(Another) 48 Hour Photo Project – 2013 – Post 5

Angie makes blue look slinky and eyebrows appear beyond redemption.

© Angelika Wierzbicka

There’s more of her work here on her URL

(Another) 48 Hour Photo Project – 2013 – Post 2

This time around we’ve got help in the form of loan equipment, advice, support, etc from the following partners:

The Flash Centre – Elinchrom flash, Go Pro‘s

Vemotion – video streaming over low bandwidth mobile phone network. Here’s the link to the stream:

http://www.vemotion.com/live/

Phase One – additional cameras to augment our existing kit, IQ 180’s & IQ 160’s

Eizo – a selection of high end FlexScan & ColorEdge 24 & 27 inch monitors for post-production

© María Sotelo

Riding On…..From Here To Eternity

Why was I drawn to become a portrait photographer? I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve asked myself this question.

Bryonie Porter

In part I chose this career because deep down I know that I’ve a strong voyeuristic streak. I like the lives of others, I want to get on the inside, to be nosey, to stand within someone else’s skin and feel their life. And this has been the profession that allows me a way into those spaces and experiences that may prove difficult to achieve in other ways.

Noel Richardson

Some time ago I decided to embark on a very long personal project to document the UK motorcycle community as it was at that time. So I spent three long years photographing as many bikers as I could manage to persuade into my studio to pose with their machines. I had a connection to this world because I, too, had ridden for many years until my driving was curtailed by the onset of epilepsy in my twenties.

Joelle & Calypso (after Jean Cocteau)

I chose to work all of these as a studio series with a standard lighting set-up and background throughout. I was particularly inspired by the work of August Sander’s series of photographs, ‘People of the 20th Century’.

Dan Tze

My starting point was a background and lighting plan. I commissioned a large, painted, mottled canvas which dropped the full height of the studio and then ran out onto the floor and had sufficient slack to allow me to add folds & still fill the picture frame when working on a wide angle lens. It is 7 x 4 meters.

Two Kevs

The lighting consisted of an Elinchrom A2 head with 60cm softbox high above the camera and running from an Elinchrom 202 pack. A large ‘V’ reflector made from two 8ft x 4ft flats on the left out of which runs an Elinchrom 50 head and finally a large 8ft x 4ft polyboard reflector beneath and in front of the camera. I needed something that was simple, easy to repeat, quick to assemble and would work successfully for both individuals and small groups.

Ani Bhana & Edward

The shots were made using either a Hasselblad 500C/M usually with a 50mm lens but sometimes an 80mm. With this camera I shot Ilford FP4 Plus black and white negative. My other approach was to occasionally use a Horseman monorail camera and a 150mm lens to make black and white Polaroid negatives from either Type 55 or Type 665 film. In actual fact I used this method as much as the medium format approach.

Deno with a ‘ratted’ Honda CX500

The great advantage of the Polaroid pos/neg material was that I was able to solarise the negative. I did this by cutting the standard processing time in half, peeling the film, re-expossing the resulting under-processed negative using a speedlight on low power, then leaving the negative in a dark box to continue developing. After another 2 minutes I’d clear it using a bath of sodium sulphite to find an image with properly exposed highlights but re-exposed and thus negative shadow areas.

Vic Dickens with ‘The Mod Machine’

Finding people was the fun part. Understanding that all magazines are always on the lookout for free material I began by shooting a small number of friends and with these initial shots  put together a press-pack for the bike & scootering press. All the magazines published my images and contact details and the phone didn’t stop ringing.  This was done when the internet was in it’s infancy so social media was still just a dream.

Nikki Thomson & Rebecca Stevenson

The beauty of it was that the people just kept coming and the project developed a life of it’s own. The stories of peoples lives, events, journeys, near death experiences, love, loss, sorrow, sadness and joy were a pleasure to listen to and mirrored many of my own experiences. I lost count of the number of cups of tea that were consumed during this process but I do know that film and processing cost me close to £10,000 (€15,000 at the time) and that was without print costs.

Hairy, Scary, Ball-Buggering Bob from Barnet

In retrospect I have no regrets. I never succeeded in publishing it as a book yet I learnt an invaluable amount about my own creative process and the images that found there way into my portfolios generated interest from clients and thus additional commissioned work.

After almost 500 individuals had posed I called it a day.

All images © Julian Hawkins

Details:

Hasselblad 500C/M, 50mm or 80mm, Ilford FP4 Plus @ 125 ISO, 1/125sec, f11 1/2

Horseman 450LE monorail, 150mm, Polaroid T55 @ 50 ISO or Polaroid T665 @ 75 ISO, 1/125 sec, f11 1/2 (flash power increased to compensate for slower speed)

Ref: Adams A, (1963), Polaroid Land Photography Manual, Morgan & Morgan (out of print)

Wayland’s Smithy – mixed lighting

Adjacent to the Ridgeway, on the chalk downland above the Vale of the White Horse and under 2 miles walk from Uffington Castle and the White Horse itself. This shoot required carrying almost 60kgs of photographic equipment half a mile (0.8kms) from the car – surely one of the over-riding reasons why I took up this profession?

Wayland’s Smithy, take 1

Wayland’s Smithy, take 2

Details: Phase One c/w IQ160, 35mm, ISO 200, 1/4sec , f12

The difference between these two images is purely time. They are 5 minutes apart and in that time the ambient light level dropped by over 2 f-stops as the next rain storm approached.

Again the versatility of working with the Phase One & this time shooting tethered direct into a Mac enabled me to set-up, light & shoot all of this in just 3 frames. My intention was to frame this ancient chamber tomb with the silhouettes from the beech trees whilst lighting the the tomb entrance in particular in such a way to lead the eye inwards and add to the mystery of the place. Lit with a combination of Lumydine and Elinchrom Ranger lights supplied by TFC in London. Legend says (amongst other things I’m sure) that if you’re a traveller whose horse looses a shoe then leaving it overnight here will mean that when you return at dawn it will have been reshod by Wayland himself.

Two other essential tools to me on this shoot where:

The Photographer’s Ephemeris (more soon) in conjunction with the weather from the BBC online.

The Photographer’s Ephemeris

48 Hour Photo Project, post O

Tuesday, 00.15, 19 June 2012

Zack gets reprimanded. Naomi Geczy’s take on Charles Dickens

© Naomi Geczy

Details: Phase One c/w IQ160, 55mm lens, ISO 50, 1/250sec,  f/11

48 Hour Photo Project, post N

Tuesday, 13.35, 19 June 2012

An in camera effect created by Alex Selby using a homemade filter mask in front of the camera lens.

© Alex Selby

Details: Phase One c/w IQ160, 80mm lens, ISO 50, 1/250sec,  f/8

48 Hour Photo Project, post M

Monday, 00.15, 19 June 2012

Irene Tonnessen meets the ‘Urban Spaceman’ having previously forgotten that he doesn’t exist. Shoot on a white Colorama background again and this time lit with orange and amber gels to give a unique solar flare colour in camera. More medium format digital using the Phase One system courtesy of  The Flash Centre

© Irene Tonnessen

Phase One c/w IQ160, 110mm lens, 50ISO, 1/1000sec, f8