Fame

11 March 2013

1/160sec, f/3.5, ISO 5000, exposure bias -1.0, 18mm

Shortly after I posted the images from my first trip to the Greenwood Theatre, Catherine invited me back to shoot another play. This time, a society of students were performing Fame, and unlike the production of All’s Well That Ends Well, there would be a big set and big musical numbers, hopefully meaning I’d get a different sort of picture for the project to decorate the wall of the theatre foyer with photos.

I arrived earlier at the Greenwood than I did for All’s Well, and things were still all being set up.

1/50sec, f/3.5, ISO 4000, exposure bias -0.33, 18mm

This was all part of the plan. After only shooting a dress rehearsal the last time, I was keen to get more behind-the-scenes shots of the theatre. I even took the concept to its literal extreme, and took some shots behind the scenery.

London at Night: Somerset House

10 February 2013

All’s Well That Ends Well

13 January 2013

7 Comments

A few months ago, Catherine – she of CJ Trigg Photography, a blog you really should follow as it is along a similar theme to mine – asked me to take some photographs for her. In her day job, Catherine is a theatre manager, and she wants to decorate the foyer of the building with some images from the theatre. With the idea of having some of my photographs framed in a public space, as well as lure of a new subject matter, I was keen to get involved.

So at at the start of December, I attended a full dress rehearsal of a student production of Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well in order to get some photos. As it was a dress rehearsal, I was given near enough the full freedom of the theatre; I was allowed in the seats, backstage, in the control room, basically anywhere except the dressing rooms (had I known that I’m not sure I’d have agreed to it. I was hoping to get a Paparazzi shot of someone’s bum).

As it was a full rehearsal, it was essentially the finished product, complete with lights, costumes and technical cues. The only thing missing was the audience, which gave me the scope to rush about the theatre for angles without annoying paying customers. Or tripping over them for that matter. It also allowed me to get really close to the front and centre of the stage without blocking any views.

1/200sec, f/4, ISO 3200, exposure bias -0.67, 70mm

London at Night (Part IV)

29 October 2012

8 Comments

Most of the time, my London at Night posts take place in the winter months when night comes along a bit sooner and doesn’t require quite as much waiting for the sun to set. Indeed, my last one was back at the beginning of March, with only a twilight trip in April since then.

However, back in August, my wife and I decided to stay up all night to see the entirety of the Christopher Nolan Dark Knight Trilogy at the BFI London IMAX. As far as I’m concerned, Christopher Nolan shooting in IMAX is the future of filmmaking, but I’ve already waffled about that elsewhere.

Attending an all-night screening that started after midnight gave ample hanging around with a camera time in central London.

8sec, f/20, ISO 100, exposure bias -1.0 (+0.56), 18mm

London at Night Part III

11 March 2012

11 Comments

In the evening after my apparently rather successful trip to Borough Market, I found myself, after a few pints, walking home with my wife from a London pub.

We had been drinking in a pub right by the Tate Modern, on the other side of the Thames from St Pauls, which had caught my eye whilst we were drinking.There was a bit of mist in the city that day, as evidenced by the disappearing top of the Shard earlier in the day, but as the night rolled in the Shard disappeared from view completely.

This did wonders, however, for the lights used to illuminate the dome of St Pauls, which was enough to make me pull out my camera.

There is definitely nothing boob-shaped about this monument. | 1/15sec, f/5, ISO 2000, exposure bias -1.0, 44mm

London at Night Revisited

8 February 2012

4 Comments

I can sometimes be a little lax when it comes to writing up posts. My last post on the Chinese New Year (imaginatively titled Chinese New Year) took a week from shooting to posting. Usually I try to be a bit quicker when any of the images are bordering on topical, but sometimes that’s not possible (the Bournemouth Air Festival, which made national news with first flooding and then the death of a pilot, and would therefore fit into my definition of ‘topical’, took ten days to produce, but in my defence there was over 4,000 images to cut down and fourteen pages of waffling to type).

When the post is less topical, there is less impetus to get it out quickly, and sometimes more important posts will take precedence. This is especially true if said post doesn’t lead on to the contents of another (which does often happen).

This is one such post. Four weeks ago, I took another short stroll around London after work, to add to the ’London at Night‘ project I started late last year. My primary purpose? I had read on Wikipedia that the fountains as Trafalgar Square are fitted with LEDs, and would look pretty impressive at night.

Ultimately, however, this trip wasn’t all that successful; only a handful photos made it through the cut, when more typically I would expect thirty or more to make it (that, perhaps, is a reflection on my own inability to be truly ruthless when editing). Which meant that, as it happened around the time I shot a few more interesting things (namely experimenting with macro), I’ve only just gotten round to writing it up.

Trafalgar Square turned out not to be as colourful as I was hoping. All the LEDs were red, which is a colour that never seems to look quite right when processing shots from my camera.

Exposure 1.6sec, f/4, ISO 100, exposure bias -0.67, 22mm focal length

Sights and Sounds of London Town

8 January 2012

2 Comments

This post is one I’ve been planning for quite a while. In fact, this post was originally created back in July, when the idea came to me and the best way I could think of to remember it was to start a new post with the title so I wouldn’t forget it – that and, it has a hint of an obligation to actually do it.

And thus, I have done it – or rather, I have started it. I see this project as an ongoing one, one I will return to in the future.

The Sights and Sounds of London Town - named for the Richard Thompson song – is a project documenting London in pictures. The idea is to try to capture not just the obvious bits of the city, but some of the sights that aren’t always seen by the tourists (on a pedantic note, this entry is only photographs, so there won’t be any sounds in this one, but I haven’t ruled out the possibility of video elements down the road).

For my first trip out, I didn’t head too far off the beaten path, although I did still cover over six miles on foot in a single day, wandering around not really caring where I ended up. Having not spent much time photographing London I felt I needed to get some of the ‘touristy’ stuff out of my system, but I’ve still yielded some results that I’m quite proud of. I’ve done quite a lot more post-processing of my images this time (there is a both a photo-stitched panorama and a HDR image in this set), and experimented with some different sorts of photography than I usually do.

Introducing the Daily Photo

1 January 2012

Bournemouth Air Festival

28 August 2011

4 Comments

I would love to start this post with ‘I was visiting Bournemouth and there happened to be an air show going on’, which would be more in keeping with the usual way I stumble into great photo-taking opportunities, but truth be told I’d been planning this trip for months. In fact, train tickets and bed and breakfast were booked within a week of me coming back from my last trip to Dorset, and I’d been intending to go since I first heard of the Bournemouth Air Festival around this time last year, just as the 2010 event was coming to a rain-soaked close.

My desire to come to this sort of thing armed with a decent set of camera gear dates back even further: six years.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Creative Splurges

“Creativity is a natural extension of our enthusiasm.” – Earl Nightingale

Category Archives: Projects

Fame

London at Night: Somerset House

All’s Well That Ends Well

London at Night (Part IV)

London at Night Part III

London at Night Revisited

Sights and Sounds of London Town

Introducing the Daily Photo

Bournemouth Air Festival

Follow “Creative Splurges”

Rate this:

Share this:

Like this:

Rate this:

Share this:

Like this:

Rate this:

Share this:

Like this:

Rate this:

Share this:

Like this:

Rate this:

Share this:

Like this:

Rate this:

Share this:

Like this:

Rate this:

Share this:

Like this:

Rate this:

Share this:

Like this:

Rate this:

Share this:

Like this:

Follow “Creative Splurges”