We loved the texture of these rocks so much that we just had to do something playful with them!

Sometimes simple light really is the best thing for a good portrait.

Oddly this forest looks like an autumn scene, but it’s spring! Where are all those leaves coming from? The light on Elizabeth is fantastic here. (Actually it’s a Canon Speedlite through my trusty brolly held by  helpful hubby Steven). The light on the tree is genuine sunlight!

And finally a black and white showing Elizabeth doing what she does naturally all the time, smiling!

I hope you like these Elizabeth?

]]> http://www.matthewboyle.net/2010/03/23/elizabeth/feed/ 0 http://www.matthewboyle.net/2010/03/17/victor-villena-tango-workshop/ http://www.matthewboyle.net/2010/03/17/victor-villena-tango-workshop/#comments Wed, 17 Mar 2010 23:24:47 +0000 Matthew http://www.matthewboyle.net/?p=953 In my last posting I shared my photo session with my friend Petrea’s tango band in Edinburgh. The bandoneon player from her band, Roberto, organised a weekend of workshops to learn from the expert bandoneon player Victor Villena  (ex Gotan project and currently playing with Quintetto EL DESPUES).  He was teaching about tango idiosyncrasies and techniques and how to play tango together as an orchestra. I was kindly invited to enjoy the rehearsal and take a few record shots of the get-together.

Photographically the lighting in the room was difficult for 2 reasons. It was low level, and it had a mixture of daylight from an overhead skylight and tungsten from a number of wall mounted sidelights. I have often had problems with that kind of mixed lighting giving an odd colour cast that can be impossible to fix.  I’m afraid that I took the last refuge of a scoundrel and solved the colour cast in most of the pictures by using black and white conversion. Getting a decent shutter speed was a challenge too; my fast 50mm f1.4 gave me a speed of only 1/125th at f1.4 using ISO 1000. Anyway, light problems aside, the music was fabulous and I’m in serious danger of falling in love with tango music.

Double Bass: James Stewart – Edinburgh

The strings:

Piano: Marc Fallon – Greenock

Bandoneon: Marianne Vinther Olesen – Denmark

And there they are in the gentile surroundings of the “Counting House” in Edinburgh. I wish you could have heard them.

Cello: Maria Rodriguez Reina – Spanish – London

Violin: Suzanne Senior -  Edinburgh

Bandoneon: Juanjo Passo – Sweden based

The organiser of this amazing event:

Bandoneon: Roberto Rabinovich – Edinburgh

Bandoneon: Victor Villena – Paris

When I was chatting with Victor and apologising for not knowing much about tango music, I explained that my only contact with it was my copy of the Gotan Project’s album. This is a real favourite of mine and I play it a lot. Imagine my shock when he told me that he was the bandoneon player on that album!

Flute: Sharon Dowsett – Edinburgh

Violin: Cathy Johnson

Violin: Petrea Cooney Edinburgh although very Irish, and I’m happy to say my friend.

Bandoneon: Marianne Vinther Olesen – Copenhagen (Denmark)

Thanks to everyone for entertaining me so beautifully while I got to do my favourite thing!

This particularly great looking bunch of musicians spent some time with me on Sunday doing some photos for publicity. I had a great day with them and enjoyed Edinburgh on a beautiful bright February day. I loved photographing them and loved their willingness top trust me as I dragged them onto the monument at Calton Hill in their light shirts in the FREEZING afternoon. Thanks guys, I hope you love the pictures as much as I do.  This would have made a fantastic day for me anyway, but to hear them play was really special; these guys are totally amazing. They play traditional style tango, and the sound of them, their soulfulness, their tightness makes your heart ache. They are brilliant.

Orquestra Atipica de Edimburgo’s Facebook page.

These images were done with one flash and umbrella on a stand fixed and one handheld by my helper for the day, Gustavo. We were able to move that one quickly to balance the lighting without wasting time.

One problem taking advantage of a band for photographs is that they tend to wander off all the time; with a little platform and a 30 foot drop on 3 sides they tend to stick together. Mwwwwaaaahahaaaaaaaa

An Edinburgh band need to have Edinburgh behind them. I love that city so much.

Back now on terra firma. Those smiles are relief. I don’t care what the motivation was however, I’ll take advantage anyway:-) Note the tiny Princes Street behind them.

And now, double bassist extraordinaire, James…

How cool is James’s hair?

What poise, what a shirt!

One of my favourites, the lighting, background and pose are totally classic. This is in Gustavo’s wonderful cafe, looking out on Broughton street.

Every tango band needs someone in a red dress. None of the guys were up for it, so Petrea stepped up to the mark.  No the background of Arthur’s Seat and the crags isn’t stuck on. She was way up high and keepin’ it real!

Here’s Petrea in the cafe later. I love the background and the catchlights in her eyes.

As a guitarist myself, the most humbling part of the day was hearing Mark making this astounding lightly built flamenco instrument sing and wail so perfectly.

Note the resemblance to the amazing David Gilmour Pink Floyd fans. The graffiti is a shame here. I wondered about cloning it out, I’m just not sure. It’s a love/hate thing..

And finally Roberto. Master of the bandoneon. If any instrument can be said to be hard-wired to the listeners soul, this is it. This man and his music will break your heart, and you’ll love it.

Check Roberto’s chiselled looks.

And then, in the cafe, Petrea sang and everyone turned to watch and listen, you have to, she’s that good. Don’t go to see this band if you don’t want to fall in love with Petrea’s singing.

Just a few angles on the guys now:

And finally, helper-for-the-afternoon Gustavo and Petrea showed their skills dancing tango while the band played. Beautiful and amazing.

Check them out.

f2.8 1/250 (50×1.6) ISO 100

This terribly striking and handsome man is my colleague and friend John Grant. John is a musician and specialises in conducting. John as a conductor is something to see; he basically knows how to get the best out of people and everyone loves working with him. This picture was snatched in 15 minutes from a rehearsal for the Argyll Concert Band which John was organising. The setting was the Ardentinny outdoor centre in Argyll and the backdrop is a play-spiderweb in their grounds.

Photographically, the sunlight was very directional and strong. I wanted to get some drama from the backdrop so shot with the sun behind John and handheld my flash with no softeners as a much needed fill-in. I did a black and white conversion as the shapes are the strength of this picture and the greenery distracts the eye too much. I have a theory about greenery in pictures; it is easier to focus attention on a subject using a simple backdrop. When in woods, the eye seems to scan the scene. Apparently the eye is more sensitive to green. I also wonder whether we have evolved to be more vigilant about woods since they were sources of food and of danger in our hunter-gatherer past. Give me a factory wall every time, but in this case, woods were what I had!

This one was from the slopes of Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh on the 31st December 2009. It was like an ice rink and frankly the path up Arthur’s Seat really needed crampons. (no really!). I set up my tripod and indulged in a 30 second exposure of our ever-so-odd parliament. The car light trails are fun.

f20 30s (56mm x 1.6) ISO 200

My dad died on Friday night. On my way home from work, before it happened, I stopped to photograph this landscape. I know that every time I look at this image I’ll remember my dad and what happened on Friday. My dad was a good and kind man, who was flawed and challenged just like all of us. He put the best of his life into my brother and I. This picture will kind of stay with me now, that’s the power of photography; I hope I’ll be pleased about this image over the years.

I don’t know these people, but looking down the mound and using this man’s arm as a frame for the lovely girl that he was photographing has caught a little love story in the midst of the celebrations. (f4.5 1/80th (70 x 1.6) ISO 1600)

If you know me you’ll know that I love gargoyles. Odd when I have no great fondness for churches. These I consider to be their cutest features! This one was on a fairground “haunted house” ride and I couldn’t resist it in the smoky torchlit atmosphere. The zoom was fully extended and the shutter speed was glacially slow. This illustrates well the effectiveness of Canon’s image stabilisation. No way I could handhold that length of zoom at that exposure without it.  (f5.6 1/13th (300 x 1.6) ISO 1600)

While passing the fairground rides I watched these two thrillseekers being locked into one of the scariest rides I have seen. This cage is on two massive bungee cables and on release launches the poor inhabitants of the cage at frightening acceleration into the sky. They then bounce up and down and frankly all around while the tall buildings next to them dissapear below them. This image would have been good if I had had the presence of mind to move a little to avoid the safety brace handle getting in the way of the man on the right. I knew it wasn’t right but didn’t think the picture was worth the bother. Moral of the story, listen to those nagging doubts as you photograph; so much of it is instinct. (f5 1/50th (165 x 1.6) ISO 1600)

Perhaps one of them at this prelaunch moment is beginning to realise what he has let his poor stomach in for. My pants were in danger of soiling just through watching! (f5.6 1/25th (300 x 1.6) ISO 1600)

And now to the kind of ride I could just about manage as long as it doesn’t go to fast. On this particular evening it was way too cold to contemplate sitting in an open gondola. Just a simple fairground shot, but the composition pleases me. I had switched here to my 17-85 lens. It has a really annoyingly slow aperture, but again the image stabilisation is effective.  (f4.5 1/15th (24 x 1.6) ISO 1600)

And finally, one of my favourite public monuments or pieces of public art. The Scott monument is a magnificent tribute to a damned good author and populariser of Scottish romanticism. I always think it looks like the rocketships on the covers of 1950′s sci fi novels. In close and wide to abstract the shape, a quick monochrome conversion to accentuate the shape and form and bob’s your uncle! If you want to see how good the canon IS is, note the 1/4 second shutter here, handheld!  (f4.5 1/4 sec (17 x 1.6) ISO 1600)

While driving home from Carradale on the Kintyre peninsula last Monday I came upon this scene just as the last light was fading. The spot is the ferry slipway at Kennacraig for the Islay ferry. Strictly speaking the sunset was gone and so I set up my tripod to catch the final moments and indulged in this 10 second exposure. The long exposure has made the loch glassy and ethereal. I pushed the saturation a little to accentuate the tiny afterglow. I am more into portraiture than landscape, but I sympathised with the landscape bloggers who endlessly beg Canon to put a direct mirror-lock-up button on their SLR’s. As it is, I have mine in my “my favourites” menu so it is only 2-clicks away, but how annoying that irritating “direct print” button is when it could be used for mirror-lock instead. Canon should ask the 13 people worldwide who use direct-print on an SLR if they could live without it?

f18 ISO 100

Taken after a coffee in Glasgow’s Prices Square. Two things made this a challenge. The back-lighting of the centre’s Christmas lights required fill flash which of course was colder in colour temperature than the yellow cast tungsten background. The second problem was the impossibility of framing Claudia without distracting bright spots or areas behind her head. It was an opportunist shoot, with only 3 exposures before we parted. I therefore used monochrome to work round the colour variation between foreground and background. I also cloned and shaded some of the extreme lights in the background. The result isn’t perfect, but does feel like it captures some of the shy intensity of Claudia. For the record, Claudia doesn’t enjoy being photographed; I am therefore all the more grateful for her relenting for the sake of this portraitist’s art. I hope she likes it.