Recent Work...

by Sam Oster on July 2nd, 2011

I guess I need to admit that blogging doesn't come very naturally to me. But today it's raining and I have a cup of tea brewing and it seems timely to jot down a few things in this little blog-type-thing.

The past couple of months have been busy with a couple of unusual projects for me, with much of my time taken by 2 'residencies'. One is an ongoing residency at Flinders Medical Centre, where I am working on a group arts project as a timelapse artist. It is very interesting working with my cameras with movement in mind, and what has been most interesting has been that my approach to timelapse has had to be very different to the usual shoots. Rather than using an intervalometer and locking off a shoot for a few hours / days at a time, this project involves lots of fast shooting and changing camera angles and lenses to follow the action of what is happening at the hospital. It is fantastic working with the other artists, including a musician, video artist and visual artist. This project will continue over the next few months, so stay posted for information about that..

The other project has been at Flinders University working as an artist in residence, again with a number of other artists across various disciplines. Co-incidentally, this is another job where I have been engaged as a timelapse /moving-image maker. This has just completed, and it was really interesting to work in the university environment.
In terms of shoots, some interesting bits and pieces have been happening. Highlights include another shoot for Zephyr Quartet, shooting some promotional images for a new collaboration coming up with a singer (see left). We chose to shoot at Himeji Gardens in the Adelaide Parklands, a delightfully serene place to spend a morning. Despite the contrasty light, we shot entirely with natural light and it was a simple and fun shoot.

The images required some variable location options, so we also shot in the nearby parklands for a more simple Australian landscape.

I always travel with location lighting options for shoots, but I have to say that unless there is enough time to play with lighting setups, this is usually the less practical option. It's far more flexible and spontaneous to be able to shoot au-naturale.
I have also shot the public performace for Dance week, presented by Ausdance SA. I always find these shoots really challenging, and this time I really blended the 3-hour shoot styles between 'natural' (that is, pretty awful gelled theatre lighting, ghastly colours and totally variable in brightness across the stage), and flash. I found that flash worked well for some some performers and not others. Trying to make the flash work effectively with the volatile stage lighting was pretty interesting! Nonetheless, there were some great results!
AND IN THE STUDIO...

I've been shooting fashion (on a charismatic mannequin) for renowned graphic designer David Zhu, whose client is launching a new range of sleepwear for women aged 45+. We have shot a range of garments for a brochure, and will be shooting the clothing on models in the next couple of weeks for his client's new website.

We had a slightly more complex lighting setup planned, but in the end we streamlined the lighting for all garments for ease of graphic layout, and worked with a simple black background. Despite the simplicity of the style of lighting, we still managed to work with 4 lights and a huge variety of cutters!

I so enjoy working in the studio and with winter setting in, I am certainly pitching for more studio shoots.
STAY TUNED.. I will be announcing an exciting opportunity for local artists to get their headshots done at the studio over the month of July..!


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