As alluded to in the last post, I (Ben) had a project to shoot whilst in Wales. "Weightless" was a themed open call, and I decided to do a return to a variation from the long-running "Inflate Deflate" project (the long-running series of mine producing faintly-abstract shoots using inflatable toys). Having done shots in the studio, outdoor, with and without models, and most recently in the middle of the night on beaches, it was time to come back to a variation of the project from the early days.
Well, not a proper photography shoot... after a morning of indoor, backlit, black-background shoots in the spare room of our Uni accommodation back in 2006, we took some of the toys outside and spent an afternoon chucking them about in the garden just for a bit of fun, whilst taking some snaps, and not being terrifically bothered if they went over the garden walls or landed on pointy things as it would save the effort of letting them down. A wasteful attitude, yes, but that's being a student for you; I'm rather more of a hoarder with my props these days, and anyway most of the toys survived. The above shot ended up published I think, but it was a good while ago. Anyway, with a considerably better camera available, and beautiful weather, I thought I'd do some more, but this time incorporating the landscape. With the actual beach at Llanbedrog proving too busy, it was off up the hill behind the caravan site, where there was a gorgeous view across to the mountains of Snowdonia.
A promising start as we (self and Elder Child) set off just after tea.
Walking up the hill, we paused to watch an impressive display by a large number of birds of prey.
Walking up the hill; quite a lot steeper than I'd remembered, but then I'm getting old. The days when I strolled casually up this hill with bags and boxes full of miniatures for location shoots in the mid 2000's are long behind me now.
A lovely spot, and just the view I wanted. And of course, we couldn't shoot here; yet more problems with being in the area on a busy bank holiday weekend. Not long after we arrived, a gaggle of teenage lads from the village rocked up, and we were quite clearly on their spot, and we were made to feel very unwelcome. Ah, just like being at home. On the way down, we passed some scantily-clad female teenagers from the caravan site walking up, doing a not very good job of concealing a bottle of booze, so it was clear to see that us pratting around taking photographs would have cooled their teen hormones.
So we headed to the backup location, a public footpath to nowhere, down near the Osprey site. The RSPB base would be shut, and we figured it would be nice and quiet. Boy, were we ever wrong.
We started relatively well, even managing to re-use the ball from that original shoot. Believe it or not, these are collectables now, from the days when inflatables were made of a slightly different, more durable material, and didn't have massive health-and-safety warning labels printed on them, hence why I hoard the older props for the various iterations of this project. Sadly, despite it having survived nearly 25 years as a prop, and everything from hot studio lights to mischevous models with pointy objects, we finally managed to burst this one. A replacement via eBay would cost between £100-£150, plus import fees, which seems insane.
We started to notice a passing car (a distinctive yellow 4x4) which was doing laps, slowing down on the bridge and holding up the traffic, clearly wondering if they could get into the layby behind our car.
The breeze was also picking up, which made photography tricky. We were, naturally, joined by a family of locals who objected to us being on 'their' dog walking patch, and celebrated their arrival by letting their two massive fighty dogs off the lead to run uncontrollably around us. We retreated to the car and went for a drive, to let them get it out of their system, before returning half an hour later. Oh, and we killed the ball used in these shots too.
Admittedly it wasn't a great location; the breezy aspect played into the concept of the shoot that I was going for, but we seemed to have picked the field that was filled with the most pointy, dried grass, bordered by the spikiest plants and a barbed-wire fence. At least it sped up deflating these large toys...
By this point we were struggling for the light, and the delay caused by the mad dog walkers (or at least, owners of the mad dogs, if you're being grammatically accurate) meant this planned viewpoint was off the cards.
Annoyingly, this ball -the most common design, still available cheaply in the shops- survived intact everything that was thrown at it, and indeed that it was thrown at.
With the light fading, we decided to call it a night. And were then joined by another randomer. This chap wanted a panoramic shot of the mountains, and wondered why we were stood there belting beach balls around. We were clearly trying to pack up and get out of his way, but apparently waiting two minutes to pack the bags was too long for him, so his beautiful panorama shot on his wall will feature two tired, slightly stressed photographers trying to stuff some burst inflatables into a rucksack.
Still, we'd managed some nice shots, just what I needed for the project, but with a day left of the holiday, I really wanted some beach shoots. The plan was to pack up our stuff the next morning, and head for Criccieth, where Amy was aiming to do a shoot of her own.
Criccieth is a bit of an odd beach; the bit in the town has some sand, and is very busy. Walk 15 mins along the shingle, and you only have the dog walkers.
For these shots, I roped in Younger Child as well as Elder, to chuck the ball around. It was still tricky, trying to focus on the moving object whilst compensating for the breeze.
It was also a beach scattered with rubbish, pointy things, and broken glass from evening barbeques. Good for Amy, documenting it for her shoot, less good if you've stupidly only bought the one inflatable with you. Luckily, the rather nice ball we were using survived the day intact.
Rather (and unapologetically cheesy) shot to end on. What? I was always going to find a way to shoe-horn in a train shot or two...
Anyway, the project was hastily edited and sent on the last day of the open call, and happily, a selection of them were chosen for publication. More on that soon...
No comments:
Post a Comment