Fujifilm X10.
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Wales Finest.
Wales Finest. Welsh open hairdressing and beauty championship. These images were shot behind the scenes at the Wales Finest Open Hairdressing and beauty championships in June 2015
Gods Among Us.
A lot of my work comes from my interest in mythology. The stories humans have told for centuries. The ability for us as a species to create these stories. I take inspiration from all kinds of sources. For this body of work I wanted to make my own depictions of classical characters and myths.
I started by writing down any particular gods and characters that I remembered from classics, folklore and popular culture.
Something else that was important to me was that I wanted the images to be organic and unedited; I wanted these characters to exist in the real world. Being able to do this was part of the challenge of creating a believable fiction.
To create images that cannot be tampered with, I opted to shoot the whole series on Polaroid 600 film. Basic and idiot-proof controls strip back any of the complexities of shooting an otherwise “high quality” image. This lack of control allows me to focus solely on the composition as well as the construction of the reality in front of the lens.
I wanted to make each image speak for the character it represented in a more modern setting.
Dionysus is depicted as a bartender, mixing drinks (top left)
Ophelia is floating on the water (top middle).
Zeus is surrounded by electrical cables (top right).
Icarus is wearing his prison jumpsuit and a pair damaged wings (middle left)
Persephone is guarding the gates to the underworld while waiting for Hades (middle centre)
The story of Damocles is that of the unseen responsibilities of leadership. Damocles gets to be king for a day while a dagger hangs above him held by a horses hair. However, the rhendition I created was based on the representation of Damocles, the black centurion, a vengful spirit from a videogame called RYSE: Son of Rome (middle right)
Ares is a soldier in waiting (bottom left)
Narcissus facing his reflection in the water (bottom middle)
Niniane, the Lady Of The Lake who is about to present Excalubur to Arthur (bottom right)
After some experimentation, I made composites of the digital files shot as a backup. They look nice in regards to the resolution and impact, but I feel like they really lost their atmosphere and mood. Making the images so clear really lost the mystery and feeling of the Polaroids.
These images were featured in an exhibition in The College, Merthyr Tydfil. I got a generous amount of space to work with so I displayed both sets of images alongside a copy of the images in a book.
I mounted both sets of images in the same 3×3 grid order. The original Polaroids are mounted on cream mount board, in a black frame. The digital images were printed out onto a semi gloss paper and mounted onto foam board to make for a lightweight, large scale display.
Endings.
Endings was an exhibition, setup, planned, and executed by myself and members of the Foundation Degree Photography year 2 students. The exhibition was held at the Redhouse… Read more “Endings.”
Abergavenny Vintage Toy & Car Market.
These images were taken last year at the vintage toy and car market in Abergavenny. The show hosted dozens of vintage vehicles, toy stalls and dioramas. It is an annual event and I have attended 3 years in a row as there’s always something interesting to photograph.
This series of images was presented as a documentary project for university and earned a 1st.
Archiving Project
A few weeks ago a really interesting project landed on my desk. A box of glass plate negatives were anonymously donated to Redhouse in Merthyr Tydfil.
In the past I have been contracted to archive and retouch family photo collections. This experience coupled with my already extensive experience with analogue film processes, made me the perfect candidate for the project. The image on the left was taken on my smart phone and then converted to negative in order to give us a better idea of what images we were dealing with.
The negatives were stored in a curious wooden box and were separated by the pages of a book. they had such a ghostly feel about them due to their age and content. In my own opinion I would date the negatives from between 1890 and 1920 due to the fact that they are dry-plate glass negatives and the kind of clothing worn by the subjects. The subjects of the images ranged from portraits to street scenes, landscapes, graveyards and even a shotgun!
While searching the box I came across this one image which simply looked menacing with the pages of the book underneath.
To start the scanning process I had to ensure that I could create the highest quality images from these negatives. To achieve this I started by deep cleaning the Epson V700 Perfection flatbed scanner and preparing a program
Epson scanner with Mac and Silverfast 8.
Cleaning the flatbed scanner before use.
Removing negatives to check condition.
Cleaning negatives carefully to remove dust particles.
Placing negative on center of glass on at a time.
Prescanning negative to adjust settings before a full scan is done.
The process took roughly 45 minutes per image as they each had to be cleaned, scanned, processed and retouched. The process of retouching the images was left up to my own discretion; the authenticity of the images being a key part of my ideals, I decided to only retouch the faces of the subjects in the images and leave the rest in the original condition. By doing this I believe a good balance has been struck between restoration and the retention of authenticity. I also scanned with the intention of keeping the whole negative intact with no cropping; whoever shot these images really knew what they were doing.
The intention of scanning these negatives is to hopefully create an exhibition from them, possibly at Redhouse in Merthyr Tydfil.
If you feel you have information regarding these images then please contact me as I would love to help create a full account to accompany these mysterious images.
