Forever Your Rose, new film project for Holbeach Film Company

A new year, a new film for The Holbeach Film Company.

2016 see's the creation of Forever Your Rose, a romantic comedy, much different from 2015's Dishonoured' thriller-esc genre. Dishonoured is soon to be released by the way.

Being part of the Dishonoured crew, i was naturally included in news about the new project.
I want to help out where i can.

All films need a cast and crew, so its audition time.

There were people coming and going all afternoon, the waiting room filling up and changing round continuously.

The waiting game

I spent a couple of hours in the audition room, at some points literally hiding behind a sofa. I wonder what the budding stars thought when they walked into the room and saw me crouched behind the sofa?

Judging the auditions was handled by director, camera men, actor and actresses. Im sure their are different job titles in there somewhere.

There was fun to be had amidst the nervous faces.

I had to get behind the action and capture the gestures of the hopefuls.

The essence of photography is capturing the light. As soon a i see the spotlights in the room, the idea was a light bulb, no pun intended, moment.

Staring into the abyss

My favourite images from the day.
The beauty of shooting into the light.

I love the haze at the bottom caused by the light reflecting off of my silver Fujifilm X100T placed just under the Fujifilm X-Pro 1 that i was shooting with.

The lens flare on the left and the flick of the hair on the right, does it for me. 

My last objective of the day was to join the judges and use them to frame the candidates.

Use focus selectively to tell a story.

Many of the above photographs were taken with a 1980's Canon FD 50mm F1.8 lens that i bought years ago for £10. Manual focus of moving targets, at large apertures in low light is not an easy task, however its important to challenge yourself. The images are much more rewarding....which reminds me, i need to shoot some film again!!! Does anyone want a wedding shot on film???

For any more information on the local film being made, follow this link https://www.facebook.com/ForeverYrRose/

Its been a while since my last blog, hopefully this will be the jump start it needed.

Thanks for looking. 

Return to Causeway Lodge

This place is a great visit for any urbexer; there's 3 houses to explore as well as numerous dark farm buildings.

Every time i drive past it on the way to Peterborough, i want to pop in for a quick explore.

In January i had a 20 minute look around on the way to hospital appointment, my poor back!!!!.

The 1st building at the entrance i guess you could call the gate house. I've been in before but only at the entrance as its been used as a fly tippers parade, its literally full of rubbish downstairs. I climbed over the piled up sofa's and carpets and made my way up the some what iffy stairs; the bottom 3 steps are missing and the rest sway and squirm happily under foot.
Ive said it before i really should have a partner while exploring because this is quite a dangerous hobby.

Upstairs there's not much apart from an old chair, theres always a chair!

I love the way old buildings get taken over by wildlife and undergrowth. Natures trying to reclaim the earth.

The main house is far too dangerous to enter, its suffering a speedy demise.

The first time i had a look around this place i noticed a bungalow in overgrown bushes, this time it was my main mission to have a look around in there. An easy mission considering the windows and doors are pretty much non existent or at the least open.

Here, I've taken probably my 2 most favourable and memorable urbex images yet. The diffused light shining through the windows into the room with the bed in corner paints a cold and sad image.

Life's hard.

Window shopping in Cambridge

The best weekend of street photography yet.

I cant help it, im totally hooked.

I want to go out and shoot more street.

Its the challenge, finding something quirky, how close can you get to get that shot?, its the waiting game; waiting for someone to walk into the shot.

I've started to manual focus more; using zone focusing, knowing that anything in the 'zone' will be in focus. That way I can set up my focus zone, step forward and take the shot. The last thing I need is for the camera to hunt for focus!  I don't want anyone turning round wondering what im doing!!! LOL

If anything, im becoming more adventurous, im not shooting so many peoples backs anymore, im photographing people walking right towards me.

Often all you need is a smile after taking the shot, no one questions a smile.

This weekend ive started shooting with windows in mind; reflections, advertising, shooting through the window. Life is lived around windows, windows are everywhere.

Sale shopping

Just look at the similarities

This guy saw the funny side

Or walk on by

Im looking into her world, she's asking me why.

I cant wait to get to a city again.

Photography is my life and I want to live it!

The death of a whale

Maybe it's just part of their lives. 

The natural selection process. 

Life's shit and then you die.

For humans it's both sad and a spectacle; Whilst you stand there in awe touching the giant beast thinking 'wow this thing is massive'. 

Much like everyone else I had to go and visit the Sperm whale that washed up at the weekend. There have been beeched whales before, 1 in the last 5-10 years in my home town too, but I've never been to see one with my own eyes. 

For many of us this is the only opportunity we have to come close to such a creature. So it becomes a tourist attraction; a selfie magnet!

The whale in Hunstanton was not the only whale death this weekend, I've heard 3 were beeched in Skegness too, the opposite side of the wash from Sutton Bridge and Hunstanton and reports of some washed up in Europe too. 

Strange!

The spectacle

As the blood trickles away

The Skeleton of a ship wreck and the body of the beast. 

This is the 1st blog post I've ever created without the use of a computer. No computer has been used to edit the photos, instead the Jpegs images were transferred to my iphone 6 from my Fujifilm X100T via built in wifi, a feature that I've used and love since my recent new purchase of the legendary Fuji. 

The blog has been been typed via the iPhone and Blogger app. 

The future of the whale tourist attraction is almost certain. 

iPhone blogging for me is currently not going to see a return. You can't beat a proper keyboard and mouse.

Carry on living your lives with open eyes 

Being a kid and the ghosts of pigs

Its funny that ive just explored a building once owned by members of my family.

I remember going to this place as a child with my dad, I think he used to store things here.

Everytime I drive down this busy road, I see the old Piggery and think of long ago walking into this cold, dark and dirty place. Im not sure how long its been 'empty' for, im not sure who now owns it, im now 30 years old and my memories of the place probably date back around 25 years.

I was itching to go exploring December 30th, I woke up and its all I could think of, I didn't go, a little bored I was that day. So New Years Eve I climbed out of bed, put my exploring coat on; its just a dirty old duffel coat, and drove to Long Sutton with 2 locations in mind; both locations approx. 1 minute from each other on the same road.

For this explore I used my newest camera; Fujifilm X100T and the WCL-X100T wide angle lens converter. Since buying the X100T a couple of weeks ago, I haven't had a real chance to use it. I would usually explore with my Canon but I thought id see how this lens Fixed Lens Compact fared in a low light situation.

Image quality from Fujifilm cameras are known to be superb, a statement I agree with since previously owning an X20 and X-Pro 1 cameras. My X-Pro 1 is usually my carry everywhere camera but I think the X100T will now replace this title.

Urbex means low light, for me, its either a 'tripod day' or a time for high ISO, large aperture usage. I don't like tripods; they're too restricting so ISO ranged between 400 and 1600 and apertures typically around F2-2.8.

Muddy track led the way; a job for wellies

 

Early worm catches the early sun

A little dangerous this one

 

 

Mouse hole

 

Love the shadows on the door

Bones

 

My next blog post, coming soon, will be the 2nd location from this explore session.

 

Keep shooting!