a promotional video for the University of Kent Summer Ball 2008. I was at the filming location, one of the exam halls at the UKC, to help with the lighting and to take some ‘making of’ pictures, which you can see above. Oh, and I also pushed the caddie for the zoom effects, which led to the Ben Hur photo (taken by David Cater).
2007 Favourites
I’ve put together my favourite pictures from this year and arranged them in a short slideshow. I’m having a bit of trouble finding the right settings to make the whole thing web-friendly, so for now all I can offer is a 10MB video with dimensions that really don’t do the photographs any justice, but hey.
I wish everyone a happy new year; I’m off to Méribel.