Dark Daze photography blog

Living Room wall…..

Your Life is my Vanity Project- week7

Georgie Hobday

Thursday 23rd October 2009 5.00-6.00pm

Georgie Hobday- Vanity- Week 4

Your life is my vanity project- three weeks later

Georgie Hobday. Thursday 15th Oct 2009. 5.00pm-6.00pm

Polaroid 340 Land Camera- Brighton

Georgie Hobday- Your Life is my Vanity Project-week 3

Shot on fuji Neopan, on Olympus mju11.

I have started the new part of the project with Elin. I am kinda excited and confused by this. Its 10 months since i first shot Elin, when she came to Garage Studios with the stone cold photo killer Mr Banks.

You can also see my first polaroid of her….

My first Polaroid of Elin

I busted down to the hideous but kinda cool Brighton centre on friday night under the pretense of shooting the freshers at the ball with the Garage Studios pop up studio, but really I was just totally scoping out new models and getting mad liquored up… ya know how it is…..

You will be able to see all the images on the Garage site soon, the gallery links not live yet tho…. but I have put a few of them up on the GS Blog as well.

Garage-studios at Freshers Ball@Brighton Centre

Garage-studios at Freshers Ball...

Garage-studios at Freshers Ball... - I dont walk i get carried...

Garage-studios at Freshers Ball...

Lit with a beauty dish, we roll quick and tight… why the hell am i typing this like a 12yr old wannabe gangsta… i should take Wu off myy headphones and grow up…
It was all out pure mayhem from start to finish, big ups to matt, nick and charlie for crowd control- well kinda control, honestly its like these students had just left home and been unleashed on a new city with loads of cash in their pocket and mad access to cheap booze… oh and yeah we really have put a watermark over brick…. cos you’d have to be a pro to clone that shit out… Boom….

We have a lot of shoots planned this week at Garage, but thought some of you might like this. One of the fashion editorial make_up artists I use a lot has just had 19, thats 19 Special edition covers of V magazine published. You can see her work here

Janeen Witherspoon for V magazine

This was all done by Janeen Witherspoon, who is hella dope, and has a salon called Square Roots on North Rd, she has shot a fair bit of stuff with me including the killer tanlines shoot for GangUp,

Dont Forget Your Sunscreen _GangUp Issue 1

and the current cover of Arty magazine,

Cover of Current issue for Arty magazine.

Anyway as you can see her work is brilliant, go and click on the first link to see all the covers, and the amazing concept shot by Paul Rowland. If you havent figured it by now, there is something pretty special about the ruff the model is wearing above…..

Your life is my vanity project- two weeks later

Georgie Hobday. Thursday 8th Oct 2009. 5.15pm-6.15pm

Well this was an interesting one….

Week3 * non directed make-up changes in an hour.

Your life is my vanity project- one week later

Georgie Hobday. Storm Agency Model Thursday 1st October 2009 4.45pm-5.45pm

Inside American Apparel.

Georgie Hobday- Your life is my vanity project- one week later

Georgie Hobday- Your life is my vanity project- one week later

Your life is my Vanity Project

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

Georgie Hobday- 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…..

Gah damn flash didnt fire

Flash fired and i fell to one side due to a pirate leg

shot on land

a double exposure including my foot

Final inside shot

Final Cover Shot -border removed