'Absolute Bowie' Shoot n' Other Stuff

Hi again,

Just another little blog entry to show some of my current work!
Last week, I done some freelance work for the tribute band ‘Absolute Bowie’. It involved taking promotional-type shots of the front man dressed as Ziggy and other eras of Bowie. The shoot lasted most of the day as it involved many costume and make-up changes. It was a great shoot which I really enjoyed. Here are a few of the shots I took:















Yesterday I was booked for a few more freelance jobs for another band. They are both shoots for promotional images (one on-location and one studio). Those shoots are coming up in the next few weeks!

Uni Stuff:
At the beginning of April, I travelled up to Manchester to see Don McCullin’s ‘Shaped by War’ photography Exhibition at the Imperial War Museum North. It was a very long day because of the driving but I survived! I am doing my dissertation on McCullin’s Vietnam War images and his work for the Sunday Times Magazine so the exhibition was a huge part of the research I needed to do. So far I have done about 5000 words so I am well on my way to getting the 8000-word first draft done n’ dusted. I have also been spending quite a bit of time at the Newspaper Library in Colindale sifting through 1960s copies of the Sunday Times Magazine for research so I’ve got plenty to work with now. I’m hoping to get the first draft finished by the first week of May. I have also managed to get in contact with Sir Harold Evans who was the Editor of the Sunday Times in the 1960s when Don McCullin worked for the paper so I will be interviewing him as part of my research too!

I am also making good progress with my final project. I will do a blog post about it sometime next week.

See ya soon,
CD.

Some more music photos....

Hello again,
Since I last blogged, I have shot a few more gigs and have really enjoyed the experience. Each venue has its own style of lighting and ambience and this gives quite a varied selection of images for my portfolio. The images below were taken at the ‘Half Moon’ in Putney. I was mainly there to take some more live images for the band ‘Ambersuit’. It was a really good night - definitely one of the smallest venues i’ve been to but it added to the atmosphere. The lighting was also much darker than other venues i’ve photographed at - as I didn’t want to use flash (as it would totally wash out the ambient lighting), the lighting conditions was almost pushing my 50mm f1.4 lens to its limit. Overall though I was pleased with the images I took and so were the band :-D Here are a few shots that I took that night:

Ambersuit (click on image to enlarge)
Ambersuit (click on image to enlarge)
Ambersuit (click on image to enlarge)
Ambersuit (click on image to enlarge)
Westley Horner (click on image to enlarge)

My last semester of uni started over a week ago so its not long now till I finish. For one of the projects I am thinking of taking images with a handmade pinhole camera (made out of a shoebox). I have made the camera already and have taken a few shots with it - I will show some of those on this blog in a few weeks time. This week i am starting to shoot for my final project - the Rolleicord and slide films are packed and ready in my bag! Will talk about that soon as well.


cheers, CD

Some Olympic Images and the Final Semester

I’m just about to start the final semester of the degree so I am looking forward to finally completing it. This semester will include an ‘Imaging Techniques’ module and the ‘final project’ which will involve an exhibition. I have an idea for my final project but I’ll talk about that another time - it still needs some tweeking - I will begin taking images for it this week so I will hopefully have some working images to show very soon.

I will leave you with a few images I took last Saturday (30th January) around the surrounding areas of the 2012 Olympics site. From when I first started visiting the area over a year ago, so much progress has been made. Over the next year or so, I will be going there whenever I can to capture some of the buildings and places that will no longer be there by 2012 and to also capture the new places that are currently being created.

These images below were taken using Fujichrome Velvia medium format slide film:




Some interesting facts and figures about the London 2012 Olympics:

1. The five host boroughs are Newham, Hackney, Waltham Forest, Tower Hamlets and Greenwich

2. East London will see a massive upgrade in facilities. As many as 5,000 new homes could be available there after the Olympics.

3. The London Olympics will generate £10bn in revenue for the British economy as a whole.

4. Revenue from tourists attracted by the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games are forecast to add up to an additional £2.1bn.

5. An estimated global audience of 4bn people are expected to watch the opening ceremony on July 27, 2012.

Band Shoot

Last Tuesday I done a live shoot for a London-based band called Ambersuit. The gig was at Tommy Flynn’s in Camden and there was a great atmosphere there. The shoot went very well and had a really fun night. Five bands performed during the evening and I took some photos of these too. I love taking live shots of bands as you can really capture the energy and emotion that they release. I don’t know what i’d do without the 50mm, f1.4 lens - When i’m gone, I wanna be buried with that lens in my pocket.

Some picks from that night:

Ambersuit
Ambersuit
Ambersuit
Ambersuit
Cardinal Jack
Cardinal Jack
Cardinal Jack


More to come....

cheers, CD.

Hand-ins and a possible new direction..

The last few months have been quite chaotic. Assignments have been due so I have not been getting much sleep - some days I have been awake for up to 24 hours at a time so huge shots of caffeine have been pumped through my system. I didn’t leave things to the last minute but there was just so much to do..anyway I got there in the end and I’m pleased to say that I’m quietly confident ;-)

Part of last semester involved an editorial project where I decided to a series of documentary style images of a tribute band. This has been a project that I have really enjoyed - I have made some great contacts and this has led on to some other projects and jobs which I will talk about later :-) For years I’ve been interested in music photography and candid backstage-style images so this gave me the chance to try it out. I don’t know why I hadn’t tried it sooner - music and photography are the two big things in my life so mixing them together seems the natural thing to do. Being a music photographer would be my ideal job.

‘Absolute Bowie’ are a great tribute band and I have, so far, enjoyed photographing them. I’m pleased to say that they have been using my images for their website and they are also in process of designing their new promotional posters which will hopefully contain image(s) taken by yours truly ;-)

Here’s a screen grab from Absolute Bowie’s website a few weeks ago, containing three of my images:


I have been in contact with other tribute acts and intend to photograph more ‘tributes’ in the coming year to learn more and do an extended project about the tribute act culture. I have also been in contact with a John Lennon act/impersonator who currently lives and works in Spain - so that may be something for the late Summer ;-)

Plenty more to follow...including a band shoot I done a few days ago.

CD

'Absolute Bowie' Tribute Band Documentary

For over two months I have shadowed a David Bowie Tribute Act namely ‘Absolute Bowie’. I have attended and documented their rehearsal sessions and their shows and gained an intriguing insight into the tribute band culture that currently exists in the UK.

‘Absolute Bowie’ are Europe’s Premier Bowie Tribute Band. They are a five-piece band who faithfully interpret the music of David Bowie with uncanny accuracy. Recently, they were personally endorsed by Woody Woodmansey who was the original drummer from Bowie’s iconic band - ‘The Legendary Spiders From Mars’. Born through a mutual love of David Bowie’s music, the band have gone from strength to strength and play to thousands of people every year.

Unsurprisingly, with the amount of shows which ‘Absolute Bowie’ play every year (up to three shows a week), each member of the band has a wealth of musical experience and therefore a degree of perfection and professionalism. Their shows take you on a musical journey through the ever changing phases of Bowie’s music and fashion with incredible attention to detail. All of the Bowie classics are performed along with a few surprises!

Capturing the transformation of the band from when they are rehearsing in their studio to when they perform was quite easy. Over the time I have spent with them, I got to know them very well and this enabled them to get used to me being there with my camera.

Tribute bands help to bring back memories of past eras in music and to also make the music live on to a new and fresh audience. Also, if you’re unable to see the real thing then why not see the next best thing?

These are just a selection of the images I have taken during the project so far...

Rehearsing in their studio, October 2009

Set-List for upcoming Gigs

Assembly Rooms, Tunbridge Wells

Waiting for the Sound Check

Sound Check

Sound Check

Sound Check

Tuning Backstage

Bowie Wigs

Waiting in the Wings

Discussions during the Interval

Modern Bowie 'Wigging Up"

Red Bull and Cigarette before the 2nd Half