lessons from the late night;

YQ II;

2012-01-02T12:19:00.000-08:00

First of all I'm gonna apologise 'cause I might ramble a bit (too much caffeine and not enough sleep) and also for the quality of the images, I'm beginning to notice that the textures look pretty awful compared to when I view them in Bridge. However blogger seems to have implemented a new slideshow feature, so if you click on one of the images and scroll through them, they look better.

YQ, the model from the last shoot, really liked one of the images and I ended up with quite a few renditions of it. So I thought it'd be interesting to see how the image develops - I always enjoy WIP insight - so I'm posting the various versions including the raw, unedited photo.

I promised YQ I might try and get a bit creative with the post processing if the inspiration hits me, but I tried a few things and it didn't really work out. In the previous post you can see the editing I ended up going for; quite soft, harmonious tones, a little bit of split-toning, nothing too extreme. I really liked this slightly washed-out look, it's got something melancholy or sentimental about it that I think goes with the concept.

I uploaded the images and YQ liked one of them especially (below), but it was one which I decided would be better off as a black & white. The image just didn't seem to have enough 'pang' to me in colour.

PANG

SOOC, no grey card used, auto white balance

Adjusted white balance, split toning, some dodge & burn on the face
- even though the image is more rich, the focus seems to be somewhat taken away from the model

The other night I started sorting through the images so I could pack them up and send off to him and I ended up playing around with said picture. It started with a simple "let's liven this up, I wonder what happens if I throw a bit of red in there". I experiment with overlaying gradients quite a lot in my PP but rarely end up using them in final work, and if I do, they're very subtle. But this time I think they worked pretty well - they helped isolate the model and the image seems stronger to me overall. There are two versions and I like the second one better, but I feel I could brush up on my knowledge of lighting; some of the lights 'cast' onto the model seem a little off. Either way, here you go.

Red-transparent and transparent-cyan on Overlay with adjusted Opacity

The colours 'cast' onto the model, created using Brush tool

shoot with YQ;

2012-01-02T06:48:00.000-08:00

Shot in Soho in early December.

YQ happened to be in London and contacted me through modelmayhem asking to do a shoot together. It was all a bit last minute, we both ended up being short on time when it came to planning and preparation. As things worked out the way they did, I ended up having to figure the concept out on the way to the shoot. Not recommended for commissioned work but I gotta say I like to improvise, plus when you know you'll be working with someone passionate and creative, it's always interesting to just meet the person and see where your creativity will take you.

For ages now I wanted to do an urban, 'nighttime' shoot. London is a different place at night. And now that I was equipped to do so (i.e. in possession of a 50mm lens with f1.8 aperture - more light! shorter exposure time! shallower depth of field!) I thought hell, why not, it could work.

I have to give credit to YQ for his commitment and perseverance. It was freezing, it was raining, we were at it for hours and he was hardly wearing anything yet he stuck with it until we got something we were happy with.

So for this shoot, I was going for a "lost in the city" thing (for some reason I had He took a midnight train going anywhere... stuck in my head throughout the evening). Everyone's rushing past and you try to figure out where the hell you are and what to do with yourself now that you are there. I shot on longer exposures to get the painterly blur created by people walking past which was another challenge because YQ had to keep very still. Anyway, without further ado, here are my favourites. And here is YQ's MM portfolio, so be sure to check it out!

animals;

2011-11-04T03:25:00.001-07:00

Street photography with a twist, inspired by the work of Rosie Hardy and my good and very talented friend Alda Villiljós. This body of work will be updated, these are my initial experiments. The idea, stems from several things. First of all, I want to push my photography further. Looking at the work of Rosie Hardy was very inspiring - I've wanted to incorporate a tinge of surrealism into my work for a pretty long time now and I'm a big fan of Brooke Shaden, but where Shaden's work is completely fantasy-driven and dream-like, Hardy adds a dimension of surrealism to fairly 'standard', if you will, photos. I feel like all these ladies deserve their separate updates so I will get on that at some point, for now here are my results. I should also mention that what I wanted to portray through these photos is the spirit of London as I see it. London is an urban jungle. People are apathetic. There is beauty in these streets but it goes overlooked and unnoticed. There is chaos as well as structure - London is harmoniously dual and contradictive, much like what I feel about myself. So, onto the shots:

duality;

2011-11-04T03:21:00.000-07:00

This is something I'd like to incorporate into my work at some point. For a long time I've felt like the most powerful quality I have, albeit perhaps the hardest for outsiders to notice, is my duality, conflicting and contradicting personality traits, going back and forth between two opposite poles. I'd like to explore that idea in photography.

dougie wallace inspired street photography;

2011-10-10T08:24:00.000-07:00

fantastic Nonsense Society articles;

2011-09-08T19:04:00.000-07:00

10 Young Photographers to Keep Your Eyes On

Two Teenage Girls Leaving Their Mark On Photography

Fashion Photography Tips

beauty&beast;

2011-09-08T15:41:00.000-07:00

So me and Talia have been talking about working together again and we finally got the chance today. We've been going over this shoot for awhile, so once again there was a fair bit of research and discussion involved over a fair period of time.

The concept was Beauty & The Beast (as Talia did give this make up a go in her own time before and we thought it'd be awesome) and originally, we were going to go along with the classic take on the fairy-tale with possibly period clothing and a bit of a visual narrative going on, but as we are limited to what we've got (equipment, props, wardrobe, location; the list goes on) the idea, as is usual with me, has changed as we got stuck into it - as we were limited if we attempted to stick with the original theme it just wouldn't be strong enough 'cause the closest we had to period clothing was a chocolate-brown waistcoat.

So I did a bit of styling magic (and by that I mean "let's put things together that have a chance of being somewhat aesthetically pleasing"), the clothes sourced from my own and my new housemate's wardrobe, and Talia got stuck into the make up. We did the Beauty stuff first, then moved onto the Beast - we experimented with different backdrops (dead ivy, living ivy, white textured wall, white side of a curtain, etc) and I had the chance to play around with my makeshift reflector (basically a piece of cardboard covered with aluminium foil) and my flashgun which as usual made a world of difference. But nonetheless here are the preparation shots:

A tiny fraction of Talia's magical box

Beauty 1
(you know you're a broke-ass student-artist when a coffee cup serves as a mirror stand)

Beauty 2

Beast 1

Beast 2

Alexia the Accidental Assistant
(very useful to have an extra pair of hands around)

Talia struggled a bit with being in front of the camera and as modeling isn't something she sees as her forté - but we managed to loosen her up and she did brilliantly. Alexia does a bit of modeling so she helped me translate my "...look like you're off your face and don't give a f**k" into actual poses and facial expressions - Acid King playing in the background also helped, as did showing Talia music videos involving 'angry chicks with an attitude'.

Okay Talia, I didn't mean this much off your face.

She was actually blinking while talking about some guy and the way he poses against the wall. Naturally she will want to kill me for this, as she already threatened to pour kerosene down my throat and stab me to death in my sleep for refusing and resisting the deletion of this picture - it's okay Talia, we all think you make a lovely wasted biker chick. Although I won't be surprised if our next shoot will look something like this (I now regret showing her this video in order to entice the whole angry chick thing):

Not Quite Safe For Work & Excuse The Gore

Distractions aside, here's what we ended up with:

(click for higher-res)

These were two of my favourite shots - due to the good lightning there was minimal amount of editing to be done. I only had to mess around with the Curves a bit, but what this caused is a difference in the red (or maroon if you want to be picky) bandana's tint and they didn't match anymore, so I masked the bandana on the left out and matched the colours - then I had to do the same for Talia's lipstick (which originally did match the bandana). I did a tiny bit of retouch on the make up just to emphasize is a bit, and we also had to flatten Talia's chest on the Beast shot a fair bit with the magical Liquify tool 'cause tying a scarf around her chest just didn't do the trick. On the Beauty one, I also tweaked with her eye colour to match the green bar she had in her ear, which she really liked in the photo, but it worked well because of the general vibrancy of the colours and brought her stunning eyes our even more.

I won't be writing what was the reason for doing these shots the way I did 'cause that would completely take away from the whole 'audience experience', but I can tell you that save for a happy accident or two pretty much all of the elements here were thought through and discussed.

I'll post some more when I get through them, in the meantime I'll be finding out who my photography teacher is for this year - fingers crossed for Laura.

illustration/inspiration;

2011-08-05T02:22:00.000-07:00

So, inspiration.

There's plenty of things that inspire me and I'm constantly inspired, but sometimes it's hard to translate the ideas and concepts in my head into something you can share with others.

Lately my creative flow had a release and although I haven't picked my camera up in a few weeks (although I haven't been slacking in that respect, I've been doing the internship with Hugh I mentioned applying for earlier - I'll write about it at some point, it's fantastic) mainly in form of a bit of writing (spoken word poetry). I also watched I'm Not There recently, a fantastic conceptual film inspired by Bob Dylan and that gave me some ideas regarding live performances combining spoken word, photography, film and music. If I ever have a chance to put it into action I'll jump at the chance.

What inspires me a lot these days is music, and one of the top musicians in my books at the moment is Alison Mosshart, the singer of The Kills and The Dead Weather. The two bands, along with a couple others, have been playing on my iTunes on repeat for the past couple of months and I'm still not bored. The Kills is the band that was playing constantly during my shoot with Marin and I considered their music to be a big part of the moodboard I created for the concept I had, the energy and mood of their music translated into my idea perfectly.

The other day I woke up and (as I have an iMac now - with working USBs - which allows me to use my tablet! at last) and started drawing a scene The Dead Weather's video for Treat Me Like Your Mother.

It was just the most natural thing in the world. I woke up, put their music on as usual, stumbled upon their video and ended up drawing. I carried on with little stopping for the next 10 hours - as was always the case whenever I was really "in the zone" and ended up creating stuff I'd be afterwards proud of - my best work was created like that, work where I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do, etc.

Click here to view the process

Close up of the rough sketch (red) and the beginning of the final lineart

Final lineart, hair and basic shadows

Base colours, initial background sketch and background palette

Reworked the colours & shadows, added skin highlights and started colouring the different elements - e.g. the
ring & zip, also finished the background and added some blood (I got a little over-enthusiastic with that later on)

Finished the colouring, added more blood, hair highlights, text & signature;
also added a sepia overlay to bring the whole thing together more

Final version, threw in a few textures, changed the signature & messed around with layer modes
- which lightened the deep shadows & thus less detail was lost. See the blood on the glasses?

concert photography;

2011-06-17T03:07:00.001-07:00

DPS' awesome little guide on gig photography.

college, internships & Ellis Parrinder;

2011-06-16T11:26:00.001-07:00

COLLEGE

So my exams are finished and it's a huge relief. I'm back at college for 3 weeks now so we can get a head start on next year's material. This also means that I've had my first after-exam photography class and I have my next year's assignment! Exciting stuff. Last year the theme was Conceal/Reveal, this year we have Street, which for several reasons I think is brilliant.

First of all, the following year will get far more serious and I already got the feel of that. Aside from photography I'll be continuing my graphics and history of art courses, which means the entire focus will be generally on things I love.

But back to photography. Street photography offers me an opportunity to explore a lot of different subjects: from architecture, through fashion, to street portraits - the latter two I'm especially excited (as well as anxious) to try. Also, it will push me to just get out there and interact with people, if people I choose to photograph. This also means there won't be any pre-prepared shots and settings, everything will be done on the go. It'll be a nice break and it'll challenge me to find new ways to make portraits captivating. I also have to write an essay to support my practical work, which I'm also looking forward to as I've got a lot of opinions when it comes to photography...

Some ideas I've got so far, so I keep track of them -

Buskers - they're fantastic performers and they often bring so much life and energy to the shots. They are people from all sorts of backgrounds and many of them I find extremely interesting individuals, both personality/lifestyle and appearance wise.
THE BIG ISSUE vendors - I'd get to document exactly the kind of thing that a lot of people in this city try to look away from. I would however have to think long and hard, since there are all sorts of exploitation issues at play here - but I think it'd make for a great research study/essay too.
Candid - shots of different people doing the same thing. But I'm not sure what just yet.
Camping out in Trafalgar Square with a "STUDENT PHOTOGRAPHER LOOKING FOR SUBJECTS. MUST BE BRAVE" placard. Or something along those lines. I think seeing what kind of people would approach me would be interesting. Plus, it'd be fun.
Going out with a friend who writes for a fashion blog and getting her to pull 'trendy' people from the crowd. She talks, I snap, and then we both ask questions (me in relation to my essay - i.e. feelings on being photographed on the street by a stranger, etc.)
Reflections - I've already started taking some shots in the city playing around with reflections on glass office buildings and such.
Typology series on signs - London overloads us with information, instructions and rules. We just often don't realise it.

Tomorrow I'm going to the Whitechapel Gallery to see Paul Graham's exhibition. So that's it for college related news.

INTERNSHIPS

So as my financial situation hit a new rock bottom - and the summer is beginning - a lot of the plans I've had fell through as they were pretty dependant on my money situation. But every cloud has a silver lining right? This really motivated me to try and get a photography internship (unpaid work). Now I've wanted to do this for ages as I think just observing a professional photographer at work could teach me a lot, but I've been struggling to find anything. A couple of contacts fell through, I've also emailed a couple of local photographers and got no reply. But a few days ago I was on gumtree looking to find what sort of skill level is offered by the photographers who post on there, and I found an ad saying that a photographer is looking for an intern.

The ad was only a couple days old so I replied, sending through a link to the page with my photos. The next day I get a call - which I obviously miss - and it turns out it was said photographer, named Hugh, interested in meeting me. I said that unfortunately I am not free to meet today but tomorrow is okay. Now he didn't reply to this and today out of curiosity I googled "hugh photographer fashion beauty london" and found his portfolio. And then I was kind of blown away. It turns out it's Hugh O'Malley, a pretty renown London fashion photographer.

So nevermind that I love his work, but he also lives and works in the same borough as me, which means that it'd be extremely convenient for me travel-wise. And another amazing thing - he writes that in exchange for the assistance said assistant would be allowed to use his studio.

I have a great little local studio I can use, or well, I could use, when I had spare £25, which these days I don't - so it'd be great. And really I'd just feel very privileged if I could work for him, the images he generates are absolutely beautiful and thus inspirational. So I'm crossing all my fingers. But if it doesn't work out, i'll just keep trying until someone does take me on.

As Hugh wasn't replying I got a little more pro-active at looking for an internship and I'm in the process of writing a CV and cover letters for Sam Peach and Patricia Nicolás so one way or another

something will hopefully come through. Moving onto the definite good news:

ELLIS PARRINDER

Now, I can guarantee you that you've seen something by Ellis Parrinder. I have, just haven't realised it! He's a celebrity photographer who has shot many musicians (Beth Ditto, Coldplay, La Roux, Dizzee Rascal), actors (Russell Brand, David Tennant, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and many more) and other known figures such as our beloved Prime Minister. And he was also the official BAFTAs photographer this year. Awesome.

Anyway, where I'm going with this - a person whom I like to think of as my Auntie said she has a few photographer friends and that she could show my work to them, so I said sure. Today she calls me up, telling me that one of them has replied. And then she starts telling me about his work and mentions this one particular image of Beth Ditto that instantly came into my head as she was describing it...

I've always liked this shot so when I realised that this is the same guy we're talking about my jaw dropped a little. (He also photographed celebrities for the Some People Are Gay, Get Over It! campaign.) Either way, said Auntie is going to arrange for us to meet in a couple months when he's back in London, given he's got enough time, so I'm very excited. And now for the feedback he's given:

Hey love,

Ronna is brilliant!!!! I am really impressed with her work! She takes really good photos. I love the What are you afraid of set of shots, great idea and nice colours. Her work has something to it and her portraits capture people very intimately which is really hard to do. You either have that or you don't and I see she does. She isn't shy to try new things and that works with her ideas. I have seen lots of assistants' work and you try and give positive feedback, but with her stuff it was easy.

Keep it up Ronna!!!

Needless to say I am extremely flattered by this and that's all that can be said really. So that's it for the extremely long update, thank you for reading if you stayed this long!

photography exam;

2011-06-16T09:43:00.000-07:00

So I wrote about the following shoot before, but I haven't had the chance to share the final results. Of course there is a myriad little things that I would like to correct, but my computer can't handle anything right now so I'll save processing jobs for after I re-format it. So in summary, not perfect but a damn good job, much due to a talented MUA and fantastic model (you can stalk her fashion blog here) - I was very lucky to have these girls. So, without further delay...

wish list;

2011-06-04T19:37:00.000-07:00

After reading up on some equipment and considering certain purchases for the past few months here's the stuff I want to get for my camera (I call this basic essentials that will make a heckload of a difference)

- Hama Circular Polarizer Filter 52mm
- Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 lens
- Nikon ML-L3 remote

With the current prices it comes up to £142.83. I need a job 'cause I'm no good with savings. The good old "expnsive hobby" frustration.

BDE tutorial;

2011-06-04T19:04:00.000-07:00

Trying to wrap my head around BDE, equivalent exposures and Sunny 16 rule. Posting a link so I don't forget to re-read this since I never use my bookmarks...

Natalie Norton's guide to BDE

But hooray, a good friend of mine will be visiting from Berlin and staying with me for a few days, we're both crazy about art and he's modelled a couple of times for me before, so I'll test it out with him and all should become clear. I've soaked up so much information from DPS over the past few days - really amazing website.

Man Ray;

2011-06-04T15:48:00.000-07:00

self portraits;

2011-06-02T18:32:00.000-07:00

So I haven't done any in awhile and I snapped a few today that for once I was satisfied with. I think it might have something to do with shooting in RAW - which ages ago I gave up on, not seeing the difference, but I definitely do now. I've also been spending hours on DPS Forums on their critique section, just reading the comments. I'm learning, learning, learning and training my eye. I haven't dared to venture into the Processing critique section yet... I imagine I might be overdeveloping my shots but I've got a massive thing for split toning - which I'm trying to tone down a little. So just to make this whole shabang more interesting I'm gonna share the before-and after. I have to say this first shot is by no means a photo I terribly like as a photo of me, but photographically, I probably like it the most. There's just this sense of detail added in this tiny reflection on the edge of the face - I love these light contours, I've been trying to catch this kind of light as much as I could in my more recent work. The second one I enjoy as a simple portrait, the third one I think works due to a simplified background. If you have any thoughts, don't hesitate to share them. Oh, and click to view them larger.

contemplation/motivation;

2011-05-07T20:48:00.000-07:00

This post will be a little self-indulgent, following a conversation with a close friend I decided to write about my motivation to take photographs. Mainly so I have a good look at it myself and try and put it into words.

I am fascinated by the melancholy. The Bill Henson quote I posted two entries back resonates with me. There are people who have a sort of darkness in them - a secret, a deeply buried truth, denied feelings, things they haven't come to terms with, underlying hurt. I have a fascination with those buried feelings, with capturing them, with this sense of loss and longing. The sadness. The truth.

People put on masks every day, but some more than others. We play out a character. We show a different side of us to different people. And then there is a part us that we only allow ourselves to see and even that is not often. Sometimes, when you meet the right person, you let them see it too. But what I'm fascinated with is people who bury their feelings very deep, who put on a mask so successfully, who even spend a good while fooling themselves. For people like that it's a massive struggle to allow that connection with someone, to make themselves vulnerable and their weaknesses seen. And what I've been always obsessed with is human connection.

There are two things I'd like to evoke and capture in my photographs in my lifetime.

One is the relationship between the sitter and the photographer. For what I have in mind to be possible, the relationship between me and my subject would have to be very strong. I want to capture a twinkle in their eyes that's there for me, or a fondness, or desire. In other words, we're probably talking about a love, a lover, somebody very close.

The second one is the relationship of the sitter with oneself. That moment when they take a good look at what's deep inside, what is usually hidden, what they usually hide even from themselves. The conflict between the craving for human connection and being afraid to be hurt, exposed and vulnerable. I want to capture authentic feelings that resonate with me. The complexity and contradiction. Something real and something deeper.

I imagine that this can be an upsetting or uncomfortable experience. I imagine that my subjects will unknowingly try to shut off. Put on another mask. I appreciate that and I appreciate that it'll be difficult to get them to do what I need them to do and it'll probably require a level of trust. But I think if done right, it could be very powerful. And I'd really like to create something powerful, an image that strikes a note within someone, that evokes feelings, that captures something very human, something that transcends the lens of the camera and provokes emotion.

Richard Avedon, favourite work;

2011-05-07T16:52:00.000-07:00

Richard Avedon - Darkness and Light

2011-05-07T14:14:00.000-07:00

Documentary about Richard Avedon; and below, Norma Stevens, Avedon's assistant talking about the photographer.

photography quotes;

2011-05-07T13:06:00.000-07:00

Quotes I found when reading about various photographers which I find very true and relatable from a photographer's point of view -

"I always felt that our relationship to photography was conditioned by an underlying sense of loss. There was always this feeling of 'otherness' or 'elsewhere'. Trying to understand the nature of that distance seems central to my need to take photographs. I suppose the apprehension of distance evokes a sense of loss in us - a sense of longing, and I think it's this longing that animates contemplation."

- Bill Henson

"When Dick [Richard Avedon] walks into the room, a lot of people are intimidated. But when he works, he's so acutely creative, so sensitive. And he doesn't like it if anyone else is around or speaking. There is a mutual vulnerability, and a moment of fusion when he clicks the shutter. You either get it or you don't."

- Brooke Shields

"A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he's being photographed and what he does with this knowledge is as much a part of the photograph as what he's wearing or how he looks."

- Richard Avedon

"All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth."

- Richard Avedon

Jacques Bardoux inspired illustrations;

2011-05-01T17:36:00.000-07:00

So for a change I'm gonna share a couple of illustrations I did for my Graphic Design class. This is for my exam - our brief is to create promotional material for "Barnum", a musical (circus theme). This is just the visual research part of it - we look at an artist and try out their style. I've looked at Jacques Bardoux, a contemporary French illustrator. The style of his work is just massively different from what I usually do so it's pretty fun for me. If you look up his work, his designs are very "busy" and "cluttered" - I haven't quite hacked it yet, but I think I'm getting there. So below is something I did today and underneath that is a poster I coloured in Photoshop (using flat colours and Fill Bucket - that's a massive change for me too, in terms of illustrations... it was refreshingly quick). So I think you can already see the difference - I find the newer piece more dynamic than the original design.

My approach to the two was really different as well, though. The earlier one (the coloured piece) involved hours of elaborate sketching before careful inking. Everything was sketched out beforehand. In the newer, black and white page, only a couple elements have been sketched out - the clown in the middle, the puddle and the "waterfall", the outline of the tent and the text. The rest I added with a pen as I went along.

P.S. I get a qualification for doodling! This is what I mean. I love what I do and do what I love so I almost feel like a thief enjoying myself so much... education isn't supposed to be fun, right?

lightroom;

2011-04-30T09:22:00.000-07:00

Lightroom is really excellent. I'd recommend it to anyone, especially if you need to batch-process your shots - it allows you to copy & paste your applied settings to other photos which works fantastic if you're working on a set.
Here I'm just messing around with split-toning and various exposure settings... Click to view it high-res - the textures are pretty cool - the painterly smoothness of the image was achieved with the "Detail" settings & Luminance slider. Really great software.

Avery's Transition, April;

2011-04-19T14:05:00.000-07:00

So I think I might've mentioned this at some point, but a friend of mine asked me to document his transition awhile back. So basically this will be a long-term documentary project in which I will be taking portraits as well as conceptual photos that document changes him and his body goes through due to hormones, but I also want to take more narrative shots expressing Avery's feelings.

One thing I decided quite early on is that the photos won't be retouched. I don't want these to be fake. Donna Ferrato published this brilliant, very powerful and eye-opening book called Living With The Enemy - which was a collection of photos she took over the years documenting domestic violence. The book also contains her notes and reflections and various persons' articles and short essays on the matter. The photos weren't technically perfect - if you fired them up today in Photoshop you could go, "Right, this edge of a table coming into the shot in the corner is quite distracting, I'm going to remove it. And hang on, this woman would look pretty great if not for the massive bruise on her face. Oh, nevermind, let's leave the bruise, but let me just tidy her hair up, and maybe remove that spot". But it wasn't about perfecting the images, it was about capturing a very real moment. So, I'll see how I can incorporate that approach in the future, but for now here's some portraits of Avery from last week (and a few more narrative ones at the end).

One thing I wanted to say about this one - I chose to pose him in front of a tree as they could symbolize

growth, so yes, I do think of these things, occasionally...

Ariel&Aine;

2011-04-19T09:54:00.000-07:00

So I got around to editing the shots I took with Ariel and her girlfriend.

Basically, this was just for fun - Ariel's a mate I've been in an out of touch with for the past couple of years and she was coming to London so she asked if I wanted to do a shoot. I was up for it -- she's cool, she has a pretty distinct look, she has an interesting face.

The original location I wanted to shoot in (abandoned lot in Brick Lane -- you had to climb through a hole in the fence) was boarded up, but we walked on and found a similar location just up the road.

The second location -- where I talked Aine into participating -- was along the canal near Victoria Park. She was a little bit camera shy but I thought it'd be nice for them to have some shots together from London (and nobody can resist my persuasion powers anyway). So here's a few results:

You can see the rest here (at least until I upgrade my flickr or get a proper portfolio set up).

current work;

2011-04-15T05:07:00.000-07:00

Now that you're all a little bit familiar with what I've done in the past, for better or worse, I'll talk a little bit about what I'm doing currently.

One of my friends asked me to document his transition, and since it's such a personal thing and change fadcinates me I was honoured and more than happy to do it. I started taking some shots already but I'm not going to post them until I get his permission to do so.

I've also shot with Ariel recently, a girl from across the pond whom I've known for a couple of years. I took them to Brick Lane wanting to get the urban location I used in a shoot with Dwayne months back, but as that was all boarded up we found one just up the road. I haven't gotten around to editing them yet as I've been busy with my exams but here's one of them:

We'll see how I'll do with editing the rest, but in retrospective I regret I didn't use more of this light throughout the shoot - the rest were mostly shot closer to the wall in the shade so I missed out on the vibrancy of colours somewhat, also the light was highlighting her features very nicely in the sun. Lesson for the future.

Now the latest thing I've done was my final photoshoot for my photography exam. This was Wednesday night, and I'll talk a bit more about this.

My chosen theme was coloured light. I've already done a couple of shoots involving this (especially happy with what I've done with a set of lighters in a studio, unfortunately technology fails me so I can't share those at the moment) but for the final set I wanted to work with a model. I had a set of shots from the beginning I linked to Bill Henson's work, now I wanted to take it to the next level. I wanted dark, moody, atmospheric images centering around the subject with thrown out of focus lights in the background. I'll probably write about Henson's work at a later point because I adore it and it resonates with me, but for now let's talk more about my idea.

I was going to get a friend of mine, Yasmin, to model for me at night in Soho - neon lights, crazy make up, all that. She's a busy girl though. So then I approached Marin, a girl from my college whom I vaguely knew and knew she did a bit of modelling. I asked her because let's put it this way - I wanted a model who looked like a model. Luckily for me she agreed. So we talked a bit about what I wanted to do and swapped some ideas.

moodboard for the shoot;

We agreed to shoot during our Easter break and, what do you know, so it happened that a friend-of-a-friend who's really wicked at make up art happened to be in London for a week. So on Monday they both came over; Talia, our to-be MUA with a heavy suitcase full of stuff (I've never seen so much make up outside a shop). We went over the concept again, talked about the make up and the styling I wanted and then we let Talia loose on Marin with her make up kit.

Two hours later we had the make up. Marin was also fantastic, being interested in the fashion industry as she is she showed us a lot of cool editorials and styling we could get some ideas from.

I feebly mentioned that I was thinking that shooting in my (massive) garden could be an option if I set up some fairy lights but I didn't have one of those gigantic extension cords. But apparently, Marin did - so we agreed to shoot there - for a couple of reasons.

First of all, shooting in Soho would pose a few problems. I was going to use a telephoto lens so that I could get the best bokeh effect possible, but that meant getting pretty far away from the subject - and probably getting a lot of passer by's either distracting us or plainly getting in the way. Shooting at home would allow us to try different things and do stuff like make up retouch and wardrobe change with far less hassle.

So come Wednesday evening, the girls came over again, my auntie drove by to drop off multiple bags of fairy lights with me as I didn't have the time to get any, and an hour later (which was 7pm) we got started. Marin brought some clothes with her and we picked an outfit, then I took everything out into the garden and started setting the lights up (which was a bit of a nightmare) while Talia started on the make up. When she was done and Marin went to get the clothes on while I made Talia run around the garden testing the settings and the set.

Unfortunately my original concept with bokeh didn't work out - for one the coloured bulbs I was going to use were too large to be thrown out of focus at the distance I was working from, and what's worse, we definitely did not have enough light - which is the worst thing possible. So instead we started shooting next to the wall of lights I put together but the light was still a massive issue. I switched to my 18-55mm by then which helped a little bit, but even on max ISO, widest aperture and slightly longer exposure the photos were coming out too dark. Plus, the noise made me cry on the inside. Another problem with leaving the shutter open for longer was that even though it helped expose the model better, it meant overexposing the lights, which made it look tacky and also loose their colour altogether.

Guess what saved us. My £2.49 40W tiny table lamp I bought in Argos the other day. I was pretty ecstatic. So our MUA turned into my assistant and a light-holder ("Talia, could you get me my other lens? If you just bring my tripod in while I do this..." -- I was only short of ordering her to make us coffee).

We shot until 4am. At some point I cooked dinner for the three of us and my flatmate and we drank a copious amount of coffee. We also took the make up to a slightly more extreme level (which turned out great).

Nevertheless by 4am we were all dropping on our faces and Marin was shivering and I couldn't possibly ask more of them. The girls were fantastic, really professional (save for the sporadic exhaustion & coffee-high induced giggle fits we had over "perrywinkle blue" and other such things) and brought so much into this. They stayed over and after they left I started on editing. Clone Tool has to be my favourite thing ever. I don't do this type of editing often and this is still pretty far from the kind of shot you'd see in an editorial, but I managed to get rid of the noise (ish) so I'm pretty happy. I'll upload more images at some point, but here's what we've got so far:

So from now on I'll be posting about the development of my exam project and any new ones I come up with, photographers and photoshoots, and maybe a bit of my art and design. We'll see. I'll probably wing it half the time. Enjoy :)

experimental;

2011-04-15T03:46:00.000-07:00

past work;

2011-04-14T10:30:00.000-07:00

So let me tell you about what sort of things I've done in the past.

A lot of my work is generated due to assignments I get at college, but I do quite a bit of independent work too. I use a Nikon D3000 and the stuff you'll see here will have been shot with either 18-55mm or 50-200mm lenses. I equipped myself with a tripod and a remote (which I lost 'cause I'm silly like that - really need to replace that baby soon). I look back at my old shots now and think, "Wow, this is really mediocre". So I guess that's a good thing - I've only been shooting for the past year and it's good to see I improved.

I'll talk a little about a couple small things I'm still pleased with/interesting experiences.

Carte de Visite

A couple months back in Photography our task was to look at carte de visite - we had to be the model and the director of the shoot at the same time, which was bloody tricky. I mean, I have certain ideas about things like angles, composition and framing. Also on the day I had to use a college camera (one of those Coolpix ones which are a tiny step up from point-and-clicks but don't even allow you to switch lenses, let alone have full control over the settings). Needless to say, being used to my dSLR, I hated the results. Here's one shot from that:

Bloody terrible.

But I don't give up that easily, I thought my concept had some potential. So later that week, I came to college with even more outrageous clothing, tons more of empty cigarette packets and JD bottles (I knew they'd come in handy) and my electric guitar (which sadly only ever serves me as a prop, regrettably I've never had half as much drive in the musical department as I do in the visual one). Then I went up to one of the art rooms and stole a buncha newspapers. Because let's see, with the first attempt there were several things really bugging me:

you could see that the shitty backdrop is a shitty backdrop
the quality is awful and the shot is overexposed
you can see the warm glow from one of the lights (don't know the name of it whatsoever - one big reason for me to take Photography up at uni, need to learn about lightning)

Solution included: shooting with my own camera and completely changing the tiny set. I covered the floor with crumpled newspapers (so that the backdrop wouldn't look so much like a backdrop - also, as you'll see in a moment, this gives an illusion of far more space - I swear, I've seen bathrooms bigger than that studio) and made sure the images are fitting far more tightly around the model (in this case me) so that, again, the backdrop wouldn't be so obvious. I also didn't use the orange-y light this time and the glow wasn't a problem. One of the results (post-processed) is the following:

I don't really like what I've done with the colours anymore, but you get the idea. Oh yeah -- I think I recall making one, poor soul stand on a chair holding this reflective silver screen to get a little more light bouncing around. But the reason I liked this whole experience is because I managed to come up with something decent in the end, despite how badly I started.

Portraiture

At one point I had a concept for a shoot (assignment being portraiture - I like images that dig deep, you know?) which was all about people's passions - which made me quickly realise that not that many people actually have a passion. Sounds silly, right? But the truth is having a genuine love for doing something, a drive an ability to do it, is not really all that common. I asked around a lot of people and the only way most of them could comprehend my question was in relation to hobbies. The most popular answer by far was weed or a blank stare.

Anyway, I'm lucky to be surrounded by plenty of passionate and talented people (though I think it's a matter of choice too, in certain cases), so I pulled a couple of mates into this. I'll share a few shots I came up with.

Here's Lorena, who's a fantastic multi-talented musician from Spain. I went along with her to a studio while she banged away on the drums and got a few snaps afterwards. Here's a favourite of mine (not that great in retrospect, but I'm very flattered that she decided to use it as a pic for her page):

I also had a lot of fun shooting with Dwayne during his fire performance practice. He took me to this little secret ruined lot in Brick Lane with plenty of graffiti and debris everywhere. Sadly the location is closed down now, but there's a pretty good place I found recently just up the road. Here you also have one of the black & white shots I took of him in my bedroom. Dwayne's a performance artist and a model who's a great friend of mine, but sadly (for me, great for him) he moved to Berlin recently in order to get into his performance work more. The black & white shots I did of him also generated a lot of interest in my work, I've been asked for prints and offered my first paid job, but the client never went through with it. But hey, at least I worked my rates out.

Conceal/Reveal

Remember how I said I like to dig deep?

The above are three pieces from a series of diptychs I did centering around revealing people's weaknesses, fears and secrets. Here's a little statement I wrote about it:

My concept is: when you look at portrait photography, the people in the photos are strangers to you. You don’t know anything about them except what the photograph tells you. Often, we pass strangers on the street without taking a second glance or making assumptions about them. I want this project to challange that and literally, though the use of diptychs, reveal something very personal about the subject.

And here’s a second link: the recent suicides of gay teens in America. I want you to show me your fears, your secrets, your vulnerabilities, lay bare on your fists because despite them you’re strong and life hasn’t won with you yet. We build up facades and appearances and we tend to cut ourselves less slack then when we look at other people. But we’re all human, and we all have some demons to fight.

Fashion Assignment

Rockstar 101

Possibly my favourite work to date. Nana's an artist and photography student from Vienna whose illustrations I've adored for around 4, 5 years now; we started talking over facebook at some point and she had a chance to see my photography. She liked it, so when she was coming to London for London Fashion Week she asked me to collaborate. Needless to say I was more than up for it. Her concept was based around this video:

And to my surprise she wanted me to be in the shoot too - we had this cool opportunity with styling though since we both have similar hair so I was up for it. We rented out a studio in North London (which I just realised I'm very close to now that I moved in in the area - this makes me pretty happy) and spent well over 5 hours there. Nana knows a bit about lightning so that helped, I was like a blind mouse trying to work these lights and reflectors. Good job my Nikon remote arrived the day of the shoot though, we would've been in trouble if we had to keep running back to set self-timer on.

This is our little set:

The studio we rented out, The Second Floor Studio, belongs to Geoff and Diana and they are really nice people. We had a little mishap with payment that they were really lovely about... won't go into details about that.

So on this note let's wrap up, next post I'll be sharing some photos that were, in terms of photography or editing, largely an experimentation for me. Random things, people, self portraits... things like that. Then I'll talk a little about what I'm doing at the moment.

first thing's first;

2011-04-14T09:03:00.000-07:00

So I suppose I should be making a snappy (geddit? no? too soon?) introduction to myself and the point of this blog.

Let's get the boring stuff out of the way:

I'm Ronna, I'm 18, I live in London. I study at college - photography, graphic design and history of art (and psychology, but that's not important) and I can't wait to get out of here and get to Brighton to study photography. London is a home for me, but it gets crazy. Anyone who likes running away from the world now and again will find that London wears you down. Doesn't stop me from loving this city though.

So as for the blog, I guess we'll see what direction it'll take, but mainly I'd like it to be a documentation of what I'm doing in terms of photography - I'm a very visual person, photography is one of the ways in which I express myself, but I might end up posting my art and designs every now and again too.

Let's just say this -- I aspire to become a freelancer. I'd like to do a bit of everything. Graphic design here and there, running around with a camera, art for the pleasure of it. And I don't mind if that means I'll live in a cramped flat (well, I might mind that a little, I need my space or things get chaotic - artist's temperament and all that) and have two crappy day jobs. As long as I can create, I think I'll be happy.

I also moved into my own flat recently so I guess it'll be interesting to see how things develop from here - it's a fresh start for me in many ways.