Monday, 28 September 2015

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.

























Monday, 21 September 2015

Travels with my Leica

Upstairs is out of bounds for a few days whilst paint dries and we're all playing musical rooms, moving mattresses and boxes along a room at a time.

I haven't had a chance to get out the tripod and Monochrom today, (instead my arms are covered in white gloss) but I did grab an hour after tea to look through some earlier shoots to see if I had missed anything...














Monday, 14 September 2015

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









Sunday, 6 September 2015

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


Monday, 31 August 2015

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.







Monday, 24 August 2015

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