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

Metropolis

Ever in the search of something new to try I thought I'd attach my Macro lens and a 1.5 converter to the Monochrom today and try a bit more shooting blind.

A few problems presented themselves fairly early on in the process. Shooting blind is hard. Shooting blind incredibly close up is even harder.

I did however learn that a bag of liquorice all sorts makes a good bean bag support for the Monochrom.


Although the results weren't perfect 'as is', many of the pictures had graphic white reflections from the table lamp I'd been using and these intrigued me. Pushing blacks, whites, and playing with contrast I imported them into Photoshop and layered them onto a black background.

A bit of flipping, turning and manipulating later and abstract themes of chaotic cities started to emerge. Patterns of lights made me imagine sky rises, smog, rain and speeding cars. And thus, the Metropolis cityscapes began to take shape and although I was feeling a bit 'Meh' to begin with, once the pictures had spoken to me and I had found my inspiration and direction I ended up rather liking the experimental results.


Metropolis - Futurescapes

Copyright: Clayton Bastiani

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