Professor Eyeball and friends

I've spent the last couple of days slowly scanning some of my son's drawings from when he was younger (a job I've been meaning to do for quite some time). In the back of my mind I've been trying to think what to do today for this project (I'm more than aware that I'm turning into the rabbit from Wonderland and struggling to catch up with myself sometimes).

And then I realised the answer was literally staring me in the face, Why not base this week's instalment on his artwork?

After a quick trip to the local pound store to get an assortment of weapons, I headed upstairs. It's a beautiful day today so I though 'to heck with it' and opened the curtains wide to let the daylight in.
Then I began my imaginary battles with Professor Eyeball and his villainous friends...


Dark Dino

Fencer

Dark Knight

Robo Square

Robot Guard

Jaw-O-Saurus

Saw Bot

Jammy Dodger's Aunt

Professor Eyeball

Into the Deep

Today's plan was to make a fantasy inspired fairy picture, but that all went out the window when I started looking for some dragonfly pictures I had taken (lesson learnt, be careful how you file your elements. I still can't find the shots), and found some pics of an octopus I had taken for an article written in Black and White Photography Magazine about simple photo-manipulation.

Hey ho. I'll store the fairy idea for now and mull it over for a while. I'm sure it will surface when it's ready.


Into the Deep

Copyright: Clayton Bastiani

Model (Mermaid): Ella Rose Muse

Patterns

The Leica's back. It's all new and shiny again. Taking it out of the box I remembered how I had been too scared to use it for the first few days it was in my possession.

We needed a simple warm up exercise today so time for some straight shots, walking around the house and garden and looking for patterns and textures...



Copyright: Clayton Bastiani

  

Objectivity

I entered five competitions at the end of last year and now all the results have come in. I managed to get winning positions or honourable mentions in three of them. The two where I came nowhere were both competitions for a series of work rather than single images.

I thought the pictures worked well as a set and that they were connected well. With the Lensculture Exposures Award they kindly gave submissions a brief portfolio review. Mine came through last week and was more in depth than I had imagined it would be. The reviewer gave me some good advice which I intend to follow, pointing out how and why some of the pictures worked better together than others. At first I thought 'how can you criticise my baby?' but then I looked at my entries through their eyes and thought they were absolutely right. Why hadn't I seen what they saw? I guess because we tend to judge and criticise our own work and don't always get or take the opportunity for it to be looked at through another's eyes. We approach it through a personal standpoint and lose some of our objectivity.

This project will be a year old in July and in the back of my mind I'm trying to work out what to do with it. A book? An exhibition? More competitions? Having had a second opinion halfway through I'm now starting to contemplate the project as a mass or series of pictures rather than individual attempts each Monday. Some of the work will stay as is, others may get re-treated to bring them together a little more than they already are.

It is never an easy task to seek criticism, but a worthwhile exercise if it is constructive advice.



I have been informed that the Leica is due back to me this week so I can start working on new ideas soon. In the meantime, one more from my mini series about the life of Mr Jones...



Mr Jones was starting to feel nervous and a little hot under the collar. Maybe buying the Fifty Shades box set For Mrs Jones' birthday hadn't been such a wise idea after all.


Copyright: Clayton Bastiani

Let's Dance

It's been a busy half term and plans are afoot for taking lots of pictures over the next few days so I think I'll be keeping busy for a while longer.

In the meantime the camera's still away in Germany so a chance to play some more with my pseudonym Mr Jones...


Mrs Jones loved to dance and was surprisingly light on her feet

Copyright: Clayton Bastiani
 

 

Mr and Mrs Jones always looked forward to Date Night

You may remember that I recently entered a nude self portrait into a photographic competition. Well, the results are in... I only went and got Silver in the Men Nude category. (As well as a First in the Academic Nude category and Second place overall in the competition)!!

Please visit www.photoshootawards.com to see the winning entries and this year's catalogue. A superb collection of nude photography.


I like entering competitions. It can be scary to put your work out there in front of professionals from related industries, but I don't think the fear should put you off. Sometimes your work gets nowhere - maybe it just wasn't suitable for that particular competition. Sometimes your pictures get noticed and put into the finalists selection or even better, given placements above being short-listed. It's a very good feeling knowing that someone else liked your work and thought it worthy to put forward as a nominee or finalist.

We often work in isolation (unless we're acting as part of a team), for the past year I've been working in the cupboard under the stairs. When I was at college we had peers and tutors to help critique our work, but then we had to get used to assessing our own performance. This is good up to a certain point and if you're doing something you love then you must find a way to keep doing it (within legal restrictions of course), but by entering a competition you get the chance to ask "How am I doing? Am I any good?" or "Hey, here's some crazy stuff I've been working on and I want a second opinion."

We're never going to agree wholly with the jurors' choices, Some competitions are simply not for me and I know (after failed attempts to prove this otherwise) that my work will fail in some and succeed in others.

If you buy a book of a photographer's work it will often have a bio at the back and competitions are a decent way to legitimise our work and start creating a bio of our own.

Every now and then you might even get a first or a second place. (Or win something awesome like the Leica M Monochrom this blog is based around).

Here I am working in a small town on a small island in a small cupboard under the stairs and every now and again I catch myself having a little smile at some of the results on my competition bio.




Anyways, back to self portraits... I think I've found a comfortable way of being in front of the camera. More Negative Space Man than Invisible Man, it's time for another outing with Mr Jones whilst the Leica is off in Germany for a service.

As it was Valentine's Day last weekend I thought it only right that we saw the romantic side of Mr Jones today...



Mr and Mrs Jones always looked forward to Date Night

Copyright: Clayton Bastiani

Facing the Mirror

I've used this project as an opportunity to try my hand the other side of the camera. Apart from problems relating to focus and composition there's also the issue of having to face what you look like. Although I'm working on my six pack with my new year's resolution to get fitter I know full well that I'm not classically handsome and I don't find it easy looking at pictures of myself in much the same way as I find it difficult hearing my voice on answer phones.

Last week I worked on a nude self portrait and sent it into a competition. I've submitted nudes before to various photography competitions, but that's fine, they're not me, I can look at and relate to the picture with a certain amount of distance as it's not my body on display. Now there's one of me - a middle aged, slightly over weight and out of shape man confronting himself and coming to accept his imperfections about to be considered in a competition. A frightening thought, though strangely liberating.

I feel it's good for me to attempt self portraits from time to time as it means I have to lower my guard a little and not take myself too seriously. Maybe, at this rate, you might even catch me on a dance floor and not giving two hoots about what people think of my dancing! Who knows?

Storytelling

A lot of my commercial pictures end up being used on book covers around the world. I'm not always working to a brief so I have to guess a final use for the picture and consider how it might suit different genres of writing, whether it be adult fiction, teenage fiction, crime, non fiction etc...

Although the photograph I take represents a single moment in time it's my job to create enough information to let the viewer complete the story - this may or may not be how I personally would have continued the scene but it is always interesting to see your work applied to somebody else's imagination.

It doesn't matter what subject we choose to photograph, be it weddings, fine art, sport, the yearly school photo... as photographers we are often immersed in telling stories.




Once upon a time...

Copyright: Clayton Bastiani

Mirror Bride

I thought about giving this project a miss today what with it being the Christmas holidays and all that, but I needed to burn a few extra calories so I packed a bag of fancy dress and props to accompany myself and Tigerbelle Model on a hike down to the beach.


Mirror Bride

Copyright: Clayton Bastiani
Model: Tigerbelle

The Christmas Tree

It's December tomorrow. I'm not sure where this year has gone and I'm sure time moves quicker the older you get.

I keep thinking about why I'm making GIFs and I just cannot think of an arty-farty long winded answer. They take a bit of patience to create, but they're fun to do and I can't stop looking at them once they're finished.

Set to repeat forever I suppose they'll exist until the internet stops... 

The Christmas Tree

Copyright: Clayton Bastiani

The Soul Departs

On Friday I attended the award evening for this year's BPOTY competition. It was an honour to be included in the judging process and although my social awkwardness kicks in amongst large crowds I thoroughly enjoyed the private view. Congratulations to all the winners this year. Very well deserved.



And before you know it, we're back to Monday. (This year is going frighteningly fast).



It's good to make mistakes, so long as you learn from them. This morning I made loads of them and by having to go back and correct them I learnt lots. I'm rather enjoying making GIFs and hopefully will continue to make them. They're relatively simple, fun, and offer a way of working in sequential imagery, allowing you to convey a passage of a story.

I don't always set out to make ghostly pieces, but when playing with double exposures the paranormal becomes an excellent subject to work with.


The Soul Departs

Copyright: Clayton Bastiani

The War

I initially had a light hearted idea in mind for today, but when I was going through items to photograph I came across my collection of measuring instruments. I looked at the calipers over and over again thinking they resembled soldiers with guns and in light of last weekend's events and the general inability for our species to co-exist in peace and harmony I thought I'd drag out the lightbox and make a picture about war instead.


Influences: Loosely inspired by the work of John Heartfield.



The War

Copyright: Clayton Bastiani

The Magician - Part Two

So you get these ideas in your head and you think 'you know what? I think I'll try that next Monday'.
And then you start to try and make your idea, only your initial idea won't work and you need to try a few things before it starts to come together. Then it's on your computer and again you're not quite sure how to do it so you go forwards and backwards all afternoon working out the logistics. And the clock keeps ticking 'cos your Mum's coming round for tea and you've got to get this finished by the end of today as it's a Monday project, right? and all work needs to be finished and submitted by midnight.

You also realise by mid afternoon that you don't like cutting out hula hoops! Why did you choose a hula hoop? Crazy fool. Must put aside some time to practise cutting circles.



So anyway.

A thick strip of wood, a brave model and some guesswork at where she was once that bit was sorted and as if by magic you have...





The Magician - Part Two


Copyright: Clayton Bastiani
Model: Tigerbelle

When at first you don't succeed...

I spent this morning with tiny torches strapped to me fingers, practising at light drawing and continuing from last week's attempts. Although my methods worked I just wasn't very keen on the results. It's very frustrating when this happens but it's par for the course.

Not wanting to finish today empty handed I picked a couple of the better shots and played with them, pushing buttons and sliders to see how they would affect the picture.

It's quite hard to let go completely - you're constantly fighting all the voices in your head telling you that a photograph needs to be this or that. It's quite therapeutic though and comes highly recommended :)



Influences:

The experimental work of Brassai (Transmutations) which I saw in Germany about twenty years ago and had a huge impact on my photography at the time.





Transmuted Finger Lights

Copyright: Clayton Bastiani

The Ghost of Eleanor-Mae

The ghost of Eleanor-Mae
Wanders the earth
Both night and day
Her killer to haunt
Forever more
Until his death
Doth close the door





Influences:

Early spiritual photography. Check out The American Museum of Photography for some examples or check out the book. Photography and the Spirit by John Harvey (Reaktion Books, ISBN  978-1861893246).

BBC's crime drama New Tricks



The Ghost of Eleanor-Mae

Shooting Blind

I thought my Man Flu had passed but it decided to freshen up today.

Feeling a little under par I decided to pass the reigns over to the Monochrom and let it do most of the work for me. Using a Nikon 85mm lens, I decided to shoot blind - only making adjustments to ISO and aperture (generally playing with very shallow depth of field) and using the distance reader on the lens to establish focal points. I forced myself to stop looking through the viewfinder and tried my best not to check all the results on the display screen for focus and composition.

I then set about walking around the garden in a dream-like state and pointed the camera in the general direction of anything that caught my eye. I had almost no idea as to what the end results would look like and couldn't wait to get them downloaded and see the outcome.



Shooting Blind...

Towards the end of the experiment I thought I'd shoot blind with the Bulb setting and whilst standing still and pointing the camera I gently span the distance reader from its closest point to infinity, releasing the trigger once I'd gone through all the focal distances.

Spellbound

I've always liked fantasy and science fiction films and artwork. I used to annoy my Dad every evening - he wanted to watch the news and I wanted to watch an old back and white sci fi film on the other channel.

Throughout the year I love looking through ImagineFX magazine and at Christmas I always ask for a copy of the latest Spectrum Fantastic Art Book , pouring through awesome illustrations until the holidays are over.

I wish I was better at drawing and painting (I can doodle an idea, but it comes accompanied with writing to explain what it is I've drawn). Corel recently brought out a Photoshop plugin called Particleshop and since I'm getting into fantasy photography after a little break I thought I'd give it a go on this week's Monochrom image.

Stories come into your mind when you're working on pictures like these. In this case I started to imagine a witch out gathering ingredients for her spells. 

Wisps...

Model: Helen Diaz

Copyright: Clayton Bastiani

Influences: Now the summer's ended Christmas is in the pipeline. The latest copies of Game of Thrones and Spectrum Fantastic Art and I'll be a happy man.

Light drawing

About a year ago I made friends with a chap down here on The Island who had started up a studio nearby (Studio2). It's been a long time since I used studio lighting, I tend to use natural light wherever possible. I would never profess to being an expert at using flash, but I'm slowly getting better and after a period of closure the studio will soon be open and I'll get to practise again. 

I've found over the last year that I tend to create small projects. It helps to give me a sense of purpose and direction and it's a good way to create an environment whereby you can explore creative options. Feeling a bit intimidated by the whole studio set up I started bringing alternative lights to the shoot, handing models lights and torches that are easily found in hardware stores. Once the model has the lights in their hands, the studio lights get turned off and over the course of the shoot we work out a direction and see what we can come up with. 

The Monochrom Project has let me both sides of the camera so I thought it about time I picked up the torch and had a go myself...

Influences:

Decorating, decorating, decorating, trying to get some bedrooms up together before Christmas. After so much painting I thought it apt that I pick up the torch and do a bit of light painting.

Film: The Green Mile, and the bursts of energy given out by John Cofey when he performs his miracles.