"Inflate-Deflate" is one of those projects that I (Ben) have been working on, here and there, since University. There's something appealing about doing nice bright, abstract, colourful pictures every now and again as a break from the more usual work. And on a gloomy, cold Autumn afternoon, here's a post about a day at the beach.
Having started as a studio shoot, most of the recent shots have been out on location on deserted Welsh beaches in the middle of the night (or a more sociable early evening during the winter), such as the above, a prospective promotional shoot for the company that made those inflatables. I was meant to be doing another of these shoots during the early spring this year for a competition brief/open call, but Covid put paid to that, because why have anything fun, bright, colourful or playful in 2020...
However, in 2019 I got some interest (and a publication) of the above shot, which was a daylight one taken whilst Amy was shooting some underwater pics with her new camera a few years back. So this summer, we were back in Wales in that lovely gap between catastrophes, the weather was meant to be nice, and The Childs were desperate for a play in the sea with some toys, and it seemed like a good opportunity to get some more shots for the underwater part of the project.
The beach in question makes a lovely location for this shoot (and for The Childs to play in general, as the sea is ridiculously calm and shallow- seriously, you can walk about half a mile and the sea never gets above your waist).
We took a big bag of inflatables, bought cheaply over the years for various parts of this shoot. Given there's environmental concerns about plastic in the oceans, and people discarding beach toys (a theme that this project addresses) it's fitting somehow to be using stuff that we bought 15 years ago as photo props for our Uni fashion photography/ still-life projects.
As the above shows though, one of the problems with using the special underwater compact cameras is the focussing, as the kit tends to be a bit variable in quality (and our laughable low budgets certainly don't extend to buying an underwater-spec SLR). Oddly enough it was the newer compact underwater camera that was less reliable, so we ended up switching to the older backup cam after an hour.
The other problem- the water is so shallow you can't actually get bodily down under the water to see exactly what you're shooting through the viewfinder... We've often talked about how nice it would be to have access to a private swimming pool for a few hours for this shoot (and other underwater stuff).
And don't they print a lot of health and safety info on stuff these days?
A lot of sand and things drifting around in the water too.
I was aiming to get some nice, abstract shots. Shame the sunlight wasn't brighter (it was at least a nice hot day).
The shoot kind of worked; the problem was that the better, more colourful props had been leant to a fellow photographer last year, and Covid meant he hadn't been able to post them back. What toys we did have for a family day at the beach were based more around play value to The Childs than their aesthetic properties for this shoot.
Honestly though, the other people on the beach must have thought we'd looted a toyshop, we were in and out of the sea so frequently with half a dozen rings, a couple of beach balls, three inflatable unicorns and a lilo...
Not sure about the fad this year for glitter-filled stuff, even more waste and mess when the toys pop I'd imagine. Still, it's not about practicality, probably more to do with vacant-eyed teenagers posing for poolside selfies on insta.
The pics seem to work best with a little tweaking of the contrast afterwards in post-production.
Having only managed the odd experimental shot in the past, this session at least meant that I was able to get enough pics to form a decent selection for future open calls (there's one on the cards as I type this in November). Sadly we didn't get chance to go for a second shoot, as the weather turned, and we thought 'ah well, maybe when we go back to Wales in the autumn'. Then Drakeford started channelling Owain Glendowr and kept the borders shut.
Maybe next year. At least there's a few shots for a potential open-call that's coming up.
No comments:
Post a Comment