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 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.

Never enough time

I could have done with more time today, but there's lots to do and it's got little to do with photography.

Copyright: Clayton Bastiani



The pointing finger

The frustration of too little time

Green Badgers and the Headless Man

When I was a child I belonged to the local cub scout group and as part of our activities we went camping a lot. In those times before we fell asleep we would either play space battles on the inside of the tent with our torches or frighten ourselves with ghost stories - the most popular of which were tales of the giant Green Badger (I kid you not), and the Headless Man (who seemed to only haunt the toilet block making us scare for our lives if we needed the loo in the middle of the night).






Influences:

Apart from watching R.W.Paul's 'The Motorist' I've made a little list of films and clips to look through over the next weeks:

A Page of Madness
The Cabinet of Dr Caligari
The Seventh Seal
and Nosferatu







The Headless Man

Whack-A-Mole

Ghostly Capers

The Crash

Disa-Rea-Ppearing Act

Box-Portation

The Magician

I love taking pictures and to be honest if I haven't for a few days I can feel the grumpiness kicking in. Like many things though there are times when we simply lose our mojo for a while and enthusiasm, passion and creative energies appear to take a dive.

I'm rather liking my Monochrom Mondays Project. It's giving me the chance to be a bit silly, experimental and have some fun. At the end of the day it's helping me to reconnect with photography and remind me of what a wonderful expressive medium it is and why I love it so much.

The Magician

Copyright: Clayton Bastiani

Influences:

Film: I'm still obsessing a bit about early camera / film trickery. This week I re-watched The Mirror Sequence from Jean Cocteau's Blood of a Poet.

The Student Becomes The Master GIF

I had some issues trying to attach a video of the sequence to The Student Becomes The Master, so I thought I would try again at making a GIF and upload that here instead.

The Student Becomes The Master

In a few weeks time my son will start studying GCSE photography. In two years time he will have more qualifications in photography than I will.

For this week's post I wanted to portray the student overtaking the master and what better way to do it then messing about in the spare room once again and pretending to be characters from Star Wars?

I really must stop taking pictures upstairs and start concentrating on decorating.

Not just yet though.

A sequence of 40 pictures taken with the Monochrom, played about with in Bridge and Silver Efex and then several hours applying glowing lightsabers to each shot using very simple Photoshop techniques. 

I've made a short video of this sequence but I am having difficulty attaching it to this blog post.

Please feel free to check it out over at YouTube...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcWyIFTQjH8

Influences:

Real Life:

A conversation with Paride, who suggested (after racking his brain about video                   production) that I should experiment and have some fun.

Converastions with Tom and Debbie about science fiction films and wanting to own lightsabers.

Being a child in the 70s, running around the playground with my mates acting out space battles and wishing our parents had been cool enough to call us Luke or Han

College trips to London and gravitating towards the MOMI (Museum of Moving Image)

Films:

George Lucas' Star Wars

Fritz Lang's Metropolis (I really need to watch this again soon)

Animators:

The Brothers Quay

Photographers:

Eadweard Muybridge

The Student Becomes The Master

Copyright: Clayton Bastiani