Can’t wait to do it again. We climbed Loughrigg Fell.

Wow! What a shoot. Seriously lacked in time, 3 hour slot. That’s 3 hours including makeup, hair, styling and lighting set up. I thought I’d struggle to even get one set of shots but I think I got quite a varying degree! Which is exciting. I think I learnt a few valuable lessons – namely to have a solid theme or story behind the shots you want. I tried to cram in some last minute research the night before the shoot and it just wasn’t working. Anyway, I feel they’re a damn sight better than my previous studio shoot and I’m not sure why that is.

One thing I do know, though, is that it’s 4am – I’m really tired and my bum is numb.

Still absolutely in love with The Pines stuff, second week in a row that they’ve topped the list of most played. Lissy Trullie following closely but it’s been a busy with and I haven’t listened to half as much music as the week before. Sigur Rós have hit the list this week with their album Ágætis Byrjun. It’s amazing. Seriously it’s mystically serene and sad yet beautiful? Really can’t explain – it’s just the epitome of amazing music and it’s odd that I haven’t listened to it more.

So Andrew Schofield linked me up to an amazing photographer, Sarah Stolfa, with an amazing book called ‘The Regulars’ – I hastily clicked hoping it wouldn’t be precisely the project I’d undertaken on the premise that I’d grown up with these people around me and they were slowly fading from my life.

It doesn’t quite strike that, but it still rings home on many levels. Which gutted me somewhat. I mean, this idea, this chronology of work I’d set myself up to produce, to document and to keep had just been kinda unseeingly plagiarised by me and I felt like I’d lost originality. That sucks.

But I thought back to the amazing visiting lecturer we had this Wednesday. Dinu Li has been commissioned for a few of his projects and he made it clear that the people who commission you do so because of the way you view the world. The way you see things. Not anyone else. You. That’s why you’re being commissioned to do it. So have arrogance, know that as a Photographer you view the world in a unique way and as an individual with a journey to the present as anomalous as the next person – you broadcast an entirely different perspective also.

So with that in mind I feel despite similarities in subject matter, I had something to add to this portrayal of the Pub regular.

The most important aspect of the work of Stolfa that I saw though, was the deconstructing text residing it. It made statements I hadn’t even begin to think about; like the idea of a ‘Regular’ in a broader sense of the term as opposed to how I’ve viewed them in regards to being nothing more than a consistent visitor to a pub. It expands on the idea that a regular is more than a stranger but not quite a deep friend.

Part of me agrees, part of me doesn’t. I think that’s based on what I discussed before about the idea of perspectives. I mean, I’ve lived in this pub for a long time, this is my home as well as my work. The people that come here each and every day I see more than my own family. They feel like they are family. We seem to posses a connection outside of a friendship. It feels odd to define people between 40 and 80 as friends. They seem more like parents, or grandparents. Some I love, some I despise. Some I look up to, some disgust me. But it’s the raw honesty and the microcosm of the walks of life that appeal to me so much. In what is seemingly a quiet city centre pub, there is an overwhelming array of stories, positive and negative.

So how do I deal with that? I eradicate it all and produce the most unappealing flat representation of each one willing – and allow their face to tell that story instead. Even the term ‘Rogues Gallery’ removes the intuitive inclination that these people are regulars at a small local pub. So hopefully with that in mind and an ever expanding knowledge and depth in Critical Theory (Seriously, it’s so important.) – I think I’m going to turn this project into something really quite great.

Besides, how many rehashes of the same mundane shit do we have to see before we realise no one’s truly original anymore?

This one particularily. I went out at 11:30pm in the town center looking for leaves to use as part of the shoot. The only issue was they were absolutely drenched. So I dried them all nicely over the radiator and they crinkled and shriveled beautifully. The Lilly I shot from the other day (the shots below) turned out to still be alive. So I used that as a sort of dry, placid cliché look at the contradictions between old and new, dead and alive.

Hope you like them! Can’t wait to start printing them in the darkroom.

Peace!

20 minutes late, but whose counting. I’m in absolute awe with Lissy Trullie’s album. You might have heard this song by the band Hot Chip but I assure you, her cover is far superior! The Pines have also impressed me and my favourite track is Heart And Bones – a melancholy tale of love. Diverse’ album One A.M. is a mixture of some amazingly delivered lyrcism mixed with upbeat jazz and briliant samples. Definitely one of my favourite albums this month. Though the new album by The Bloody Beetroots is disappointingly bland. I’ve given it 2-3 listens and it just won’t hit home like I Love The Bloody Beetroots did.

Au Revior!

Feast your eyes on something I’m finally proud of! Here’s the first two of the series that I probably will re-shoot. The only gripe I have is the right side didn’t quite capture enough light from the catch light umbrella I’d set up. No big deal, I’m actually super chuffed with the way it went.

Critical Focus with those Wolf cameras is a pure bitch. They’re old and rickety and loading the film after focusing just jigs the whole lot around!

Also, I’ve finally found a title for this project. Rogues Gallery. It’s pretty much genius. I found it after researching the Mugshot last night. Basically it’s the ‘collection’ of images used to identify the naughty criminals! I thought it was quite apt for the characters I’ll be shooting.

Anyway, more to come!

So I spent 9 hours shooting some still life shots in the studio yesterday. FP4, rated at ISO 50 and shot pretty much perfectly. The flower had some flaws and they really stood out, but I was pissed off more than anything with the fact that the rinsing agent was 3 months old, unchanged and left the most horrible streaks on my negs. I had to re-wash them and use my fingers to rub the grime off which has pretty much left me with some mangled up and crappy negs. So I’m going to print them next week and see how they turn out.

Critical Focus is a bitch. If you don’t have a loupe, you’ve got no chance.

The makeshift dark cloth.

Together with the makeshift loupe (50mm lens backwards)

Peace folks!