Tuesday 27 July 2010

Beginning to get there..

So I spent last week ensconced along the Norfolk/Suffolk border with a brief of spending a ton of time with my brother to really thrash out some exhibition worthy images. Generally it was nice to catch-up and as the atmosphere became more relaxed, the shoots seemed to flow nicely. He was chipping in with bits of information about whatever I would point my camera at which let me gauge the importance or otherwise of what I was capturing.

One thing which was always going to happen is that his home is ever changing, objects flow like a river around rocks. Meaning that some objects appear in different rooms or scenes depending on the shoot date. I don't think this is a problem as it illustrates the point that he is finding his feet in life and establishing an identity in the wake of trauma. It may add to a deeper exhibition as the audience can view for themselves how scenes or areas of a dwelling have shifted in tone, organisation or layout.

Currently i'm sifting through a lot of RAW files while performing a series of test edits to see what works. Generally the adjustments required in RAW conversion are minimal. Parameters such as exposure, blacks, contrast, white balance, clarity and saturation are being slightly manipulated but not dramatically so. The reason for the tinkering is to create a strong, defined series of images with a distinct feel. Also because it seems the 40D AND the 5DMKII have a tendency to slightly underexpose, an issue with Canon DSLRs I have been aware of in the past.

Bit annoying that for this shoot I had to use my 40D rather than the 5DMKII, but really its the bit of glass on the camera that matters and I was using some decent lenses. Not a lot to be gained from boring the reader with technical details but the 50mm F1.4 generated some sharp close-up shots and the 24-105mm L series was useful for rich wider shots.

At this stage I have around 30 images that I really think have potential after briefly working on them. There are more that will either be used for the book or in some capacity for the exhibition, but I need to consider only around 20 can actually be displayed in large frames. Selecting and discarding will not be an easy task but i'm going to finalise all the images before picking.

Again reluctant to give away all the images that might make the book/exhibition piece, I want to show some new work on here. The two edits below are shots i'm particularly proud of. I think they allow an audience to contemplate a person's life and from a personal view, get to the core of my brother's navigation in life;


Faded Sisters



Lantern and Chinese paintings

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