Shoots

The Kendo Studio Shoot

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I confess that I’m pretty much in love with all things Japanese. My garden is designed with a loose Japanese feel and I keep koi and bonsai. So it was inevitable that eventually I’d want to create a body of photographic work centred around an oriental aesthetic.

This Kendo shoot is the start of a project that I feel will last for many months as I try to create images that communicate how I feel about the look and feel of the orient. To me it’s mysterious and uber stylish and if there’s one sport that encapsulates that, it’s Kendo. Just to look at these guys sends a shiver up your spine and trust me, when you see them in full fight mode it really is something else. This is ritualised, highly controlled violence - but of course a Kendo aficionado would never say that!

Over the next few weeks you’ll be able to make your own mind up because we’ll release the video of our shoot with the Gaku Shi Juku Kendo Kai club in Leicestershire. But in the meantime here’s a few worked up images to give you an idea… it was an epic shoot!

First Ice Hockey Shoot Goes Well

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We did our first shoot with the Nottingham Lions Ice Hockey Club this week. It was a complicated shoot to pull together, not least because we were shooting on the ice which creates obvious slip hazards, but it also made the shoot quite late - it was 9.15pm when the ice became free.

Our contact for the Lions is Matt Bradbury - he is our “gatekeeper” for this project. I call these contacts gatekeepers because they can quite literally unlock the door to the access required. In this case Matt has been fantastic - from arranging on-site parking through to liaising with the venue, nothing was too much trouble. And of course he arranged our 6 players, including a goalie.

Inspired by Pinterest boards we’d pulled together we planned 6 shooting scenarios;

1.      Shoot puck skidding across ice from various angles. Thrown in by hand, these shots will be composited into the action shots later, eliminating the danger of flying pucks from the action shots

2.      Single skater powering into shot, ice spraying up. Simulating hitting puck or just fast turns etc. See this Pinterest Board - https://www.pinterest.co.uk/davidkeepphotography/sports-ice-hockey/single-player-action/

3.      Double skaters powering into shot, ice spraying up. Simulating hitting puck or just contact etc. See this Pinterest Board - https://www.pinterest.co.uk/davidkeepphotography/sports-ice-hockey/dual-players-action/

4.      Bring in goal & Goalie

5.      Shoot from behind net, single & then double skaters powering in, simulating goal mouth action.. See this Pinterest Board - https://www.pinterest.co.uk/davidkeepphotography/sports-ice-hockey/net-minder-action/

6.      Erect black backdrop behind net

7.      Shoot Goalie portraits. See this Pinterest Board - https://www.pinterest.co.uk/davidkeepphotography/sports-ice-hockey/net-minder-portrait/

8.      Remove goal

9.      Shoot single player portraits. See this Pinterest Board - https://www.pinterest.co.uk/davidkeepphotography/sports-ice-hockey/single-player-portrait/

Everything went really well & we were back in the car & on the way home by midnight. A late night shift but well worth it! A massive thank you to Marlies & Alex, without them I just couldn’t pull off shoots this complex.

This is just the first stage of an ongoing project and we have lots of other plans - you could be hearing about this one for quite a while :-)

I look like a dwarf telling a story to a bunch of giants!

I used every light I had - flash & constant LED

Inspiration Comes From Many Sources - The Swimmer Series

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As I’ve stated many times before, inspiration for my images invariably comes from the work of others. Here’s a quote I particularly like;

“Inspiration can come to us at any time and from many sources” - Jim Rohn

“The Swimmer” series was inspired by a photo that appeared in my Pinterest feed - it was an Art Deco bronze sculpture, 'Swim Series II’ by Deon Duncan (below).

I love the Art Deco period, particularly the fashion, and I instantly fell in love with the sculpture. Could I create something similar as an image?

Working with the ever adaptable Jane Riley and assisted by Marlies Chell I decided to give it a go… the Swimmer Project was born!

I thought the pose of Duncan’s swimmer made him look almost alien. I decided I wanted to go down that route, moving as far away from a recognisable human form as possible, so I bought a Morph costume on Amazon to make Jane look less human.

The column is a stand used to build music sets. Marlies’s dad built a top for the stand, Marlies made a sleeve for it & sprayed it.

I guess total time from concept to first shoot was around 3 months & cost circa £200.

Our first test shoot (in my lounge) was of the one pose and it immediately highlighted a problem - the Morph suit was way too large for Jane. It created lots of creases when she took up the poses and they were very difficult to take out in Photoshop. We ordered a new suit and Marlies took it in even further - poor Jane, it really was a tight squeeze to get in it!

On the second shoot we created 3 more poses, all inspired by Art Deco sculptures.

Results below - I’m really happy with them. Massive thanks to Jane and Marlies.

The Swimmer

'Swim Series II’ by Deon Duncan

Phil Bradley Guitarist

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I rarely take on private commissions but I made the exception this week for guitarist Phil Bradley. He’s a “friend of a friend” so that was one factor, but the main thing that tipped the balance for me was that he looks the part!

We shot in my home studio and it went really well. Over 2 hours we set up 9 different sets and I took over 700 shots. I selected 289 “keepers” - here’s sets 1 to 4 & here’s sets 5 to 9

Phil will choose his favourite 12 & I’ll give them a final polish so he can use them on his website. The images I’ve uploaded so far have all been edited in Lightroom - I only go to Photoshop for competition workups. Lightroom’s sync facility makes it easy to apply edits to batches of photos really quickly. I’d estimate total time to get from 700 photos down to 289 lightly edited and uploaded to my website was around 3 hours. If you’d like to see the techniques I use to get to the keepers there’s a video here

One bonus of this shoot was that Phil actually played whilst we were shooting. Marlies & I really liked his music tbh, so there was lots of dancing while shooting :-)

I prefer the relaxed environment of my own lounge when shooting