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.