End of an era

On Saturday I headed out with my friends Shane and Siobhan for what is to be our last Shoot Experience experience. Regulars to this blog may recall several previous posts that involved much gloating and photos of winners badges, this time round you will find neither of those things, just a giant bunch of sour grapes and a realisation that things move on.

A brief background to bring up to speed:
- September 2007 I enter my first Shoot event with 3 friends forming a team of 4. 3 other friends also entered the event as their own team. We won a winners badge for one of the clues and were stoked to bits, never been prouder and pumped for the next event. This was the winning shot for the clue Emerald City



- A month or 2 later both teams enter a follow up event Shoot Brixton. Still chuffed from our victory we decided to raise the audacity stakes and named our team "Reigning Clue I Champions". Our rival team also decided to change their name, or shall I say declare war, when they registered as "Better than Simon's team". Clearly a preposterous statement, what with us already having a winners badge and all, but they ran with it. This was a successful event for both teams with winners badges all round (to put it in perceptive there are roughly 60 teams with 13 winners badges on offer). My then flatmate Dave took one for the team for this winning shot.

From Shoot Brixton

- The next 2 events saw us win another 2 badges, the good times continued to roll. The only downside was the success of our arch rivals which burned me on the inside - although I'll never admit it, especially on the internet. They managed to win themselves free cameras after Shane submerged himself in a polluted London canal for a photo.

- A couple more events passed, and for various reasons we didn't pick up any silverware (a technical mishap saw our photos omitted from the judging process in one event, and we just didn't win anything in the next despite having some AWESOME photos!). There was disharmony in the team, people has grown apart, one team member was leaving the country, we all shook hands and went our separate ways.

- The way it panned out our team broke up at the same time as Better Than Simon's Team, a few negations took place and the next thing I knew we had formed a super group in the ashes of breakups. The new team was called Simon Has Defected (not Simon Has Defecated as one of the judges thought) and we tasted immediate success with this shot for the clue "No need to cross the Atlantic for a flying fish or loaf shaped fruit"



This brings you up to last Saturday. I headed out for my 8th (yes, 8th!!) event and I have to say, all good things must come to an end. The giddy excitement of running round new, unseen corners of London, exploring the area, taking cool photos and fiercely competing against a rival team had been replaced by walking round familiar corners of London with a weight of expectation round my neck, no banter with a rival outfit and no buzz about the day. Don't get me wrong, I would heartily recommend the event to anyone looking for a novel way to spend an afternoon, but after 8 events and 18 months I feel that I, and my photography, has moved on. I'm all about taking classic, timeless images now, not the cheesy shots that tend to win prizes in these events (bitter much at not winning anything on Saturday?).

This is my favourite shot from the shoot just been for 2 reasons - firstly I like the shot itself, the framing, the light, the colours, but secondly becuase it has an awesome story behind it. The clue was "The unofficial start of carnival, a Horni man provided the land, some other Charlie made it a Pleasance experience" so we decided we needed some devils horns to represent a Horni man. Next we had to represent Charlie, and while no one in our team has even seen cocaine, let alone sampled it, we are street wise enough to know that it's known as Charlie in various circles, so we used some sugar at a cafe to represent this in the photo. The final step was the word Pleasance, we decided this had to be spoken by the devil in a speech bubble.

Sooooo, we were sitting at the cafe debating who would write the sign, all 3 of us had terrible hand writing, when all of a sudden the guy sitting at the table next to
us offers to do it for us on account of his excellent penmanship. We got talking to him (as we put him to work on the sign), he was from Sydney and was over here for a fashion show. Another thing about him was that he happened to look a lot like the devil. Perfect for our photo. After a little bit of arm twisting he agreed to pose for us, the result was great so we offered to email it to him. After googling his name later that night (as you do) we discovered he's actually a famous Australian fashion guru, he's been on Australia's Next Top Model as an industry expert and there's loads of stuff about him all over the net.

And we made him dress like the devil and endorse the use of class A drugs.

This is why I still love these Shoot Experience events, even if some of the magic has worn off.

From Shoot Portabello

Tripod Nazis and the last of the winter light

With daylight savings just 4 short days away this is the last week for any Londoners wanting to leave work at 5:30, grab their tripods and walk straight out into the glorious light of the magic hour (with plenty of time to find your spot and get everything ready). As of next week the ideal time to get night shots will be pretty close to 7:30 - 8:30, so unless you're a late working city worker or work a long way from the photographic side of London (like Slough for instance - Shane, I'm talking about you!) it's not that convenient for a quick post work session. Of course in a few months time the magic hour will be starting at 9pm so there's plenty of time for a feed with friends and a few brews before heading out - but who feels like lugging round heavy camera gear and a tripod with a belly full of curry and beer?

With this in mind I've made the time to get out there twice in the past week after work with a message to London - lift up your skirt and show me what you've got! Last week I headed out with some crew from work and managed to get some nice shots of the Tate and Millenium Bridge, I might talk about this night in future blog, but today's blog is all about last night.

It's literally been a couple of years since I headed down to Tower Bridge with the trusty SLR so I was excited at the prospect of hitting it with better equipment and, more importantly, a better trained eye. I had a shot in mind that I really wanted to get but as the evening progressed I just couldn't quite get the framing of that particular shot, and with so many other great angles I moved on and went with some different ideas.

From Tower Bridge Tuesday

As expected I encountered some problems from the tripod Nazis. As anyone who's ever wanted to take photos with a tripod in London has probably found out security guards are not your friends. Part of their remit is to make life for us photographers as difficult as possible, in recent times I've had various guards give me the following reasons for why I can't take photos with a tripod:
1) Security - I could be a terrorist planning an attack
2) Health and safety, someone could trip over my tripod
3) I must be a professional and by me taking a photo of their landmark (let's say the London Eye, or Tower Bridge last night) I am somehow robbing them of their financial dues. This one is particularly preposterous.
4) There are children around (because photos of kids in full winter gear ice skating is really what the perverts are after these days)

Last night I managed to Derren Brown this guy into submission though. WHen he came over I was all friendly, he told me I was zooming in a bit too much on a particular building so I showed him the photos I was taking with my ultra wide 10-20 lens, then he asked what I was using the photos for so I told him personal use then he said I was going to have to stop so I got a little testy and told him it was ridiculous as both reasons he had weren't valid in my case. I did the good cop bad cop routine all by myself and it seemed to work as he eventually walked off while I continued shooting. This was the shot I was taking, and the shot that I'd come there to take, so I didn't want to be rushed.



All in all a good night. I rounded it out with an attempted bus shot, but by this stage the sky was pitch black and it didn't make a nice backdrop, but I guess it turned out alright in the end with the conversion to black and white.

Until next time, get out there and make the most of this light!

Franklyn follow-up and Covent Garden compact

I'll start by saying I've spent more time in London's west end than usual this weekend. On Friday night I headed in to see the movie Franklyn which I spoke about in my last blog, you remember, the one that was filmed on my street? It's fair to say it was an unusual movie, I respected the fact it was something new and original (unlike the 4 previews which were all for sequels), what I didn't respect as much was the fact the movie made no sense and 2 days later I'm still left wondering who or what Franklyn was. I guess that's why it was showing in only 1 London cinema 3 weeks after release, a cinema consisting of just 4 rows!! I did a quick headcount, there were 24 others in there with me. Still though, it was awesome seeing my street on the big screen, it played a pretty major part too which was great.

My second West End experience came about yesterday when I headed to Covent Garden to check out the London Transport Museum. I guess it was an okay museum, as far as museums go, but I've concluded I'm more interested in the future than the past and the whole experience, while slightly interesting, didn't really float my boat (not unlike the Princess Alice in 1865 - look at that, I did learn something). While my friends Bec and Danny were still looking round the museum I took the opportunity to put a recently acquired inexpensive Panasonic FS3 point and shoot through it's paces. I find that I almost never use a point and shoot now that I've got my big cameras, but there's something to be said about using something no bigger than a deck of cards to create images, and from the 15 minutes I had to take some shots you can see that it is possible to get nice images with basic equipment if you know how to compose a shot and understand light.

From Covent Garden Compact

(the guy with the umbrella is actually standing on someone's head in this shot, it wasn't possible to get the whole scene though as the people on the balcony have direct sun on them while the foreground is all in shade, and the dynamic range on a little P & S couldn't handle the contrast)

A different type of camera

Roughly 18 months ago I received an exciting letter in the post. It told me that in a few weeks time some Hollywood film makers were coming to town and using my street (yes, MY STREET!!) to film part of their new movie. The filming was taking place maybe 100 metres from my front door, so needless to say I decided to head on down and see how these Hollywood big boys do it (and also with Casino Royale Bond girl Eva Green starring I thought I might chance my arm with her if the opportunity arose).

From Filming on My Street

The movie being made went by the name of Franklyn, some sort of sci-fi drama set in a futuristic London with explosions and stuff in it. From a photographic standpoint the importance placed on lighting was quite extraordinary. Like still photography it's all about quality, not quantity, and from the next couple of shots you'll see that every light used was either bounced or put through some pretty high strength diffusers which cause a nice soft light - direct light causes more contrast in the image / scene and often results in ugly harsh shadows.





Without doubt the most impressive bit of kit had nothing to with photography though, it was an incredible rain making machine. It was a basically a 15m pipe held up by a crane and attached to a high power hose, the pipe had a series of sprinkler devices right down the length of it, and when the juice was turned on the result was a monsoon.







Now I know what you're thinking - this is all well and good Simon but you're really clutching at straws talking about photos taken 18 months ago, why now? I'll tell you why, because a few weeks ago I was walking through the Underground when I saw a poster for the movie on a wall announcing its cinema release! Hooray! Post production was a little longer than I'd anticipated but that's fine, the day had finally arrived I could go to my local cinema and see my own freakin' street on the silver screen!

Well, at least that's what I thought.

I had planned to see it this Sunday but when I looked where it was showing there was ONE CINEMA IN THE WHOLE OF LONDON I could see it at! 2 weeks after release! For a film set in London with several moderately big name stars (Ryan Philipe is the other one)! What's going on? The cost of 5 minutes screen time in Tabernacle St must have been astronomical, there were 3 cranes (2 for lighting, 1 for the rain machine), the rain machine itself, a crew of close to 50, countless lights and other movie related stuff, catering for the cast and crew, the time and cost of writing to all the local residents giving them the heads up, money paid to The Tabernacle pub where filming took place, replacing the window where the explosion scene took place (I wasn't there for this but it sounded awesome) and paying off the council to block off the road for 2 weeks. And all for a movie that hardly saw the light of day in London cinemas.

I'm interested to hear if anyone out there in the rest of the world has heard of this movie? Let me know in the comments.

In other news I'm going on a shoot Monday night so I'll get something new up here soon rather than resorting to using old stuff.

My second compact

Way back in April last year, in the early days of simonbills.com, I decided to post an entry detailing how I got into photography and some of my early photos, check it out here if you like.

At the end of that post I promised "for the next instalment of my photographic odyssey you'll see what results a hefty 4mp Canon point and shoot can deliver" - this was because my first camera, a 3mp Pentax, was stolen by Argentinian banditos 6 months after purchase. So here it is, my favourite shots on my favourite ever point and shoot camera (I've had 4 now), the mighty Canon Powershot S400.

Like all good stories this one is a mixture of tragedy and comedy. The story starts in Miami with the purchase of the camera on what turned out to be quite a traumatic day (mainly due to a run in with a local shop keep which resulted in him labelling me a "f*cking c*cksucker" as I walked out of his shop). The story ends in tragedy with many of the photos taken on this little gem being lost for good in the great hard drive crash of 2007. I'm sure I have many of the photos backed up on CDs on the other side of the world, but that's not useful for updating a blog on a sunny Sunday afternoon in London. Fortunately I was able to dig up my photos from 2 weeks in the USA which I'll share with you now.

This first shot was of Miami beach and was one of the first shots I took my with my new baby. The default colours on this camera were more saturated than on my previous machine, and the screen was nicer too so I was thrilled to see the vibrant blues on this shot.



About a week later I'd moved on from Miami to Vegas, met some strangers at a hostel and embarked on a 4 day road trip with them to see Hoover Dam, the Grand Canyon, some National Monuments in Utah and Zion National Park. The initial plan was for just an overnight trip, so we left all our clothes and bags in Vegas, but adventure got on the way so we ran with it.

This is probably my favourite photo taken by my little 4mp Canon, and disappointingly it wasn't even me that took it. This shots sums up what travel is all about for me, the open road, vast space, blue skies, bare feet and no particular agenda. It also highlights the beauty of photography, the fact that my favourite shot was taken by someone sticking their hand out the window of a moving van and snapping randomly - what other art form can you create something so beautiful completely by accident?



No chit chat for this one, just a photo I like.



And finally a shot from Zion National Park. I remember at the time walking along and spotting the bridge in the distance, I figured the shot really needed people crossing the bridge to make it interesting so I hung back and waited for my crew to make the crossing.



It's interesting that 5 1/2 years ago, before I even knew I really liked taking photos, that I was creating scenes and making photos rather than just taking them. Looking back over these old shots there's certainly a fair few duds, and shots I would take totally differently now, but there are still a few gems in there where I did all the right things even if I didn't know I was doing them.