Bert and the V2

          I can't remember when this was but I just found the pictures and figured i'd use my blog. I originally started writing this stuff as a kind of diary for showing pictures that don't really fit anywhere else. This set rest very firmly in that camp.

   An old friend of mine, portrait photographer Chris Floyd, was working on a personal project. He'd been photographing the impact sites of the German V2 rocket. His grandparents had been killed by one of the last to be launched. They were real point and hope weapons, designed to demoralise as much as destroy. They were loaded with just the right amount of fuel to get them from their launch site to somewhere over london. They were then pointed in the right direction and launched. That is pretty much it. Once they ran out of fuel they would fall from the sky and destroy whatever they fell upon.

    Having photographed the impact impact sites the next logical step was to find out where they originated. After some detective work Chris managed to find a guy called Bert who was an expert on all things V2. It turned out that our particular weapon was launched from Den Haag in the Hook of Holland. This is a pleasant over night sail from Harwich and Chris had ask that I come along. I love a personal project so didn't hesitate. We were accompanied by documentary film maker Ian Denyer and Floyds long suffering assistant Andras Bartok.

Hook of Holland

     

       The photograph above is the port of the Hook of Holland. It is also the launch site of a German V2 rocket. According to Bert it was launched from just about the red train barrier. The train line wouldn't have been there at the time but the port certainly was. It was about 6am when I took this photograoph and absolutely freezing. This was the first of what would be four launch sites we were to encounter.

   Above is the large format film camera used for the photographs. Fitting in every way for a job which was about the past. The next image shows the camera in action. What would be one of the final photographs is clearly visible on it's screen. It is a park near Den Haag.

   The images don't look like much but I guess that's the point. There really is nothing there now to give you any clue about the dramatic events. Hard to imagine from this that a group of German soldiers were once here launching their weapons against London. 

    This is our first meeting with Bert. I thought he seemed quite sinister but it turned out he was just Dutch. At one point I dropped a few of the metal screws that secure the top of the tripod. " Aah! You are losing your ammunition" he said in a kind of Germanic twang. I liked him from this moment on.

   Ian Denyer and Chris Floyd. Like a true film camera guy Ian never, ever put his camera down. He'd disappear and then be spotted in some bushes, filming the locals. Quite disconcerting if he'd have ever been busted. He also had a habit of leaving little microphones lying around to pick up any secret conversations. Fortunately he was great and there was no need to worry that we'd been slagging him off on tape. I had a go of his kit and you could hear every breath from about a hundred metres. A cautionary lesson for the next time I find myself with a filmmaker. 
   This particular spot was a small park right in the centre of town where another rocket was launched.

   This was a kind of obvious shot that someone was bound to take. It's a funny photo which covers up a serious part of the day. This crossing led to the open ground where the actual rocket which killed Chis's Grandparents had been launched. We had finished shooting by now and we're on our way back to the port so spirits were high after a successful trip. I'm sure Chris had a few things on his mind but if he did he didn't say....

Chris, Andras, Me and Ian........

Fashion

.................I am no great lover of fashion. I have very little interest in the subject to be honest. Being "in fashion" is as much a lifestyle choice as being into body art or skateboarding or being a hippy. It is all consuming. Fair enough too if that's your bag but it isn't for me. Don't get me wrong, I like nice clothes. I probably like them more than the next man, but fashion is different isn't it. The kind of stuff I buy I've been buying for the last twenty years. Good quality stuff, probably with a bit of a price tag, that I can wear until it falls to bits........... not until it goes out of style. The one exception is jeans. You've kind of got to get the right jeans. You really do look a bit of a lemon in a pair of flairs when everyone else has gone skinny. So fair enough, I have my limits.

When it comes to fashion photography it is a similar thing. It is a lifestyle choice made early on. You have to want to spend your whole time in the company of stylists, models, makeup artists etc etc etc. You also have to know how to make a frock look nice since the name of the game is selling clothes. It's so easy to go off on a tangent when something starts to work only to be told that it's all about the product and the beautiful, moody photo's you've ended up taking are of little use.

This is a recent shoot for lifestyle brand Mudd and Water. It's a spring summer catalogue shoot for next season. The photographs they wanted are as below. Bright and colourful like the new collection.

We got the shots and everyone was happy but left to my own devices I couldn't help but try and make the shots more moody. It was all about the location. We had this amazing house with plaster hanging off the walls and tatty furniture strewn about the place. We had a great props, a great model. It was crying out for a certain treatment but it wasn't what the client wanted, and let's face it they were paying. 

You've got to listen to the person with the purse or you won't get used again but it is always fun to try and sneak a few shots through for yourself. 

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