Llynnau Mymbyr Winter [Explored]

Llynnau Mymbyr Winter [Explored], a photo by David Rothwell (rothwell172) on Flickr.

These three; in this mini series are test shots for an upcmoing project on April 6th 2013 entitled One Minute On Earth

If any of you are currently shooting a 365 + Project may be you would like to get involved for more information please see the link below.

The photographs will get voted for a book, so if your happy for your work to be displayed you can register at www.kujaja.com

Thanks for looking.

Cinematographer...

Well, well I never thought I would ever consider myself to be a Cinematographer. That said it is currently my assignment, so far I have made a fairly good draft using Adobe Premiere Elements 11. It is meant to be two minutes in length, however looking at my peers work of such length am not overly impressed.

I cannot see how someone like my target market can grasp my photography in such a short length of timescale, alas I digress. One thing for sure I definitely did notice was 'artistic' my draft is so far. It does reflect my style of photography very well, once my final edit is complete and I have completed the credits and subjected a movie score to the images I will post on here via Vimeo.

I have been watching a lot of amateur film makers work on Vimeo and to be honest I would not normally use the term amateur. These guys seem like Pros!

A lot of photographers have developed certain styles and one particular photographer has re-awakened a particular style of photography, Ian Ruhter AKA The Alchemist is known for his daguerreotyping which was the first commercially successful photographic process, his photography is shot on these rather large metal plates. Obviously with this style of photography, it is shot in brightly sunlit conditions for the process to be at an optimum. It is known as wet plate photography today.

Here is a interesting video if you haven't viewed his work, I would suggest you follow him on Vimeo

Le Métro©David Rothwell All Rights Reserved

For now I will post a 'still' from my short film...

Drowned DSLR

Okay, so one minute your there taking in the beautiful and very captivating; view of a river in winter in Wales. You have shot a few off and decide to move to get a wider view of the river.

Now when shooting in rivers especially in the UK and especially after some heavy snowfall you can expect to be a little bit wet under foot, you wrap up warm you have your special rubber grip gloves, and a trusty sturdy tripod. This tripod of course is made by a very reputable company particulary in photographers circles, a Manfrotto 055XPROB tripod with ball head.

So you have been shooting and you move your camera, I always switch off my camera after a shot in the snow or the rain or in this case; a river. Your camera holds a charge, and it is best advice to switch off, after a shot. I did two minutes later, and an unexpected increase in the water level lifted the tripod out of its firm hold and elevated the poor thing and camera into the water; I was of course oblivious as I was reaching into my kit bag to change a lens.

The initial reaction was to just pick it up, I did at once up the small hill, straight to the car, tripod off battery out, lense off and memory card out. Turn engine on, heater on, whack it up full blast and air conditioning on too. Well that a few bags of long grain rice; and plenty of hair dryer sessions and good old tungsten lights which worked as TLC lamps for my Canon 60D DSLR 108 hours later and my drowned DSLR had come back to life!

Yes, yes I am a happy man, yes I am insured but when you have a claim already for another camera, you really do want to keep your preimums down! I was ecstatic, to see the 'sensor cleaning' appear on the screen. As it goes for the last few days I have been shooting using my Canon EOS 1D MK II

And in another wet environment and pretty close to a historic castle in Wales, where else? This is shot next to the Afon Conwy; the title on the fishing boat said it all for me; it may have been a night shoot, but the whole scene was very crystal to me, so evocative. I decided to go for another perspective; the ambient light came from a nearby street lamp on the road level and the light was pretty amazing too.

So now that the Canon 60D DSLR is back online, I will be taking some surreal self portraits shots, for now enjoy this other piece from my recent night shoots.

Here is another surreal self portrait, this one with an obvious twist! I loved shooting this and the editing was just as enjoyable, Adobe CS6 is just a fantastic tool! Here is the shot and if your looking for a concept photographer get in touch! I have many more ideas coming so keep watching/reading this space, the inspiration for the shot comes from the film Twister such an exciting film; of course it shows how extreme the weather can be but for us Brits, we don't get to see many tornadoes on our little island!

However events have changed, the climate is changing and no doubt we will see more extreme weather coming our way for sure. The shot highlights climate change on a global scale, we should do more about it, people say.

Whoosh!©David Rothwell All Rights Reserved. Please do not use any of my images/digital data without my written permission. 2012

The thing is what if we physically cannot? We have an abundant energy source in our solar system, it is expanding all stars do this...I think we should stop looking for excuses of green house gases, and start looking at the bright bastard in the sky! It is the giver of life and it shall without prejudice take it away!

We are so insignificant...its about time we realised that fact.

Looking Back

Looking Back, a photo by David Rothwell (rothwell172) on Flickr.

Hello all

Looking Back©David Rothwell All Rights Reserved. Please do not use any of my images/digital data without my written permission. 2012



I have been working on the idea of multiplicty and also landscapes for my current photography assignment; I wanted to combine the two but also have a unique style.
I have looked at the work of others, and they're all very inspirational this idea was to have more figures in the shot, however it looked distracting and so decided on just the two with the backdrop of the lighthouse.

The textures came from two sources one from www.flickr.com/people/yndra/ of the Netherlands, an exceptional artist, and the other from Pye of the slr lounge tutorial.

Both are very inspirational artists, you should seek out their work respectively. The shot itself involves three photographs and two textures, in all seven layers to make this wonderful composition work. My feet did get wet and yes it was very windy, I believe the wind speed yesterday was gusting to ninety five miles an hour!

Although the water was actually warm.

Have a great new year in 2013 everyone, thanks for following my work and blog!

Thanks



David Rothwell

Happy Christmas

Hey all well 'tis the season to be jolly as they say, or should that be lolly? Well have had a fab day today thanks to family and friends at the moment am just chilling out, and thought I would share with you a series of images I shot from a surreal perspective; hope you like them I found them fun to do. So am going to do a few more seeing as I have time to do so, please enjoy your holidays!

Falling Down Serious as this may look, the story behind this shot is actually funny. Whilst posing a young boy and his sisters and dad were watching me do the shots, the little boy asked me "Wotcha doing?" I replied with glee ..."Err that's a good question, young man!"

I got to my feet and introduced myself to this man and his family shook hands wished them a Merry Christmas and produced a business card! Ha,ha what an opportunity it was to market yourself than shooting 'live', that said they have not seen the finished result as yet. No doubt they will.

Eat Dirt I enjoyed doing this one I was on such a high after being caught in the act shooting self portraits, I thought to myself how surreal it must have seemed to that man and his children, happening upon myself throwing certain shapes whilst operating a trigger switch.

The idea came to me a while ago to do something like this, I had been high up in a quarry, and shots some funny shots, however I wanted something a bit more interesting.

Interesting it will become, as always when the inception comes to my mind am always listening to music, and have shared a play list on my twitter account aka @stonemonki 

Anyways here is the next shot a bit of me or perhaps more of me Get Out Of My Way Have a Happy Christmas all of you!

House On The Hill

House On The Hill, a photo by David Rothwell (rothwell172) on Flickr.

Hey all here is my latest work, yes it has been a while since I posted anything. I have been busy though with my assignment and my book, doing a photography book is not just doing a photobook; particularly if you are trying to seel your work to high bidders!

I recently made some changes to the paper I am now using so I have gone with photorag, yeah a paper that is also 100% cotton, I heard on the grapevine that many professional photographers swear by its nature and how the whites look white and the blacks are black etc but the distinctive tones come through.

So I have gone with that for now, hope everyone is doing well and looking forward to the Christmas break....until the next post have a great time!