Dark Daze photography blog

Living Room wall…..

Georgie Hobday. Storm Agency Model Thursday 24th September 2009 4.45pm-5.45pm

Part1.

Your life is my Vanity Project.

we had a promo shoot for Brighton’s Source Student Guide this week, I had only been back from USA for a day, a very long day at that… and as it was for the Student guide, editor Mr Kendall insisted it be shot on location somewhere landmark-esque in Brighton.

The band that he picked were This City who fortunately have a strong image and a good look. I cant begin to describe the torturous process of organising the shoot itself, and i have ranted and ranted before about bloody PR agents, but lets just say somewhere in the region of twenty emails pinged back and forth from the bands PR company, with some demands/requests that started at mildly amusing and ended up bordering on the deranged ended up in my inbox.

The band fortunately cant have been aware of any of this, as when I mailed Aaron he was incredibly helpful and willing to go with the ideas. It just goes to show that mgmt/pr and photographers should never mix, they clearly want to defend or protect their financial investment at every step, whilst I want to exploit every opportunity to make a great image. We are so far apart in what we both want to achieve that I have found if you can get direct contact with the band then its the only sensible road to go down. If you can show the idea they tend to be incredibly willing- often the most nightmare PR’s have turned out to be working for the most easy-going bands you’ll ever meet. But I aint complaining thats exactly their role, to protect and serve and to look after the labels interest, eg getting their money back…….

The idea I had was to shoot the band in the sea, but with just the usual ‘band line-up’ style, the twist being waist deep in water. Its pretty good weather in Brighton still now and amazingly the water was very warm- well compared to what i thought it would be… but thats cos I am a 9 Stone wuss and feel the cold on my almost visible bag-of-bones body.

What followed on the day of the shoot was a quick discussion on the beach as to what the band would wear, they needed only a little convincing to ‘man-up’ and go shirtless, as they have a whole set of killer tattoos between them. We kept two shirts on to add symmetry, and waded out into the sea. I dont know if the brighton sea is always this shallow but we waded out proper far before it even got slightly deep. Matt have a £500 light strapped to his arm, and a £450 battery pack strapped to his back as the waves crashed around us. My assistant Tash, cos shes so achingly hip, wore her lovely new dress in the sea too, and kinda ruined it. I was in my freshly ironed Ben Sherman shirt you know god is in the details and even when your crouched in the sea with water up to your chest you need to look fresh.

We were shooting polaroids, on a vintage land 340, into the sun with a bowens 500w head, blasting into the band. We chose Polaroid for the slight washed out look (no pun) and as the mag needed the images by the end of the day and we arent dumb enough to try with digital and there was no time to get film processed…..Unfortunately Pocket Wizards being more tempremental than Kanye when he’s done a big bag of afternoon gak with a brandy bottle chaser, they just didnt want to fire. Waiting in the sea, jumping waves and counting for the two minutes until you can peel apart a polaroid just to see it as silhouette is a real kick in your tiny shrivelled salty balls. This happened several times until we had to shoot away from the sun instead, shame really. But the band were brilliant, not complaining at all and trying not to get too soaked whilst i faffed around like a right tard.

Anyways here are a few of the outtakes, that kinda have a nice quality but aint covers for sure. They are sandy cos each time I shot one I had to wade a 100m to the shore and give it to the mag editor and then wade back out again to the band. Matt and tash seemed a bit despairing at how the equipment kept screwing up, but i guess Bowens wasnt built for the sea, everything got soaked, all our clothes, lights, cables, tash dropped polaroids into the sea like it was a new game, and even lobbed away a decent reflector which may have bobbed up on the beach by now, and is yours if you find it. After 6 shots we got the one we needed, and the whole thing probably took 15 minutes but under that pressure it felt like an age.

I gotta say though it was one of the most fun shoots I have had in years, and just goes to show that with the right subjects, a dope as fuck band like this, and a bit of willing even i can overcome my own ineptitude to pull out a decent image or two.

This will be out in Oct.

Thats genuine sand on the scans by the way…..

Thanks to the many hundreds of people that came to the launch last night, we all had a great time and hope you did as well… I dont think i have seen so many models in the same room at one time, it was brilliant, and I even got presented with a sort of spoof/homage mock up of the mag from some flickr friends, they’d got the look of the cover and text etc spot on… So the party was great , beer, photos, fashion, nakedness on the walls and hundreds of happy people, but without the usual dross of same old Brighton faces, thank you so much if you came down.

due to some hosting difficulties our site still isnt visible, which is a shame cos it looks great, but as soon as its back up we will let you know. In the meantime we still have the blog, GangUp and if you want to buy the mag now, then go straight to the Ophelia Fancy shop, dont worry its not a scam, the ladies are 2 of the 6 crew that make up GangUp.

Buy a copy

The mag is 104 pages, all photography, no adverts, with a beautiful matt laminate cover, and is priced at £12. You really wont disappointed, its a thing of beauty….

Thanks to Ed for this shot of one of the display copies from the launch, you can see more from last night here….

But first go buy a copy…..Go

This is a little heads up that I will be running a few new courses at Garage Studios soon, quite originally its called Studio Lighting Part2, (the result of an all night brainstorming session)… It is aimed as a follow on if you have completed the original 2 day Studio Lighting course, and feel comfortable moving onto the next step.

We will focus a lot more on finetuning set-ups, and also the other factors that come into the image at this point, such as shooting to a brief, working with models, composition, introducing backgrounds and sets, current editorial styles. It will equip you with shooting portraits, band promos and fashion. You will need a good understanding of flash, and ideally have completed the first course, or be able to show some images that demonstrate your ability at a basic studio level. This image below is an example for a commissioned shoot for a client, and the sort of level that I will hope to work towards with the course. We will, as always provide models and assistant for the course, you will need a DSLR and a love of lighting. We will keep the group small, and places will be limited. I will post more details when dates and prices are fixed, but if you want to register interest please mail info(at)garage-studios.co.uk

I will also be running a course on Fashion Editorial aimed at those that want to shoot, or improve how they shoot fashion. We will work with a team with stylist, model, make-up artist etc. This is aimed at film or digital users, but this course is aimed at those with a real love of fashion and a decent grasp of fashion photographers work and will be shot on locations, not in studio. We will work on shooting a full editorial story, with specific magazines or websites submissions in mind. I will only be able to take a very small number of people on each session as we will have a full team working with you. We will also look at editing and post work on this course (though this will be available as a seperate day- so if you just want to shoot, you only need book Day 1). There are some examples of editorial on location below…. (again if you want to reserve a place pls mail info(at)garage-studios.co.uk)

But there are lots more editorial on here if you search my blog.

These should be really interesting courses and a real step forward from Studio Lighting 1, if you are interested the contact details are here

We will confirm prices soon, hopefully by the end of the day.

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.

[caption id="attachment_544" align="alignnone" width="433" caption="SJ in Mishka and a Gold Chain for DarkDaze"][/caption][caption id="attachment_546" align="alignnone" width="433" caption="SJ in Mishka for DarkDaze"][/caption]

DD x

]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.

[/caption

So this is kinda how it came about… if yr interested.

I have had the desperate desire to shoot rooms in the studio for ages, but due to many reasons its been really difficult to sort out, especially as we have so many workshops and classes in the Garage Studios space- meaning anything we did had to be set up, built lit and shot in less than 48hrs, with everything returned back to a plain white, painted studio by the end of it. Running a commercial business and trying to do creative shoots is a tricky juggling act. So I had an idea of an image i wanted to shoot, and fortunately Matt and Adam are happy to indulge my ideas sometimes, we had 2 empty days in the diary in the week ahead, so they said they’d be happy to throw some time into this one- as long as i could get the whole thing locked first.

I have always been a bit obsessed with the horror of religious painting, and had spent a fair bit of time cradling my head in my hands at Caravaggio paintings, I have linked some detail images below…. if i could control lighting like that then I’d die a happy man, instead of one probably wracked with remorse and regret.

I have also got a bit consumed by the narcissism of what we’re all doing now, the blogs, the twitter, the constant bleating just to hear our own words, over and over- and yes sure I realise that this post here is contributing to that thing that drives me all nuts. Its the self absorption I guess…. and that Narcissism appeared in another bloody Caravaggio image…..

I didnt know what the image was at this point- except it would be a room split down an axis, in one room SJ, beating up a guy, as we are both in thrall still with LaChappelle and I had promised her I would shoot something with this as its starting point, but completely try and bring something new to content.

Now as much as we both wanted to shoot something hot and rowdy, I didnt wanna rip this, but add something DD to it, you know, Hot Girls, comics, horror, the whole shebang, plus I had a magazine offering a double page spread and knew this could be one room- with some horror in the other. The story would be maybe a girl banging on the dividing wall, but with a hanging body next to her, oblivious to its prescence- but after a while it seemed a bit obvious- and angsty, and I wanted to use more models anyway, and fill the weird double page crop (its a square page on the mag) with a image that had an obvious flow, but a really rigid structure. I never really like to allow my models to move on shoots like this- you gotta keep it tight or it becomes something completely different.

So after a few false starts – and even the specific model dropping out- and a lot of coffee, no food, a few beers, some arguments with myself and getting to the point that I wanted to stab my fucking eyes out after sitting on my own in the studio for far too many bloody hours, and feeling kinda drunk off of two beers, i came up with a half decent sketch. Going over the idea for about 4 hours one night with Emma of Ophelia Fancy, (who i could never had carried this through without) we got the story right, an epic battle between two forces, the Blonde tattooed SJ and the Brunette Tattooed Toots Von Fury- two amazing girls who couldnt be more different but equally enigmatic when you meet them.

I mapped out all the positions by sticking the camera on self timer and throwing myself around the studio, with a masking tape set of walls stuck to the floor- but nothing in ‘there-is-no-God’s’ sweet earth would bring me to show those to you.

So here is the exact sketch that came out after the cawling on the floor, by the early hours of Saturday night (we were shooting on Tuesday), as you can tell I caint draw too right… but its just a plan innit….

complete with colour scheme (heavily influenced by the amazing Dean Stockwell “In Dreams”scene in Blue Velvet- which if you havent seen just stop reading this indulgent bollocks and go watch now. You may never feel the same again. I wavered on the carpet ish for a while, thinking it needed to be darker (but as it happened matt came back from a car park salvaging mission with two choices including a perfect Green.)

The thing I am dead pleased about is really the only thing that changed from sketch to final image was elin’s position, she was gonna be stabbed in the side and slumped down but it just wouldnt have worked- leaving a big space in the middle of the image, so we decided to lean her on the mini bar, and a little bit of tweaking for the others. And look at how good a job Matt and Laurie made bringing the sketch into something 100% real, and to identical scale, thats skills kids, skills….

So thats were I got to by Sunday night, after some non-stop obsessing and handed the ideas to Matt for Set Construction, and Emma and Stevi for the styling, whilst I had to try and cast the remaining models, with 24 hours to go…….

and i havent even begun to mention the shoot itself yet- the team, the time it took, oh theres good stuff to come for sure…. with photos too (and bonus they aint mine).

More will be on www.garage-studios.co.uk/blog tomo …. whoop

Important news below…..

here it is in some not eye bleedingly small glory… and less yellow than flickr makes it…

To see a set-build and read some more about this please follow the link to Garage Studios Blog

If you like this we offer courses in Studio Lighting and Creative Photography, but are also thinking of a new course that may involve a small group of students working on a project, with a set build, and models etc. Its the chance to be part of a creative team, work on all aspects of the shoot from the inital idea, to the set build, the shoot itself and the final image. Kind of a bespoke course, if you are interested then please mail info@garage-studios.co.uk

Last night had to shoot a quick fashion editorial for Ophelia Fancy… we only had about 2 hrs as the model had to go do a shift in a bar round the corner… where we relocated to sink some beers just after, and watch the most glamorous barmaid in Brighton, deal with the over enthusiastic punters sinking their ‘once-a-year’ pints of Guinness as it was that Irish marketing Campaign Day.

matt took a quick snap (below) whilst I was shooting this pic of the amazing alex…..

nice bit of wood panelling- its actually plywood, with a coat of varnish and the joints are just drawn on with permenant marker chisel tip…. the thick shag carpet- well its just a bit of rug from one of the Ophelia Girls flats. So yet another illusion shattered but hey its only the results that count…

The Ophelia girls have been asked to do a diffusion range for TopShop which is amazing news, its not all signed and sealed yet but hopefully this will clinch it for them. Go ladies!!