Strobist Shoot: Jonny Walsh

I’ve just uploaded a new batch of photos from a strobist shoot last week with Jonny Walsh.

Myself and Jonny have been talking about doing a shoot for the past few months; he’s got an awesome collection of tattoo’s and despite never having done a shoot before he kindly agreed to meeting up last Thursday night for a shoot around MacDonagh Junction.

I used the shoot as an opportunity for my first proper attempt using multiple off-camera flashes, shooting with my SB800 and SB900 on wireless triggers. I used the SB900 on a small tripod as my main flash with the SB800 as a side or back-light depending on the location and pose.

We started in the main courtyard outside the shopping centre just after 9pm, the sun was starting to go down and it gave me a great skyline for the background. I added some gradients to the sky in post to really bring it out and they’re easily my favourite shots from the bunch.

We moved from the courtyard into the sheltered area in the outer building. I really wasn’t happy with most of the shots from this location, I wish I’d spent a bit more time positioning my backlight, I underexposed the background but unfortunately didn’t position my SB800 right meaning I lost the outline of Jonny’s head in most of the shots and didn’t notice until I transferred the photos to my computer. It’s annoying but one of the points of the shoot was to learn this type of thing. I scrapped the shots from this location except for one which I added a texture to.

We moved from there to the stairs outside the bowling alley and I tried a combination of different setups; with my Sb900 positioned high on a tripod near the camera and then moving my SB800 from a back-light to a side-light depending on the pose; some shots worked, some didn’t, but again I know where I went wrong and I’m very happy with the ones that worked. Finally we tried a couple of shots under the sheltered area near the bowling alley and at the wall.

It can be a bit confusing trying to figure settings between the camera and both flashes but overall I’m very happy with how the shoot went. You can check out my favourite shots from the shoot here on the Oss237.com Homepage with links to the rest on my Flickr.

Myself and Jonny have plans for a few more shoots over the summer so there’s plenty more strobist stuff and tattoo portraits on the way. I’d like to say thanks to Jonny for doing the shoot, for his patience when I was messing around with settings and for having the balls to get half-naked in front of my camera in a public place. I hope you like the photos dude!

Finally thanks to the two security guards who politely spoke to us on two separate occasions, for not kicking us out or having us arrested (I’m sure it’s not every night they stumble across a half naked tattoo covered guy getting his photo taken!).

Bridal & Vintage Fashion Photo Shoot

A few weeks ago I answered a casting call looking for a photographer interested in doing a Bridal fashion photo shoot in Kilkenny.

Shortly after that, I met up with Make Up Artist Dawn Ryan and Hair Stylist Deirdre Esmonde Walsh to chat about the shoot. We set a date for it and over the next few weeks, four models were organised along with a selection of bridal wear, vintage dresses & headpieces supplied by Cameo Bridal Wear and Rebekah Patterson.

The Sunday before last, we all met up in the Hair Court to prepare for the shoot, we were joined by Cork photographer Ger Leahy. Our models; Grace Baker, Shelly Baker, Joanna Szendera and Mairead Moran tried on various outfits before Dawn and Deirdre set to work on hair & make up. Myself and Ger killed the time, shooting some behind the scenes shots and worrying about the blinding sun outside.

Once the girls were good to go, we moved to our first shoot location, the old TeaRooms Bridal Shop beside the river across from Dunnes car park. It was about 29 degrees at this stage and the sun proved to be a huge problem to shoot in, leaving us with the only option of shooting in the small shaded doorway area.

Unfortunately, despite having checked my kit the night before and everything was fine, I couldn’t get one of my wireless triggers to work properly, meaning I could only shoot with one wireless flash, my SB800. I kept it simple for the start, with the SB800 positioned on the ground in front of the girls at 1/4 power shooting on my 18-135mm. With the limited shoot space, we didn’t stay long in the location, moving to the shaded canal area beside the castle.

The second location was a lot better for shooting, plenty of shade and room to move around. The only small problems being the amount of attention the girls were getting, featuring of course the obligatory Kilkenny chav’s throwing some abuse, but the girls paid no attention and I had a lot of fun playing with settings and different strength flash bursts.

Unfortunately, my one working wireless trigger started acting up at this stage so I had to resort to using my SB800 on camera for a while. I swapped around between my 18-135mm and 50mm for various shots but just couldn’t find the right settings to stop the sky burning out in the background whilst keeping the girls lit.

Post-wise I did some selective desaturation on the background of some of these shots. My trigger had started working again so I tried some more strobist stuff against the wall of the castle, with the SB800 positioned to the left of the camera at either 1/4 or 1/2 power. I also did some sign replacements, removing the writing and graffiti off the Water Depth sign and adding a silhouette of the model.

Finally, we moved to our third location, just inside the grounds of the Castle Park. We found a nice spot in the woods with the sun coming through the trees providing a nice back light, we shot a mixture of group and individual shots with SB800 at 1/2 power. Then called it a day.

You can check out my favourite shots from the shoot here on the Oss237.com Homepage with links to over 70 photos on my Flickr. As always any comments or feedback are appreciated.

Finally, I’d like to say thanks to Dawn, Deirdre, Grace, Shelly, Joanna and Mairead for all their time and hard work, I really enjoyed the shoot, I hope you like the photographs and I look forward to hopefully working with you all again in the future.

Dear Epson…Your Customer Care Sucks! (Updated Again)

Back at the start of February I bought an Epson Stylus Photo R2880 printer and up until two weeks ago I was very happy with my purchase.

Two weeks ago, the first of the eight ink cartridges in the printer ran out, it was the Matte Black ink cartridge, I replaced it with the Photo Black ink cartridge (they both go in the same slot), everything seemed fine, I did some printing and shut down the printer. The next day, I turned the printer on again and the ink light came on. When I opened the printer to see which cartridge needed replacing, ALL of the individual lights above each of the cartridges were on.

The status monitor flashed the warning that “none of the ink cartridges were recognised” and told me I should only use genuine Epson ink cartridges. I should point out that all of the cartridges in the printer were genuine Epson ink and that they had all come with the printer when I bought it. I spent that Thursday night searching the internet for information on the problem, going through various FAQ’s on the Epson website and through forums but could not find anything relating to this issue except for an article that suggested removing the cartridges, wiping the green chip at the front of them and then replacing them. I did this several times, it didn’t solve the problem.

The following day (Friday), I made my first attempt at using the e-chat support through the Epson website. It took about half an hour to load properly and then constantly tried to sell me ink & products before I was put through to a tech support agent, a guy named Tom. He asked from some basic details and the problem I was having, then said he’d send me out a trouble shooting email. He then tried to sell me some ink, given that a full batch of ink for the printer costs over €100 and the problem I was having, I declined.

I received the trouble shooting email, it gave me links to some information on the Epson website that basically told me to remove the cartridges, wipe the green chip and then replace. If this doesn’t work then just buy new ink!?

On Saturday I tried to log on to the e-chat support again but couldn’t get it to load so gave up for the weekend.

The following Monday afternoon, I attempted to the use the e-chat support again. It took a while to load, then highlighted that I could buy ink if I wanted then put me through to another tech support agent, a guy called Nathan. I gave him the reference number from my first e-chat conversation, told him the problem and he then told me to remove the ink cartridges, wipe the chip and then replace them. I explained I’d done this several times but did it again anyway. It didn’t work so he took the barcode number and told me he’d arrange for an engineer to come out and look at the printer. He told me that because it was late into Monday afternoon, it would be Wednesday before they could come out.

I spent all day Wednesday waiting for the engineer to show up. After 3pm, I attempt to once again use the e-chat but it wouldn’t load so I phoned the Epson support centre in England, I can’t remember the name of the agent I was talking to. I gave him my reference number from the previous e-chat session, he couldn’t find my details… he had typed it in wrong but eventually found my details then told me that the engineer had been cancelled!? I asked why? He said he wasn’t sure but they might be waiting on parts. He would look into it and call me back, either that evening or the following day. I never heard from him again!

Then yesterday (Tuesday), nearly a week later and without warning, I got a phone call from an engineer who had arrived to look at my printer. Unfortunately, because I had no warning I wasn’t at home, I wasn’t even in the same county! I explained this to the engineer, he understood and told me to contact the support center again to reschedule.

I rang the call centre again and was put through to a guy called Mark, I told him my reference number but he couldn’t find my details. He eventually found them but told me I had been given the wrong reference number, he gave me a new number and then I told him all the details from my previous conversations with the support staff. He apologised and told me he would make a note of it and reschedule the engineer for me, for Friday. He told me he would ring me back to confirm the details. He never rang me back!

Today, I called the call centre again. I was put through to a guy called Dal, he asked for my reference number, I gave it to him but he couldn’t find my details. He eventually found them and told me the reference number I should have used, which turned out to be the one I used yesterday and was told was wrong. He put me on hold and eventually confirmed to me that the engineer has been booked for Friday.

It’s been two weeks of hassle at this stage, whether the engineer will show up I don’t know, I still don’t even know what the problem is, but the entire ordeal has ensured that I will never buy another Epson printer!

Is there anybody out there that has had a similar problem with their printer or indeed the Epson support because I’d really love to know how I can make them aware of just how much their customer care sucks!?

UPDATED – Friday 21st May 2010

So once again I sat around all day today waiting for the Epson engineer to show up. By lunch time, I still hadn’t heard from anybody so I rang the UK Call Centre again, this time I was talking to an agent named Pete.  He took my details and confirmed that an engineer had been booked for today, he told me that he would “put a chase on it” to see if he could get any more information and that he or somebody from Customer Service would ring me back.

I’ve just gotten off the phone with a woman from Customer Service, she just rang me and told me that an engineer was never booked for today!? They were waiting on me to confirm when I would be available for an engineer to call out!? I explained to her that the engineer had been booked (by Mark) for today when I rang them on Tuesday. A fact that I myself had confirmed on Wednesday when I rang again (and was talking to Dal). She disagreed and told me that they were “waiting for me to come back from my holidays”!?

So once again Epson have wasted my time! I’ve been told that an engineer is now booked for next Tuesday, bringing me in to week 3 of this ridiculous situation. I quite simply don’t know what to do at this stage!? Do Epson engineers actually exist?

Somebody please help me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

UPDATED – Friday 26th May 2010

So yesterday, a representative from Epson finally showed up. He wasn’t an engineer and made absolutely no attempt to fix the printer, he wasn’t even aware of what my problem was before he arrived. Instead he simply gave me a new printer.

The lack of trying to fix the problem makes me think that this may be a very common problem and makes me worry that it may just happen again. I’ll have to wait and see because unfortunately the new printer didn’t come with any ink cartridges, and constantly removing and charging my previous cartridges had meant that two of my old cartridges had now run out.

So I’ve had to order a new set of cartridges, meaning I still have to wait before I can even check to see if the new printer works correctly! After this three week long (and counting) nightmare… it better!!!!

Tokyo/Glow

Check out this awesome short film, Tokyo/Glow written and directed by Jonathan Bensimon.

It follows the journey of an illuminated man from a crosswalk sign as he embarks on an adventure. Shot on location throughout Tokyo using thousands of individual digital stills, the light suit was constructed using hundreds of feet of high-voltage LED rope and a translucent nylon outer shell to achieve the striking effect of the illuminated man.

Post-production included weeks of extensive roto-scoping and compositing, a colour grade, and once the effects were complete the thousands of still images were pieced together. Quite simply it’s amazing!

A Painting by Julie Moorhouse

Two years ago I got an email from artist Julie Moorhouse, asking me if I would pose for a painting for an upcoming exhibition ‘Ecce Homo’.

I’d never done anything like it before so couldn’t resist giving it a try. I met with Julie one afternoon, we had a great chat then she took some photos and sketches. Unfortunately I never made it to see the exhibition when it ran in the South Tipperary Arts Centre and so never saw the painting, until now.

Last week I got the above photo and despite being slightly weirded out every time I look at it, I think the painting is pretty awesome. Thanks Julie!

Funded By The Local Arts Office

Back in November, I was delighted to receive financial assistance from the local Arts Office in the form of partial funding towards the purchase of equipment as part of the Arts Act Grant 2009.

The partial funding has helped me make my recent purchases; a Nikon Speedlight Sb-900 flash unit and an Epson Stylus Photo R2880 printer.

The Nikon Speedlight Sb-900, my second flash, will help me to develop my skills using the strobist style of photography. Using both my flashes through wireless remote triggers will give me a sort of mobile studio set-up.

Whilst I still need to get some softboxes and stands, I can’t wait to spend the next few months experimenting with double flash set-ups and coming to grips with the ridiculous amounts of settings possible between my Sb-800 and Sb-900. I really think it’s going to have an amazing affect on my photography.

Getting the Epson Stylus Photo R2880 photo printer means that for the first time ever I can offer printing services to anybody I shoot with, able to provide prints as large as A3 size. It also means I will finally be able to exhibit my work in print form. I’m currently working on a plan for my first ever exhibition, which will hopefully take place later in the year.

I began doing print tests during the week, I’m still trying to tweak variances between colour settings on my monitor and the printer, but it’s really awesome to see my shots in large print form for the first time.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be making some adjustments to the website to allow for print purchasing. Details on the exhibition will be announced in due time and hopefully the results of my new flash set-up will start appearing online soon.

All that’s left for me to say is thanks very much to all the staff in the local Arts Office and the independent members of the panel who approved my application, the support is very much appreciated and will be put to good use in the coming months.

Evolution Of A Dream – Photo Sequence

I’m pretty much addicted to sequences lately, trying to put together still images more like a scene than just a photo, if that makes sense!?

The other night I had one of those awesome flying dreams and it gave me the idea for the above sequence. Now, anybody who knows me, knows for sure that I can’t fly… so the sequence was more a nightmare for my legs than it was from the technical side (which was also a bit of a nightmare!).

Shot in the HotShotz Photography Studio in Callan (thanks Benny) using my 50mm on auto-focus, four-point wireless lighting, with my D80 set on delayed-timer triggered using remote.

The main problem was being in the air at the right time, whilst staying in the frame and then trying to make the movement of the jump progress. I didn’t have a tripod so I had to rest my camera on a large stool and prop it up with a blanket.

I had to try frame my shot on an empty white backdrop, move into where I thought I should be, trigger the delayed-timer then count not three seconds… not four seconds… but three and a half seconds before jumping into the air just as the lights and camera triggered.

I repeated the process while adjusting my movements in the air to get the progression. Afterwards I added the film strip, did a bit of playing around with colour and varied the opacity through the jumps to make it look like a sequence you’d see in a skate magazine.

The result is an image sequence I’m really happy with, some very sore leg muscles that I never knew I had and the firm belief that jumping is over-rated (Martin Bridgeman agrees)!

You can check out a larger version of the image here along with a link to an alternate sequence. As always comments or feedback are appreciated.

Vultures Episode 5: Character Portraits, Stalking & Chase Sequences

I’m attempting to sort through a huge backlog of photos I’ve let build up from the past year, in particular all my behind the scenes shots from the 10 week shoot for Vultures episodes 5, 6 & 7.

As I’ve said before, I’d like to put the photos up in the order that the scenes appear in the episodes, not in the order they were shot. The result of that choice is quite confusing; the shooting schedule was pretty complicated and scattered, I’ve got over 2000 photos from the shoot that need to be put in the right order before I can work on them. After previous episodes I was aware how frustrating it was to have to hold back on uploading shots to avoid spoilers. It meant that I had looked at the shots so many times before they went up that I just wasn’t happy with them anymore.

Thankfully, over the past few months I’ve learned a few new tricks and tips, I’m beginning to concentrate on the overall presentation of my work and I have a lot of new ideas with plenty of photos stocked up to test them out on. Recently I’ve been looking at a lot of commercial photography and in particular image sequences, it’s something I wanted to try. I was never quite happy with the final presentation of most of my Vultures character portraits, so as a test I revisited three individual shots of the gentlemen detectives of V.P.I: Niall Tennyson (Séan Hackett), Jim Vultour (John Morton) and Dan McGrain (David Thompson), each standing outside the red door exterior location used for the V.P.I offices.

I wasn’t happy with the overall finish of the shots but at the time didn’t know what to do with them. Now, I’ve done a bit more work on them and feel they go better together in a sequence which you can see here.

I’ve also uploaded a couple of behind the scenes shots from the scene in episode 5 where Dan McGrain stalks Tom Moriarty. For such a small scene it was surprisingly complicated to shoot; with bits of the scene being shot on different shoot days. The stuff where McGrain gets a lift from Noah (Gus McDonagh), who suggests running him over, was shot on Shoot Day 22.

We only had four days to shoot any scene featuring Noah and it was the most intense four days of shooting overall; attempting to shoot scenes that were bigger and more complicated than anything we’d shot before. We had been shooting all day and then before we completely lost the light we picked up this part of the sequence. Gus can’t drive so we simply found a quiet street in an estate, with a gradual slope and then we slowly pushed the car along. Sla was positioned sitting back-to-front in the passenger seat to get the shot and I watched on the monitor through the window as we pushed the car along. I didn’t get any photos.

But I did get a nice shot of McGrain watching Tom through his binoculars at the Black Abbey. It was Shoot Day 37 and it was horrible. I can’t remember what else was shot earlier that day but we went to pick up the shot outside Frank Walls and it began to rain, ice cold rain. Snow was soon to follow. We moved quickly to the Black Abbey, the rain stopped but then Sla got called away. We attempted to shoot without him (NOTE: never attempt to shoot without Sla), but we ran out of tapes. There was more in the office but Sla had the keys. It was a painful day!

The rest of the stalking sequence was shot on Shoot Day 39, the last day of shooting. I’ve uploaded two new shots from behind the display of the Canon XA H1 featuring McGrain watching Tom leave his house and one shot of Tom leaving his house with Isabelle watching him strut away. Shooting the rest of the sequence where Tom walks through town and all the ladies swoon was hilarious but I didn’t get any photos, I was either laughing too much or in awe of sexy Tom Moriarty!?

Episode-wise, the stalking sequence leads us back to the office, Quint Quigley makes his entrance and then all hell breaks loose with a chase sequence through the various lanes of Kilkenny. We shot the office interior stuff with Quint on a different weekend entirely, where we also shot the dialogue for the start of the chase sequence. We shot the chase sequence itself over the intense weekend that Gus was available, on that day in particular the Post Office on High Street had been robbed and so the high presence of squad cars and helicopters added to the mood.

Sla managed to nab a couple of handy pick-up shots throughout the day and we got quite a lot of funny looks. We started an hour later than planned, somebody got delayed, it was already going to be a tough day and now we had to pick up speed. In the hour wait, I managed to pick up a character portrait of Alan Dawson as the randomer-punching eye-patch-wearing samurai-sword-swinging Pinkerton goon which you can check out here on the Oss237.com homepage.

Shooting was quick and frantic, we were against the clock,  shooting the sequence in order, quick handheld set-ups that I had mapped out in advance, moving through the various lanes, dashing across roads, dodging traffic and occasionally having to hold for human traffic wandering through shots or simply for actors trying to catch their breath. I kept putting my script and flask down for set-ups only to forget them. Thankfully Pip was with us and was good enough to constantly pick them up for me!

The chase sequence was also the first introduction of new Pinkerton goon BrickMan played by Matty Gargan. I didn’t get to take many shots that day but I had already snapped his character portrait during Shoot Day 8 where we shot some of Ned Savage’s montage sequence for episode 6. Again I wasn’t entirely happy with the finish of the overall shot so I’ve gone back and worked on it to produce a two-shot sequence that properly introduces BrickMan, you can check it out here.

Following the chase through the lanes we moved location to an industrial estate to shoot the end of the sequence where Noah shows up to rescue the detectives and Quigley, which was then followed by a location move to Jenkinstown woods to shoot Noah’s montage sequence from episode 6, but I’ll talk more about those scenes when I get the photos sorted.

The result of the quick-paced shoot for the chase scene meant I didn’t get a lot of time to take photos but I had a couple of rough shots. Alone I wasn’t happy with them, they were taking on a corner as the lads ran uphill and towards the camera. I hid behind a car out-of-shot to get the photos during a take, but as they came around the corner the sun was shining and I didn’t have the chance for a second take or adjusting settings. It also wasn’t ideal to be trying to shoot all this action on a 50mm lens, focus was a nightmare. So rather than not have some of the scene captured in photos I spent a bit of time working on the five shots I had (seen at the top of this post), playing with colouring and textures for a sequence that I’m very happy with, for a first attempt at this sort of thing.

I wanted to give it a film sequence look, making it look like old film footage that had been slightly damaged and exposed. To finish it off I added some lines directly from the script that best described the scene and explained what exactly was going on in the sequence.

So please have a look at The Chase Sequence and as always any comments, critcism or feedback would be greatly appreciated. More photos on the way soon.

The Beauty Queen Of Leenane – Teaser Poster

Here’s the teaser poster for Watergate Productions ‘The Beauty Queen Of Leenane’ in the

Watergate Theatre November 23rd – 28th.

Mac User’s; I NEED YOUR HELP!

Last night myself and AlanSla attempted to bring some life back to my slowly dying 15″ PowerBook G4. I bought it over four years ago, when I was starting college and it has served me well over the last few years despite a few knocks and spills.

I think my three-year commute to college was the first thing to take it’s toll; during third year and throughout my thesis I was using the PowerBook so much that the charger quite literally melted on itself. I replaced it with a Macally charger (I couldn’t wait) which broke a year later only to be replaced by the current Macally charger (which appears to be nearly dead already too). Due to my nasty habit of always plugging in my PowerBook; the battery became very unreliable and wouldn’t last long.

Despite the power issue, I’ve had no other major problems until about a year ago; when the PowerBook started going to sleep at random while in use. The first few times it would be easy to wake it up again by simply pressing Enter, but over time it began to go to sleep more often and it became harder and harder to wake it up. The worst case left the Powerbook asleep for nearly a week until it eventually shut down with no power. I charged it, turned it on and then it seemed fine for a couple of months until it started happening again.

When I bought my iMac; the intention was to clear everything off the PowerBook and reinstall OS X, which I was hoping would sort out this problem. I was transferring and doing backups of anything on the PowerBook I needed when I knocked it off the corner of the desk. The above image shows the nasty dent caused by the fall; but apart from just visible damage, my problems got a lot worse. Ever since the drop, the disc drive on the PowerBook doesn’t work; if I insert a disc it makes some horrible scratching noises and won’t read anything. It can also be very difficult to get it to eject a disc. And it fails to attach to our wi-fi network in the house (I’m told this may not be related).

Without being able to insert discs, I wasn’t sure how to reinstall OS X, until last night when we used the iMac connected to the PowerBook. We set the iMac in Target Disk Mode and used it to install OS X on the PowerBook. The first disc was fine, it took over an hour but it seemed to be working. We moved on to the second install disc and then the PowerBook went to sleep again, it happened a couple of times but would wake up and there seemed to be no problem with the install. Half way through the second install disc it went asleep and would not wake up.

It had to be something to do with the Power (didn’t it?)! After much deliberation as to what to do; we removed the battery. Nothing happened. So we pulled the power and of course it died. We then plugged it in again and turned it on without the battery, it seemed to be working fine and prompted to install the second disc so we did. It took about 45 minutes and then everything appeared to be fine, the PowerBook started from scratch and even managed to find the network. So I did a series of updates for the next few hours and still everything appeared to be okay. And then with no warning; the PowerBook died and can not be restarted.

I’m not much of a techie when it comes to computers (which is probably very obvious from this post) and at this stage I’m well and truly in over my head so if there’s any Mac users out there (or indeed anybody) who has any idea what the problem is here or have had similar problems then please let me know.

At this stage I’m not sure whether this is the end of my PowerBook or not!? Is it a power problem? Should I buy a new battery and yet another charger or is this just a waste of money? Would it be more expensive to repair the dent in the PowerBook (and the drive) than it would be to buy a new one?

Any advice or help would be very much appreciated!

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