The Old Masters, Grapes and a Personal Project

     I've got a personal project coming up. Been putting it off for a while because it's going to be kind of traumatic. This will all reveal itself in due course. It seems to me that personal projects, otherwise known as "massive jobs that take ages and you don't get paid for", are the creative backbone of all things photographic. No one is ever likely to pay you for the stuff you really, really feel compelled to do. Unless you are totally driven by fashion maybe. But if like me your interest is in animals things may be trickier.

     I did a job last week at Crufts for Marie Claire. A dream gig. Getting paid for something that I would do anyway given half the chance. This is not the norm. But this job came from a personal project. I'd spent a year and a half making a book on dogs. The picture editor saw it, liked it, and decided they wanted me to do some stuff for them. This is the upside of the personal work. No matter how hard it is to justify the time and lack of money involved, just do it, because at the end you will have more work for your portfolio and if what you have created is any good it may just spin off into other, paid work. 

The other great thing about personal work is the total lack of constraint. You can do whatever you like. It is the one massive bonus. Total artistic freedom and the knowledge that if you fail, nobody even needs to know.You don't have to justify your work to an editor who will likely choose the stuff you didn't want to use anyway. No ones going to tell you what you can and can't or should and shouldn't do. You  just have to find the motivation, be a bit pushy, and the world is your oyster................... Did I mention that you don't get paid.

As a result of my impending work I have been deciding on a lighting style. I like to do this. I like to be prapared. I'd been looking at lots of old paintings in the National Gallery. My background is painting so I often like to go back to basics for inspiration. What seemed perfect for this new idea was the the lighting style of the old masters. All those funereal, dark images. Every one of them telling a story. Always literal in their use of symbols. Lots of dead stuff. After a bit of experimenting in the studio I kind of arrived at this (below). One of them is a straight forward set up with two lights, reflector etc. The other is a five minute exposure and is lit with a mag light and a blue gel. Probably go with this one.

It's really good fun experimenting with still life. You have all the time in the world and can really tweak things if they aren't working. Plus, if you use grapes, oranges etc. You can eat them as you go. The perfect crime. I'll upload all the images from this series as soon as I find the cajones to start.......

Lighting experiments for an upcoming personal project influenced by old master paintings

If it bites you it WILL hurt.....

 This week I photographed some slightly more exotic than usual creatures. Parrots, snakes, lizards, tortoise and a random African barn owl. There was a crocodile there too but it was a big one and too dangerous to handle. We started off with the barn owl as it was the most calm and would be easiest to deal with. It was perfect and between every shot it moved it's head a centimetre or so to keep an eye on me. If I could speak owl I would have asked it to do just that. Of all the things I've ever photographed the owl was the easiest. Not because it was well behaved, which it was, but because it was so photogenic. Every shot was kind of great and I haven't had to do a thing with them on the computer. It was truly beautiful. Maybe the most beautiful thing I've ever had in my hand..... 

African Barn Owl

.........Apart from at lunch time when it definitely let the side down...............

Swallowing a mouse whole

Next on the list were parrots. These guys weren't so relaxed as the owl and we had a very small window before they lost interest and literally flew away. These are handsome, long lived birds with real personalities. They craved attention but were very quick to panic when anything unusual happened. "It doesn't take much wi them parrots", said Steve, the creature handler with a voice like a weary husband. We probably got about 20 shots of each bird bird but this was more than enough.

Macaw

African Grey Parrot

     After the birds came the reptiles. I shot quite a few but I'm just going to post my favourites. The most interesting was probably the Boa Constrictor. When I asked to handle it Steve said, with typical northern candour,"I'll get him out but he WILL go for you, and if he bites you it WILL hurt and you WILL bleed A LOT". I sensed there was something of the challenge in these words so we got him out anyway. He wasn't joking. Every time I got the camera within about 6 inches of the snake it struck at the lens. It was ace. I just had to hide behind the camera and I was pretty much out of harms way. Don't get me wrong, I was bricking it. Behind the camera you very easily loose track of the distance between you and the subject so every few minutes I'd pop my head over the lens to realise I was only a few inches away and in danger of getting a nasty bite. This snake was incredibly aggressive but try as I might I never got the killer shot of him striking. 

Boa Constrictor

       Dragons next. The Bearded Dragon is probably the most common lizard to be kept as a pet in the UK. After meeting this one it's easy to see why. They have real personalities and are surprisingly gentle. Also, like all good animal models, they are completely driven by food so as long as you've got a wriggling grub in your hand,"they'll let you do owt". You can see by this ones alert stance that he is totally locked onto the prey/food. I kind of wanted to take this lizard home with me by the end of the shoot.

Bearded Dragon

Floydalikes

Looking through some celebrity portraits taken by an old friend, Chris Floyd, I noticed similarities between his people portraits and mine of dogs. I started to post them on twitter and it's become something I do every day. I'll keep it up until I run out of images or someone tells me to stop. If you want to see the entire series have a look on my twitter feed @gezgethings

Paul Mccartney by Chris Floyd and me

Paddy Considine + Peter Mullan by Chris Floyd

Paddy Considine + Peter Mullan by me

David Bailey by Chris Floyd and me

Close up

    I think there's an assumption when photographing animals (or anything else for that matter) that you need to get eye contact. If not eye contact then at least the head and shoulders should be in the shot. I disagree. There are many areas of interest on an animals body and it is a mistake to ignore them. The classic photo of a dog is taken from a fairly high angle with the animal looking up at the camera. This is fine but it is slightly unnatural. Much better to take the shot from their point of view. Get on your knees, it's the only way. Once you do this you start to notice some interesting stuff. This is a shot of my dogs knee. His hair here has this kink to it. It's always been there and seeing it reminds me of him every bit as much as a head shot. There is a lot going to in a shot like this. In a typical headshot there is a tendency to look at the eyes. It's instinctive and we do it all the time but it can be distracting. In a more abstract image the rules are different. You have to search for some meaning and in doing so tend to find some more interesting answers.

Border Terrier

     Here is another example. At home in the evening my dog generally sits on my lap. We both watch TV or I use my laptop and he has a snooze, whatever, the thing is that this is my view of him. I probably spend more time staring at the back of his head than I do at the front. I know every scruffy hair. This is therefore a very interesting area for me and certainly represents Baxter as well, if not better, than taking a picture of his face.

Border Terrier Fringe

    This abstract shot is of one of those modern breeds that once upon a time would have been called a cross but are now given full billing with their very own name. In this case Labradoodle. Naturally this is a blend of Poodle and Labrador. They seem to come in all shapes and sizes. This particular one has a strong poodle gene which means it has this amazing curly coat. It's almost exactly like the Astracan material my Grandmothers best jacket was made from. This is an example of a shot that relies as much on what is left out as what is included. Most of the frame is empty which kind of distils your focus and makes what little is included seem even more important. Well that's the idea anyway.

Labradoodle

Sphynx Cat

    Since i've just posted a hairless dog it seems reasonable to mention the hairless cat too. The Sphynx - baldest of all the cats. I hadn't photographed a cat before, never been particularly interested in them. After meeting these ones I did change my mind a wee bit. Not least because when they play fight with each other it sounds like an episode of Benny Hill. There is no fur to soften the blows so they jump in, dish out a volley of slaps, and jump to safety. Very entertaining.

Sphynx Cats

Sphynx Cats

Mexican Hairless ( Xoloitzcuintle )

   Think I might start posting a new breed every day. Or at least every week depending on time. Going to start with one of the more unusual breeds i've photographed - The Mexican Hairless or Xoloitzcuintle. 

Mexican Hairless

 I'd always thought these dogs were the same breed as Chinese Crested, which I'm sure must be considered very bad form amongst Mexican Hairless breeders. I'd wanted to photograph one for a while but you just don't see them. There are in fact only about 65 individual animals on the country. The ones featured here belonged to a woman who had seven. This must make her the leading expert on the breed, or at least the keenest. She was very reluctant to give me access to them at first. They had never been photographed by anyone and she was concerned I may want to make the images funny or ridicule them because of their appearance. Apparently Hoover had once contacted her to see if they could use them for in advert in which the powerful new cleaner would appear to have sucked off their fur. This is the last thing I wanted to do. I think they are beautiful animals and after spending a few hours with them I would go as far as say I wanted one. In fact the one pictured below could have gladly come home with me that day. It does look a little bit like Dobby the House Elf from Harry Potter but in a good way.

Mexican Hairless

Happy New Year

   The start of a new year and I just found this picture from High Voltage Festival. This is a now defunct musical gathering for people who still  like Deep Purple and Black Sabbath. It seems like the perfect celebratory photo to start 2012. 

   The picture itself is of the fan club for a band called Black Label Society. I've seen tons of music photo's over the years and I've lost count of the number where someone is flipping the bird. It's a total rock and roll cliche and always leaves me cold. This one seems different. I think it must be the amount of people and the sheer joy they feel responding to the camera. I didn't ask them to react like this. They just got straight into character and gave me the sticks as one. There was no malice in any of them. If I remember rightly we were all screaming and laughing at the same time.

Black Label Society fans

    At the same festival I found these two characters. These guys are great. I was watching ZZ Top perform a blistering set when I had a look round to see what was going on behind me. There they were - loves young dream. I took about twenty shots and they never moved. I'd love to know what they were both thinking about. Safe to assume it wasn't ZZ Top.

Loves Young Dream