Ellen McAteer

One of the shots Ellen chose from her shoot at the Art School last week.

Threads of Xmas

I was back at Stereo on Friday for Threads of Xmas, featuring

Inspector Tapehead

 

 

How to Swim, who got into the Christmas theme in a big way, with tinsel, fairy lights and a programme of Christmas songs (their own songs, not Jingle Bells or anything like that)

 and Turning Plates  who started with an a capella number

I really enjoyed the evening - and it was vastly less hard on the ears than last week's other gig: three heavy metal bands at the Cathouse.

A behind the scenes shot of Shona at the sound desk.

More pictures over here.  

Durer

A Hipstamatic shot of one of the wee mosaics of artists on the wall of the Art School. This was meant to be a double exposure, but I can't quite work out if it is or not...

Mackintosh View

I was at the Art School today taking some portrait shots of Glasgow writer Ellen McAteer.  In the process of which Ellen very kindly gave me a tour round the building giving me the opportunity to take a few shots of bits of the Rennie Mackintosh building.

View over Glasgow from the "Hen Run" where the male students used to be able to catch a glimpse of the first women students at the Art School on their way between classes.  This is the long, glassed in corridor you often see people being interviewed in in programs about the Art School.

Skylight (there's a whole corridor of these)

Vaguely Escher-esque stairwell, built from polished concrete (which is apparently known as "Glasgow Marble").

Statue in a corridor.  There were a lot of statues.  In fact it was a bit like being back at primary school where there were lots of holy statues, only these ones had fewer clothes and fewer heads (in that many of the statues were headless, not because I was brought up in  a particularly bizarre sect of Catholicism which featured multi-headed saints).

Continuing the churchy theme - a font in a stairwell, right next to the emergency telephone.  

Three to Four : two

Jonathan's windharp, previously blogged here,  is back in action in London for one night on board the MS Stubnitz in London.  He and the other Output Arts folk have put a recording of it up here - including a bit 5 minutes in when it starts raining and sounds like bells...

Double Exposure

Atlas doubles

Tardis materialising on Buchanan Street.

Lost Bear

...on Lawrence Street.

Warp Speed

Adventures in Black and White

More Hipstamatic double exposures.  I don't know who this woman is, or why there are two posters of her in Ashton Lane, but she does go quite well with the leaves.

Glass roses

Obviously the tower had to feature at some point...

Clouded trees

Light through a star and "The Twelve Dancing Princesses".

Only

My latest favourite photo app is Hipstamatic's multiple exposure plugin (multiple exposures are also my favourite thing about my real Holga).  It's also given me a chance to try out some black and white double exposures before going out with actual black and white film.  I did have another one like this that I liked a bit better, but it said "permit" across it, which is a daft word to have on your photo.

Threads of Ska

Threads was back after a bit of a break last week with an all-ska programme, where everyone was moving fast (including the crowd).

Joe Viterbo

Capone and the Bullets

Esperanza

More photos over here.

Botanical

I recently acquired this tiny Kibble Palace-alike for my office window ledge.  The clover's not really there - it's a double exposure to give the general impression of plants, although some viola seeds are hopefully germinating in it as we speak.  

It's only about 3 inches tall and the same along, so I could really do with a tiny sprinkler system in it so that I don't have to take the whole thing off the base to water the seeds, which tends to lead to the roof collapsing.  I'm also a bit worried about what will become of the roof if the violas do grow as, while they're fairly small plants, they're not that small and I fear it might all turn into a bit of a triffid scenario...

Autumn Walls

Kelvinside Hillhead and leaves…(Snapseed and Blender)

Kenny and Elly's wedding

I was down in Ayr last week doing wedding photos for Kenny and Elly.  It was a lovely wedding (although being the official photographer is more tiring than it looks) and it was great to see them looking so happy.

Five Tangos

On Saturday morning, along with a another batch of bloggers,  I got to go along to a rehearsal of the programme for Scottish Ballet's new Autumn Season.  The ballet they were working on on Saturday was 'Five Tangos', but the programme also includes 'Run For It' which was developed for the Cultural Olympiad and 'Workwithinwork'.

The company consists of 35 dancers, and even though this particular ballet only involves 14 dancers, there are several different 'casts' all learning the part so that performances can be spread across the company during the course of the season.  

This meant that although everyone isn't dancing all the time during the rehearsal there are other groups kind of marking the moves in the background.

Claire Robertson who was dancing the main female role and whom we got to chat to after the rehearsal

along with Owen Thorne, above.  They gave us an insight into the dangers of over-decorated tutus (the men's arms get shredded by the sharp diamante when doing lifts) and the tendency to break into dance at odd moments.

Being launched through the air

Another dancer watches while sewing ribbons on to her shoes

Leaping

Tango Four (I think)

I'd never photographed dancing before and was quite keen to have a shot.  In some ways it was similar to photographing gigs, in that there was music and movement.  The main difference was the speed of the movement and the amount of distance travelled; even the liveliest band don't tend to move around the stage to the extent the dances do, or at anything like the speeds.  

To give you an idea of it I usually aim for a shutter speed of around 125th of a second when shooting bands.  At the Rezillos gig last year I pushed that up to 250th of a second as they were jumping around a lot, but here even 640th of a second wasn't always enough to freeze the dancers.   

It also wasn't enough to freeze just any moment as this could result in the sort of effect you get when photographing people while they're talking with people caught in strange expressions or, in this case,  strange postures.   It began to seem that in some  ways the dangers were like pendulums moving between instants of stillness and the trick to getting a good shot was to catch these instants.   

Anyway, I had a great time and will certainly be trying to see the programme when it's in theatres next month.   (There are a few more shots from the morning over on Flickr.)