Wow what a day. Today I got set an assignment by Joe McNally to photograph the lovely Alessia – an up and coming musician. The goal was to get two photographs suitable for a magazine (one landscape and one portrait as a cover) in order to show Alessia as a very quirky but likeable person (think Biorke). How on earth do you do that? And more to the point, how on earth do you shoot and edit those in under 3 hours? Keep on reading to find out how and how this turned out to be one of my most expensive photos to date…

Story and more photos after the jump…
(Click here to see more…)

So for those of you who regularly read the blog you might have been wondering where on earth I’ve dissapeared to in the last few weeks. Well I’ve been working on a Philip Pullman play, “Clockwork” which has just finished it’s run at the ADC Theatre in Cambridge.

Due to my normal crazy lighting for photographs, the director, Holly, asked if I would be the lighting designer on the show. Well I couldn’t say no and as such embarked on my first foray into the world of theatre. I have to confess I found it really quite interesting and it’s really made me appreciative of my photography lighting. Enter the theatre and suddenly I was banned from all softboxes, photoshop and flashes and instead had to contend with hot yellow continuous light which couldn’t interfere with audience vision and had to work across an entire stage. Quite a mission.

I think we succeeded though: had lots of good feedback and reviews. I did take one very quick photograph while on set, of all the major cast members. It actually made it into the Cambridge News along with the review and a photo by Hugo Vincent, a good photographer friend of mine. Hugo stepped up to take the photos of the performance since I was otherwise indisposed operating the lights. If people want, I might put a blog post up going into the photo in a bit more detail later.
Anyway my photo is the one at the top, Hugo’s is the one further down.

More adventures (and blog posts) to come!

Alex

So yes I promised I’d do a post going into a bit more detail about how to light the 200 odd people of the London Lindy Exchange. Dancing fast. In a large (70×40ft) hall. With only three speedlights…

If you’re not a camera nerd I suggest you leave this post alone. Otherwise find out after the jump…

(Click here to see more…)