New portraits

New shoot with @alexisshep shot during movember.
This was planned as a precursor to another shoot which will have to wait for the ground to dry and involves making a few props, location scouting and renting a costume. I'm finding as time goes on that my shoots are turning into bigger productions, so every now and again it's good to shoot something that has no prior planning and doesn't require a huge set up!

Both images were shot with a Bowens 400 head fitted with an octabank  

RELAMPAGO

Omar Lopez is an artist who has kitted out a motorbike as a travelling darkroom which he is using for his new project "Relampago", Lopez will travel around the Los Angeles area creating fictionalised interactions with strangers, posing as members of their families. In his kickstarter campaign video Lopez talks about his work, the ideas behind the project and the wet plate process which he will employ to create the images.

If you would like to see the full campaign visit his kickstarter page here

More than 28 days later

Saturday marked a momentous occasion for a lot of us. We finally got to see Zombie Resurrection up  on a big screen, sat in a cinema packed with cast, crew and family members of those involved, including my parents. Needless to say that after sitting through more swearing than an extended edition of Nil by Mouth and watching a scotsman tear a zombies spine out my parents are still talking to me.

From the left Jade Colucci, Emma Luckins, Joe Rainbow, Eric Colvin, Shamiso Mushambi, Matt de Tisi 

It was a great evening and really good to catch up with some people I haven't seen for over a year. 

Who said zombie films don't bring people together!

p.s Jade there's a picture of you on here now :-)

The Red Carpet

In just over ten days we will be attending the cast and crew screening of Zombie Resurrection, so we will all finally get to see all of our hard work up on the silver screen. From the off the film has been a family affair, the zombie hordes (on two separate days) were made up of friends and family, including Andy (our director's) mum. My parents will be attending the premiere and even though I have thoroughly prepared them for the amount of swearing and lopped off body parts they will witness, deep down I know that nothing could really prepare them. The scariest film my mum will watch is What Lies Beneath, so it'll be interesting to see if she speaks to me again after the screening.

I will also have a display of a large bulk of the promo shots I took for the film including portraits of all the zombies who kindly gave up their evening to be covered in fake blood, so I will be able to take orders for prints if you are attending the showing. 

Lord Lav on set 

Pete Lumley and Lav

 

Matt De Tisi

A couple of new portraits that I shot of the legendary Matt De Tisi a few weeks back.
Matt worked as the best boy on zombie resurrection. For those of you who don't know what a best boy is, they are responsible for the day to day handling of the lighting equipment on a film set and work under The Gaffer.

Lord of the Dead

Recently a few of us put our heads together to come up with a promotional video for Lord Lav.
The two main purposes of the video were to help Lav to crowd source funding for his debut album and also to introduce the character of Lord Lav.
Lord of the Dead is a zombie rap concept album intercut with audio scenes that run as a narrative throughout the album. If the funding campaign is successful the album will be pressed onto 12" vinyl and become a tangible collectable object for which I will be shooting the cover.
Between us we watched a lot of IndieGoGo videos, some great and some terrible to gauge what made a successful video. Our main concerns putting the video together were that it held peoples attention, was fun to watch, got the main points over as clearly as possible and that it was short enough that people wouldn't get bored whilst watching it (hopefully)
So ultimately here is the video. Let us know what you think and if you would like to contribute to Lav's campaign it currently live on IndieGoGo here

Bless This House

A few weeks back I did a shoot my friend John outside his house.
The idea behind the shoot was to create a scene that could have come from a 1970's British sitcom, where an Eric Morecambe inspired character interacted with passers by.

I've known John for years and used to assist him on shoots up in London, pretty much everything I know about photography I have learned from him.

The shoot took about an hour with most of Johns neighbours out in their gardens, although none of them seemed to pay attention to what was going on. 

We used a pair of 3d glasses instead of his actual glasses just to give his character a more exaggerated appearance. At least they're good for something!

Broken Links

I have just finished the longest retouch on a picture I have ever done, it has taken 3 days on and off to complete and is a promotional group portrait for the band Broken Links. Let me break down the shot to give you an idea of how it was constructed.

I knew that the band wanted a shot that would reflect the mood and aesthetic behind their music, so I spoke with Mark (guitarist/vocals) about their album which is titled Disasters: Ways To Leave A Scene. The album has the theme of a post apocalyptic future running through it and when you listen to it has a really visceral feel to it that I wanted to somehow work into the picture. So the first thing I did was to go out and shoot a series of background plates of different places in various states of disrepair so that i would be able to give the band a few options for the backdrop. i knew I would be putting the band in afterwards and how I would light them, so I wanted to shoot a plate that would reflect the lighting that I had in mind. Of the three plates I shot the most successful was underneath a block of flats near to my house that they were tearing down, so I set the shot up to allow the light to bleed through all of the openings and shot four images to make a panorama.

The band were all shot separately against a light grey backdrop and then cut out. All the colours were tweaked to make the backdrop and band match as closely as possible and that was it.

The final image was just short of 2GB in size due to the size of the background and all of the subsequent layers. The image was sent a few days ago and the band loved it.

Show's over

Thank you to everyone who came down to my show at Room 237 over the past two weeks and to all o the people who helped me to put it together. I hope that you all enjoyed it and got something out of it, I would also like to thank those of you who bought my work on the opening night, the money I have made from the exhibition will go back towards making more work.
I am also planning on a small book to accompany the show, which will feature all of the images from the show plus a few extras.

If you are interested in this please leave a comment underneath.

Thanks guys and see you all at the next one!

Rob

Lord of the Dead

So what did you do with your thursday night?
We spent last thursday shooting a Kickstarter campaign video for Lord Lav. For those of you who don't know what Kickstarter is, it's a website where you upload a video of yourself explaining a project you need funding for and offer perks that reflect the amounts people pledge, which are decided by yourself.

The original idea for the video was to have Lav sat in the studio telling you what he needed the money for, so we set the lights up and as always started talking. The conversation quickly turned to "you know what would make a really cool video"...
The title of the album is Lord of the Dead and is a concept album set in a world where zombies have taken over. Proclaiming himself as a newly found lord of the manor Lord Lav sets about living the life of luxury whilst society falls into ruins.

As a result of the conversation in the studio we scrapped the idea of a normal straight to camera piece and decided to set up a scene that would better reflect both the concept of the album and the humour Lav wanted to inject into the campaign.

Over the next three weeks we would scour charity shops and gather make up supplies and start to collect our zombie volunteers. Thursday night came around and everything fell into place. My sister and her boyfriend made up all of the zombies and everyone pitched in to distress their own clothes. Lana cut up her t-shirt with a pen knife whilst wearing it that turned out not to be such a great idea.
Gaz ate more than his share of red food colouring, Justin shot a time lapse of the whole thing and Lav kept us all in tea for the night.

We will be editing the video on monday with a view to getting it finished and uploaded by the end of the week, so keep checking back and I will be posting the link as soon as it's done.

A massive thanks to all of our zombies and to Jake for lending us his camera (and their instagram names to see more zombie pictures)


Emma - @emmaluckins
Gaz
Gemma
Jake - @jakeycboyo
Justin - @lightreflected
Lana
Laura -
Lex - @alexisshep
Yasmin - @yazmoogle

I have also been uploading a lot of the pictures to my instagram account @zomtographer

Welcome to the Darkslide

The dust has settled and I can sort of sit back for a minute. My show is up after three days of laying it all out and then hanging it. The show features 29 framed prints that I have shot over the past four years, half of the work I shot specifically for the exhibition.

A selection of zombies from Zombie Resurrection

It took abut two weeks to frame and mount all of the prints. Some of the mounts I cut, some were cut by my wife and the largest were cut by the excellent staff at Southsea Gallery. If you've ever tried to cut photographic mounts before you'll know how frustrating it can be. You buy a large sheet of expensive mount board, measure everything out. Get the metal ruler and cutter in place, then make your cut only to realise that you 've got the blade the wrong way and the bevel is facing the opposite direction.

Shooting a time lapse of the show going up next to my print of Brotherman

The exhibition space is divided into three rooms, so I placed all the work on the floor and moved it around until I was happy with where it sat, then asked a few people to give me their opinions and tweaked the layout accordingly. I know that Richard Avedon used to have a foam board scale model of the exhibition space made up and scaled down prints that he would tack on the walls until he was happy with their arrangement. I had already done this in my head over the last two weeks before taking anything down to the space.

Exhibition cat who turned up on the first day

For the first two days I had a lot of help from Lord Lav who was a massive help both with carrying frames and keeping me sane sat underground for the first two days.
On day three the legends that are my parents came down and helped me to hang the rest of the show.
All the name plates went up a few hours before the doors opened and it all went really well. I sold 9 pieces on the opening night.

Dave White and Jon Gibbs

Johnny Griffith

Johnny and Rob

So if you are down in Southsea within the next week and a half drop in and see the show.
It's at Room 237, 76 Elm Grove Southsea, Portsmouth, Hampshire.

Time flies

In a few days time it will be one year ago that I stepped onto the set of Zombie Resurrection. There are many things you find yourself being nostalgic about in your life, a favourite toy from your child hood, a  chance meeting with an old friend, and zombies.

I know what you're thinking, they're dead, they're all messed up. How could you feel a pang of nostalgia for something most people would rather keep at arms length. Even now, whenever someone mentions Basingstoke (where we shot the bulk of the film) I don't think "wow, they've got some really nice scenery, or isn't that where the Aldermaston nuclear weapons depot is.
No, I think Basingstoke, that's where zombies come from.

So, one year ago in a few days was our first night. A night of filling a corridor with smoke, spraying zombies in the face with cream filled fire extinguishers and me putting my foot in it by asking a girl if she was pregnant when she clearly wasn't.

Good times

The American dream

New video from Ian Ruhter. Check out his website here

Promo material

Just got all of my leaflets and posters back from the printers, so I will be putting these about all over Southsea in the early part of next week, so keep your eyes peeled for them when you're on your travels.

Broken frames

The show is coming together nicely. I'm taking some of the bigger prints and their frames down to the framers today and have already started cutting the mounts for the smaller prints. So far two sheets of glass for the bigger frames have been broken, which is a cost I didn't want to pay out for, but that's life I guess. The show will run from the 2nd of August to the 14th and feature 29 framed pieces, all of which have never been exhibited before. Half of which have been shot specifically for the show.

I hope to see you there.

Shout It Out Loud

As of Wednesday it will be three weeks until the opening night of my exhibition, so I thought I would upload one of the new shots that will be included in the show.
This is a portrait of my friend and model Yasmin, shot on a Mamiya C330 using natural light at her home. Also in the show will be one of the polaroids we shot during this session.
The show will run for two weeks beginning the 2nd of August with a private view on the 1st.
Lord Lav will be DJing, so come down, see the work and meet some great people.

Special Delivery!

Freshly delivered this morning.
These are the largest prints for the show measuring in at 20 x 30 Inches each.
The show will feature a wide range of portraits i've shot over the past 4 years including my work on Zombie Resurrection. I hope you can make it down.

Follow me on Instagram - zomtographer

Dead exciting news

Exhibition update. Due to popular demand my exhibition will now feature work from Zombie Resurrection.
This will be the first time any of these images have been on show in the UK, a small selection of images were shown briefly in Guernsey last year.

Prints from the exhibition will also be on sale.

So put down your copy of 50 Shades of Grey and i'll see you on the 1st of August

Buffalo Huddleston

During my first visit to Guernsey I had the pleasure of meeting Mike aka Buffalo Huddleston who was sharing a house with my friend Andy at the time. Everyone kept telling me how good he was at playing the guitar but it wasn't until a few years later that I finally heard him play. As you can see by the video below he is a very talented musician, so if you like what you see please share this video or at the very least click the like button on youtube.

Check out his sound cloud page here


Thanks for listening

Welcome to the Darkslide

The clock is ticking down to my new exhibition. It has been over 4 years since my work was last exhibited, so if you're in the Southsea area during the first two weeks of August come down to Room 237 comic store and see my work first hand.

Around The World In 800 Days

My good friends Andy and Emma will shortly be leaving for the adventure of their lives. They plan to travel around the world in 800 days in a customised Toyota Hilux, stopping off along the way to work with a selection of charitable organisations.

Andy and Emma have worked tirelessly to make their journey happen and plan to document the journey every step of the way via their blog, the blog will also serve as a guide to anyone looking to plan a similar journey.

If you would like to hear more about the journey check out a recent interview here on the BBC website.

I have seen how much they have put into this trip and what it means to them and those who have supported them along the way. It will be an amazing experience for them both and i'm sure that it won't be the last. 

Songs for Seagulls

A few weeks back I shot Alistair Goodwin and his band recording a set of live sessions in an old priory. The band are releasing a set of live acoustic albums over the next few weeks and using my work for all of the album covers. They are a very talented group and great company which always made for a relaxed session that I hope comes across in the work.

Album number 3 has just been released, so head on over to their Bandcamp page and take a listen. 

Also be sure to like them on Facebook here

Robert Szabo

Photographer Robert Szabo uses the Wet Plate Collodion process to shoot civil war era portraits.
He has shot covers for National Geographic magazine and also photographed the 2006 Jack Daniels calendar.
Roberts work has been exhibited all across America creating a window back into the past for all of us to peer through.

See more of his work here

Robert Szabo

Robert Szabo

Here's one I made earlier

Shot this while working on the first episode of Lord Lav TV. In the upcoming episode Lav makes a drum machine out of everyday things you would find lying around the house.

You're scared of Room 237, ain't ya?

I've been measuring up the space at Room 237 Comic Store in Southsea for my upcoming exhibition at the end of July.
Here's a sneak peak at some of the new pieces of work that will be on show.
Remember to keep the date in your diary and I will send out more info nearer the time.

Zombie Resurrection goes to Cannes

As you read this, Zombie Resurrection will be travelling across the channel to France, safely in the hands of its creators Andy Phelps and Jake Hawkins of Charmed Apocalypse Pictures. All of their hard work has culminated in an advert just short of ten minutes showing all the best bits from the film to show to potential distributors.

So good luck guys and hopefully we'll be seeing it on the shelves in HMV very soon!

Poster concept. I went with two simple fonts which will continue across all of the posters. 

Smoking jacket

Another shot of Lord Lav from a few weeks back in honour of his birthday.

Here's Johnny

A recent portrait of screen writer Johnny Griffith.
Johnny is currently working on the script for his first feature "Ticket Inspector" and will shortly begin production on a new web comedy mini series documenting the lives of two British born Mexican wrestlers.

Polaroids

Had a busy day on Friday, I shot windsurfer Chris Murray and Strong Island's Paul Gonella for a new exhibition i'm working on. Thanks to Johnny G for arranging one of the shoots and to Chris and Paul for giving up their time.

Arto Saari

Nice little film of photographer Arto Saari by Russell Houghton. Shot for Gravis footwear.
See more of Russells work here

Old work New work

Just going through and retouching some old work ready for the new website.

Silver and Light

Once ever now and again you'll see something that makes you step back and completely re evaluate everything that you do. This is one of those moments.
Ian Ruhter took his life savings and turned a van into a giant camera/darkroom and has begun travelling the United States shooting wet plate collodion images. When you see the part in the video where Ian throws a plate that hasn't worked in frustration you think he's over reacting. But then when you find out that each time he makes a plate it costs him $500 whether it comes out or not you completely sympathise.
The first time I saw Ians work was on the Vans dvd A Lucid Dream which if you haven't seen it before i've added it to the bottom of this post.

Enjoy

Rain Rain Rain

This started off as a "what are you doing this afternoon?" shoot, which turned into dodging out of the rain which in turn became "let's go get a fry up".

Camera Head Photographers

I spent a while thinking about what I would write in this blog post to explain the website that I found, but there really aren't any words for it other than people wearing a Pentax 67 camera head.
Posted by Kiyoshimachine on flickr.

You will never see this man presenting a children's programme

Sunday afternoon impromptu shoot with Lord Lav.

I've also cobbled together a short behind the scenes video.

Keep checking back for more stills from the shoot.

Victorian Ghosts

I've just been sent this great link from my friend Ross McNeil.
Artist Kevin Weir takes old Victorian cabinet cards and photographs and turns them into ghostly animated GIFs.
My favourite being the French gunner who has his soul removed by an apparition made out of gun powder.
Check them out over at the Wired blog