Cover Art - Prole Issue 5

Towards the end of last year, the poetry and prose magazine, Prole, used one of my images for their cover of Issue 3 (see - "Cover Art on Prole Magazine")

Well, they've done it again, and chosen another of my photos for Issue 5. This time they've gone for one of my more iconic images, that of my friend and poet, David Mark Williams.



If you fancy submitting your own writings for consideration in the magazine, then you'll find their submissions page here - http://www.prolebooks.co.uk/page3.html

Building and Burning The Wickerman 2011

The Wickerman Festival is not on the same scale as T in the Park (Scotland's most famous music festival), but it does have 2 distinct advantages over other, larger music festivals. The first is it’s less than 15 miles away, and the second is it has a giant willow sculpture that goes up in flames at midnight on the Saturday.

And it is damned impressive both before and after it does.

Because I know Trevor Leat, one of the sculptors of The Wickerman (built by leatrigg.com), last year I popped out one day during the building of it to take photos (see - Building The Wickerman), then went along to the festival and took photos of it burning down (see - Burning The Wickerman).

This year we planned it a bit more and I went out on site half a dozen times so I could create a sequence of photos showing it being built at several different stages.

The steel frame was still in place from last year’s sculpture, but they repositioned the arms, removed the bow and this year added antlers to create a stag-headed man design.

Below are a few taster photos of the complete sequence, which can be found by following the links at the end of this post to my Facebook or Flickr albums.

As always, feel free to click on any of the images for larger versions.



Starting at the bottom of last year's frame and working upwards


The arms are repositioned


The scaffolding gets higher


The brave photographer scales the scaffolding to see the head being built.


Admiring festival goers give the completed sculpture a sense of scale


One food stall taking full advantage of bonus publicity...


Going up in flames


Because of the direction of the wind, one arm and one antler remain long after the rest has burned away


Links:

The full set of images on Facebook
The full set of images on Flickr

Trevor Leat's website
Alex Rigg's website
Leat-Rigg website

Appearances...

“Oh, I know who you mean,” said Maggie. “He works in the Co-op. Lovely man. Always so friendly and helpful.”

Richard is tall, covered in tattoos and has a spiked up Mohawk. At first sight you might assume he was likely to knife you if you looked at him.

And yet, everyone you talk to who knows him comments on what a lovely guy he is.

In a recent debate with the management at the Co-op store where he works, about whether his Mohawk should be flattened, such was the outcry from local residents (including many of the grannies the management feared might be intimidated by his appearance), they backed down and his spikes were allowed to remain.

I first saw Richard at the Midsummer Music Festival a few weeks ago as the new drummer for the band The Geese, and immediately started thinking he might be interesting to photograph. When a chance encounter presented itself a couple of weeks later, I asked him if he’d be up for it. The upshot of that is I now have a couple of new photos, which are among my all time favourites.

So I thought I should put them up online.

As usual, click on the for larger versions

Qiku at the Mill Sessions

I have been photographing the headline performers each month for “The Mill Sessions” – a mostly acoustic venue at The Mill on the Fleet, in Gatehouse – a town about 15 miles from here (see Mill Sessions Posts).

Last week's headline performers were Qiku (pronounced kee-koo). Usually based in London, these sisters are in fact half Scottish and half Japanese. They were warm friendly and a delight to photograph.

The rain was threatening, but fortunately held off just long enough for me to get the shots.

As usual, feel free to click on any of the photos for larger version


Clare


Rosa


Qiku

They were previously part of a 5 piece band, but are now performing as just the 2 of them, which means there's virtually nothing online about them yet.

So I recorded a couple of their track using the video function on my camera. Almost all of their songs are in English, although the 2nd video here has the one song they sang in Japanese.

When they make it big, you can say you saw them here first.





For more about Qiku, visit their website here:
http://qiku.eu/
or find them on Facebook here:
http://www.facebook.com/qikumusic

Photographing the Midsummer Music Festival

I was invited along to the Midsummer Music Festival in the nearby town of Gatehouse of Fleet to take photos of the bands performing last weekend.

In the studio, I can interact with the sitter, ask them to move this way or that, adjust the lighting and alter the background. But when it comes to musicians on stage, I have no control over any of these things. They move about, the lighting is often poor and constantly changing, the background usually interferes rather than compliments, and when there are more than one of them on stage, they tend to either spread out – leaving huge uninteresting spaces between them – or obscure each other with bits of instruments or entire bodies.

Performance photography, then, is about as far removed from portraiture as you can get while still pointing the camera at people.

In fact it was at the Midsummer Music Festival this time last year, when at I first tried out photographing musicians on stage and discovered these difficulties. Since then I have photographed The Sex Pistols Experience and Cash From Chaos playing live, but I’m hardly a pro in this department.

Still, I have learned a few tricks over the past year. For example, taking photos from closer to the side of the stage will help bunch up spread out musicians. If you move about a bit and use a zoom lens, sometimes you can isolate the head of a singer against a less busy part of the background. And when the lighting is poor you can compensate by increasing the ISO setting on the camera. Unfortunately, this has a side effect of making the photos “noisy”. However, if you drop them into black and white and play with the contrast levels afterwards, the photos can take on a “grainy” quality, reminiscent of old music-press photos, which add mood and atmosphere.

For me, then, it seemed a reasonable exchange. I get a free pass to the event and the chance to develop my skills in this area, and the organisers get some free photos for publicity if I manage to get anything halfway decent.

I had also been asked if I could supply the local paper with any halfway decent photos for post-publicity purposes, which, if they took, would also get my name spread a little further. And while this seemed like a great idea at the time, it ended up interfering with my photography.*

For the first 2 bands on the Friday night – The Ideal Crash and Sweet Relief - I was thinking about camera angles and shots that might make a reasonable newspaper image – nothing too fancy, just something that reports what’s going on.

It was about half way through the third band – a superb group called The Inflictors – that I stopped thinking about the newspaper and started thinking about what kind of images I would like to see. And then everything changed. I started enjoying myself much more, I tuned into the rhythm and movements of the musicians so I could start to predict where they were going to be by the time I clicked the camera, and the quality of the photos improved.

By the time I was onto the 4th act, John Otway, I was in my element and I shot some of my favourite performance photos to date.

The following night I started warming up with the first guy on, Dave Sutherland; I got into my stride with Quirkus and carried that through with The Geese (now a 5 piece band – they were only a 3 piece outfit when I photographed them for their CD cover last year), again, producing photos I was dead chuffed with. However, by the time King Creosote came on stage, my CFS tapped me on the shoulder to remind me it was there and my energy deserted me. I took a few photos, but my heart was no longer in it and I had to leave before the end to ensure I could make the 15-mile drive home in safety.

Below are a handful of my favourites from the evening, but you can find the full set of 50 or so images on my Facebook or Flickr pages.

As usual, click on any of the images for larger versions.



Cameron of The Inflictors


The Inflictors


John Otway with his 2-headed guitar


John Otway


Nicola of Quirkus


Blue of Quirkus


Michelle and Richard of The Geese

Links of interest:

The complete set on
Flickr
Facebook

The Bands
Friday line up
The Ideal Crash
Sweet Relief
The Inflictors
John Otway

Saturday line up
Dave Sutherland
Quirkus
The Geese
King Creosote


* and it turned out the newspaper weren’t interested in the photos I submitted after all, because they were all black and white and the paper prefers colour images

Facing The Weekend

Photo taken by Rogan

Over the next day or two I will start taking down the 130 or so photos stuck to the walls of my studio from last weekend's Spring Fling Open Studio event (see previous post).

It was a success on every level I can think of - in terms of response, feedback and keeping up my energy levels. Before I began, I thought perhaps I might be able to photograph 80 people over the 3 days. Secretly I hoped for a hundred. As I closed the door late on Monday afternoon, I had photographed over 170.

Amazingly, more than half of all the visitors who walked through the door agreed to take part. And the feedback and enthusiasm I received was wonderful.

This is what the first ones faced as they entered my studio (click on any of the images for larger versions):



KEY
1 - PHOTOS - not wanting the first visitors to face a completely empty wall, I figured having a few photos up first might help encourage people to take part. This included one my daughter, Meg; two of my son, Rogan - before and after his dramatic haircut; one of me, taken by Rogan, and 4 photos of friends who helped me 2 days before when I decided to dry-run the system - Graham, Danny, Mark and Ken. Andrew also helped, but the printer started playing up so I didn't get a photo of him up until later.

2 - REFLECTOR - the back of the reflector used to bounce a softer light on to the other side of the face - see below for more details.

3 - COMPUTER - bridging the photo between camera and printer, allowing me to convert the image to black and white and email a copy to anyone who wanted it.

4 - CHAIR - in order to minimise energy expenditure, I spent most of the weekend sitting down.

5 - OLD PRINTER - ready as back-up in case the new one failed. After all the hassle I'd had with it on the dry-run, when I discovered the new printer would only use the black ink cartridge if I lied to it, I thought it was wise to have one in reserve. Fortunately I didn't need it.

6 - STACK OF BLACK INK CARTRIDGES - I had no idea how many I would need. In the end, I only used about half the number I bought.

7 - OLD LAPTOP - used for displaying a slideshow of photos. However, it became clear quite quickly that no one was bothering with it - partly because it was too low down to see, but as there was no room anywhere to put it at a higher level, we didn't use it on Sunday or Monday.

8 - STEPLADDER - used as a seat for my assistant (my wonderful friend Mark, until about 3.30pm on Saturday, and Rogan the rest of the weekend), or for sticking the photos on the higher parts of the wall.

9 - CUPBOARD - stuffed full of miscellany not intended for display, so hidden behind the assistant/stepladder.

10 - TABLE WITH FORMS - so I could use the photos of the people, I had a Model Release Form for each of them to sign. It's a legal grey area, so this covered my butt. It also allowed people to leave their email address if they wanted more information about the book I'm going to create (see further down the page).

11 - VISITOR COMMENTS BOOK - and a bowl of sweets to encourage people to leave nice comments. However, only 16 visitors left a comment in it, and one of those was my daughter.


THE PHOTOGRAPHY AREA



Those who got their photograph taken would sit in the chair with their body facing the window, which acted as the main light source, then they would turn their head back to me and look into the camera. The textured backdrop worked as a background more interesting than white and not as ink-heavy to print as black. The reflector cast a softer light on the other side of their face, lifting it out of the shadows.

This set up allowed me to be at the right height to photograph them while sitting in my chair, and it removed the need for lights, which would have taken up more room and run the risk of getting knocked over, or bulbs burning out.

It was all about trying to keep things as simple as possible.

Below are a couple of photos of the studio after the weekend, with all the photos on the walls.





The exhibition was intereactive and grew as the weekend progressed. At 5.30pm on Monday, it was all over. However, this is not the end.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be putting all the images into a book called "Facing The Weekend", which I'll be publishing on Blurb.com for anyone who's interested. More on that when it's complete.

Most of my energy lately has been taken up with preparation for this coming weekend’s Spring Fling Open Studio Event

For 3 days (28th-30th May), along with more than 80 other artists and makers across SW Scotland, I will be opening my doors to visitors.

To make a more interactive event out of it, I will be taking photos of anyone interested, printing them out and pinning them to the wall. As the weekend progresses, the walls of my studio should steadily fill up with images of the visitors.

In order to survive 3 days of intensive interaction, I am trying to create a system to run as smoothly and efficiently as possible – from getting people to sign a model release form (so I can use the images in a book of the event later), through to sitting and posing, taking the photo, printing it, emailing it to anyone who wants a copy and pinning it to the wall. All this needs to be done within a few minutes per person.

If, for example, I take 15 minutes per person, then I can only do a maximum of 4 per hour, even at the busiest times. What I want to do is streamline it so I can get up to 10 per hour. Not every hour of the weekend will be packed, but going from previous experiences of Maggie opening up for Spring Fling, at it’s busiest, you can have up to 40 people or more in an hour poking their heads into the studio, and I want to miss as few people as possible.

My biggest hair-pulling frustration at the moment is the printer. I bought a new one especially for the event. It even has a wi-fi option so I don’t have to connect cables to it. However, for some bizarre reason it won’t print black and white photos using the black ink cartridge only – it insists on using some of the colour inks too (thereby increasing the ink cost). It also only has one photo-printing setting – highest resolution, maximum ink and soooo slow to print an A4 sheet (approx 30cm x 21cm).

Hewlett Packard – you suck!

The style of portrait I’m going to shoot will just be head and shoulders. A light background doesn’t go with the mood I’m want to create with the images, so my original plan was to use a black backdrop. However, given the ink problems in particular, a completely black background would have me changing the cartridges in the printer every 5 photos.

I figured a textured background would be better and could add an extra level of interest, so yesterday Maggie and I went in search of some material. Unfortunately, almost every material available had a regular pattern and I wanted something a bit more random.

Luckily Maggie spotted one my eyes had skimmed right over. The reason I hadn’t registered it was because it was purple – not a colour I would use in a colour portrait. However, as Maggie pointed out, I’m doing black and white portraits, so the colour is irrelevant.

Below is a test shot I took of my son, Rogan, using the set up I plan on using throughout the weekend.


Original with dodgy colour scheme


Cropped and converted to black and white

If you’re in the region this weekend, do come along and get your photo added to the wall.


View Larger Map

Cash From Chaos

When my son, Rogan, and I went to the Scottish Tattoo Convention in Edinburgh 6 weeks ago, we got in courtesy of Skid, the lead singer in the punk band, Cash From Chaos.

We first met Skid and his band last November at the Sex Pistols Experience gig in Bathgate. They were playing again at the Tattoo Convention, so I took a few photos.

The light was low which meant I had to have a high ISO setting. What that means, for those who don’t know, is it allows you to take photos is lower light without so much blurring of movement, but the downside is the images get “grainier”.

For photographing a punk band, however, this isn’t such a handicap, as it just makes the images look a bit grungier and more fitting.

Below are a few photos – the rest can be found in my Flickr and Facebook pages


Skid


The Band


Lizzie the drummer


When someone with big hair stands in front...


A wide variety of audience members

As always, feel free to click on any of the images for a larger version

Links:
The full set on Facebook
The full set on Flickr
Cash From Chaos website

Farino at The Mill Sessions

The 4th of the Mill Sessions this year took place on Wednesday, and this time featured accoustic guitar duo, "Farino".

As with previous sessions (see Sean Taylor, Beth Fouracre and Becc Sanderson & Graeme Stephen), I was given time to get some photos of them before the gig started.

Unlike previous sessions, however, the seasons have moved on, and it is now light in the early evenings. Additionally, with The Mill on the Fleet open again for the tourist season, the empty gallery space I used for the last 3 photo sessions is no longer available.

So I turned up early to try and find another possible area. After searching inside and out, I was directed to a closed off, derelict part of the complex, which had plenty of space and light.


Guitar duo, Farino

There was also a great old weathered area of wall that added a wonderful texture in the background for close-up portraits


Graeme Wrightson


John Shepherd


Farino

When we were heading back over to the main building, I realised we were in the "golden hour" where photography is concerned - when the sun is low in the sky, giving everything a golden hue.


Sunlit



Like last time with Becc Sanderson, I recorded one of their songs on my camera. It was a close run thing - the memory card would have run out if it had gone on for another 15 seconds.



If for any reason the video isn't showing above, you might need to click on this link:
http://youtu.be/svw-f0se0LI


I should also mention the support act, warming up and getting everyone in the mood, was talented local singer-songwriter Marcus S Wright, and I also managed to squeeze a quick photo session in with him too.


Marcus S Wright

The room was packed, and the atmosphere and playing were superb. It was a great evening.

You can hear more of Farino's music on their MySpace page, here
And Marcus's music can be found on his MySpace page, here

Scottish Tattoo Convention 2011 at the Edinburgh Corn Exchange

When Skid (the lead singer from Cash From Chaos) asked if I’d be interested in attending the Scottish Tattoo Convention in Edinburgh, I knew it was too good an opportunity to miss.

As a portrait photographer, I love faces and the way people inhabit them, so to get the chance to go to a place where many would also be highly decorated with tattoos, piercings and more unusual hairstyles, was a dream.

Of course I had to overcome an extreme reluctance to ask complete strangers if they would mind having their photo taken – normally people come to me, not the other way round – but as it turned out, not a single person refused or even seemed the slightest bit irritated.

The experience was about as far removed from normal portrait photography, as it was possible to get.

Usually when I photograph someone, I spend time with them to establish a rapport and trust. I arrange the background so it’s uncluttered, and the lighting to help generate the mood I’m after. I take many shots, showing them as I go, so we can work together towards achieving an image we are both going to be really happy with.

At the Tattoo Convention, however, I could do none of these things. The backgrounds were busy from any direction; the lighting was very low and mostly coming from straight above, so cast dark shadows over the eyes; and I only had 30 seconds to a minute with them to try and get something worthwhile.

Because I handed a business card to nearly everyone I photographed, and told them if they contacted me I would send them a copy of the photo, it meant the challenge was immense.

I have spent most of the past week working on the best of the photos, making adjustments to compensate for the poor lighting and background conditions.

Finally I have a collection I’m ok about displaying. Below are a small handful. The rest can be found on my Flickr Account, or on my Facebook Photography page

As always, you can click on the images for larger versions


David - the very first person I asked to photograph


This guy was getting an eagle head tattooed on his neck


Laura had problems keeping a straight face


Originally from Borneo, this guy does traditional tattooing by hand - not an electrical appliance in sight. A much slower process and certainly not for faint hearted


Sakura's "horns" are silican implants. Despite appearances, she was a very warm and friendly person to chat to


Nonchalant expression. To look at her you might be forgiven for thinking she was being drawn on in felt pen rather than having a needle jabbed thousands of times into her thigh.