8BallPhotography

RB And The Dress!

2011-08-31T04:29:00.000-07:00

Ellie’s wedding day was the 7^th of July 2011. 2 days later we drove to the stables in the wedding graffitied car, where she once again donned the wedding dress and collected her Horse.

Royal Blue is an Irish Draught, gorgeous dapple Grey colours, and Ellie wanted to do a photo shoot of her in her dress with him. I was privileged to do this, and we had fun at the same time, I guess I was more relaxed about these as it was a laid back situation, no time limit, unless RB said so!

We went into one of the horses fields, and had RB being held by Ellie. Trying to get good shots of animals is difficult and needs patience, and when I did get a good one of RB, Ellie was talking or facing the wrong direction, but after a while we got it, and tried doing some photographs without the harness on RB so he looked more natural and at home. We got some nice shots of him walking by her side, but in all honesty, I think he was only interested in the food we were rattling to keep him happy!

My favourite set of shots was when Ellie sat on the ground, set her dress out, and we convinced RB to stay around by using feed and letting him eat it of the dress. This worked, even though at one point RB started to eat the actual dress, despite this, the dress remained intact and we got some photos of the occasion I was happy with, and most importantly, Ellie was happy with.

I only used Monochrome for these photos, feeling it would give the images a more personalized and timeless feel about them. I did once again, have problems with lighting… it seems to be my downfall! Some images turned out too dark, and once again had to be Photoshopped brighter. This led to the photos having noise, and I had to work on a fine surface blur in order to cover up the noise without softening the focal foreground.

I’ve yet to print the photos, choosing to concentrate on Uni work first. But these images will be printed and sent on!

Ellie And Howard Reads wedding day!!

2011-08-31T04:09:00.000-07:00

I was so nervous. I really wanted to get some really good photos for the married couple, and didn’t put the camera down all day and all night. I took 1685 images. Sorting through them was very time consuming, and considering many of the photos turned out dark, needing a tad of Photoshop to brighten them up!

The day started the night before. Bride, Bridesmaids, mother and I had manicures and pedicures, drank champagne until late night and prepared ourselves for the next day.

Ellie was awake before the rest of us, and by the time we got downstairs she was already having her hair curled and prepared by her Aunty. I tried getting a couple of these shots but the lighting inside was difficult, so I decided to leave it until we arrived at The Matara.

Things started kicking off when we got there. The Bridesmaids got dressed and had their hair done, The bride got ready last, the flower girl came to join us, and so did the official photographer for the day. We managed to get the dress and take it to a room in the housing area. Hung the dress up on the four-poster bed and started taking what was an attempt at an iconic photograph for the occasion.

The ceremony came and went, and we all got put into the hall for lunch. Bangers and Mash! We ate while listening to saxophone, and being entertained by the same guy.

Time for the speeches, and I was lucky to be seated right in front of the main table, giving me an uninterrupted view of the Bride and Groom and the family. Unfortunately, my social anxiety got the better of me on this occasion, and I found myself unable to move from my seat in order to get different angles. I settled my nerves by remembering I wasn’t priority photographer, and that she most probably had the shot already.

The evening was difficult as everybody was on the dance floor, and nothing is really distinguishable! Yet you still get the essence of the day.

I hope Ellie and Howard will like the photos. I will be the first to admit I feel I failed in getting some iconic good ones that they would’ve liked as their professional, so for me it concludes that I’m not ready to start doing wedding photography professionally yet, until I have more of the right experience and kit with me. This is not my best work by far, but it’s defiantly a start!

tango's growing

2011-08-02T12:22:00.000-07:00

Due to unfortunate events, I've got to admit I've been neglecting tango quite abit! So he's been getting to come out of his viv alot more and gets free roam of the bedroom! He likes coming out when we've got people around, only as long as they're okay with him and don't get too excited!

He's enjoying his food, it seemed like we were over feeding him a little to compensate for the lack of handling, so he's been on a mini diet... this seemed to encourage 'hunt mode'!!

He's over 3 foot long now, so different to the tiny worm we got over a year ago!! Must say I do enjoy taking photogarphs of him, however, it's tricky in low lighting situations, and he's never keen on staying still for more than an 8th of a second!

Good Tango! :)

off to southwold again

2011-08-02T12:07:00.000-07:00

One of our trips to Southwold, and after a long break I started to pick up the camera again. Just using standard Canon 50ml lense!

The beach huts are renowned in Southwold, one of the better views of the North sea!

Just a couple of days away from home made us feel alot better and helped get me back on track with my work... resulting in hand and camera surgically attatched!

bugging the drift slag!

2010-09-15T07:13:00.000-07:00

Well, RIP golf, we'll miss you, but you've gone to a better home... Welcome, Skippy the Bush Bug!! what a classic, '69 WV beetle imported from Australia, shes awesome!! Needless to say getting her in such good condition was an absolute mission! we've been looking for a car for about a month, Tom had his heart set on a Beetle, so ebaying it up, we went to look at a couple, There was a black one in Manchester that, by the photos, looked in good condition, the description was good also, so we went to have a look one evening... They guy was abit of a knob really, said the car was running not long ago and the car had been moved... so what was with the 2 inch thick layer of moss underneath and gaping big hole in the floor on the passenger side... yeah, so that didn't happen, after a while we were starting to loose hope. Then Skippy came along on ebay, the guy was looking for about a grand for her, which was our budget.. lovely... so, we phoned him up and asked, if we drove from Wrexham to London to look at the car would he accept £1000 there and then? he said yes. So me, Tom and Paul drove to Swindon,(to drop off the car we were borrowing) where Toms dad drove us to London, we got there, brand new 1300 engine, really good nick, hardly any rust, (just the right amount though to make the car look nice and rustic.. old school!!) the bottom was fine, and the car ran... but this geezer decided he wasn't going to take the £1000 for it and wait for ebay to finish... needless to say we weren't happy, so we drove back to Swindon to think about what to do... Then, said geezer decided to let us have it for £1600, so off we go again, arrive in London at 11pm and pick the car up, only to drive it back to Wrexham at a maximum of 50mph all the way!! No problems with her at all, and touch wood, she hasn't let us down yet!! What an awesome car! We got back at 5am.

And introducing Pauls car, Drifto Slago... she lives up to her name, that car goes sideways... really sideways... alot!! We done a photo shoot at night just for the fun of it, with some lighting techniques, inspired by the guys... this is what we came up with! The only problems was finding somewhere with no light whatsoever in order to make more of an impact, and a little help from Photoshop...!

For this shoot I used standard Tripod, Standard lens and Canon digital SLR 1000D, 2 torches and 2 people running around like fools!

These 1st photos were done in the cash and carry car park, very limited lighting and out the way of roads, we just finished doing these, then lights came on and we had to move to another location.

Here are the ones we did at the side of the road. It was completely dark, yet sometimes a little bit of light did manage to get through, we also had the problem of passing cars, but these were few and far between leaving us able to work efficiently. The camera was left on long exposure for a maximum of 5 seconds, and a minimum of 1.5 seconds, varying between the 2 for each image.

The above was a failed attempt where Tom got too close to the car in the 1st 2 seconds of the open shutter!

These are the better photos I took with a portrait view, and decided to concentrate more on blacking out the backgrounds via Photoshop!

Final Drifto Slago;

and final Skippy;

With the torches we were trying very hard to get the line of the vehicles as they're very distinctive... we ended up with some very interesting shapes, I'm very happy with the end results!!

Ten Of The Best

2010-09-15T05:48:00.000-07:00

This was a car show that Tom got asked to go cover... We traveled to york with a couple of mates. I was asked to come with so I could take some photos of cars for Polybush, I got told if I made an impact there could be a possibility of me getting commissioned work in the future, so i jumped at the chance. We went early in the morning on the Saturday, it took a good couple of hours to get there, and when we did we were slightly dissapointed, we thought it would be alot busier, turns out that the main day to go on was the Sunday, nobody told us, so we had to make do with what was there!! Still, it was pretty impressive and we had a great day out! As soon as we got back home I was on Photoshop editing the images and lifting the contrast, (on some photos maybe too much) and sent them off straight away to Hayley at Polybush. Here's some that I came out with...

The main events happening was the drag strip, a quarter mile, where people were trying their cars out on their own for the next day, or just racing with other cars that where there.

Heres a few I took from just walking around the event,

With the colour image I tried out some photoshopping, and got rid of everything distracting in the background, the blue tent is missing and a slight disturbance on the left hand side f the picture aswell, both of which you can see in the black and white picture of the same car taken at the same time! I'm currently looking at Photoshop tutorials in order to improve my editing skills!

Then there was the handling course. This was going to be tricky for the drivers as it had been raining for half an hour previous to them opening up the course.. The main car that had an impact on this run was the RX7, a rear wheel drive car which drifts nicely on wet tarmac. For these shots I used my 300mm Sigma lens, and I was stood in the stands 50 yards away from the front line.

So there's a narrowed down selection of photos sent to Polybush, I've been having ideas of contacting the event organisers and seeing of they want to use any for future promotions. We'll see!!

Ah, back at last!!

2010-09-15T05:30:00.001-07:00

Unfortunatly due to orange and bt being the difficult buggers they are, I've been offline for over 2 weeks, this has put a major halt on my professional development... so, I've got loads to put up and evaluate, ready?

im going to start with excuses as to why my mind hasn't been directly on my third year, like it should've, theres just been so much going on!! we've been looking for a new house to live in, we had to leave the flat, (yeah, really bad times) we were going to go move to Swindon for the holidays and find somewhere to live up here, I had a job lined up and everything! However, Tom managed to get a job alot sooner than we expected and had to stay in Wrexham... with no house!! Thank fuck for our mate Paul... what a life saver, he put us up in his place and were all looking for a new house together!! After a few hits and misses, we found the perfect house in Ruabon... fingers crossed!! Toms job is going really well, he's really fitted into it well, early mornings and early nights however is an entire new concept to me, one I'm struggling to come to terms with, but he's been to a few shows across Britain already and has really made an impact on the company... if you need Polyurethane suspension bush mounts for your car... go to Polybush and ask for Tom aka, Bodders! ;)

Since hes been all over the place I've been going home alot, I've missed my mates alot recently, andI've found that everybody seems to be taking completely different directions in life... so its about time I made my own way aswell!

I've got a job, okay, not many hours but I'm keeping positive... Halfords... I'm trying to get trained up so I'm not just a till bitch and learning more about cars and bikes and all that jazz! Toms impressed... I get a discount card soon!

So when it comes to Photography, I havn't been able to get any commission based work... I'm starting to get worried, I need to sort something out, I've got lots of research, but I don't know what I want to do for my dissertation either... Shit, I should've written my proposal by now!! Wheres my tutor when I need him?

Glyndwr really is a naff uni... I don't want to talk bad about it... but it really is... The entire institute is completely corrupt, moneywise, they don't bother well with British students, instead concentrating more on the foreign students... this wouldn't be so bad if they were doing it out of the kindness of their own hearts, instead, they're looking at money... foreign students pay a hell of alot more than british... soo it's nice to see where glyndwrs morals stand!!! There are many other issues aswell, but I'll save them... for a more worthwhile cause!!

right... so Photography... I remember!!!

pitt stop

2010-08-04T06:25:00.000-07:00

The engineering department had a pittstop night, everybody had to dress up as racing drivers and pitt girls!! It was a really eventful night, and I was doing the photography for the website and for next years pitt stop promotional. I was hired officially by Lee Lapihuska to follow everybody with my camera, but by the end of the night and after a few drinks myself the quality of the pictures changed considerably, but despite this I got some lovely shots of everybody and some really unique moments! cheers to the smurfs for turning up also! I wasn't the only photographer there, Thibault Fenie, also an engineering student and photoshop god was there taking portrait photos all night, and people standing with the special guest... the Stig! The night started in the Student Guild and finished at Liquid in Wrexham, the last thing I remember was a short bouncer man in a fluorescent jacket asking my friend swampy to leave the premises at the end of the night, he didn't expect swampy to be 6 and a half foot tall, and therefore failed miserably!! Good times, and I'm looking forward to doing more photography for events like this in the near future!

We got to Liquid and I stopped using flash photography, and going on the minimal lighting of the club instead.

Towards the end of the night (before I got drunk!) it was alot easier to get some really natural poses from people, and to play bit more with the camera settings.

Swarm

2010-08-03T14:36:00.000-07:00

When we were in India in January, we met up with these guys from San Fransisco who worked with a project called Swarm. They designed and created these orbs, each moves on its own, plays music and lights up, and interacts with other orbs, on their own! Swarm consists of many members each assigned a different job with the orbs, some doing the music, the outer design, and others on the technological side of figuring out how to get them to 'dance' with each other! Swarm also demonstrates at the Burning Man festival! Needless to say these guys made a great impact at the Technology festival at Kanpur University, and were really inspiring to meet.

I took these photos for them, and have since e-mailed them on after working/cropping the images!

Time to get Professional!!

2010-08-02T16:23:00.000-07:00

f****d but still smilin'!

2010-07-12T05:56:00.000-07:00

so, i havn't been on here much since my 1st post... shit happens!lol! i mean to though, and only just got round to it...
well, alots happened since 'it begins'. i passed my 2nd year at uni, my assesment went, well, i thought okay, it wasn't great, i got my hopes up big style but the lack of enthausiasm and being told, 'we get the gist' for my film was really down putting, so i said a few swear words on facebook and let my anger out that way... and now got a letter through the post saying i've passed... see, foul language works!

so, i'm thinking about my dissertation, i dont have a clue.. i thought something along the lines of journalistic photography... but where to begin? what i really want to do in life is travel my arse off, but for that i need money and a direction, to which i lack both!

i havn't picked up the camera for a while... i'm almost forgetting how to use it, but i found out that on sataday i'm going to the RAF fairford show so i'll get my 300mm lense out and get back into it again... i have soo many photos to upload its silly, i've been really lazy and been enjoying life.. a few changes have been made and so far for the better, but this summer is really going to be something! wait and see!

we've moved out of the flat, mine and toms first home together, it was sad, but with the promise of bigger and better things, you got to keep an open mind, something will definatly work out for us, i feel it in my tummyguts! :) were now in swindon, well highworth for a week, (will be learning to ride a big horse with one eye.. he's called josh! :)) then we'll be coming back up to wrexham where me lover starts his new job!! im so proud of him! i'll be monging around trying to think of ideas and concepts for my third and final year, oh and having a drink in the process!

tango's getting so much bigger, fast too! he's awesome! ive got some really cool pictures of him feasting away and destroying fluffs! they'll be posted sometime soon!

i had a major incident that im recently recovering from, sometimes things make you either a better person, or a more grumpy person... im still confused as to which this has made me... surgery over pills anyday, and a smile... a really big smile! :)

"Say hey matey...!"

2010-05-23T07:53:00.000-07:00

"Say hello to my little friend..."

Ive tried so many times to find a decent page, a website or a decent blog to start up. To be honest, I don't even know why I've got one. I keep getting told by people in university that I need one, and that it would help with my studies, and will help get people to notice the work I do! well, here goes...

... I'm at the end of my 2nd year in Glyndwr university, I've got my assessment next monday, shit, thats tomorrow.. well, I've done most of my work for this terms projects. Iv'e only got my PDP to write up and to finish my Photo Editorial.

Thing is, I've been doing a little bit of travelling this year, in february I went to India with my partner to help talk and promote the Glyndwr solar car team in several Indian engineering universities. That was an experiance, India is definatly a country that opens your eyes, It's rough as arseholes, the beggers see a white person and they're all over you, every baggage handler wants to take your luggage and children come running at you from miles, it's a nice country, don't get me wrong, but the people are somewhat deprived of simple luxuries, without much help from the government... it gets complicated, but it breaks your heart. Anyway, point is, we went there for a couple of weeks, I really wanted to use the experiance in my work, so I decided to do my Photographic Editorial, (magazine article in other words!) on the Taj Mahal, 500 words to talk about it and lots of photos to make a double page spread... pretty easy to be honest. The story that goes with the Taj is a love story of a sort, I'm not really into love stories, but it fitted the scene, me and my partner had a lovely time there, so thats where that headed, I completed a trial version, I just need to sort the layout.

Another one of my projects was to take 6 photos of broken grandeur/ decay.... once again, I thought this was perfect for india. Althoguh I felt it difficult to go around taking photos of starving people, beggers and children, it fittted perfectly. But after a while, I took a couple of photos of beggers, (after I gave them some money, wouldn't be fair otherwise) and then turned to the animals.

I love animals much more than humans, anything with four legs and a tail I'm all over it in the most high pitched voice I can muster, I'm not proud of being such a girl when it comes to fluffy things, but the little buggers just get me everytime! So, when I saw all these animals, Dogs, Pigs and Cows (which are supposed to be sacred in India, but do get treated quite badly) rumaging around starving aswell, donkeys and ponies being beaten and scarred, Ox's getting smacked with sticks, it broke my heart even more... this was also the decay of India, a third world country. It fitted the project, and who am I to step in and tell them they are wrong, their country, their culture, their life. Good luck to them! :)

So I came back thinking, great, Ive taken so many photos, so far so good. Back in Wrexham, I've been playing with them on photoshop, cropping, contrasting etc, until a month later, where me and Tom got asked to go to St Gervais, France on a skiing/snowboarding holiday at my dads flat. I wasn't exactly going to say no, and by this time it was the Easter holidays, so off we went, and once again I was thinking about work, how could I put this in with any of my projects.

Considering I was slap bang under Mt Blanc, I thought about looking at the landscape for a book cover idea, I took a couple of stitcher photos to see if I could do an entire sleeve, I then had to find a book to go with it.... I took a good couple of Gb worth of photos out there, and luckily one was a picture of a moth on the wall. About a week ago today, I still hadn't found a book to go with the mountainous stitcher photos, while looking in Waterstones for a book I found one with the title, 'The Behaviour Of Moths' by Poppy Adams. Its weird how unexpected things happen, so there was my photo of a moth, the book cover was abit naff anyways, (in my own opinion) so I redesigned that one. Cheers France!

And a couple of days ago today, we came back from Cyprus. Needless to say uni wernt happy bout me going abroad so close to my assesment deadline, and also with the risk of not being able to return as of the volcanic ash situation. But I went anyway, I'd rather be stuck out there than here! After working my ass off leading up to the holiday I was left to decide which project to work into the Cyprus holiday, so I could say it was for work purposes and not just a family holiday.... it was just a nice coincidence the family was out there alreay! My only film project was to do a non-narrative film, when it comes to films, I'm not really that clever, bright or imaginative! Photographs are easy, I can play with them, I can get different angles, I'm good at looking at things in a new light! But with film, for some reason I struggle, hard. All I could think of doing was a few time lapse clips of the different beaches we were on, put them together to make a sequence and put one of my favourite tunes to it... this being The Pot, by Tool! After I came home, and with a couple of days to go before my big interveiw with a tutor I've hardly seen all year, I've just completed putting it together, and it doesn't look too bad! I like it, Time lapse films are great, I just need a better battery pack so my camera can last longer!

The other projects I've had to do in between getting on planes, was food photography, sounds easy but it really isn't, you have to make food look interesting, how is food interesting? it all goes down the same way! To be fair, it was alot of fun, we ended up making a castle out of biscuits, (project title being, 'Biscuit Bonanza') drank a bottle of wine, ('grape expectations') and in a Cyprus food store we found mounds of vegetables that I ended up doing an 8 page porfolio on instead of the one image, ('vegetable visions')

I also had to reproduce an album cover, I did a friend of mine. Luke Day is an extraordinary musician well known around the mid wales area, and I asked if I could use him, I found an old photo and reproduced a Julian Opie style image in my own style! Thank you photoshop!

Modern masterpeices was fun too! instead of sticking to the brief and choosing a classical painting everybody knew, I choose to find classic iconic photographs instead. I went along with the punk scene and reproduced pictures of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen, using a couple of mates, Amy Sayers and Karis Tomlins. They were awesome models, Kaz has pink dreads, and Amy had blue backcombed big hair, punky alternative outfits and bright make up. They were perfect for what I wanted to do. We started off in the studio, trying to get the poses right, but lighting as an absolute nightmare, I'm not too good at indoor photoshoots. So after a while we went to the 'Hobo Bridge', so named as its renowned for crackheads and smackheads and homeless going there every night and doing their stuff, there was dirty needles everywhere so we had to be carefull where we stood! We had bright lighting and a good atmosphere that blended well with the style of photos we took.. after we completed the work, the girls went on a mad one and started using their own ideas for posing, we had a completely different photoshoot where they just performed for the camera, generally having a really good laugh dancing around and pretending to be zombies, (something which amy is now using my photos for, for her own projects, shes studying her MA in childrens illustration)

Well, now I've got most of my work done, I've completed the tasks that was set for me to do for this term and made many more accomplishments, all the photography is done, I've even done the film, I've travelled a little and found bettter experiances, I've learnt many things, I've got a blog, Ive got a website, a couple of art pages, well to be fair, I'm all over the web now, this blog, im on cargo collective, stashphotography, deviantart, stashphotography, www.stashphotography.co.uk, (yet it's not finished and maybe doubt it will be) and even flikr... stashphotography! Im on facebook, tasha gilbey, and I have a myspace account, I've even got a twitter account but I hardly use it, I don't really see the point in that one!

... and why do I keep spelling phootgraphy like that!

My goal in life is to have my own photography business, or to be really successful with my images.... I've never done this before, but this year I have tried so hard to work my hardest, to finish work, to acheive something! And I really feel like I'm getting somewhere! I know I'm in for a tough time over summer, personaly, but I'm looking forward to finding out what I can achieve if I put my mind to it, and stop being a lazy bum! Something I've always wanted to do!

I think I'm definly going to post again, maybe tomorrow after my assessment, even if it is a waste of time, its good to get all this info of my chest!

Oh and another thing, I am open minded, if you want to reply or leave a comment... do...negative or not!!! I'd like to find out what other people think... I'll even put some pics up to have a look at! :)