Dr Sketchy's, Birmingham

Dr Sketchy's Anti-art School (http://www.drsketchysbirmingham.co.uk/) provides an opportunity for artists (and photographers) to work with live models outside the formal environment of a traditonal Life Class.  Burlesque artists perform their act, then pose for the artists.  There are prizes for the best and it's very light-hearted and fun.  These images were captured on 24th November 2012, when Dr Sketchy's celebrated its fourth birthday with a tribute to the films of Tim Burton.

It takes place at the The Victoria, John Bright St, Birmingham.

An old pub with lots of personality and atmosphere.

 

Even the Gents' is idiosyncratic; not a place to stagger down into:

The event takes place in an upper room, and naturally, there's lots of preparation to be done.

We set out the chairs while the organiser, Candee, prepares gifts for the performers.

And Pip 'Astro' Bayley arranges the furniture.

 

Jacob (Sound) accepts Suzie Sequin's music.

I'd arranged to record the preparations.  Here is Tiffany Beau making-up as The Mad Hatter.

Of course, the inner woman needs nourishment too.

Eating is not usually a good look, but she gets away with it here.

It's a delicate operation; burlesque performers don't have the sumptuous dressing rooms of the big stars.  I'm reminded of Lord Snowdon's image of Helen Mirren in her dressing room: http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44743000/jpg/_44743965_helenmirren.jpg

The Mad Hatter needs a gap between his upper incisors.  It's painted on with waterproof mascara.

There: it's done.  But will it come off?

The essence of Dr Sketchy's is fun.

And the final result.
It's hot, and hat and coat are discarded:

Tiffany compares notes with Liberty.

Not all the preparation is physical:

In a busy scene, where even Edward Scissorhands twiddles his 'fingers',

Kitten Von Mew remains a pillar of calm, absorbed in her role as the Corpse Bride.

 Kitten stays serenely in character during the whole of her pose. 

And opens her own eyes only when it's over.

The artists use different media to draw their sketches. 

When the fifteen minute pose is over, Kitten judges the results.

And, with the help of the compere, singer and performer Liberty Pink, awards the prize.

Suzie Sequin plays Sally, from The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Steve Pledger plays Jack Skellington...

Also from The Nightmare Before Christmas.

And together, they pose:

For the artists:

And there's another winner:

Missy Malone as Sweeny Todd...

The shapely barber of Fleet Street:

Sandy Sure gives us Beetlejuice

And poses with his girlfriend Lydia Deetz (Frankie Lynn)

Pip wins a prize:

And looks pretty pleased about it.

The lovely Liberty Pink sings farewell...

And you couldn't have a birthday party without a cake...

by Annabel de Vetten-Peterson at Conjurer's Kitchen.

The End 

Notes on Dr Sketchy’s
The Plan

It’s good to plan; there’s less chance of missing vital things out, but one needs to be flexible, too.  It’s a matter of making good compromises.  I was trying to record an event without interrupting it.  I was asked not to move around while taking photographs, which inhibited what I wanted to do, yet I did manage to get about a bit without disrupting the show.  One of my objectives was to produce a set of pictures for the participants, to record the event for their benefit.  I’ve published the blog to the Dr Sketchy’s people on Facebook.

Technical

It was a dull, rainy day, and I had to use available light indoors.  ISO 800, F5.6, one stop underexposure, still made it impossible to stop movement.  Many of the 200 exposures I took were blurry.

The stage was intermittently lit by coloured lights and LEDs, so white balance wasn’t simple.  I’ve seen that reducing the colour temperature in Adobe Camera RAW gives an effective exposure reduction too.  I was already at a high ISO, so I didn’t want to have to adjust exposure upwards, multiplying the noise already present.  I set white balance to tungsten, but still had to tinker with it on some shots.  With strong stage lighting, there was a big difference between darks and lights.  I tried to prevent highlights being blown out and let the darks go to black, which helped de-clutter backgrounds.

The Photographs

The format of the evening is that each artiste performs her act, which usually includes removing her clothes.  While this would have provided some interesting images, the ethos is that such photographs are not taken—or at least, not published.  The character of the event is good-natured fun, not an erotic display.  When the act is over, she resumes some of her clothes and then poses for up to fifteen minutes for the artists and photographers.

I’d arranged with the organiser beforehand that I’d be able to photograph her make-up work, but on the day she was unwell and would be unable to perform.  She asked folk to come early to help set up and we obliged.  It was raining; we hurried inside; I didn’t even take a shot of the outside of the venue.  I like my barmaid picture, which does show the character of this busy pub, though removing the menu from the corner of the bar would have improved it

I didn’t plan to take a picture of the Gents’, but have always found it odd, so I included it as part of my scene-setting.  A project like this is not about individual photographs; if they all zing then there’s no quiet place to recover.  I don’t think I’ve made the setting-up shots interesting, though.

I took several pictures of the present-wrapping, but the close-up of the hands says more than those showing the face of the wrapper.  A couple of days earlier I was in a portraiture workshop; if I’d followed the advice given there I’d have had Candee holding the presents up to her face.  I can’t think how that wouldn’t have looked contrived.

I like my photographs of Tiffany Beau more each time I see them.  Given the opportunity again, I’d make a project all about her preparation, and take multiple shots of her completing it; putting on coat and hat, and taking them off again when it got too hot.  My pictures of the removal of her rollers are unusable.  I could have tried to vary the shots more, but wanted to document the process.

Post-production

I’ve tidied a few of my images, ironed out the odd wrinkle and tightened a couple of jaw lines.  This is a compromise I feel was necessary: I want my subjects to want me to photograph them again.
I didn't try to remove the projected text from the single portrait of Jack Skellington. 

What I learned, what I’ll do differently next time:

Motion blur was a problem, yet I could have used it to produce interesting swirly images.

I took a general shot of the empty chairs at the start, but could have taken one of the audience, later on, which would have been more interesting.  Don’t be shy about changing lenses.

Be bolder: folk are helpful and accommodating; I could have at least asked to take a picture in the Ladies’, which was being used as a changing room.  After all, I took a photo in the Gents’.

Adapt; be aware of and look out for opportunities to diversify, to follow an individual while being aware of the group.  The opportunity to do a set exclusively on Tiffany’s evening, from make-up to relaxing afterwards, was there, but I didn’t see it.

Summary

In my photographs I’ve tried to tell the story of the evening, well, a story, and I think this has been fairly successful.  It has a beginning, middle, and end.  I’ve included all the performers, and brought the story back to its beginning: the fourth birthday celebration.

 

Mike White

30th November 2013

Exercise: Telephoto, Wide-angle, Standard

Telephoto

I've posted a lot of my telephoto shots already, but here are a few more:

This cheerful man buttonholed me later and we had a chat.  I didn't understand much of what he said.

These girls weren't chatting - with each other.

 

 This couple looks unhappy: such a contrast from the girl in the sunshine.

 I like the contrast between the hair style in the window and that of the man in the Nikes.  The lean of the ladder and the signpost balance each other.

Wide-Angle

Monochrome seems to suit these.  I'm not comfortable using the wideangle in this way; to get a really good shot you have to be really close to the subject in the corner, invading their personal space, never mind taking their picture.  Maybe I'll try it in a situation where there are more distractions.

 

Ladies on their mobiles. 

These gentlemen were talking here for several minutes.  I nearly cropped the 'Ask' sign out but it seems to add something.

 If you'll just follow the Sleepeezee truck...

Standard

My 18-55 kit lens has a spot at about 27-29 mm which I gather is intended to indicate a 'standard' focal length.  Shooting at this length it's difficult to hide; you're obviously taking their picture, unless you conceal the camera or shoot from the hip.  The following shots were all taken sitting on a bench with the camera in my lap, pressing the shutter with my thumb.  Framing's tricky, and so is keeping the camera level, but these improve with practice.

The pairs of shoppers attracted me.  I've straightened and cropped both of these shots, to centre them in the frame.  I stayed with monochrome for these two because they didn't need colour.

Now they seem to be converging, and have noticed each other.

 

People watching is interesting - and necessary, for a photographer.  A sequence:

This lady applied lipstick...

 

Spent a long time...

 

Smoothing it...

 

Out...

 

Put on...

 

Her spectacles...

 

Met a small child behind a push-chair...

 

Chatted to her and her mother...

 

And watched them go.

 

With the standard focal length, the images feel more intimate than with the other two focal lengths. Telephoto implies and creates distance; one is only an observer.   Curiously, the wide angle seems to me to create a kind of distance, too: one's not an observer but an intruder.  The standard focal length places the photographer in the same space as the actors.  I need to seek a way to use it more often.

 

 

 



Roland Barthes - Camera Lucida

Language

I appreciate that academics write for academics and therefore are obliged to use academic language.  But I'm not obliged to like it.  I came across Barthes in a course book: Photography: A Critical Introduction, (Fourth Edition, edited by Liz Wells, Routledge, Abingdon, 2009), which gave me the impression that he was an even more difficult read than it was.  When I found Camera Lucida (Roland Barthes, translated by Richard Howard, Vintage, London, 2000) I had to take a look.  I found the first chapter quite accessible, so I bought the book.
There's a question with translation: do you translate word for word, phrase for phrase, or do you re-write it in English?  The translator has adopted the former, and I found occasional difficulties where the literal translation reveals a difference between English and French usage: en effet is not exactly the same as in effect; I think unseen vision conveys more than blind field.  I wished my French were good enough to be able to read Barthes' original.  I got used to it, and found that what I'd seen as difficulties were the French coming through: they conveyed the sound and feel of the original language, which added to my pleasure.
Barthes writes in a chatty, rambling style, continually interrupting himself in parentheses and using Latin, Greek and German words where French ones don't convey what he wants to say.  He is primarily concerned with photographs of people.  He's not an easy read, but it's a short book, with short chapters.  I've summarised what I think he says.

Photography and Death

A photograph is always identified by its subject, whereas a painting is always firstly a painting; its subject comes second.  A photograph is always of something that existed.  In this it differs from a painting, for which the subject need not have existed, except in the mind of the painter.  Photographs are redolent of death: a photograph persists after its subject has gone, so even images of people now living foreshadow their death.  'All those young photographers who are at work in the world, determined on the capture of actuality, do not know that they are agents of Death.' (op cit, p.92)

'Whoever looks you straight in the eye is mad'

(op cit, p.113).  People always pose in photographs.  The result is a conflict between 'the one I think I am, the one I want others to think I am, the one the photographer thinks I am, and the one he makes use of to exhibit his art.' (op cit, p13). 

The "Je Ne Sais Quoi"

He wonders why he responds to some photographs and not others, and decides that most photographs are unary; they're only about one thing: the subject, what it's about, which he terms the studium.  He finds these inert.  The ones that interest him have something else to prick him, to touch him.  He calls this the punctum.  'If I like a photograph, if it disturbs me, I linger over it.' (op cit p.99).  Something happens in interesting photographs.   He illustrates this with a photograph: Nicaragua, 1979, by Koen Wessing: http://www.arts.ucsb.edu/faculty/budgett/classes/art19/camlucid_files/image002.gif
where armed soldiers patrol the streets while behind them two nuns cross the road.  This 'co-presence of two discontinuous elements, heterogenous in that they do not belong to the same world' (op cit, p23); the intrusion of normal, peaceful life into a war zone, is the punctum to warfare's studium.
Attempts to insert a punctum by creating a surprise don't impress him.  The punctum can't appear intentional, contrived.  It may be latent, not appearing straight away.  It causes the image to live outside, beyond the occasion of viewing. 
Landscape: he needs to connect with it, not simply observe: 'photographs of landscape (urban or country) must be habitable, not visitable.' (op cit, p.38)
'What I can name cannot really prick me.' (op cit, p51).  If there's an English term meaning punctum, it must be je ne sais quoi.

Bartes' Response to Photographs

He examines his response to a photograph of his mother, taken before his birth, when she was a child.  He finds it difficult to recognise a loved one from a photograph because he knows a lot more than the photograph conveys, but, 'I studied the little girl and at last rediscovered my mother.' (op cit, p.69)
The photograph is tragically limited: it can only show what was seen; not the subject's entirety; not the whole truth.  Yet some photographs express a non-photographic truth; they note not only a characteristic, they are like the subject. They occasionally reveal something about the subject that is not normally perceived.
Seeing a hand-tinted photograph made him feel that however it's created, 'color is a coating applied later on to the original truth of the black-and-white photograph.' (op cit, p.81)
In disagreement with semiologists and sociologists, he's a realist, believing that a photograph is an image without 'code', though accepts that 'certain codes do inflect our reading of it.' (op cit, p.88).
'The Photograph is violent: not because it shows violent things, but because on each occasion it fills the sight by force, and because in it nothing can be refused or transformed' (op cit, p.90)

Mad or Tame?

'Society is concerned to tame the Photograph, to temper the madness which keeps threatening to explode in the face of whoever looks at it.  To do this, it possesses two means.
'The first consists of making Photography into an art, for no art is mad.
'...The other means of taming the Photograph is to generalize, gregarize, banalize it until it is no longer confronted by any image in relation to which it can mark itself, assert its special character, its scandal, its madness.' (op cit, pp.117-118).

Other opinions exist, e.g. http://csmt.uchicago.edu/annotations/barthescamera.htm

I want to take photographs with a punctum, a 'je ne sais quoi' that makes people linger over them.  A landscape may be amazing or beautiful, but without a punctum it does not engage me.

Exercise: Capturing the Moment: Leontia Flynn

Leontia Flynn, the poet, http://www.leontiaflynn.com/ was reading her work in the Poets and Players event at the Whitworth Gallery, Manchester, and I photographed her, looking for the 'Best Moment'.
Light was limited and at 800 ISO and F5.6 I wasn't always able to stop the movement. I discarded several images in-camera, another twelve on the computer, and here are the rest.

Images 1-4
1) Reflecting; the hand clutches for the next idea.  This is a pause, not a moment.
2) Amused, driving home the point, focussed on the audience.  An attractive view, but I feel the moment has just passed.
3) The punch line.  I like the moving, blurry hand.
4) Earnest, spread fingers, explaining the point.

Images 5-8
5) Quiet; reading the next line.  Preparing for the moment.
6) Voilà, hands outspread.  But she's looking down.
7) Serious point being made, clutched in her fingers.  I like the profile against the background, the modeling of the cheekbone.
8) The moment is over, the chin line unflattering.

Images 9-12
9) Beyond profile, turned away; face too much in shadow.
10) Joky, pulling a face.  Very unflattering.
11) Animated, laying down the law with her hand.  Tip of nose is just beyond cheek line, though.
12) Animated, making point, focussed on audience.  Good modeling of cheeks, neck.

Images 13-15

13) Full length.  In between moments.  Clutter of heads bottom right.

14) Earnest, powerful.  But looking down, framing could be better.

15) Reflective mood.  Chin; eye almost closed.

 

Image 16.  I moved round and took several shots with the day-lit garden background that white balance for the tungsten lighting on the poet has here turned blue.  Here, she seems transfixed: at the point of saying something, feeling something.  It's the moment before the outburst of emotion.  Cartier-Bresson's Behind the Gare St Lazare, not Capa's Death of a Loyalist Soldier.

This is my favourite.  The background's plain, she's alert, clutching the glass to her.  Tense.  The following shots were very animated (and blurred) and their memory influences my feeling towards this image.  It's a still, transitional moment.  Hell is about to break loose.