Editorial - First Cut

This is kind of only half a story of this part of the editing down from 150 to a more manageable 50(ish)

Yes it was done and I may have gone back after this and re added a few after a Tutorial with Antony based on some of the recommendations he made in regards to image selection. This original large print was intended to be made and cut up into little images in order to have a play around with how they looked in different groups.

Somehow it managed to get put up on display in the college instead and wasn't really used when I made the decision to get 8 prints to have ready for the edit session with Jason the day before hand in.

What had happened and seemed like the right thing to do for uniformity,was they had all been converted into black and white. Im still unsure as to whether I would keep them like that for the overall project but felt at the minute its the best way to judge each image based only on its content and not by its aesthetics.

Removing all the processing that had been applied with a very basic approach to just the highlights and pure whites/blacks in lightroom and converting to tiffs for archiving. this was then rolled out over the entire set of 150 for future use and continuity.  

Editorial - Billy Monk

The unusual narrative of his life and work has often been related and embellished upon, and has become entwined with our perceptions of the images. In essence, he was born in 1937, and worked as a nightclub bouncer for Les Catacombs Club in Cape Town in the late 1960s when he was around 30 years of age. He later moved to the West Coast and lived in Port Nolloth periodically until his death in 1982.

Jamie put me onto Billys book we had in the library. It was a work that Martin Parr had asked if we had when he visited the college. A truly unique and intriguing collection of works by a previously unknown to me photographer. 

The forward in the book makes some comments of how it could be mistaken for just snap shots at first glance. I disagree with that sentiment and feel its a little patronising to the viewer who would have to be interested in this kind of photography if you were to search the book out yourself. 

"His close and long friendships with many of the people in the images allowed him to photograph them with extraordinary intimacy in all their states of joy and sadness"

Editorial - Riffraff Portraits

The thinking behind these sets of images was to try and take traditional portraits of clubbers as they entered the venue in a fixed space. Although eventually omitted from the Editorial selection after a conversation with Jill regarding them. I feel they have still got plenty of scope to be carried on over time and added to the 65 already taken.

Using a tripod and soft box on the flash set up to the side of one of the bars in the upstairs part of the med bar. This was to keep the images identical except for the subjects. Same background,same lighting and same distance away from the camera. I used the 85mm Sigma lens to isolate a smaller area for added focus on the subject.

 We coaxed people in as they entered the club and before they went downstairs. Most were quite receptive and gave a natural pose after only a few seconds  to compose themselves. They had nearly all already been drinking and a few had told me they had been up from the night before,which on some adds to the look of submission.

Here is just a few examples re edited for this blog post.

Editorial - Michael Abramson

"The late Michael L. Abramson forever sealed into emulsion the energy and emotion of Chicago nightlife. From blues clubs to strip clubs, his photography revealed a side of the Windy City that had never really been documented before."

The few articles I have managed to find on Michael all revolve around his work from Chicago being exhibited and not much else to go off really. Its a shame as there is probably a lot more to him and his work than is visible online.

Some more of his photographs I like...

Editorial - Equipment and Lighting

Tokina 11-16

Its something I never really covered last time. For one it wasn't that much different from shooting during the day apart from a flash was almost always used ...

 and secondly, as I never really had much of an understanding as how to best explain to someone else how and why choices were made or what differences it makes to the final image.

I use..

Nikon D7100 cropped sensor DSLR

Nikon SB 700 flash with/without diffuser

Nikon SB 910 flash with/without diffuser

And thats it really.. I dont need triggers as they all work together on a system that uses the pop up flash as a commander if you want to use them off camera.The only draw back is this can sometimes fail if its not in direct line of sight. The other way is to use the 910 as a main and the 700 as a slave which is activated off the master just being used as normal.

Both have AF assist which fires an infra red cross hair that works brilliantly in the dark for focusing. Before i used this I was using the fashion lamp on the camera which in smokey rooms tended the catch the closest thing to you and fix on that..usually not what you wanted and  a cloud of smake machine haze.

The 910 can be operated with just the AF only which again is really handy for doing low light shots when your not wanting the flash to fire.

I try to experiment as much as i can to mix things up from direct,bouncing,off camera and just switch between them as I wonder around. TTL mode can be used on both and although it can help in changing light situations its not great for getting candid shots as it fires a pre flash to check the lighting levels. This when done with a 1 second exposure on a rear curtain setting makes it seem to the subject you have already taken a shot and you get a reaction in that time mostly whether you want it or not.



 The camera produces raw files that I then process using Lightroom. I have a set of presets that i have customised and continue to change as I learn more about how I feel the images should look. They all have a high level of adjustment but a similar look and feel. Hue saturation,tone curve,split toning,lens correction and some noise reduction/masking depending on the time of day/night.
White balance is corrected on each image individually to suit. I have tried to do this in batches but there doesnt seem to be a way with such variation in lighting setups at different venues. Even in the same venue at any given time 20 different sets of lights can be on and coming at you from a different angle.

I have 3 lens that I use with the D7100

Sigma 24-70

Sigma 85

Tokina 11-16

These cover anything I would need in the clubs,mostly using the sigma 24-70 and the Tokina equally and occasionally the sigma 85. The obvious advantage of the 11-16 tokina is the extra bodies you can get in but it does have an almost fish eye distortion being such a wide lens. Also people tend to feel less comfortable when you are practically sat on top of them. Its also quite brutally un flattering for women to see their facial hair in such detail. Ask me sometime to show you the image i took in the summer of my ex wife at an event.

Editorial - Tom Wood

We briefly looked in to Toms work last year watching the episode of "what do artists do all day" as an introduction. There is a small section of the film that looks into his photobook "Still looking for love".

To achieve this he spent 3 nights a week in a nightclub over a 3 year period. Its good to be able to see the connection he made with the subjects in a similar way I have, especially at the riffraff event I do regularly.

His style of being right up close and in the middle of the crowds is something I know I happily try and emulate in my work. Where I don't really feel the connection is with most of the images I have seen from the book,he is looking for an almost exclusively sexual context.

I get that it wasn't a music club as such and more what I would have called a discotheque style cattle market. There for the purpose of single people to hook up with each other.The other clue to this would be  the styling of the clothes suggests to me quite a mainstream crowd for the time mainly consisting of upper working and middle classes. This is something I am interested in and have been looking into understanding more about it in my work.

All images from "Still looking for love" Tom Wood - Promo Video "Still looking for love"

Editorial - First Selection

Although I was going to be doing shoots with this assignment in mind, I had to go back as far as Easter to get images that I could include in the selection for this brief. I actually went back right to the beginning of the events shooting with the same outlook. However as some of these had already been included in the previous event narrative hand in they had to be excluded from this.

From  a collection of over 3000 edited images that had been used to promote events I managed to get down to around 150. This is after omitting any that were of the following.

Straight forward smiley/pulling stupid faces into the camera.

DJ working - Playing tracks or live.

Large crowd shots,hands in the air etc.

What i am left with is images that seem to capture more than just a moment in a club/venue of a party. A look,an awkwardness or indiscretion ...even a slight of body language just caught by luck at the exact right moment. Here are some of them from various events.