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!

Promo Shoot: Stephen Colfer – Comedian

I’ve just uploaded a bunch of new promo shots of actor/comedian Stephen ‘Pip’ Colfer taken in the Hotshotz Photography Studio last month.

For those of you who don’t know Pip, here’s a couple of facts; he’s an actor, I once dropped him on his head whilst attempting to direct him as an actor, he can’t see purple, he assures me he couldn’t see purple before I dropped him on his head. He’s really into computer games, he recently began podcasting about computer games, he also writes game reviews for Culch.ie and has a growing collection of game related t-shirts.

Over the course of the past few months he has gotten into stand-up comedy and it came as no surprise to me that when we discussed doing a promo shoot; it would somehow be game related.

We did however want to keep it simple; so we hit the HotShotz Studio in Callan (thanks Benny) on a Sunday afternoon, bringing every kind of console controller we could get our hands on, joined by Aileen Johnson whose job was to “make Pip look good” and play his Nintendo DS in the background all day.

This was my second shoot in a studio and my second Canon shoot using an EOS 5D with a EF24-105mm zoom lense, I did try some shots using a 70-200mm but didn’t use any of them in the end. The studio is now set up with a wireless trigger system so hopefully next time I’ll be able to use my own gear and avoid all the frustration of not knowing where buttons and settings are.

We played around getting various comedian-esque poses and expressions with the mic stand and then the mic on it’s own; including my favourite “mic in the air” shot. Then we moved to the shots with console controllers, I was hoping to get more of a twisted perspective on these shots but the lens just wouldn’t work with me.

We also tried some Johnny Cash style shots using guitar hero instruments but they didn’t quite work out. I think they’d work better outdoors so maybe it’s something we’ll re-visit in the future.

Post-wise; as I worked on the photos, they were still looking too much like portraits so I added a vignette just to add to the promo shot feel. You can check out my comedian promo shots of Stephen ‘Pip’ Colfer here and here on the Oss237.com homepage where you’ll also find links to the rest of the shots.

As always any comments or feedback is appreciated and don’t forget to keep an eye on Pip’s blog for announcements of upcoming shows.

Oss237.com – A New Look

As of yesterday evening, Oss237.com – Ross Costigan Photography has a brand new look and a bunch of new features, thanks to the website wizard that is Ken McGuire.

My photography has come a long way in the past three years, my work has also branched out into video, P.R & more so it was time the site got an update and new look to fit everything.

It’s early days yet, there’s still some changes to be made, some links to be added & activated but as Ken introduced me to the joys of widgets; you’ll see that the homepage now has a featured video player, a video section and updates from my Youtube, Twitter and Flickr.

The blog will follow in the next day or two with the same themes & features being added. As I’ve said it’s not finished yet, it’s a work in progress so check out the new look & features on Oss237.com, click the links and please let me know if something’s not working or if you think we’ve left something out.

Jeff Lang, Busker2009, The Lions Mane & South

The past week has been a blur of activity; myself & Ken are nearly at the end of our second national tour with Australian legend Jeff Lang through MyMusicPR.

The tour has been a great success and if you’re reading this early then there’s still time to catch him tonight in Kenny’s Bar (Lahinch) and tomorrow night in Mick Murphy’s (Ballymore Eustace). I should hopefully have some photos & possible videos from the tour online in the next week or so.

We’re also working closely with progressive grunge rockers ‘The Lions Mane‘; currently gearing up for the long-awaited release of debut album ‘Strands’. The release of the album was held back for numerous reasons but is finally due to be released online VERY SOON.

The online release will be followed by the CD release & tour later in the Summer. Make sure and subscribe to The Lions Mane MySpace Blog for upcoming announcements.

Round 3 of Busker2009 saw three more contestants taking to the streets of Kilkenny on Saturday, despite the heavy rain. Myself and the Chief were on the streets to film each of the acts, one of which will walk away with €200. Keep an eye on KilkennyMusic.com this evening as the new videos go online and don’t forget to cast your vote for your favourite busker. You can also check out my photos from Round 2 which are now up on the KilkennyMusic Flickr.

With everything that’s been going on I haven’t had much more editing progress on ‘South – The Making Of Insula‘ but should be getting back to work this week. I can say that the videos will be released online in the run up to the launch of the album.

South have just posted a new blog on their Myspace & Bebo; updates on the mixing process, the launch & tour booking and they’ve also released the track-listing for their upcoming debut. You can read more here.

To go with their track-listing I’ve just uploaded three new shots to the Oss237.com Homepage; individual portraits of Daw, Thomas & Ken in the studio recording.

These are the first shots in ‘The Making Of Insula’ series, as I played around with off camera flash techniques to capture the recording. The flash was positioned across the room at half power for each of the shots, settings varied.

Check them out and let me know what you think. There’s plenty more to come.

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