Monday 24 February 2014

Monday 10 February 2014

Rain lashed night shooting Icebergs…

We have recently been shooting a job out in Iceland which I will be blogging about in the next couple of weeks when the shoot is out , as always on these trips I wanted to try to shoot a little personal work if time allows , so myself and Tom and our intrepid guide Ronnie set off one stormy night to one of the black beaches on the Southern tip of Iceland ,the plan was to try to light an Iceberg at night on the beach or preferably in the sea… it didn't work out to be as doable as I hoped! … when we arrived at the beach the night was pitch black and we had sheets of horizontal rain lashing straight into our faces , but we endeavoured to try to get a picture , Tom and I started off down to the sea shore through clumps of ice navigating with a head torch but none looked right, they were to small  ,we eventually found one that looked ok so we set up the camera and we then set about lighting it , within seconds the light had blown , it was just too wet,the rain was torrential and the wind was lashing it straight into the lens  , Tom had the Pro 7 light out and immediately the head started strobing madly , , that was it , the light was done for….. 



It was at this point I decided on a different approach , I got Ronnie to drive as near as he could to the water without getting stuck and shine the headlights out to sea illuminating some of the bigger Icebergs , Tom held a poncho over us to try to stop the rain covering the lens , keeping the Hassleblad dry and the lens clean was the hardest thing to achieve in these conditions , it really was a bloody thilthy night , we then shot these shots ,using 25 second exposures , the sea was pretty wild and moving the bergs around, we became so focused on the exposures we both failed to notice a wave coming up the beach and straight into our legs and tripod ,camera was hoisted straight up into the air out of the water ,They were a real pain to capture but I really like these shots , they capture something different from the usual shots of the Icebergs, to me they have feel slightly ethereal, and the process of getting them was extremely exhilarating ..
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Friday 7 February 2014

Things crop up

Things crop up in the most unexpected places , I was in a bar in Tuffnell Park last night , after a couple of pints imagine my suprise whilst in the loo ,  staring at me was one of my shots plastered to the wall , this was one of the characters I had shot for Misha Glennys brilliant look at Eastern Europes organised crime underworld . It reminded me how much I like seeing exhibitions in unusual places ... Food for thought #fb....