T Shirt idea 1

If you've been to Covent Garden or Forbidden Planet on a Saturday afternoon you'll know what I mean.

IPC Building (is anybody there?)

The IPC building is off Upper Ground St in Waterloo and has been empty for about two years now. Strangely, when fireworks go off on the Southbank, it lights up the windows and it looks occupied again. It used to be offices for magazines like Zoo, Nuts, car and fishing magazines and homes and gardens. It's still supervised by security staff but the windows are grimy and graffiti'd. It's a really cool space. The skateboard kids are using the grounds for jumps and the free runners and bmx'ers also. This is the second time I've tried shooting there and quite like the results.


Just using my digital Samsung NV5 (7.5 megapixel) and a tripod on a really sunny day so there's strong shadow and the dirt on the windows looks sharp. Been thinking about the film Pulse and the empty grey shots of Tokyo with subtle ghostly images, but also the concrete and glass and relections and graffiti from games like GTA, Skate and Skate 2.





I used a skylight filter to cut down the glare. I'm intretested in the abstract spaces that the odd relections, dust and shadow produce. They'd work really well in a film or game which needed edgy deserted locations. The limited colour is also really cool, you end up concentrating on texture and tone. This would help characters stand out.


On the image above I've used photoshop to layer one of my IPC shots with a screenshot I took from Pulse. The Pulse image is at 35% opacity and fits in well, it's a lot softer than the dirt on the window and matches the soft reflections of the road.


This last shot (above) I took by putting the lens right up to the window to cut out the grime. It's a bit soft but sometimes digital can be too sharp. Sometimes the games environments are way too hard (skate 1 was way better in look to skate 2, they've cleaned up all the dirt). I thought this shot worked ok with the light from the windows being soft. It was strong afternoon light outside but when you peer in it looks more like evening inside, a lot of light is reflected off the dirt. I'll try to get inside, I'll see if the security guards are ok to talk or maybe call the number on the board. This has to be another summer project.

Pulse

Pulse is a 2001 J-horror film written directed and produced by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. the main plot has ghosts invading the world via the internet. It explores ideas about lonliness and isolation and our generations relationship to technology. I took the screenshots below from my own monitor to enhance the distance between the viewer and the person as it does in the movie. All the characters at some point meet strangers via the internet as ghostly images or bad resolution digital images in spaces which are like their own isolated rooms or offices or bedrooms. I used my small Samsung digital and enhanced the colour on photoshop to make my room more orange to contrast with the cold screen images.


As the film progresses we see more of the invading ghosts and Tokyo becomes depopulated as depressed and lonely people kill themselves or are cancelled out by spirits.

The suicide shot shown above is really well made. Its impossible to see where the cut is as the actress on top of the silo jumps, then hits the ground in what appears to be a single continuous take. Even in a frame by frame check I can't see the cut. But when the body hits the floor it does look like a dummy. It could be that it's an actual stunt with the actress on wires. I watched the Pang brothers J-horror The EYE2 and it also includes a scene where the actress jumps from a roof, twice! In the DVD extras you can see the actress wired up standing on the edge of the building. They don't show the jump but it's possible that she's lowered really slowly and then the take is speeded up. (Eye2 is worth a look for the effects of people moving through water then superimposed into the same space as people moving normally). Back to Pulse...



In the screenshots above (again from my monitor with a samsung NV5) you can see the scene where one of the ghosts becomes solid and attacks one of the characters. Like other J-horror films (The Ring especially) the director uses action shot backwards then played forward to make the ghosts look different or menacing. In this scene, the attacking female ghost (backwards going forwards) is in the same shot with the male character (moving normally). This is really effective.


There's really good use of colour with the living in strong coloured clothing and the dead in greys this sounds like a cliche but in the middle of real looking and empty Tokyo streets and buildings it works really well. Also he uses reflection well and polythene and plastic reflect bits of the ghosts in concrete spaces. Its quite quiet without much music. There's a really good image (not here) of plants in plastic bags which look almost like stand ins for the chracters.


The big budget shot is the explosion of a crashing plane near the end. Its not too effective visually it doesn't really fit. Everything else had been more about slow scares and sadness until 'bang' the plane falls out of the sky. Otherwise a fantastically shot and edited film.

street photography

Speaking about jungle gyms...... I went back over the holiday to the site where I hope to use the monkey mask again. Still couldn't get access to the scafolding but theres a new poster as you can see.

Let the right one in

Let The Right One In, is a 2008 Swedish horror film directed by Tomas Alfredson. It was shot on 35mm film rather than HD video and uses mostly natural sounds. Its very odd, its a horror romance but is very subtle in how it uses the language of a horror film. There is gore and some CGI but mostly it is very naturalistic in how its shot and played. I think the locations are fantastic, its mostly set in a Stockholm housing estate, school and playground and has few gothic elements.


Theres a fantastic use of focus with the actors often being really close and the set slightly blurred which gives tension, instead of relying on things jumping out of the dark. The intimate cameras, realy close to the actors work with really close mic'd sound. You can hear the breathing, gulping and movement of clothes. The sound recordist said he didnt want any hollywood sound effects, and even though he did manipulate them electronically he always started with a natural sound.


The sets had no ceilings so that it could be shot with as much natural light as possible. When the two main characters meet its often on a jungle gym in a play ground, this was specially made because they were shooting in wide screen and normal jungle gyms are to high. This one needed to be long and wide so it didnt get cropped.

There is one over the top scene which is in fact really funny where a woman turned vampire is attacked by a room full of cats. It uses stuffed cats attached to the actress, CGI cats and real cats. Still, the scene works really well, a bit like Alfred Hitchcocks The Birds, in the scene where the heroine is attacked by birds in a small room.

Octopus and umbrella

Last week I got the chance to help out on a photoshoot for Oskar who's a student at Glasgow School of art, environmental art course. The course is for fine art but from what I can see most people are using photography and video, I think the environment part is that the work has to be socially engaged. He was in london getting some technical help for some sculptures which are for an exhibition in Glasgow next month. I took some shots while they were setting it up.


This photo shows how the octopus sat on the end of the umbrella when the piece was finished.
The beak was cut out of the octopus and a tube was inserted.


The hood part which is the head, had been gutted and it had to be stuffed with expanding foam that had been shaped to fit.


It was then set up in a studio to take reference shots so that it can be set up again, and for publicity.


When the artist took his own shots he used a digital camera, natural light from some skylights, one spotlight above and to the right, and some silver reflectors to get light under the umbrellas.

Orozco

I saw these images by the mexican sculptor Gabriel Orozco. He works with objects and installations but I like his photography.



He's using found objects, and making images from what he finds in the street. With the puddle and bicycle marks I recognised the effect, I've noticed this myself. The rubbish piled to echo the city skyline is more diliberate than found but still looks natural. The ball with water, again it's an effect I've seen and liked, I'd tried a similar shot but more abstract with water on a seat (below).

billboard ape

I got my mate to take some images of me in the monkey mask. I spotted an empty billboard on Herne Hill Road and had already taken some shots. I put the image of me in the mask on the billboard in photoshop using layer, free transform, skew and distort.


I like the idea but I'm not sure it's the best location for the mask. I've found a good space with some old scaffolding supporting a building. It looks like a jungle gym, I'm going to try hanging up side down from the scaffolding.

Godzilla Haiku

http://godzillahaiku.tumblr.com/

enough said

Obama looking at awsome things

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dryponder/sets/72157623726710218/

Check these out.

Bert Hardy's dark room

At the Back of Southwark College in a side street is a sign for the Bert Hardy Darkroom. Bert Hardy was famous in the 1940's and early 50's for documentary and press photography, mostly for the Picture Post magazine. He was born in Blackfriars, and some of his most famous shots were taken in Elephant and Castle.




Most of his famous photographs are of working class conditions, especially from the Gorbals estate in Glasgow.



I think now they look like strange photographs. The ones of street children are comic and kind of sentimental, but they show terrible conditions and poverty.


I've heard that his printer still works there and that he is still printing the images there for exhibitions. Over the summer I'm going to find out when he's there and see if I can get some images inside.

Saul Leiter

Saul Leiter is another street photographer that I realy like. He was working in New York in the 1950's. He earned his money as a fashion photographer, but was never realy famous. A lot of his street photography went undeveloped for years because he didnt think much of it. He was intrested in a lot of New York painters at the time like Mark Rothko.


What is good about his work is the compsition, the use of focus, the use of texture and reflection, signs and the weather, like rain and condensation. The images are never as abstract as the painters he admired.

disaster photographs

Enrique Metinides is a press photographer from Mexico city. He mostly worked for the newspaper La Prensa. His images are nearly all of disasters, murders, accidents, crime or suicides, the sort of thing that attracts alot of attention on the street or on the front of a news paper.



His photos nearly always have a low point of view, like the point of view of the victim, and they look like film stills rather than documentary. More about him in a later post.