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Exhibition Project – Leicester let down 19th March 2014

March 19, 2014
HNC
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Had a busy week this week, contacting Leicester City Football Club and Leicester Tigers to see if I could get into their grounds on match day to take shots for time-lapse.   Plus i’ve done a couple of un-related time lapses for practice and too keep my options open.

Unfortunately I got a negative reply from the football club, saying that they couldn’t accommodate non-press photographers on match day (although they could probably arrange ground access on a non-match day) and i’ve had absolutely no response from Tigers.

Here are a couple of time-lapse video’s that i’ve shot:

Dog time-lapse:

We have two greyhounds which are very lazy and sleep all day.  So I thought it would be nice and easy to set the camera up on a tripod on the dining room table and aim it at the dog beds.  I took a shot every minute from 9am till my battery ran out at 3pm, giving me 360 shots.  I’d shot RAW to give me more control, but this creates a lot of data.  I imported them into Aperture, then used the lift and stamp adjustments tool to make edits to one frame and apply to the rest.  The edit’s included a crop to 16:9 ratio for widescreen.  The last step was to then export JPEG’s in 1920×1080 (1080i HD resolution).  After finding the limit of iMovie was 10fps I wanted to increase the frame rate to a more standard 25fps, so I did some research and found that Quicktime Pro, from Apple, did the job really well.  There is an item on the file menu called ‘Open Image Sequence..’  I just have to select the first JPEG that i’ve exported and it opens the sequence.  I can then view the video there and then or export to many file formats.  I may then look at importing these back into iMovie to add music, titles and effects.

Here is the finished sequence.  Unfortunately one of the dogs got camera shy and must have spent the day on the landing.  There are brief glimpses of it.  But the Brown dog, Penny makes an appearance eventually and swaps beds several times!

 

Moon time-lapse:

I had taken the dogs for a walk one night and noticed that the moon was very clear in the sky.  So when I got home I went out into the garden and set my camera up on a tripod with my 70-300mm lens.  Having no idea how fast the moon would move  I set my camera up to take 30 minutes of shots.  Unfortunately I misjudged it’s trajectory and it went across the top corner of my frame.  I used a similar process to get the files into a video.  Which helped greatly because I was able to crop right into the top corner and got a pretty good looking moon!

 

Orange night sky:

I’d actually set my camera up a week or so before after watching a video on star-trails.  Unfortunately there is so much light pollution around where I live that I was always struggling against the orange glow.  However I decided to process it and i’m really pleased with the result.  The stars look great and the clouds floating by look good as well.

 

So whilst I was quite pleased with them, I’ve not really set the world alight.  Further discussion with the lecturer and classmates suggested that I should try:

  • Other local football clubs (the lecturer used some press contacts to get names for local media/press liaison people to try)
  • A train station
  • Circus
  • Working Quarry
  • Exhibition stand
  • Airport
  • Mechanical installation Impact Air Systems equipment  (Where I work)
  • Demontfort Hall (turn camera on the crown rather than the stage to see it filling and emptying)
  • Racetrack, i.e. silverstone, Donnington or Rockingham.

All aimed at getting a crowd in and out.  I must admit I appreciated all of the help but was thinking there was an awful lot of organising, visits, shoots and I wasn’t sure if I was up to it.  I left college feeling a little stressed and deflated about it all.

Exhibition Project – LPPG visit and development of initial idea’s 12th March 2014

March 12, 2014
HNC
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After some discussion at the last session and during the week we arranged to visit the Leicester People’s Photographic Gallery (LPPG) which is located at the junction of Belvoir Street and Wellington Street. It is in a building that used to be the Central Lending Library.  On reflection we’d felt that the HQ Gallery was possibly a bit small for the nine of us.

Again, as I do site surveys as part of my daytime job I was asked to measure up and subsequently produce a drawing:

LPPG (PDF)

We then made our way back to college to have a lot more discussion about the exhibition.  Discussing the new proposed gallery, sponsors, group name etc.  We then each had a short chat with the lecturer about where we were with our projects.  I hadn’t done a great deal of work on it because i’d spent a lot of my free time working on my essay, which is the other final piece of work to hand in.  It was suggested that I should contact Leicester City Football Club and Leicester Tigers to see if I could get into the ground on a match day to do some time-lapse work.

 

Exhibition Project – Discussion of initial idea’s 5th March 2014

March 5, 2014
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2nd week back at college tonight and there was a lot of discussion about our final exhibition.  Talking about things like exhibition name, sponsorship and venue.

The first task was our arranged meet at HQ Gallery for a recce visit.  Because I do site measure-ups for work I was assigned the task of getting measurements for the room.  Which I will then turn into a CAD drawing.

HQ Gallery (PDF)

Back at college we then had tutorials with the lecturer to discuss our proposals.  I brought up the blog page with my initial idea’s and discussed them.  We felt that pin-hole photography might not have much to explore and might get a bit boring.  Sport photography was going to be difficult without being a press photographer.  Fashion was good, but I didn’t really have any further idea’s to push this on.  Time-lapse seems to be favourite.  I enjoyed exploring this for the Pride and Prejudice project and we felt there were a lot of options to push this forward.

Time lapse of crowds and sporting venue’s came up as a possible option.  Alex showed me this video of Hampden Park being raised 6ft in 3 months for the Commonwealth games.  Whilst this was outside of what i’d be able to achieve we discussed the idea of doing a time lapse of a sporting crowd coming into and then out of a venue.  i.e. going from empty seats to full seats.

I have enjoyed doing time lapse and feel there may be some commercial opportunities in the future.  Whilst I have been doing the course I keep noticing bits of time-lapse on the TV.  Just short little bits between scenes.  I’ve noticed it in TOWIE (The wife was watching it).  Bondi Rescue (shots of the beach filling or emptying, sun going and up down).

As well as getting involved with TV I feel this could add interesting shots to a wedding video, guests arriving, or going to and form the bar or dance floor.  Although this would probably need investment in more equipment, camera’s etc.

Another option may be for tradesmen, builders etc. to quickly show the quality of their work, how they can transform an empty space into a house.

As per one of my previous post’s I am concerned about logistics and timing.  Time lapse by it’s nature takes a long time and unless I can leave my camera in a secure location i’m going to have to sit with it for hours, if I can afford it.  I may end up doing a lot of work from my or family’s homes.

 

Exhibition Project – Initial proposals 28th Feb 2014

February 28, 2014
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Wednesday (26th February) was our first week back at college after half term.  It was nice to relax and not have to worry about college work for a week or so, although I still had to go to work!  We are now into our final stretch before the end of the course and have until 4th June 2014 to submit our final project, which includes an exhibition at a venue in Leicester.  At the moment this is looking to be HQGallery in the city centre on 21st June 2014.

This is a totally self negotiated project, so my first task is to come up with an idea(s) or concept(s) for projects to discuss with the unit leader Alex.

I’m a little bit lost at the moment to be honest.  The things I have enjoyed are:

Beer can (pinhole) photography – Although this was a bit time consuming and stressful because I never knew what i’d got until I went to college the following Wednesday to develop them I did enjoy it.  I’ve had some positive feedback from fellow students and feel that these images would look really good on the wall of a gallery.  Subject wise I could do landscapes or have a go at portraits.  Maybe see if I can speak to Nicole about her flapper girl outfit, get some period looking images?    This project could get expensive buying photographic paper and beer cans!

St Margarets Bus Station

St Margarets Bus Station

 

Fashion photography – I really enjoyed this part of the course.  Both the location and studio shoot.  The fashion students to have other outfits that I could talk to them about.  Although this is quite wide and varied.  I’d need to think and tie it down to a theme to make a collection of images.

 

Time Lapse photography – A different skill that i’ve had a go and enjoyed.  Although my final submission wasn’t a spectacular piece of work I could expand on this.  Probably look at more landscapes or busy parts of the city, train station, city centre etc.  Make a compilation of video’s on a 5-10 minute loop?  See if I could do anything with motorised camera movement to get some of the spectacular panning/zooming shots that you can get.  I’d quite like to have a go at the miniature/tilt-shift effect as well.   An option for this may be work related.  I work for a company called Impact Air Systems that does large mechanical installations, ranging from a day, to a month, indoors and out.  A large, week long site installation might be a good subject and also a good marketing tool for the company website.  I’d need to speak nicely to the MD about some time off work to setup and collect camera each day.

Sport photography – I’ve photographed Hockey, Cricket, Basketball, Ice Hockey and football either professional or amateur over the years.  I really enjoy playing sports and the photography is an extension of this.  I could maybe expand on this and do some sport ‘art’ i.e. unusual angles or slow shutter speeds to get blur.  A strobe light could be interesting!

Hockey close

 

I think my biggest problem, along with many students is going to be shooting time.  I work all week from 8:30 till 5pm.  The evening’s are getting lighter, so i can maybe do something then, or work in a studio.  My cricket season starts in May, so I’m going to loose my Saturday afternoons.  Leaving me Sunday’s.

I am free on:

March – 8th, 9th, 15th, 16th, 22nd, 23rd, 29th, 30th

April – 5th, 6th, 12th, 13th, 19th, 20th (Easter Sunday), 27th

May – 4th, 11th, 18th.  I am away for the May bank holiday.

June – 1st.  Although this will be extremely last minute and more likely used to finish paperwork etc.

So I really need to get my shooting out of the way by the end of April if possible!