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Author Topic: Re: Recent Professional Works 2  (Read 1205121 times)

Justinr

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Re: Recent Professional Works 2
« Reply #960 on: December 15, 2013, 06:43:22 am »

Living where you do would be seen as a gift by some photographers, I know a photographer who spends his precious time off wandering around places similar to where you live shooting portraits of everyday people.
They will probably want to keep their clothes on though. :-)

Well I can't speak for Mr C but I find that familiarity brings insensitivity. For  a year, maybe two, after moving to Ireland I still saw the country as a different place and noticed what the Irish perhaps didn't but now there is little that excites me enough to want to capture it. The upside is that I see my old country in a different light which is good from a photographic point of view but politically and emotionally I doubt that I could ever return.
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MrSmith

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Re: Recent Professional Works 2
« Reply #961 on: December 15, 2013, 06:58:42 am »

I know where you are coming from, it's not always easy to be motivated to shoot tests and ones own landscape becomes too familiar.
Same for a working photographer shooting still life/people, I need a germ of an idea or an approach to think about before wanting to create something, plus a little head-space which modern life doesn't always allow.
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Rob C

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Re: Recent Professional Works 2
« Reply #962 on: December 15, 2013, 12:21:46 pm »

Rob, what you have is too good to waste. I'm sure many of those "friendly souls" do understand that it's unlikely that you will ever take up exactly where you left off. What I and others over the years have been trying to do is to encourage you to move on, find a new passion and purpose.

Given the encouraging signs of late I'm sure we all still live in eternal hope ;-)

Best

Keith
 


I thank you for that, Keith, and it's true that I have found a new outlet - at least until the head runs dry or bored - with the green lady. It's also something that plays at my rpm: when an idea comes to call I just have to figure how to do it, or where, and that's it - no pain, no tantrums, no client breathing over my shoulder or watching the clock. And better yet: I actually enjoy shooting it!

Apart from the situation re. availability of local models, there's another angle to the thing: I had the very good fortune to end up working with the best girls that money could buy in London. Pretty much every one of them got to the casting because she'd already worked with Lichfield or Lategan (Lich for Unipart and Lategan for Mintex or similar) - I don't think there's a single one on my website's pro section that hadn't been through the process of working for those guys. The chances of landing a dummy were well weeded before I began. And having said that, I realise that it's exactly the problem novice snappers face too: people (clients) are comfortable working with others that they know have the mileage. So basically, anything I would find here has to be judged against that level of alternative, and it's a tough call. In a nutshell, why shoot stuff that you know isn't going to be what it could have been in different circumstances? I think I eventually came to terms with that reality, but I shall never like it!

Mr Smith and Justin,

Yes, you both have a point. I came to live here because my wife and I were doing a lot of travel, I was designing and producing the calendars as well as shooting them, and it seemed to make sense to live in a place that had the beaches etc. and so that's what we did. It saved a lot of travel, and the non-model opportunities got me holiday brochure work and in that, apart from hotels and apartments, I had a place to sell a lot of stock outwith what I already had with Tony Stone (Getty-to-be). I also had a separate, rep contract with him. However, as with most everything, bubbles have a habit of bursting, and those did too, in time. Frankly, I've had experience of both most enjoyable highs and depths to which I wouldn't wish anyone. In retrospect, I think it's just the photographic life.

As for getting blind to where you live: absolutely. That was why location work was so good for fashion, too, where nobody ever asked me for beaches. New places stir your juices and that, in turn, gives you ideas and enthusiasm that pretty much dies after a week with a white roll of Colorama. Then it comes full circle: your home island/town/village is just another roll of paper and new alternatives cost money and it's not a holiday: it has to bring profit.

Further, it has never been my interest to shoot people and cultures just because they are different. I leave that to National Geographic!

Regarding the snap of the 'Real 60s' that I posted above: it was actually an Ektachrome, 'scanned' on my D700, and one of the last I shot on a Mamiya C33, or whatever it was coded, using a 180mm. It ran as buddy to my new 500C with 80mm for which I couldn't, at the time, afford a long lens. As soon as I could, I bought the 150mm and almost immediately wished I hadn't. The 150mm was great in itself, but too short: the 180mm gave me bigger heads further away, so no distortion, and the hassy coudn't. They didn't have a 180mm in the hassy range at that time, and 250mm was too long.

To illustrate how shoestrings worked in pro life: the shot was done with two heads. The 'brolly front one was a black, gent's umbrella with multiple coatings of white Dulux emulsion - obviously, you couldn't fold it! - and the modelling light was a bare hundred watt domestic bulb in a socket lashed to the wooden handle of the 'brolly. The electronic head? That was a battery Braun shoulder flash - I think an F700 (though it might have been a Metz)- and the rear light was a tiny grey Braun I'd had forever. Synch. was via a splitter plug that went into the camera socket. There were several cables lying around the place... And you know what? When the main flash eventually blew up - literally burst - and I bought a proper monobloc, I found I'd been better off with the F700: it was far faster a flash, could stop motion where the mono had such a long flash duration that it was pretty much hopeless for any leaping about. Not that I encouraged that sort of thing much: Colorama rolls cost money. Mine! Don't believe what they lied about in Blow-Up.

What was also very much of the time was makeup. Twiggy was the first time any of us came across the accentuated lower lashes. Lipstick was another product that was used rather dramatically - the false lip lines were usually done with a brush and filled in, and it didn't matter that the real, natural line was visible: that was part of the game, showing the artifice. Hard to understand today, I suppose, but it was about yesterday, when yesterday was indeed today.

Frankly, I can't know, but I think it might have been more fun back then.

;-)

Rob C
« Last Edit: December 15, 2013, 03:10:37 pm by Rob C »
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Rob C

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Re: Recent Professional Works 2
« Reply #963 on: December 15, 2013, 03:13:00 pm »

The only thing I have to say about any of this (and I promise to stop because all of this is just words about the past and I care zip about the past) is . . .  to each his own and we're all different.

I never had plans to stop, hell I'm just getting good at this.

We have too much we plan and want to do, God willin' and the creek don't rise.


BC


That's the bit that gets you sometimes. But not always!

;-)

Rob C

Manoli

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Re: Recent Professional Works 2
« Reply #964 on: December 15, 2013, 05:05:33 pm »

The dude is not Young at all, I beleive on his 60, 65...he is working very well in your island, he sells well. I

Fred,
The dude is YOUNG, very young - a mere babe … what's the matter, no good at math ?

M
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fredjeang2

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Re: Recent Professional Works 2
« Reply #965 on: December 15, 2013, 05:10:38 pm »

Fred,
The dude is YOUNG, very young - a mere babe … what's the matter, no good at math ?

M
uuuups... ;D

Ok Manoli: 65 is still Young !
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Christoph C. Feldhaim

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Re: AW: Re: Recent Professional Works 2
« Reply #966 on: December 15, 2013, 05:24:15 pm »

Rob - I'll come and hit you with a cushion to get out - all this discussion is just foul excuses. I am much younger than you are and suffer from a badly arthrotic hip - but I don't let that stop me to go out for a 9 hr hike to take images and take some painkillers with me. Dude you know enough enough about life to get rid of all these foul excuses stopping you from getting active.

Cheers
~Chris

Eric Myrvaagnes

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Re: Recent Professional Works 2
« Reply #967 on: December 15, 2013, 05:29:01 pm »

Fred,
The dude is YOUNG, very young - a mere babe … what's the matter, no good at math ?

M
Yeah, that's just what I was going to say!
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-Eric Myrvaagnes (visit my website: http://myrvaagnes.com)

Rob C

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Re: Recent Professional Works 2
« Reply #968 on: December 15, 2013, 05:58:23 pm »

Yeah, that's just what I was going to say!



I wasn't. What I was going to say was that what's numerically cool/good for Bailey is good enough for me.

I was also going to say that I'm quite surprised how effing brilliant some people are at solving problems for other people. It's reassuring to know that, obviously, nobody else has any: they've solved them all! Hence that song about bright, shiny people! Now I understand it! But it took a while.

;-)

Rob C

Manoli

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Re: Recent Professional Works 2
« Reply #969 on: December 15, 2013, 06:01:46 pm »

Rob,
If they burn me at the stake so be it …


Quite a few moons ago …

I was driving back in the early hours of the morning following a good friend ( actually a VERY good friend) in, as fate would have it, his Ford Fiesta. We were close to the London HILTON, Park Lane where we came across a police Panda. Needless to say he was stopped; stopped for 'driving whilst hanging out of the driver's door and waving at the car behind'.  I parked on the other side of the road. The boys in blue were so gobsmacked as to how someone in his condition could actually get behind the wheel of a car, let alone drive, that one of them came over and, still shaking from disbelief,  was in the process negotiating a safe form of passage with me, whilst 'B',  as he will be referred to from now on,  couldn't quite adopt a marginally penitent attitude with the other. His only response to the cops request to ' get out of the car ' was to tell them to 'f*** off ' - not once but thrice.

As he sat in the back of the Rover - nicked - no amount of friendly exchange was going to circumvent the 'trip to the nick' - not even his articulate ' Who do these punks think they are … ? ' 

He got driven, I drove, to Vine Street police station, Soho. No longer exists but it was, as most of these old London house were, extremely narrow  with an impossibly steep staircase.  Such was B's underlying good nature, that the cops disposition, by this time, had gone from disbelief to a rather more humorous take on the whole episode. Nevertheless the visit by the police doctor was indeed inevitable. The 'interview rooms were on the first floor, I was on the ground floor, at the base of the staircase.

The doctor turned out to be a barrel of a woman. As tall as she was wide (with a sense of humour to match). Now, what follows I didn't witness first hand - but the police did.

Doc enters the room, and finds B siting calmly in a chair, against the wall, next to a table. Doc approaches and instructs B to empty all his pockets on said table. Out came the keys, cigarettes,  wallet and a multitude of god-knows-what items. Doc approaches, picks up all the items and proceeds to lay them all out, in a square, on the floor, in the middle of the room. B sits calmly, silently, just watching her.

Doc then approaches B, looks him in the eyes, and says in a calm, soft and controlled voice  'Now, I want you to stand up and pick all these items up'.   B' s eyes widen slightly, a somewhat surprised even incredulous look comes across his face, his head cocked in disbelief, pauses and then replies

" 'Me ? ... Me ?  You put them there you silly bitch, you pick them up !"

The cops, literally, fell down the staircase, one over the other, in hysterics. It took a good 10 minutes for the mirth to subside. No exaggeration, NADA. One of them was laughing so hard she even had tears rolling down her cheeks .  By this time it was 05:00 in the morning, I had work and wasn't going to nanny him to Bow Street Magistrates Court at 10:00. They took him to court directly …

The rest I'll let him tell you in person one day - he lives in Arta, Mallorca.

\

These antics are long gone. NO, he got spared jail, just -  and before anyone comes back at me over this anecdote - this was then , I don't condone drink driving in any way, don't drink or indulge in illegal substances either.

And to complete the picture, BTW, he was also the only person to grab John Conteh by the neck and threaten to thump him! For those who don't know who John Conteh was, here's a link ..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Conteh
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MrSmith

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Re: Recent Professional Works 2
« Reply #970 on: December 15, 2013, 06:21:58 pm »

Great story. Did you frequent the Zanzibar? Before my time but I heard all the stories from other photographers.
Halcyon days  ;D
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Rob C

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Re: Recent Professional Works 2
« Reply #971 on: December 15, 2013, 06:27:12 pm »

"The rest I'll let him tell you in person one day - he lives in Arta, Mallorca."

OMG! That says it all.

A very confusing place; they have regular wildfires around there. It's something in the air... fumes?

It's one of those places that you drive through en route to somewhere else, even if you live there. You can forget, I think.

Really, after you live in Mallorca for a while, you just can't leave. You become too committed to too many things, and you end up in exactly the same situation that you were in before you left wherever you came from, only older and more confused about what in hell it actually was that you were trying to get away from in the first place. I know what we were looking for, beaches for photography, but then what? Could have been worse: I'd wanted to buy a yacht and live on that. My wife disagreed and said no, she'd be happy for us to sell the house, but no boats. No wonder I always listened to her advice, even if I didn't always quite know why. About boats, she was absolutely right: we'd have been bankrupt in five years - at a conservative estimate.

I once saw a boat here called Camera Sheik, he was probably a dealer. Perhaps of cameras. I don't know. I don't imagine he was a photographer to trade.

;-)

Rob C

HarperPhotos

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Re: Recent Professional Works 2
« Reply #972 on: December 15, 2013, 06:48:40 pm »

Hey guys any chance you could move this little love in to so other section of this website or post some professional images.
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Simon Harper
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Rob C

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Re: Recent Professional Works 2
« Reply #973 on: December 16, 2013, 02:17:52 pm »

Still awaiting the scintillating pictures that we 'off topicers' were holding up...

Rob C

fredjeang2

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Re: Recent Professional Works 2
« Reply #974 on: December 16, 2013, 03:49:41 pm »

Rob, that's what you need to knock on your door: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCZuYS-9qaw

or that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQh8oh0rj3s

 ;)
« Last Edit: December 16, 2013, 03:59:18 pm by fredjeang2 »
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abiggs

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Re: Recent Professional Works 2
« Reply #975 on: December 16, 2013, 05:37:49 pm »

Hey guys. Just back from another huge amount of time in the African bush. Here is an image I captured a few weeks back with my DF+, IQ280 and Schneider 240mm lens. I know medium format isn't the best or easiest tool for the type of imagery I create, but every now and then things just line up perfectly and I can grab a shot. Over the past year I have added about 6 medium format African wildlife images to my portfolio, so I am pretty happy with the setup so far.
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Rob C

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Re: Recent Professional Works 2
« Reply #976 on: December 17, 2013, 08:30:40 am »

Rob, that's what you need to knock on your door: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCZuYS-9qaw

or that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQh8oh0rj3s

 ;)


Well, Fred, the Billy Idol one has possibilities at least because his mother lives/lived(?) in Cala Millor on this island in the 80s, and the girl - the little fille de rêves - looks fine, other than she suffers from what the locals call fate: piernas y cul bonito = tetas pequeñas. But on this occasion, I'd be prepared to overlook such little failings. From any direction.

The Stones girl looks like one of the Page 3 girls I think I recognize from a casting, but I could be totally wrong: they all looked much the same at the time. However, I can probably compete with Keef in the lines department (facial) but I surrender now, without a fight, in the battle of the tonsures - well, I have and he didn't then...

I took my broken stove door to the steel-worker today, and he said to return at four in the afternoon and he'll have welded the thing back together again. It's almost as old as the apartment,  but if I can squeeze another winter out of it, that's cool. No, that's hot. I tried the English makers a couple of years ago, but they can't replace antiques. Coños!

Rob

fredjeang2

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Re: Recent Professional Works 2
« Reply #977 on: December 17, 2013, 02:24:14 pm »

...I think I recognize from a casting, ...

She is Anita Morris
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Phil Indeblanc

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Re: Recent Professional Works 2
« Reply #978 on: December 17, 2013, 04:03:57 pm »

Rob, take your camera and shoot a few frames of the guy repairing/welding your stove door. That alone would be something to look at. Maybe not your usual subject, but!  Your posts are always a joy...help us with some visuals :-)
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Rob C

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Re: Recent Professional Works 2
« Reply #979 on: December 17, 2013, 05:05:01 pm »

Rob, take your camera and shoot a few frames of the guy repairing/welding your stove door. That alone would be something to look at. Maybe not your usual subject, but!  Your posts are always a joy...help us with some visuals :-)


Hey, that bird has flown and the door's back on its hinges! If it rains tomorrow, I'll see if it works. I save the fire for rain - lifts my spirits up a lot.

When we bought, the apartment had a chimney chase on the outside of the wall, running up to service the three apartments, but no fireplace was actually built inside - just a blank wall with electricity cables spreading out like spider webs underneath the plaster. Hanging a picture meant risking electrocution - guess somebody loved me at the time because 32 years later here I be. Anyway, I designed an open fireplace with one of those projecting hoods, and had the builders, still working on the site - construct it for me. It looked really nice - log cabinish? - and then came the winter. My son and I collected bits of tree and old building stuff from around the place and I set up the first fire, looking like a wigwam, proud in my learnings from the scouts during my Indian period (India, not the USA). Anyway, we all sat around and I felt really smug as the paper caught and the kindling did too. In minutes it was chaos. We had to open everything, let the freezing wind in and the smoke out. End of that.

So we decided we had to get a stove. The guy came to fit one, saw the tiny hole through the wall into the exterior chase up at the top of the new hood, and laughed. It was about the size of a golfball, when what it should have been was about six inches across at least. So we ended up with a stainless steel pipe running up from the stove, through the wall and into and up the inside of the chase to the roof, another two apartments above. That pipe cost more than the stove. No wonder I get the stove door fixed - even if for just another winter at a time.

No cellpix cameras then; no digital at all, so no snaps, I'm afraid. Anyway, the smoke would just have looked like any old rock concert, so you don't really need a picture - you've seen them all already.

;-)

Rob C
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