10 Friends

Catriona.

Mon, 17 Jan 2011 23:33:34 +0000

Catriona.

I’m in beautiful Cambridge to shoot Catriona, participant...

Sun, 16 Jan 2011 10:52:34 +0000

I’m in beautiful Cambridge to shoot Catriona, participant number eight. It sounds glamourous to plan an international photo project like this but it isn’t particularly practical.

I hope that in 10 years’ time I’m rich enough to go and visit each participant.

There’s a couple of videos on YouTube of daily photos of...

Sun, 05 Dec 2010 12:00:28 +0000

There’s a couple of videos on YouTube of daily photos of people spanning years, but this one — from birth to ten years — was new to me and seemed particularly relevant to this project.

Progress has been quiet lately since in October I started my final year in university, but I’ve booked my flights to Cambridge for Catriona’s photo after Christmas.

Luke and friend.

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 23:37:25 +0100

Luke and friend.

Inspiration: North by Northwest

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 13:21:28 +0100

Last night I watched Hitchcock’s 1959 thriller North by Northwest with Cary Grant. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable movie that feels much fresher and modern than I expected anything from 1959 to feel. The only thing that distracted me from the engrossing story line, though, was the wonderful photography and lighting in the film. I thought I’d discuss a couple of scenes here, because I found them quite inspiring. They feature a lot of hard light, which is what I primary use myself, and the colour palettes in many shots are so beautifully chosen that the stills are as good as photographs in their own right.

↑ First of all, I like the cleanness and neatness of the composition of this scene in a train compartment. The warm hair-light complements the colour of the seat and the skin tones, and in the next scene we’ll see the sunset out the window so the warm light makes sense. Notice how there’s just a little more light on Eva Marie Saint’s character’s face than on her legs, which subtly draws your attention up to her face.

↑ Just look how beautifully the ambient twilight has been balanced with the lights at the front of the hotel here. This is the kind of fine balance that lasts for about three minutes before it gets too dark. You can see a little kiss of rim light on Grant’s right side too, just subtly picking him out of the scene.

↑ I chose this scene because of the lovely palette of muted light greys in the room. Grant’s suit is darker than the rest of the room and so stands out, but not as much as Maire Saint’s dress which is allowed to steal the show (with a little cameo from the bottle of red Campari for good measure). Short of building a set from scratch for every shot, like Wired, it’s tricky to achieve this, but it’s certainly worth paying this much attention to the objects in the room.

↑ This very high contrast scene is all about the details. Notice the diagonal line of medium tones on the curtains to the left of the lamp, and on the check pattern material to the left of those. Both areas of illumination could believably be coming from the lamp (though they definitely aren’t — if they were, the lamp itself would be completely blown out). Notice the highlight on the railing in the foreground, showing us that we are outside, looking in. Again, this light could conceivably be coming from the room itself. Finally notice how again Maire Saint’s clothes stand out in the strongest colour in the scene, while the more muted warm tones in the room around her support the overall palette.

↑ I think this is pretty close to perfection. I count a possible total of five lights: (1) the main light on Grant’s eyes; (2) the frontal fill, just as dark as it can be while retaining detail; (3) a blue-gelled rim light on the lower left, giving us the impression of nighttime; (4) an ungelled rim light above the blue one and possibly (5) another one above Grant’s head, pointing downwards. There’s a geometric form created by Grant’s shadow on the wall too which provides pleasing contrast. The pole in the top right is a bit distracting though.

↑ Another good example of a single light doing double duty; providing the suitably suspenseful rim light on Grant while also creating the silhouette behind him. Again this light could believably be coming from the lamp on the right. Note also the subtle gradient on the back wall on the right, leading your attention (and Grant’s) downwards. There’s also a subtle light on the floor of the walkway in front of Grant, just giving you a little more of an idea of where he is in relation to the room he’s watching.

↑ Here again it’s easy to imagine a single ceiling light in this train compartment lighting this whole scene, from the well-centered rim lights on the two characters to the pleasing gradient on the back wall.

↑ Another beautiful colour palette. Everything in the scene is some variation on cool greys. Notice how even the people in the train are dressed in blueish tones.

↑ This appears to be a relatively simple scene and set up but if you look more closely you can see how finely balanced the lighting is. Again, it looks like all the light is coming from the ceiling light but of course that’s not the case. Notice the gradients on the desk and walls at the back, all guiding our attention into the centre of the frame. Each character’s face is lit by the main lights, but notice how perfect the fill on the policeman’s body in the foreground is. Easy to make out details, just dark enough that you aren’t distracted by them. Perfect.

Introducing the 11th friend: Christel’s newborn daughter,...

Sat, 28 Aug 2010 22:46:00 +0100

Introducing the 11th friend: Christel’s newborn daughter, holding onto her dad’s finger. (I’ve stolen the photo from his Twitter). Welcome to the world!

Update: She’s called Pella!

The by-now-traditional Bridge screenshot, this time of Siri.

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 23:46:37 +0100

The by-now-traditional Bridge screenshot, this time of Siri.

Today’s aquisition.

Sat, 21 Aug 2010 18:38:18 +0100

Today’s aquisition.

Taking a quick first glance at the files from yesterday’s...

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 23:34:00 +0100

Taking a quick first glance at the files from yesterday’s shoot with Helen. I used the €1,500 17-55mm f/2.8 Nikon lens instead of my usual lens since that is being repaired. I don’t understand how people carry around equipment as heavy as this. Sure, it’s nice and sharp, but I don’t think that justifies its expense and weight. Still, it’ll be interesting to compare the two when I get back home and can access my old files.

I’m back in Ireland after three weeks’ travel doing...

Mon, 02 Aug 2010 01:09:55 +0100

I’m back in Ireland after three weeks’ travel doing the day job. My iPhone has died so you get a screenshot of Bridge this time instead. Having a look at today’s shoot with Erwin, who is moving to Madrid very soon.

I’m going to Sweden again this weekend, where I’ll shoot Siri and Helen. Two one-time Dubliners, Gearoid and Catriona, will now be photographed in their new homes in London and Cambridge, respectively. Already the project is more international than it was at the beginning.

Editing today’s shoot with Conor James. Perhaps I’ll...

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 01:48:49 +0100

Editing today’s shoot with Conor James. Perhaps I’ll put some of the decision making process of an edit like this into a blog post in the future. To be honest publishing unfinished work is a bit difficult but maybe it’s in the spirit of a blog like this.

Inspiration: Annie Leibovitz at Fotografiska

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 00:41:44 +0100

A new museum of photography, Fotografiska, opened just the week before last in Stockholm. I got to pay a visit since I was already in Stockholm to, among other things, photograph Christel for this project and eat dinner at Mattias Dahlgren’s restaurant Matsalen — the 25th best restaurant in the world.

The top-floor café has these stunning views across the city, appropriately framed by these windows, as if into photographs. Photograph by MauronB on Flickr.

The old customs house on the docks with glorious views of Skeppsbron, Strandvägen and Djurgården has been transformed into this multi-story exhibition space, and everything in it is on a grand scale — not least the enormous acrylic-mounted prints. The museum has opened with four exhibitions: Swede Lennart Nillson’s A child is born, Vee Speers’s The birthday party, Joel-Peter Witkin’s Bodies and the one that turned out to be most relevant to this project, Annie Leibovitz’s A photographer’s life, 1990-2005.

“Brother Phillip and my Father, 1988”. Photograph by Annie Leibovitz.

George W. Bush and his inner circle, photographed in the Cabinet Room of the White House in December 2001. From left: Secretary of State Colin Powell, Vice President Dick Cheney, the president, National-Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, White House chief of staff Andrew Card, C.I.A. director George Tenet (seated), and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Photograph by Annie Leibovitz.

Leaving aside the fact that Leibovitz has clearly been alive for longer than 15 years, I approached her exhibition calculating that her ambitious and highly styled photographs of super stars aren’t terribly relevant to the way that I work, particularly for this project. Those ambitious and highly styled photographs certainly are there in this exhibition — like this brilliant, ludicrous photo of Donald Trump in a Mercedes SL with his pregnant wife Melania posing against a private jet in a gold bikini. But in the end I found myself surprised and inspired by her simpler portraits. These featured both ordinary and famous people but had in common simple lighting and posing. But all of them — like the small selection I’ve included here — bristled with life. This is portraiture at its best.

Jamie Foxx from A photographer’s life, 1990-2005. Photograph by Annie Leibovitz.

I’m just back from Stockholm, where I shot Christel. Just...

Mon, 31 May 2010 23:07:14 +0100

I’m just back from Stockholm, where I shot Christel. Just having a peek in Bridge now.

Process: A plan

Fri, 28 May 2010 14:38:29 +0100

Although I had intended to write about a few other photographers’ work as inspiration first, it seems high time now to describe how exactly I’m going about this project.

The still photograph has been with us for almost 200 years, and while there have been major developments in the way these still images are produced, the result hasn’t changed much at all. Photographs are still as compelling today in a 3D HD TV world as they were 200 years ago, and I reckon — importantly for this project — that they will still be compelling in 60 years’ time. So while it’s unlikely that in 60 years’ time I’ll be using a camera of the kind I’m using today to take photographs, I have no doubt that I’ll still be able to take photographs that look the same as ones taken today — or 200 years ago.

Back in the present: I’ll produce one portrait per participant. I’ve decided to use the square format for this main portrait. There’s nothing particularly unusual about the square format — a serious number of significant pictures have been taken peering through the square viewfinder of Hasselblads and Rolleiflexes, both very popular cameras in medium format. I used Hasselblads quite a bit when I studied photography a few years ago, sometimes retaining the square format in my prints and other times getting rid of it by cropping. (Though I loved the grain in some of my tougher classmates’ 35 mm Tri-X prints, I don’t think I ever quite grew comfortable with it in my own).

The choice of the square format for this project is mostly practical. A square picture is, a little obviously, neither portrait or landscape. This means simply that all ten pictures in this project will look the same.

I’ll be using my main camera, a Nikon D90. I love this camera. The first serious camera I owned was a Nikon D70, part of an early generation of non-professional SLRs. Since then, the market has expanded to include even smaller and lighter SLRs that require even less technical know-how, “below” cameras like the D90, and also “above” it, cameras like the Canon 5D and Nikon D700 — (slightly) smaller and (slightly) cheaper than the enormous, heavy and expensive top-of-the-line professional models. When it came to upgrade my almost five year old D70, I decided to stick right where I was in the range with its grandchild, the D90. I upgraded my main lens, too, to an 18-200 mm VR. Such a slow “super” zoom (11x) isn’t really regarded as a terribly serious lens (despite its €826 list price), but it’s a brilliantly useful lens. I reckon I spend most of my time around the 35-70 mm range (35 mm equivilant: 53-106 mm).

Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find a good way to compose with the square format using the D90. I don’t know exactly what format the grid lines in the viewfinder are in, but none of them forms a square (I tested). I tried various approaches with rubber bands across the lens hood, but this isn’t really compatible with a zoom lens. Taping over the sides of the screen and using Live View is one option, but I dislike composing this way. It seems a $150 KatzEye focusing screen is the only sensible way to acheive this. Unfortunately money is an object, so I’m just doing my best to keep the format in mind when I’m shooting.

An important part of the way I photograph is lighting with hotshoe flashes in the Strobist school. For these photos though, I don’t want the light to call attention to itself. The important part of these photos is their subjects, not the photos themselves. Just recently I bought a double-fold shoot-through umbrella. The soft light this produces would conceivably be useful for this goal, but I’m not yet used to it. I’m much more comfortable using the single flash bare.

I’ll be recording each participant talking a little about their lives in a way that lends itself to comparison. I’m using a handheld Sony voice recorder I’ve borrowed. I’ve only once before combined audio with still photography, and it’s something I’m looking forward to exploring further with this project. This recording will be combined with a few other shots for context using either Soundslides or iMovie.

In a later post I’ll talk more about how I’ll be presenting and publishing the photos, but for now that feels a bit moot before I’ve got any pictures to present.

Introducing my ten friends

Sun, 23 May 2010 01:21:52 +0100

In chronological order:

1986: I am born.

1989: I meet Erwin. We will go to playschool, primary school and secondary school together.

2000: I meet Siri at a children’s summer camp near Rimbo in Sweden.

2005: I meet Helen and Christel at Kulturama in Sweden, where we study photography together.

2006: I meet Gearóid during Freshers’ Week in Trinity College Dublin. I meet my classmates Luke and Sarah-Louise.

2007: I get to know Catriona through Trinity News, the student newspaper in Trinity.

2008: I hire Conor James to work for me on Trinity News. A mutual friend introduces me to Ailbhe.

2010: I begin 10 Friends.

This group of people are conveniently all in their early to mid twenties, but slightly less conveniently are spread across Dublin and Stockholm. In some cases they have nothing in common except me; Ailbhe is the only one who has met all the others.

I’m going to Stockholm soon, where I’ll do some of the portraits. So in the next post I’ll describe the way I’ll be taking the pictures and some of the rationale behind those decisions.

Welcome to 10 Friends

Wed, 12 May 2010 00:17:00 +0100

Welcome to 10 Friends, a photo project that I hope will take me my entire life to complete. In a nut, I plan to make ten portraits of my friends this summer, and repeat the exercise every ten years. There are a few details to be worked out along the way, and I’ll be documenting those in this blog. One important feature of the project is that my friends will be photographed at home, or somewhere they feel very much at home. The purpose of this blog is both to allow me to figure out the best way to go about this project, as well as keeping you up-to-date with progress. I’ll be posting using three tags: Inspiration, in which I’ll post others’ work that is relevant to what I’m doing; Process, where I’ll detail how I plan to achieve the goals I set out; and Progress, where I’ll keep the blog updated with the progress of my own shoots.

If you’d like to subscribe to this blog, you can use the RSS feed or follow @10friendsme on Twitter which will probably not tweet much more than links to new posts here.

At the bottom of the page you can see the newest images from my Flickr account being automatically pulled into this blog. I’ll be using my personal Flickr account to share the photos from this project (which is why the images you can see now are unrelated to 10 Friends).

If you’d like to get in touch, you can email me or “Ask me anything” over on the sidebar to the left.

I’ve never taken on a project before that is intended to take my whole life to complete, so this is uncharted territory for me. Nonetheless I’m already very excited about this. For now, you can read a little about me on my Flickr profile and in the next post, I’ll introduce the ten participants.