Through the Stars
Through the Stars is a multimedia art piece, made using astronomy photographic plates kindly donated University of Southampton.
Through the Stars is in three parts:
- Photographs: by aligning each plate with the location they map in the sky, the photographs overlay the stars on to the landscape behind
- Soundscape: having algorithmically generated melodies from each photograph, these are manipulated and arranged to create a musical soundscape of the images
- Documentation: a video blog and b-roll images that document the process of creating the piece
Perseid Meteor Shower
I drove down to Lepe late on Saturday night to watch the meteor shower.
Autumn Pieces 09: Lepe Beach, Southampton
Returning to Lepe this week, where the Summer Shorts series began, I was rewarded with beautiful Autumnal light and an early sunset.
A few weeks ago I ordered a Holga style lens for my DSLR and, ever since its arrival in the post, had been waiting for a bight enough free day to go and make best use of it narrow aperture and vintage charms. With all my weekend jobs completed by lunchtime on Sunday, and the Autumn sun still shining bright and low, it seemed like the perfect time to do just that.
With the increased busyness of the past few months, I've really treasured the times I've spent creating these Autumn Pieces films and blogs. As well, with the short winter days rolling in, I've been actively trying to get more sunshine at the times when its available. So to make the most of the sun, I decided to go back to somewhere close: and Lepe seemed like the perfect choice.
The clouds were moving quickly through the sky all afternoon: sometimes revealing the low Autumnal sun, and other times filling the sky. The bright light causing the Holga lens to turn the sun in to aberrations and flares.
With the sun starting to set, it started to turn cold, and so I moved the car to the beach front, put the DSLR on the hood and set up my time-lapse on the car.
A note on iPhone Photography:
The photographs that I took with my iPhone 7 were some of my favourites of the day. They had a totally different character to the Holga lens — you could almost believe they were from different places on different days — but that is possibly why I love them even more. The blue light that helped to create the vintage, washed out feel of the film and photographs from the Holga lens created dark blue clouds and deep, dark contrast in the sea when seen through the iPhone lens.
Summer Shorts: Compilation
As the year turns to Autumn, it felt right to bring together the short Instagram films from the Summer Shorts series.
Over the summer I set myself a challenge: find a location, compose a piece of music and create an accompanying short film.
These 11 short films and their accompanying compositions represent a body of work created during the summer of 2016.
Music was all composed using the app Auxy (www.auxy.co) and films were shot on a Nikon D5100 with a Nikon 50mm f1.8 FX Lens.
Summer Shorts 01: Lepe, Southampton
This week, I set myself a challenge: find a location, compose a piece of music and create an accompanying short film.
Ever since visiting Calshot last week with my good from Emma, I have been mindful of how many beautiful places there are right on my doorstep. The other night, after posting my new EP online (an activity that has the potential to turn me in to an anxiety ridden shell of a human) I decided to put my internet browsing on hold, and take a trip out past Calshot, to Lepe. I took my GoPro with me, and filmed some shots as the full moon appeared, and having explored as far as I could before it got too dark, I swore I'd come back soon.
And so, tonight, I did.
Leaving work at 7pm, I got straight in the car: made the journey past Totton and Beaulieu and arrived in Lepe. The light was beautiful, and there were just enough clouds in the sky to pick out patterns in the setting sun. Making my way along the waterfront in the fading light, I started filming and I started composing.
Gear:
Music:
Auxy is one of favourite music creation apps for iPhone. It's simple, yet powerful. It comes with sounds and effects that sound great right away, but that also allow for the infinite tweaking and adjusting that my production brain needs to be satisfied: I love it.
Film:
I'm absolutely obsessed with this 50mm Nikon lens. Because it's a full frame lens, and my camera is not full frame (a DX model), it acts more like a 75mm lens, and I love it. Also, you have to manually focus it too, which leads to a bunch of extra work and a lot of mistakes, I can't get enough of the unexpected moments that are created because of those two things.
