ANTICS IN THE ATTIC
WHAT a weekend!
I’m back at my desk after a wild rollercoaster ride at the last Olympus Big Shoot Experience. My crew and I took over the fabulous manor house at Studio Antics in Nottingham, and I have to say that it’s been quite some time since my creative juices have been flowing like this.
People often ask me, just what IS the Big Shoot Experience? What do I get out of it? The answer is multi-faceted, but in my opinion it boils down to this: if you own a camera, it’s something that you simply cannot afford to miss. Honestly, when I look at the images I’ve captured this weekend, I wonder if I haven’t just engineered the whole thing so that I can shoot all the things crazy ideas I’ve always wanted to try myself!
It was a pleasure on our first “Touch and Try” day to welcome photographers and help them get the most out of their kit, regardless of what make it was. It still boggles my mind, and it’s an incredibly underappreciated fact, that Olympus give me licence to put on these days and invite people who aren’t even Olympus users. Big Shoots are camera agnostic events – it really is all about getting a gang of photographers together and just taking the best pictures possible. Come and use the kit you have or make use of the fact we have all the lovely “Oly” kit on site and play with my toys, there are enough cameras for everybody!
On our second day we had some very passionate photographers giving the OM-D kit a serious test drive during some more focused workshops. One gentleman, an existing E-M1 user, was an experienced travel and wildlife photographer, and he wanted to put the new 40-150 f2.8 Pro Zoom through its paces. Given that there were only nine in the whole country at this point (including my personal one, which I loaned him), it really underlines one of the key points of the Big Shoot Experience: if you want to, you can test the absolute latest Olympus kit under real-world shooting conditions.
Of course, I had to steal the lens back as we had some immaculately styled shots I wanted to capture. I have to hand it to my crew – as anyone who has seen me work, especially those who came to Nottingham this weekend, we have a lot of back-and-forth banter. But that camaraderie and team spirit MAKES the shots, and it really comes through in the finished images in my opinion.
Two that I’m proudest of were of the wonderful Miss Pixie, who we first made up as a dejected bride in the grand hallway. A couple of people have seen the final picture and asked, “Go on, how many lights did you use – 40?!?” Would you believe, that image was lit using just TWO speedlights and a humble umbrella! As you’ll see in the behind the scenes video of this shot that we’ll put on our Facebook page, this is exactly the method that we share with people on the Big Shoot Experience: with the right application, the simplest setup can provide the most spectacular results. you can see from these behind the scenes images we seem to be able to create something out of nothing ;0)
We have just started a “secret” Face book group to post our “Down and dirty”, “rough and ready” video clips… I and they are no oil paintings but you can forgive that because of content alone… so if you want to see it, apply to join, the charge of The Light Brigade.
Here is the overview:
Here are the images to show the lighting used, simple but effective:
Now set the lighting ratio’s just so and make creative use of an inbuilt Olympus “Art filter” and we are 95% of the way there. For those that are interested the “Look” is created by a combination of gelled lights, a custom white balance and an overlay of the “vintage” and “pin hole” art filters, it sounds far more complex than it was… but anyway, here is the result!
You’ll also get a sneak peak at the new Olympus Big Dog app for the iPad or iPhone, which we’ve been using of late and is proving absolutely invaluable in creating shoot plans in pre-production that we can quickly and easily edit live on set. More details soon…
The other shot that I’m super proud of is what I’ve been calling “The Bellatrix Lestrange” (bonus points if you understand the reference!). This was the chance for me and my team to go absolutely bonkers with avant garde creativity, making use of the deranged quirkiness of the attic area at Studio Antics, where we employed everything from smoke machines to sextants to butcher’s knives to heads in jars. Be on the lookout for my Alfred Hitchcock-esque cameo!
It was just a super creative time to shoot, my team where on top form, the two models were simply beautiful and the facilities were exceptional, the very best bit though was the interest, enthusiasm and fun displayed by those in attendance – I could not have asked for more.
I was so pleased with what I shot I’m happy to share a few more…
Thank you to everyone who came along to spend the weekend with us in Nottingham, and if you want to join us on our next mad professor’s photo laboratory then stay tuned for details on December’s Big Shoot Experience coming up soon!
All the best,
D
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