Alasdair Watson – Page 162 – Unreliable information since 1972

The Heart Of The World

Posted on November 14, 2006 by Alasdair

Jhayne Holmes (porphyre) is one of the more interesting strangers on my friends list, and she would like your help.

She’s found an old theatre for sale in Vancouver, a place where acts like Neil Young and Sonic Youth once played. She wants to re-open it as an artistic space – a place for theatre, and cinema and music, a place for art of any kind. As she says:

Imagine buying a space and starting your own theatre, or your own art gallery, or your own movie theatre, or your own music hall. Imagine being able to host performances of all sorts- giving your creative friends space to perform or exhibit their work. I’ve got friends who are dancers and painters and lighting designers and actors and directors and writers and photographers and cinematographers… it would be amazing to give them a space to create what they dream of, to be seen, heard, and appreciated.

You can find out more here: http://porphyre.livejournal.com/535610.html

She has three weeks to raise a million dollars. Please, if you can: help. Donate a token amount, if that’s all you can think of to do (like I have). If you’re able to help in some other way, do that. She’s trying to create the kind of space that’s hard to come by, the sort of place that there should be more of. It’s the sort of place I’d love to run myself in London. Please: send the link around. Talk about this attempt. Tell people about it, and tell them to help, too.

(Donate a token amount anyway – you’d do it for charity, and this is Art, and deserves your support every bit as much, and that’s a hell of a target she’s aiming for.)

While I think of it: The Prestige.

Posted on November 13, 2006 by Alasdair

Run, don’t walk.

Best film I’ve seen this year.

Can’t stop thinking about it, even though I’d read the book beforehand.

Intake

Posted on November 12, 2006 by Alasdair

One from what was a really rather messy night out. (I don’t actually remeber taking this one, but it’s bracketed by two that I do remember taking on the camera’s memory card, so I assume that it was me that took it, and not the camera faeries.)

On the bright side, I also assume that Doug here was as drunk as I was, given that he doesn’t smoke.

Who Was That Masked Man?

Posted on November 6, 2006 by Alasdair

I know that I’m getting a new lens for christmas, one that will do rather better in poor lighting. This is a blessing, because I should be able to try shots like this at ISO settings below 1600, and thus produce them in colour, without having to fight a constant battle between noise and camera shake.

Well, that was a bit bloody good, then.

Posted on November 6, 2006 by Alasdair

Top weekend. Friends, gigs, drinking, unexpected clubbing, and generally full of fun and frolics. More of that sort of thing, I think.

Tonight: gym and photo processing. Apologies to those waiting for more Rollergirls pics – I’ve got a few more queued up, and a few more I think I can make something good out of, but LJ was down Saturday, so I had no chance to put anything up. (Before anyone says “Sunday” see above remarks regarding other activity, and understand that a certain amount of recovery was required.)

Venue Security In Action

Posted on November 2, 2006 by Alasdair

I feel this speaks for itself.

A Bad Workman…

Posted on November 1, 2006 by Alasdair

I’ve just gone through the photos I took at the Evil Genius gig last night. Any y’know, it’s not my tools – my camera is quite good, after all. But suffering zombie jesus, what I would give to be able to take photos at gig venues where the lighting guy has a a clue.

If anyone out there is a lighting person for a small venue, here’s some helpful hints:

There should a spot of some kind on the lead singer – doesn’t have to be constant, if you really like turning lights on and off for some reason, just perhaps on for about 75% of the time. I’m not even fussy about the colour (although, I shoudl also add that red and sodium orange are the ones everyone else is using, and everyone is used to seeing bands lit in red, and I know I’m sodding bored of it), I just have this sense that it might be important to see him or her. More than, perhaps, the bassist.

Secondly: if you cut across the very front of your lighting display with a beam of white light from the side, aiming the dancefloor wall, rather than, say, the band, it will become harder to see through it. Two additional random-motion colour-changing downlights aimed at the crowd are similarly pointless – if you want your lights to do all that pattern and colour throwing shit, and generally change every ten seconds, well, OK, but aim it at the stage, not the crowd. The band are getting money to compensate them for your annoying inability to pick a lighting design and stick to it. All this shit in front of the stage does is get in people’s eyes. There’s a reason the house lights go out, and it’s not just that the crowd are often ugly.

Yes, I am whinging about this because it fucked up my photography. And yes, I should be able to get around it, but even a hood on the lens didn’t do the job, and I don’t like to use the flash at gigs for lots of reasons. But y’know, the reason it fucked up my photography was in part that it was very hard to see anything with my goddamn eyes, and I’ve got good nightvision.

Why yes, I did just go through 150 photos, and find nothing usable. Does it show?

Bollocks.

A Bad Workman…

Posted on November 1, 2006 by Alasdair

If anyone out there is a lighting person for a small venue, here’s some helpful hints:

Why yes, I did just go through 150 photos, and find nothing usable. Does it show?

Bollocks.

Plane Crash

Posted on November 1, 2006 by Alasdair

I experimented with several different versions of this before settling on this one, mostly playing with the colour caturation and shadows, trying to get it all in balance.

I love the fact that the young lady on the right has her eyes shut, for no reason I can adequately fathom.