OXFORD!

Here's my first batch of pictures that I took in Oxford on sunday.

Which, by the way may be my new favorite place on earth.

Friday's shoot

So the shoot on Friday was really interesting. It wasn't the exciting sort of photoshoot that I'm sure you're thinking of. Michael Woods was just photographing Gyles Brandreth for his new books as well as for some publicity shots. There was no crew.. no fancy lighting.. and no big fancy digital camera. Michael just brought his old twin lens Mamia, his little SLR digital and two sheets of gold poster board to create a mirror effect (Michael also does a lot of photo collaging and was going to use the area with the gold to weave in photos of Paris). Gyles was meeting us in Barnes at 2:30 so we arrived at around 12 to scope out a good location. Michael seemed to basically know what he wanted... a bench with good lighting and some sort of trees in the background. Well, he decided on a location and a later in the day when Gyles met us Michael got straight to work. He knew the Mamia camera very well and of course didn't have to fidget with it very much to get what he wanted. Made me think about how Stephen and Frank say how important it is to know how your camera works so when a photo is there you can take it quickly without too much effort. I held the gold poster board as Michael made his shots. It's so inspiring that some people actually still use black and white film for commissioned commercial shoots. In all it was a really inspiring day because I got to watch and hear all of Michael's thought process about how and why he decided on location and ideas for the shoot.

Last pic from Cambridge... thought it was better without color and with a little warmtone tint

I'm really excited because I get to go to a photoshoot this coming Friday. Theres a photographer Michael Wood who comes by the gallery I intern at really often and knows my supervisor pretty well. He's really wonderful to talk to about photography ( we both love fashion photographers like Irving Penn and Jean Loup Sieff) and also good to ask for advice about where in the city to go shoot. Anyway this Friday he's doing a shoot for a TV personality, Gyles Brandreth. I'm pretty sure it's just a standard publicity shoot, but still it will be a good experience(plus it gets me out of work for the day).

These are pictures I took in Cambridge (a small-ish college town about 1.5 hours outside of London) I was stuck with a pretty big group and didn't have a tri-pod (Not that I ever really have one) but I definitely like these pics more than the previous ones. I actually find it pretty easy to take the pictures I want and still keep up with people, although it days take a lot of effort to not get completely lost from the group. I was really trying to capture the "quaint-ness" of the town.. hopefully I succeeded. I've also been trying to look for shops and situations with color schemes that I like so that I won't be tempted to put everything into black and white. ( On a seperate note I just wanted to mention how much I love my new battery pack that I got for my camera. It really makes the camera much easier to hold and taking vertical pics is way easier.) Anyway about these pictures, I think that they are in the direction that I wanted to head in my project so feedback on whether they're any good would be really great (I'm starting to really miss having weekly critiques where I have a bunch of ppl to tell me whether my pics are crap... although it will probably be good for me to have to make those sorts of decisions on my own) I still have some more to post from this same day.. but I wanted to get these up. I'll write a bit more about what I've been up to when I post the last couple of pics... in the meantime, ENJOY!

The Eye

All of these pictures were taken either from on the London Eye or from around it.

Riding the Eye was an incredible experience and a great way to be able to see the whole city... unfortunately the pics taken from the eye have some glare from the glass, but I just rob my fans (joking) of viewing London from that angle. I feel like I'm already falling behind in terms of posting pictures because for every 5 that I post, I have about 100 more to sort through. I'm also trying to fix the pictures up best I can... but I am working on a non callibrated laptop and I dont have a mouse so I'm using the mousepad on my keyboard. Not to make excuses or anything.. I suppose I'm just worried that my pictures arent quite up to par.

A few more pics from my walk along the Thames...

I know they're a bit touristy but it really is hard to avoid.

I feel like the first pic of Big Ben could be a postcard.. but whatevs

LONDON!

I've officially been in London for FIVE whole days so I thought it was time to post a little something. I took some pictures yesterday but to be honest I'm not thrilled with any of them. I was with a bunch of people and unable to bring a tri-pod so they're also not too sharp. Honestly I'm pretty lost in general about what I want to photograph... as much as I love love love the architecture in this city, I just dont feel like I'll make really good photos of it. I think I'm worried about too commercial. The only real idea I've had so far is to concentrate on colorful store fronts.. and maybe the parts of London / Europe that people sorda forget to photograph. The only examples I have so far are the two pictures of the little food stands. They were both along the Thames right near Big Ben and the Eye. I find something intersting in the little parts of big cities that are overlooked just because they're overshadowed by the bigger tourist attractions. These pics arent the best examples but they might give some idea about what I'm talking about.
I have a few more to sort through from yesterday but here's the first few that I fixed up....
ENJOY!!!!