Sunday 7 February 2016

WEEK 7 Portrait: Faceless

Tell someone's story without showing their face.

This week I was lucky to be around for the annual Inbolc festival in Marsden, that stems back from its Gaelic/Pagan history.   The purpose of the festival is that Spring fights Jack Frost, literally fighting away Winter.  

The procession starts with Jack Frost minions marching the crowds up to an open field where performers show their skills with Fire Poi (in many ways it is a fire festival.)

This photo is of one of his menacing minions.  I thought the mask was brilliant, and I was lucky to get the picture I did considering there were  a lot more professional photographers there than me, and the crowd was crazy.

I wanted to take a few pictures of the fight, which I did, but unfortunately it was pissing it down, and the performers were far away, but no matter, the experience was great as it was.

Note: Arguably you could say I cheated as he's wearing a mask, but hey, it looks cool, ok?


Other note: Here's an actual 'faceless portrait' that has more action, and probably more tailored to the assignment. It's just as interesting as Jack Frost's minion.



Wednesday 3 February 2016

Week 6: Artistic: Candy

Your artistic interpretation this week should be inspired by something sweet. A great chance to play with macro photography.

Actually pretty difficult one to do, had this idea where I was going to blow up a shit load of bubble gum and frame them like hot air balloons, but would have been a logistical nightmare, so on the way to the shop I decided against it and had a spontaneous idea for tribal jelly babies. The rest is history.

Would have been nice to have spent more time with it, but if I were to do it any differently would have meant different sweets that would have meant more money, that I didn't have, so there you have it.

It has made me realise that a lot of shots are just limited by how much money I can burn, and yes, on one hand it's an exercise to see how much you can do with nothing, but one other hand it's frustrating when you had a really cool idea but aren't able to go through with it.


I do like this shot. It's fun, it's quirky, it's little bit weird. And was insanely difficult to make those chocolate bears look menacing. Though I think I pulled it off ;)