Sit-down photography

It’s been a hectic couple of weeks, and I’m very aware that the blog has taken a bit of a back seat. I guess it shows that you really have to make time for something like this, and after moving back into the big smoke and starting a new job, I realise that I’ve been pretty pants at this. This will change. Possibly even tomorrow (but more probably not).So it’s going to be another travel throwback.

I mentioned in the last post that earlier this year, I spent some time making my way around the south Pacific by sail. On the whole, it’s a bit difficult to go exploring for new, exciting subjects when you’re surrounded by ocean, and convinced that even one molecule of water will cause your still relatively new camera to explode and jeopardise the safety of everyone on board. So I played with the idea of just having a bit of a sit down, and seeing what I could do with the things that were immediately visible from my position. I feel that breaking up your surroundings into a series of shapes, colours and textures is probably quite a useful skill, especially in still-life photography, and I felt that this was an excellent way of trying to get into this mindset.

As always, please comment. This is a learning process after all.

-Ollie

Headed toward the South Pacific

It’s been a while. A long while. I’ve been on a huge adventure over these last few months – sailing around the islands of the South Pacific – and I haven’t been able to find an connection strong enough to support shoving a lot of photos onto the internet for everyone to see. It’s been an incredible experience and I’ve done some really amazing things, which I’m hoping to get across in a few pictures without sounding gloaty.

Very early on in the trip, as we were making the crossing from New Zealand to the Cook Islands, I decided to revisit monochrome photography. I really enjoyed looking for textures interesting enough to speak for themselves in the absense of colour, and I thought my surroundings – a yacht in the middle of an 1800-mile passage – could produce something really interesting. It was a very short-lived exercise, but one that I feel was quite effective in parts.

Cabin

Sheet

Anchor

Tangled lines

Wet winch

Morning talk

Hauling

Auckland Bridge

Sunrise

Once again, please feel free to comment. This is a hugely amateur effort, and I’d love to hear what people have to say.

-Ollie

Moonrise Kingdoms

One of the things I’d looked forward to most after buying my own camera was the chance to take photos at night.  The only real experience I’d had before then was a few years back with a friend in Barcelona, and it was fairly horrible. There was a statue of a stone angel at the edge of a fairly significant drop, and she wanted me to stand in front of it so she could take a picture of me and my newfound celestial buddy. We didn’t have a tripod so I was standing absolutely still, trying desperately not to think about that Doctor Who episode, with my face ten centimetres away from this thing’s blank, sightless eyes. Even then, all the pictures came out blurry and I didn’t sleep for about a week.

These last few weeks, when I’ve been down in Cornwall, I’ve tried to take some pictures of the sea at night. It’s been a bit sketchy – clambering over wet rocks in the dark and runnng around the more remote coastal villages, occasionally worrying about getting mugged by the residents purely because they had nothing else to do. But at the same time it was also surprisingly exhilarating, waiting minutes at a time for the camera to take in enough light for the shot and constantly wondering how it’s going to turn out at the end. It’s a very different thrill to, say, wildlife photography where it’s the split-second that counts, but a thrill nonetheless.

I tried to get quite a varied bunch of images in this theme – landscape photography isn’t something I’ve really practiced so I tried to get some closer, more intimate shots. One night where I found a (possibly sewage) pipe and played around with that for a while, which probably explains why everyone avoided me for a few days afterwards. I hope there’s an interesting mix.

It’s definitely a bit diferent this week, so I’d be very interested in hearing thoughts and opinions, whatever they may be. Hopefully I score some bonus points for shoehorning a Wes Anderson film into the title. It’s how the blog got its name after all…

-Ollie

A touch of class?

When I was about fifteen, there was a period where every single person who owned a camera shot their social occasions in monochrome. The colours slowly trickled out of Facebook as people became more classy and the most debaucherous nights more edgy and sophisticated. This period probably lasted about three weeks. Everyone suddenly remembered that they were still in their teens, and that nobody needed to think about either edge or sophistication for at least another twenty-five years.

I think this period of black-and-white photography resulted slightly in an inability to fully appreciate the medium on my part. I haven’t really been able to see the point in it, past its obvious place in the history and evolution of photography. However a few months ago I saw a David Lynch exhibition at the Photographer’s Gallery in London, of the gloomy industrial wastelands of various world cities, and touched on understanding how taking away the colour of a scene can add to its intensity. It was something I wanted have a go at and this last week I’ve had the chance.

I’ve been based mainly in Cornwall, and saw an opportunity to try monochrome photography out for myself in the not-so-immediate aftermath of some of the storms that have battered the southwest coastline. This whole journey is about trial-and-error and this is certainly something I’d like to try again, ideally with fewer errors. Here are a few of my favourites, which I hope have some sort of vague narrative when viewed as a series as well as their small individual merits.

I really enjoyed this post, and felt like it was moderately successful. But, as always, feedback is very much appreciated.

-Ollie

There is no such thing as bad light

Spring has sprung. The sun is shining, the sky is clear, birds are tweeting alongside the lonlier people of the internet. But with the sudden decrease in cloud cover, the lighting of outdoor scenes is becoming quite a bit more stark in contrast and I’ve recently been finding it difficult to sort out my exposure as a result. The shade has become too shady, the sun too sunny, and it’s driving me mad.

I’m a firm believer in throwing myself into the deep end of something I’d like to be better at. This, incidentally, is how I first learnt to swim, much to the horror of my father. So, this week I’ve been working with ‘Light’ as a theme. I’ve been shooting in both London and Cornwall, trying to put myself in difficult lighting and get a creative result. The outcome has been mixed, but that’s all part of the process, no?

Feedback is always welcome, and much appreciated.