And finally……

The trumpets have sounded….the confetti has fallen…..the clapping has ended…..

No, I’m not talking about the EU Referendum, although I could fill several column inches, I’m talking about opening night to our end of year exhibition entitled “Iungent Nos” (for those currently scratching their heads, it means ‘We Unite’ in Latin).

It was a great success and after putting in the hard work and stress to put it together, as a group we were extremely proud and elated that it was triumphant. It also means that I can finally let you, my ever faithful subscribers (love to your faces), see the piece that I have been working on for my final major project.

So here it is. It is titled ‘I Cannot Be By Myself’

It is the story of Anna, who since she was a young girl claims to have been ‘visited’ by something not of this Earth. She has never told anyone of these incidents but now she is older, they seem to happening more and more frequently. She also knows that at some point, she will have to tell those closest to her because she knows that one day soon, she will be taken and may never return. Tonight may just be that night.

The piece is influenced by my appreciation and love of the work of Gregory Crewdson which I have mentioned before. As you may know, my main passion is street photography and for me, there is no better feeling than to out on the streets capturing real, unrehearsed reactions. However, throughout this process, I have learnt to both appreciate and respect other photographers and other genres and one of those photographers is Crewdson. His style is of course, polls apart from the instant reaction of street photography – some of his images taking 3 or more days to complete – but there is an inherent beauty and sense of total control in his pictures that immediately draws me in. It is for this reason that I wanted to try to make a picture, in his style, for my final piece.

I hope you like it as much as I enjoyed making it.

Now onwards to the unknown……(“I thought you said this wasn’t about Brexit!!!!”)

It’s Victory for Harrison!

 

V FOR VICTORY !!!

They’ve all done it and we have admired them for it ! Winston Churchill…..Lewis Hamilton… John Lennon…Mahmoud Ahmadinejad….(?)

Ok maybe not the last one….

This week my friends, I can finally claim victory! My final piece for my college HND is finished, has been edited in Photoshop and Aperture and, as they say in Hollywood, in the can (not the can as in toilet, although the first few attempts have ended up there.)

And before you go scrolling to the bottom hoping to see it, well, I’m sorry to disappoint as you won’t find it there. Or indeed anywhere else on the blog. Not just yet anyway. I will put it on here after the final show has taken place, so be patient !

To say it has been a tough journey may be somewhat of an understatement. For those who regularly follow this blog (thank you, I love your faces), you may have read in previous blog posts that getting to this stage has been “eventful” to say the least. From starting out at the planning stage it was going to be an epic scene with forests and spotlights and American cars and great Hollywood lighting but it soon resulted in me having to come down from my lofty perch and the fantasy land that I live in most of the time (it’s great there by the way, you should stop by sometime), to the stark reality of a somewhat smaller scale scene with one camera, no lights, a very local location and my lovely neighbour as my model. Not quite Crewdson, but hey – we all have to start somewhere.

And here we are. I have a final image. I must say that I am very pleased with what I have. I find it very easy to be self-critical – name one photographer that isn’t – and throughout this project have constantly questioned myself; Is this the right idea? Have I chose the right topic? Am I good enough to do this? Should I have stuck with street photography? Why am I talking to myself……?

I think I have also learnt a lot about this type of photography too. It has certainly made me more appreciative of Crewdson. Sure – you could argue that he has an army of people to set up his locations for him and do his lighting etc. but he still has to have the initial idea, he has to perceive the first vision in his head of what he wants to portray. It may be why he is so meticulous when he on set. He know exactly to the millimetre how something should look because he has already seen it in his vision of the scene.

Going into my shoot, I had a vision of what I wanted my picture to look like and now, seeing the final version, it’s 99% spot on (it would have 100% but I hadn’t factored for a security light in the car park being brighter than the sun!). Getting to use a Hasselblad medium format camera was a blessing too. The picture quality is beyond expectation. (I’ll happily take a free one Hasselblad in return for this free advertising!)

Would I do this type of picture again? Absolutely. Definitely. In a New York minute. That’s not to say I would cheat on my first love of course! My first love will always be street photography but there is an overwhelming sense of achievement when working in this type of environment. Street photography gives you that hit of adrenalin when you are surrounded by people and the everyday but working on a landscape piece such as this is almost intoxicating. You have a this enormous blank canvas to work with and you control (almost) everything within it. I think I can understand why artists such as Crewdson and Jeff Wall et al. relish working with this form of photography. Every single item in the viewfinder is within your control. It is a mixture of still life and landscape photography coming together to make something truly incredible. What I wouldn’t give to be on set to see Crewdson at work…..

All I have to do is find someone with his mobile phone number….

Anyone?

Sometimes, it’s the small victories that count…

“O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention…”

So, I’m in like, what it is now? Week 130 of my final major project? (it hasn’t been 130 weeks – it just feels like that) and I can report a small victory of sorts. After many test shots and endless editing attempts, I think I am finally getting close to something resembling what I want to present at the end of this marathon.

I can vaguely remember saying at the start of this project that I wanted to make a picture in the style of Crewdson. Of course, it can never be on his level but as I said in my last blog post, I don’t have his budget. But nevertheless, given what I had to hand, last night, I went out and shot a few pictures and after rinsing them under the cool waters of various editing packages, I think I’m finally getting somewhere. So here it is –

Now let me be clear that this is a TEST SHOT….ok? It is nowhere near being the end result. For a start, the final picture will have a woman in it !

But as the title of this blog suggests, I see this as a small victory. A small victory in the ongoing battle that is this final major project. But I shall succeed.

“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.”

Finally, the penny has dropped…

There is something to be said for ambition.

Some of the most fantastic things in this world have happened because of ambition.

But sometimes, you have to admit that some things that you want to achieve cannot happen merely by ambition alone.

So the penny has finally dropped. And over the past few days, I have had to face that reality. At the outset of my final major college project, I had a plan. This plan was epic in its scale. Massive in its concept. Ambitious in its execution. But sadly, I have had to realise that because of a number of factors, my plan has now had to be scaled back to something more manageable; something you might call a little less ambitious.

As I mentioned in previous posts, my final picture is a landscape in the style of Gregory Crewdson. The final picture will still have a “Crewdson-esque” style to it – just not shot on the scale that I originally wanted. But do you know something? That’s ok with me. Of course, if I had a spare $20,000 lying around then sure, I’d hire a set designer and director of photography and shoot the picture on large format. But I don’t have that kind of cash. Believe me – I’ve checked down the back of the sofa and in those old shoe boxes in the attic and there ain’t nothin’ there!

During the planning for this picture I have come to realise that you can’t always get what you want. (And if you could, where would you put it?) Sometimes photography is about compromise and this project has taught me more about that than I was prepared to learn. When I’m out shooting street photography, if I don’t capture a certain image, I will nearly always have the chance to get another image with another person.

With this project it has been quite frustrating not being able to find a certain location or afford to hire a particular piece of equipment etc. but it has made me think about how these images are shot. And it has also given me a new-found appreciation for those photographers who work tirelessly to create such fantastic imagery. I love Gregory Crewdson’s work and am continually amazed at the sumptuous beauty and meticulous detail of his pictures.

I just hope that when it comes to shooting my picture, I can produce the image I want.

Gather around everyone…..time to channel my “inner Crewdson”…..

 

 

 

“Where Is Everybody?”

Look around you.

I’m not just talking about those who are nearest and dearest. Look further. Beyond your street. Beyond your town. Beyond your city, beyond your country and even beyond your world.

Where is everybody?

Doesn’t it seem odd that given all that space out there that it’s just us? Is there obvious proof that we could be alone in the Galaxy?

Now before you start thinking I’ve donned a tin foil hat and began x-raying all of my mail before opening it, I haven’t. And neither have I stumbled upon some top-secret classified information or just got back from a week’s vacation at “Area 51”.

I’m talking about something called Fermi’s Paradox. And it is a small part of what is forming my HND final major project at Solihull College. I’ll get onto this later…

For my project, I am creating a landscape piece inspired by the works of Gregory Crewdson and Jeff Wall. With Crewdson, his images can often be described as somewhat melancholic or even disturbing with the blurring of the boundaries between fiction and reality. This is thanks in no small part to the artist’s painstaking preparation of elaborate sets, meticulous lighting, and strong casting.

Jeff Wall is equally as meticulous in his planning and executing of his photography. In a recent interview with The Guardian, Wall described his work as “cinematographic” re-creations of everyday moments he has witnessed, but did not photograph at the time. “To not photograph,” he says, “gives a certain freedom to then re-create or reshape what I saw.”

By now you are probably wondering what all this has to do with being alone in the galaxy? Well, there is another one of Crewdson’s images that represents not only that theme but also the idea of creating something on a large-scale and something totally out of my realm of expertise. It is this image –

Crewdson gave this image no title but I think you can take two meanings from it. It could either be a helicopter shining a spotlight down onto this person (perfectly acceptable explanation), or it could be something else. Something more unexplainable. Maybe something extraterrestrial. Whilst the first possible meaning is fine, I don’t think it has much of a story there so naturally, I have gone with the second possible meaning and it is here where my FMP is going….

So – Fermi’s Paradox. What is it?

The Fermi Paradox seeks to answer the question of where the aliens are. Given that our star and Earth are part of a young planetary system compared to the rest of the universe — and that interstellar travel might be fairly easy to achieve — the theory says that Earth should have been visited by aliens already.

So with the Crewdson and Wall imagery in my head, swirling around like a Texas tornado and then added to that the idea of the Fermi Paradox, a plan started to form and the picture became just that little bit clearer.

The picture would have to be more than just a picture. I would have to create a back story, a narrative as to why the scene you will see is happening. I will need to explain how and why people claim to be abducted and how often, if you are to have any understanding of what’s happening here. And most importantly, who it is happening to. You will need to know that the person in my picture has experienced this type of thing before and you will know that she is not afraid this time.

Below is just a mock up and my first attempt but hopefully, when you see the final image, you will understand why she cannot be by herself…

The Spying Game

I know what you’re thinking…what’s that new tab at the top of Wayne’s page?….there’s the ‘Home’ tab…the ‘About’ tab….the ‘Image Gallery’….and…oh…what’s this? ‘The Spying Game’? Tell me more Wayne…

Ok then..I will. And thank you for your curiosity.

I have decided rather than to just blog this in the usual place, I feel the work I have put into this project deserves its own special place on my blog rather than get lost in amongst the other posts. The post is in four parts so it’s easily digestible. Like a lovely cake. You want it all but would feel like a pig eating it all at once.

I guess I should tell you what it is…

As you may have already seen in the last post, over the summer, I was given a project to do called ‘Live On Location’ – the first part of which was about Witley Court. The second part of the project was about creating your own brief for a fictitious client and being able to incorporate location work into it. It was to be totally self-directed and created independently of any tutor guidance. So with that in mind, I started to think about what I wanted to do and most importantly where I wanted to go.

At this point, I could have totally taken the easy route and just done some street photography but I chose not to. Instead, I wanted to do something that would challenge me, broaden my photography skills and maybe even teach myself something. I’d had an idea about going back to the fantastic Bletchley Park near Milton Keynes. I’d been there before and for those of you who don’t know what Bletchley Park is, it is the former headquarters of the British team of codebreakers that during World War II, cracked the German Enigma codes which some suggest, shortened the war by two years. It is probably more recognised these days, thanks to the recent movie “The Imitation Game” as being the place where a certain Mr. Alan Turing worked.

So now I had my location. But somehow it didn’t seem enough. The whole thing was missing something. After some deliberation, I decided that if I broadened the scope of this project and looked at it from an intelligence point of view, it might just give me something to work on. I was thinking at this stage about other buildings that may feature and almost immediately thought of the SIS building in London. The SIS building in Vauxhall, London is home to MI6 and if you haven’t seen it before, it is a very striking looking building on the banks of the Thames. Some might say completely the opposite type of building a ‘secret service’ should have as it is nothing of the sort!

Now I had my second location. But I now had a new problem. How could I link them together? The most obvious link was of course their British Intelligence roots but this wasn’t as straight forward as it sounds. The natural path from Bletchley Park to MI6 has to flow through G.C.H.Q as this was the place where many of Bletchley’s workers ended up after the war had ended. So I had to go to Cheltenham where G.C.H.Q is based and that, I assumed, would throw up a whole new set of problems.

From G.C.H.Q, I could then come to London and to M.I.6 but if I was coming to London, I had to include M.I.5, the U.K’s other security service. So I needed to build into my schedule a stop at Thames House, the home of M.I.5. I now had all of my locations for this project. I had the link that bound them all together. All I had to do now was to try to convince Britain’s top secret intelligence agencies to let me photograph them.

This was going to be interesting…

“Meanwhile…at stately Wayne Manor….

….Wayne contemplates how to write this blog entry…”

Hello chums! Long time, no update. Apologies for that. But I’m back and with a new post. And this post is all about leftovers. Not of the food kind (mmm…food….) but of the photographic kind. I’ll explain…

At the end of my last college term, we were given a project about location photography and the highs and lows, the pitfalls and successes of shooting on location. One of the first locations was the rather grand building you see above. Sadly not Wayne Manor – however when those lottery numbers come up, you can be sure I’ll be writing a cheque for some palatial pile of bricks with numerous bedrooms and a marble bathroom with a heated toilet seat!

The building above is Witley Court, built in 1655 by Thomas Foley and later home to the Earl of Dudley. It’s current and rather dilapidated state is thanks to a fire in 1937 that started in the bakery of the house.

At the time of the fire, the owner of the house at the time, Sir Herbert Smith, only kept a skeleton staff and they heroically tried to put out the fire using a pump that was connected to the grand fountain.

However, this did not work as the pump had not been maintained for quite some time. The fire gutted only one wing of the house but the insurance company declined the claim to cover for the damage so Sir Herbert had to sell the property.

However, in its current state, the estate was not worth as much as Sir Herbert thought it was so it was divided up and sold in various lots. The house was gutted and left an empty shell. Everything of any value from Witley Court, including the marble chimney-pieces, the heavy plate-glass from the conservatory, statues that had adorned the gardens, and all the roof materials, were sold off. Dangerously close to demolition, a guardianship order was imposed on the estate in 1972 and, since 1984, the estate has been in the care of English Heritage.

They embarked on plans for restoration of the property with one of the first items being the Perseus & Andromeda fountain that still stands & this has now been restored to full working order.

Also in the grounds of the estate, but not managed by English Heritage, is Great Witley Church which survived the fire and is now fully restored. The church sits on the northwest corner of the house and is considered to be one of the finest Italian Baroque churches in Britain.

As for me, this location exercise was not only to get used to working on location but also to get shots of the house and grounds for use in a later stage of the location photography brief – to make English Heritage more attractive to a younger audience. Apart from pushing the social media angle – who wouldn’t love a tweet or a poke from a burnt out ruin? – I thought that I should look at other options and from researching stately homes, it became clear that many of these estates cater for weddings. According to the Office for National Statistics, in 2012, not only did 60% of all marriages took place in hotels, stately homes and historic buildings but the greatest number of marriages were for men and women between the ages of 25 and 29 years of age.

As the grounds of Witley Court have been restored and Great Witley Church is also within the estate, it made sense to follow this angle. On their website, English Heritage has already put into place the option for holding a wedding at some of their properties but not at Witley Court so after a bit of editing and Photoshopping here and there, I put together this mock-up for advertising for weddings at Witley Court –

As a first forage into location photography, it was a good exercise. And it was a glorious day to take photographs too. Witley Court and its surrounding gardens provide a stunning backdrop from which to get great location shots. I can image if you were a fashion photographer, this would be a terrific scene to shoot for editorial work for example.

 Planning is everything and although this particular day was somewhat pre-planned for us, it still pays to do your research.  So if I can give you, my lovely subscribers, any advice, it would be just that – plan, plan plan!!

Even if the place you’re going is just a pile of old bricks….

I have a little something just for you….

Whatever could it be, I hear you cry?

Well my lovely friends, it’s a little something I thought could be useful. And also make things a little easier for us both.

Now before you start panicking, ringing around for divorce lawyers and prepping for the “it’s not you, it’s me” speech, HOLD ON – we’re not breaking up (well I hope we aren’t – I’ve grown accustomed to your faces).

Let me explain…

I love my blog. I love writing it and sure as hell love the responses it gets from all of you but I started this blog to run alongside my college work to showcase what I am doing for college. However, I wanted somewhere that I could separate my college work from my own personal work so I’ve started up a new blog where I’m going to be putting all of my street photography images and nothing else.

I will of course continue to supply the same level of merriment and tomfoolery that you have come to expect here on this blog but I will be uploading most of my other work to my new blog so I would absolutely love it and be as happy as a man who had just been made Professor of Happy Studies at Happiness University, if you would follow me on my other site.

I suppose I had better tell you where it is, that would be a good start ! All you have to do is click this link and you will be whisked there as fast as a Greek man withdrawing his life savings from an ATM in Athens!

Thank you again!

Now go back to what you were doing….

Summertime…..and the living is easy…

Ah yes….the summer. No college, no lessons, time to put my feet up and enjoy the glorious English summer. So there won’t be any further updates until further notice….

WHAT?!?

Photographers don’t take holidays!! We are 24/7 ! Well, that’s not entirely true. I don’t get up until 7am and am usually in bed by 10pm. So technically, I’m 14/7!

So yes, I’m finished with college until October but that doesn’t mean I’ve put my camera into storage, no sir! I’m out on the streets (and not in the prostitute sense) capturing life around town and present another instalment of my ‘Hidden Street Photography’ series.

It was a glorious day; the sun was shining, the town was busy and there were just enough interesting people to take pictures of so all of the ingredients were there to shoot some good pics.

My favourite from this set has to be the guy sitting on the steps. He was sat down, in his own little world, letting the world pass by.

I’m trying to add to the series as and when I can so keep checking back to my blog. But for now, here are the latest additions. Hope you like them.

Elegantly Wasted….

 

I believe it was that great poet Sir Elton of John that once wrote “It’s seven o’clock and I’m ready to rock”. Well Sir Elton, it was a quite a bit after seven and I was certainly not ready to rock but ready to shoot – photographs!

Yes chums, night photography was on the cards and what better place to capture the thrills and spills and bellyaches of the cream of society than Birmingham’s ‘premier’ nightspots. I was heading to Broad Street to “mix it up” (no, I don’t know what that means either – I had to ask someone far younger than myself to explain) with the fun seekers, the hen parties, the stag do’s and those with chronic alcoholism.

With little regard for safety, I wondered up and down this avenue of merriment like a kid in a sweet shop! It was a street photographers dream! Everywhere I looked, there was some poor soul in an ill-fitting party dress with a gaudy pink sash embellished with either “Bride To Be” or “Mother Of The Bride” or those who didn’t want to be specifically identified and wore those that simply read “Hen Party”. And of course there were those who, for every working week, there was Saturday night – the one night of the week where you can drink yourself into oblivion, to the point you cannot stand up under your own power or have control over your bodily functions and by that stage of the evening, your only dream in life is to down that last pint and not to defecate in the street.

In amongst these ‘stags’ and ‘hens’ wandered men on stilts and hawkers with signs trying to entice the inebriated into their places with the promise of cheap alcohol and free admission. Some of the queue’s to get in these funhouses were long and this afforded me time to get some rather unflattering pics. Well, unflattering for them but photography gold for me. What I couldn’t believe was that so many women out that night wore such skimpy outfits! It was FREEZING out there but hey! What the hell – I’m wearing that top from Dorothy Perkins or I’ll get hypothermia; either way I’ll be blue and lookin’ good in the back of that ambulance….

Anyway chums, it was certainly an eye opener. Night photography is exciting, a little bit terrifying but certainly an experience. For me, I’ll definitely be doing it again.

To the revellers on Broad Street – I salute you! You have certainly given me a great set of images and I’m including them in this post below. Please have a look through them and leave a comment if you will – I do read them!

Thanks chums. Until next time!

Look at all that shines…

Bride to be

He’s a baby..

Ride ’em cowgirl

No entry..

Pink Lady..

LOL..

I’m so happy..

My girls…

I’m speechless..

Can I take your picture?

Classy…

Make mine a large one..

Romantic dinner for two

Have you had the last prawn ball..

The boys in red

You’re my best mate..

So that’s how you do it.

Walking tall

We’re ready for anything