Dark Daze photography blog

Thanks to Monica Perdoni, and Plus1 magazine for the hook-up and coverage

Click this to go straight to the full pdf

Sarah Ziffs documentary not a link to it, but article about. Looks very interesting- its absolutley mind blowing that models dont have a decent working union- its also horrendous how many girls send me shots asking to be models and some sleazebag has shot them topless in some rotten studio, with NO STYLE AT ALL…. Man if you are going to shoot with a photographer see their portfolio first- what kinda stuff do they shoot- and why do they shoot it. Are they good at what they do? I know that this film is looking at the upper echelons of the industry- but there nothing wrong with wising up down here on the basement level as well.

On a side note- the in-house model- Sally F*$%king Reynolds has finished her degree. This is pretty bloody incredible. I am dead proud of her achievement. She will no doubt leave a comment calling me gay- but secretly welling with pride too. This is our weird relationship nowadays. Its 5.30pm i have been teaching 1:1 photoshop all day and now need a beer- but I have to teach my creative class very soon and its not possible.

here as way of a visual interval and evening out the balance is a sexist, demeaning, objectifying picture of sally reynolds.

sally-motel

Shooting into a softbox (behind Elins head) with a 500w with wide reflector straight onto Elins face.

Elin- Simple headshot at Garage Studios.

Wanna learn some lighting then come on my Studio Lighting Course

or Adams Flash based course……

You can read more about this her, with lighting set-ups etc.

http://garage-studios.co.uk/more-studio-lighting-tipswith-darkdaze

i need to post that if it wasnt for sally reynolds, i wouldn’t eat, have killer clean shirts everyday, a laptop, half my studio lights, shoes on my feet, non stained skinny jeans, and a roof over my head, plus i’d still be dead crap at shooting girls and have no decent portfolio…. Although I would have a lot of good nights sleep, my sanity (maybe), especially as she is going thru some lucid dream, talking and crunking kinda still asleep but loud thing at the minute every night. There ya go sally, better? xx

Sally- more often right than is often acknowledged....

at the end of this shoot the models had been in the studio and in make-up for about 12 hours. It was a really demanding shoot- every position had been mapped out already, including where every foot, arm and strand of hair went, and we had to test each individuals lighting and position over and over again. All the girls were incredibly patient (well to my face anyways) and Bukki (the male model) was astounding, unable to talk due to wadded cottonwool in his cheeks and blood capsules up his nose for at least 5 hrs, but he just smiled enthusiastically every time we tested something with him- which reminds me I really should shoot with him again…..

So at the very end of a long shoot- where my mind had clearly escaped me- (I cant eat when I shoot, or apparently sleep before it) I asked if the girls wanted any portrait shots for their portfolio and this is their reactions and boy do i just love this. It was shot on Adams Olympus OM1- which just shows technology dont mean shit sometimes…..

Outtake after the bloodiest shoot yet at Garage Studios. Elin/Sophie/Sophie

Outtake after the bloodiest shoot yet-Sally Cut Throat

Anyway I am posting this as someone asked me how i get models to look so forlorn or bored, etc in my shoots and I gotta say that mostly its pretty genuine from them- I cant or dont do the crazy over-the-top-havin-the-time-of-my-life model kinda shoots, I love some of those pics, but its just not something I tend to do… plus i think that Richardson and some others have just nailed that so much that everything else looks wannabe. I think coming from a portrait background helps in this- plus I’m just not a very fun person to be around- you think I am jokin- but seriously even my cat dislikes me- and she loves everyone….

So in the last Saltdean editorial those expressions are pretty genuine- there was a lot of waiting and staring and more waiting, and then hit that hair trigger Bronica and we had it. This may seem obvious especially to a lot of other photographers out there- but someone asked so there it is…. Just waiting, in a cold decrepit changing room, with uncomfortable wooden bench, whilst a skinny photographer stares at you, whilst hissing at his two female assistants to stop pretending to piss standing up in a urinal- gives you this. Oh and a waist level viewfinder really really helps.

I had a shoot a while back with DD favourite SJ. You can read more about the shoot here…..

or you can just stare at how amazing this girl is in the pics below. The clothes are from MIshka, NYC although as you all may know by now SJ has her own site and designs as well- which I am sure I’ll get a crack at shooting one day. The site takes a bit to load but give it time. Hot damn i love this lady…. (but so does sally so its all good) Oh and there will be more to come tomo- but its been a busy day at GS towers.

SJ in Mishka for DarkDaze

SJ in Mishka and a Gold Chain for DarkDaze

SJ in Mishka for DarkDaze

SJ in Mishka for DarkDaze

DD x

The Great Escape 2009.

Bit late in the uploads to this blog but I covered The Great Escape for Source Magazine this year, after several years of doing it for the PR company running it. Its always an interesting experience but normally involves a hell of a lot of feeling bad bouncing past the ordinary punters in the massively long queues- as it really is just more of an industry showcase than any kind of thing for the ‘man on the street music fan’.

On the first night almost every venue I tried to get to was so full that you stood no chance of getting anywhere near a band to get photos. The organisers pick some really good, intimate venues that turn into sweaty masses of bodies- with the occasional industry type- you can spot them immediately as they tend to be rocking a very shitty combo of blazer and too new jeans, iphone and a bored look on their faces. Anyways trying to get through the crowd at Sumo/WaterMargin/Jam with a camera packed backpack to see ‘They Promised Us JetPacks’ I realised it was just never gonna happen like that- it was just a mass of heaving bodies- though the band sounded pretty good although I couldn’t see them at all- and neither could maybe 80% of the people in their as the venue doesn’t have a stage as such, just a slightly raised area. I wandered to Audio, and the rain was now properly throwing down on me. I eventually decided to jack in the digital set-up that I had- and go back to the studio I picked up my trusty old Canon T90 a camera that used to be glued to my hands, but that hadn’t been used in at least 2 years- probably longer. I stuck the 1.4 FD 50 mm lens on, and loaded up a roll of fuji neopan 400, rated at iso1000 in camera (getting the lab to push it when developing).

The T90 is a great camera, its manual focus lens which is something I am not used to in gig photography nowadays- but I wanted to slow myself down and think a bit more about what I was shooting, its heavy as a brick and can take a real battering and still seems to work, this one has been dropped down a flight of stairs, and had numerous pints chucked over it but still seems to be going strong. Pretty much every gig I got to had a tonne of photographers at it- seems like the press pass was easier to apply for than last year- and if you couldn’t get one by applying it seemed that I fair few people I knew took the route of just printing one out on the home computer- as it as just a piece of clip art on a white sticker.

I saw some great bands though, a nice mix of new and familiar The Lyrebirds stood out for me, Youves had lot going on and a lot of presence though they did seem to go a bit nuts everytime they saw a camera, British Sea Power where one of the highlights – apart from Noble using my neck as a spring board to launch himself at the crowd. Ghost of a Thousand were really great at Revenge- but surely need to be playing to bigger audiences by now. Maccabees at Corn Exchange were definitely one of the best things I have seen in the past year at least- a really strong band that have grown together and the new songs were a triumph- as was Hugos guitar playing and stage presence , they really are going to be a huge in the rest of 2009- but they still seem to have an intimate feel to everything they do. I am gonna stop rambling now as its meant to be a bout the pictures and I have a backlog of stuff to post this week in the blog, including a past shoot I assisted on for Avangelist (Andy Parker), and a new fashion editorial at Saltdean lido. Lots to cover- so will get fully up on the blog thing now- and not be so slack at updating it.

Hugo- Maccabees at TGE 2009

Maccabees TGE 2009

Maccabees TGE 2009

Orlando- Maccabees TGE 2009

Metronomy at TGE 2009

Metronomy at TGE 2009

Noble- British Sea Power TGE 2009

Noble returns to the stage, via my head....

Youves- play Revenge at TGE 2009

Shoot at Newhaven

After a handy tip off by a fellow flickr member I found out about a site in Newhaven well over a year ago now, after almost shooting there a few times I managed somehow to keep avoiding the place… don’t know why, it just seemed to need a really good idea and at the time I didn’t have it.

But good ideas always come along when you least expect them, and after a few beers with emma (its always a few beers that start these things) and growing frustration about having to curtail some ideas due to the studio business, (its amazing the time it takes running a business like this, even when you are a team of three dedicated and hardworking individuals) anyways I decided to have a ‘sit-down’ with Louie Banks/ and Sam Hiscox - you all know some of this know but stick with it. On fairly grey afternoon outside the Prince Albert I explained to them both that I wanted to put together a very special edition fashion magazine and that they were the guys I wanted to do it with. As you will all know they are both doing great things at the minute- well have been for ages actually and this would be a chance to bring all our ideas togther under one label. So that’s what we have done- we are still all shooting stories for it now, so I cant link to anything that you can actually buy yet but it wont be long. We have gathered together a great team in Emma, Stevi and Sally who I mailed about the idea many months ago, but we were stuck on some online concept then, this one will be an honest-to-god hold in your hands sweet deal of a hand stitched mag. The Girls are gonna cover much of the styling aspects, but also contribute ideas, promote the magazine, come up with stories they may want to shoot, it’s a sort of democracy- I hope anyway….so keep looking for updates, we will have a pre launch blog up very soon. These images here are just outtakes… don’t worry there is plenty of goodness left to come.

So looking for ideas for the first story we (emma and I) hopped in the strangely ‘street’ car of my buddy, dope photographer and emmas twin Andy Parker and hightailed it looking for a dinosaur park- you may have seen the tweets a while back. We found some but they were a bit shit to be honest, so after a while we found ourselves back at the abandoned warehouse in Newhaven and suddenly all the ideas for the shoot seemed to come together.

Newhaven Editorial

I have got to say I think it’s the best story I have shot yet- and it was a real pleasure to work on a lot of the images as a team, normally I am pretty rigid about what I want, but we kinda let this one evolve, with a lot of input from both Emma and Tash, and its got something different. I really hope you like it. Oh and its all film, not a megapixel in sight.

I should mention that after scoping the building off and on for over 2 years the day we arrived they were knocking most of it down, I should also mention Emma took off her heavy jacket to go and charm the foreman, who seemed to forget al aspects of Health and Safety. I should mention we were in a part of the building that we had said we wouldn’t go to, when the walls started shaking and we realised they were knocking the walls down two floors below us. I should also mention that trying to run down tiny starcases with lighting rigs is pretty near impossible. I should also mention that the digger driver just went back and forth with an empty skip all day just so he could watch the action.

And that both girls had scabbed knees from more drunk falling down situations (nothing to do with me- I live like a mormon- well except from the polygamous inbreeding aspect) . Oh and that I made Elin lay down in a mass of dead pigeon feathers and a fair bit of bird crap, and somehow she still looked amazing, or that Sally seemed to channel the spirit of Audrey Horne and it all just seemed to come together so perfectly that we even made it to the pub in time for kick-off of the Champions League semi final.

So keep looking for the blog, it will come soon and then that means the mag wont be far behind….

I am selling one of my own, remastered prints. I never sell my own stuff, every other print is sold in the one gallery that represents me, and none of it is limited edition. I have a very special DD image, which i worked on for a friends birthday. I am releasing 9 other prints of this image and then thats the end of the print run. Its a blind auction, but as a guide a non-limited print from the Gallery of the shot before this one is £100. mail me info@darkdaze.org with yr offer, if its in the top nine i will contact you with details of p+p etc.

The print is Sally in Cali, at a Motel one sunny morning. Its approx 38×30 cm archival print, which I will print myself. It was shot on my Bronica ETRSi when on a cali tour of cheap motels and dive bars.
you can see it here (its not very safe for work)
Black and White doorway shot

On another note i have a few places left on my Creative Photography and Visual Theory course you can find all the details here, the first group went so well they want to come back again- so dont miss out. There is a lot to learn here, plus some great exercises and helpful info, good places to look for inspiration etc. If you love photography, or if you feel jaded about your images then sign up to this. But click the link to see what we offer.
Creative Course info

]If you liked the latest stuff on the shoot then there are some great Behind the scenes images on the G.Studios Site so wander over and have a look. Cheers for the shots Vickeh, DD.