3DD - Photoshoot

I finally managed to get the photography studio booked for Wednesday morning. I took a selection of what I felt are my better models done so far this year in to get some proper shots of them. Colin Jackson - our studio photographer - provided much needed lighting advice and technical expertise, as I have little experience with studio photography (as you’ll note from a previous entry).

I also asked his advice for setting up some lighting shots of myself, and he took amazing shots of me with the lighting in question. I’ll upload those at a later date.

Next time I have the photography studio booked, hopefully I won’t be so nervous, and actually be willing to play around with the equipment myself. I’m not sure whether the fact that all the equipment is so expensive that makes me so nervous, or the lack of experience. Maybe both.

The Shard 2/2

And some more photos from my time up The Shard. Did a lot of playing around in Lightroom & Photoshop on these. Reasonably happy with the end results.

I tried to filter out the reflection on the lower-left quadrant in the first image of London Bridge Station. Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out how, so I just cropped it out.

Even though I really liked the first image of the wider shot of E. London, I wanted to try and remove the reflections and other artifacts. This took the use of a gradient filter, brush filters & crop in Lightroom.

The Shard 1/2

Visited The Shard (London’s tallest skyscraper) yesterday. £21 (with a £4 student discount) to visit the viewing platform at the top. Quite steep (pun intended). Should you be charged for the view? Should the viewing platform be considered a public, not private space?

I took some pictures of the structure whilst I was up there. Did some playing around in Lightroom. Kinda amazed at how sharp the pictures came out, since even though I was shooting with ISO >1000, my exposure lengths were still <1/50s, and of course you are not allowed monopods or tripods.

3DD - Holiday Project

Ok, so this project isn’t completely engaging. Nonetheless, I deconstructed a half-dozen crackers, trying to keep the shells as intact as I could. Unfortunately the central tongue was a casualty on all 6 crackers (it was simply too stiff to remove politely).

I have however managed to keep the sounding tongues/popper strips intact, and I’ll investigate them at some point.

3DD - Geometry

So, we had to incorporate the concept of “multiples” - that is, using the same material/shape/object/style/technique over and over to create a final outcome.

I decided that I wanted to revisit the idea of building with sticks, but at a larger scale. One of my original goals was to create a sculptural pyre of some description - linking a prior theme of mine of rebirth/The Phoenix. However, time was pressing, so I decided to go for an iterative approach.

I still had some of the pine board left from my “Repair is Beautiful” project, so I cut that into strips, and then I cut a little over half of those strips into sticks. I ended up sanding those strips down by hand (too small to be machined). Fortunately however, I could sand the ends of the sticks into stakes on one of the belt sanders, which saved a lot of time.

I followed the same procedure as the small scale model - create 3 walls using sticks, however I added inner & outer walls to the model this time. Bunch the sticks up, play, and photograph the result.

I’ll post some close-ups of the structure later.

3DD - Geometry

I started off with some small scale conceptual structures based off of some sketches I did last weekend. Those are the perspex and perspex/balsa models shown first:

The sketch envisioned an outer shell, with a central piece “floating” in the centre. I have a feeling my sub-concious was taking inspiration from La Grande Arche de La Défense en Paris.

The second model (perspex & balsa) was cobbled together without any direct goal in mind. I was just playing with shapes. I feel like really need to get away from cubes & cuboids, more often than not, it feels like playing with kid gloves, that I’m not stretching myself.

The last structure - made out of foam - was also based on a sketch. Originally I attempted to create this structure out of clay, however that was unsuccessful. Instead, I went back and used up some of the foam cuttings from my prior foam model, and created the central spire.
     Yes, the central spire is wonky, although it is not meant to be. These models were supposed to be made reasonably quickly - I’m trying to get better at time management, especially when you’re only doing initial concepts. The smaller structures you see around the spire are the off cuts, which I decided to include in the final model, as I found their shapes quite interesting.
      The colour scheme I used reminds me of “Mirror’s Edge”, an old (soon to be expanded upon) first-person platformer/puzzle game released in ‘08/’09.

London Field Trip 2/2

Firstly, profuse apologies for the photo quality. The weather was shit, and a couple of these were stiched together using my phone. Combine that with being dog tired, and my brain wasn’t really functioning well enough to get into great photo-taking positions.

So, this is what (part) of the QE Olympic Park looks like 3 years on. The park is in the middle of an area undergoing a 20+ year development.

There were some lovely views from the Kapoor tower, however, no tripod + night + old camera = grainy photos. Hence why I haven’t uploaded any.

The final photo is of some canal boats and graffiti on the border of the park, and I thought it was a rather amusing juxtaposition.

London Field Trip 1/2

Busy day.

The School of Architecture organised a field trip to London today, heading around various locations. I made my way up separately with the intention of meeting up. Well, I never did. Despite that, I managed to fit in:

Eames Exhibition @ The Barbican
Palladian Design @ RIBA
Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park
London Aquatic Centre
Anish Kapoor’s Observation/Guard Tower

Originally the plan was to round it all off with a talk from Sir Peter Cook at The Doodle Bar, but that was going to start too late. Also, the bar didn’t do food, and after walking around London all day, I was hungry.

Pics will follow as an when. (It was cloudy, got dark early, didn’t have a tripod, so night-time pics possibly not brilliant).

Did have a lovely steak though (if expensive!) at The Butcher @ Grill over in Battersea, nr the Doodle Bar.

Amsterdam Trip - 7/7

A selection of shots from days 2 & 3. (When I say day 2 & 3, I really mean days 3 & 4 - why? I was not counting Sunday as a full day, as we arrived in the evening.)

Seeing what MOOOI Design offered was awesome. As was the Kröller-Muller gallery & park.