Back to the Teatro Lope de Vega to meet with two famous Spanish flamenco singers.
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First day of shooting flamenco, and the artists are very impressive.
Lets see if we can get the photography to do them justice Continue reading
The day approaches when we whizz off to Spain.
First a nice weekend with friends and wifey and then they leave me to get on with it.
Me, alone … in search of “la duende”
La duende, as I’ve mentioned earlier in a blog post, is the spirit, the heart and soul of flamenco.
It is only truly said to exist when the artist has an honest and heartfelt response to the performance. Almost an out of body experience when you connect with the primal soul.
Of course I have no great hopes of discovering it just like that but I hope the search will be enjoyable and perhaps productive photographically.
So, off to Seville in flamenco heartlands. They have the Bienal de Flamenco in the town at the moment so there should be no shortage of flamenco artists.
My Spanish is dismal though.
No, really bad.
I’m just hoping that a fairy godmother will wave a wand over me in Seville and transform all that vocabulary, verbs and splinters of grammar that I’ve been learning into some intelligible mumble.
Last night I went to La Peña Flamenca de Londres in London’s Pimlico.They put on some sort of show once a month and I have visited twice so far, to meet the people and attempt to understand the art and culture of this most famous Spanish art.
Everyone knows something about flamenco dancing but almost all of us are wrong in our preconceptions.
The more I learn, the more I realise how complicated this is.
So far my research seems to indicate that flamenco is not about the fancy guitar strumming, nor the black eyed beauties twirling their frilly skirts and stamping.
It’s the song.
The “cante jondo”, the passionate song of flamenco. The stories of love and death.
The dancers and guitarists are there to support and underline this song.
I think !
My problem, photographically, is to shoot pictures that show the passion of the words and music.
It is a problem.
I can’t capture the words nor the music in pictures – so I have to rely upon seeing the feeling being shown by the artists.
So far the most visually passionate part of the performance has been with the dancers and to a lesser extent the singers, so it is this I have been photographing most.
I’m learning all the time and I will get there but at the moment I am not convinced by my results.
I have time though and it will get better.
Yes, Oscar is my new grandson’s name.
Here at The GBs home we are all staggering around in a state of dazed wonder.
Any how I’m sure we’ll come back to earth soon enough.
Meantime I’ll tell you the details, add a few snaps (yes, I’m afraid they are just snaps) and try to move on without boring you all with the minutiae of our family life.
Oscar weighed in at 7 lbs 9 ozs at 4.45 am on the 12th August 2014
Oh my word !!
We are grandparents
My son Patrick and daughter in law Tashi have produced a 7lb 9ozs baby boy – Oscar.
We’re all so clever aren’t we !!!!
Sunday 27 July – went to photograph world renowned flamenco guitarist Juan Martin.
Juan Martin is reckoned to be one of the foremost flamenco guitarists in the world so as part of my personal mission to document flamenco I arranged to meet up with him whilst he was in London.
He was actually teaching a Masterclass on behalf of the International Guitar Federation at KIng’s Place near St Pancras. A group of a dozen guitar aficionados had gathered to worship at his feet and learn just how it should be done.
Flamenco is normally considered to be the fusion of three arts:
Dance – Baile
Song – Cante
Guitar – Guitarra
Surprisingly, for some people the guitar is the lesser of the flamenco arts and it is the song and dance that holds the emotion.
I don’t know enough about it to express an opinion but was quickly aware that I was in the presence of someone who can make a guitar sing.
You will notice in the pictures the length of the nails on his right hand, especially his thumb.
They are very important to a flamenco guitarist and are jealously maintained.”So what do you do if you break one ?”
“Superglue !”
Update: Some keen photo-folk want to know the equipment I used on this shoot so I have added a little addendum at the bottom of this blog.
Check out his video on YouTube where Juan describes the art of flamenco guitar far better than I can.
Link Here
All pix shot on the Nikon D800 (which is my most favourite camera ever) using either the old Nikon 85mm f1.8 (had it for 20+ years) or the Nikon 24-70mm f 2.8 zoom.
Lighting was supplied by my Godox battery flash units, which I reviewed at the end of last year – they worked really well.
Set at 1/16th power I was getting F7.1 at 200asa
Using a smallish beauty dish (similar to this one) and a honeycomb ( like this ) as the main light source quite close to the subject (about 1m – 1.5m).
At this range the fall-off of light was quite severe which is what I wanted and enabled me to keep much of the subject in shadow.
(I had a softbox too, but found that it was much harder to control the light spill.)
For fill light I had a single Lastolite reflector on a stand
I also used another head to add some light from behind and lift his dark hair from the black background. This head was also used with a small reflector dish and a honeycomb grid to control the spill.
Any questions – just drop me a line and I’ll get back to you asap.
Well as some of you know I’ve been talking about a personal project for some time now and I have finally got the photography off the ground.
By joining a flamenco group in London I have been able to attend and photograph my first public performance, last Sunday. Continue reading
And so to the House of Illustration for their opening bash. Continue reading
I did my degree in photography at the end of the 60’s – yes the Swinging Sixties when all eyes were on London, the capital of cool.
I was doing the coolest degree in the coolest country.
And the King of Cool, the man who had just stepped out of the fridge, was Bailey.
Continue reading
And an old mate dropped in to see us the other day and he inspired me to write something.
When Patrick hoves into view it always has an unsettling effect on me.
Patrick Chauvel and I go way back.
To a time almost forgotten, when I worked in Paris for SIPA press and I could call myself a photo-journalist without sounding pretentious.
Patrick was there too and at a time when my ability to speak French was almost non-existent, his mastery of English was very welcome.
We got on immediately.
He was wild.
Still is.
Whereas I’ve become a responsible member of society (! ha !), Patrick has continued to plough his own mad furrow.
You see Patrick should be dead.
Several times over.
If he were a cat, he would be a dead cat – Nine lives are just not enough.
Patrick is probably the worlds longest serving war photographer.
If memory serves me right I think he started with the Six Day War in 1967 and he has just kept going.
Fortunately for him, if not for the rest of the world, the conflicts have never let up.
So he’s been supplying photographs of man’s inhumanity to man non-stop for almost 50 years.
He’s got good at it too.
His pictures are always the “sharp-end” stuff, where things go bang.
And I guess he’s got good at surviving those situations, despite picking up a few nasty holes in his body.
Have a look at his web site which is not very well maintained but gives you an idea of the wealth of images that he has captured.
I had quickly decided that war photography was dangerous, so my dalliance with that side of things I kept to an absolute minimum … just enough to maintain a conversation in a bar.
For Patrick it is his life.
Whenever he comes to London he tries to drop by and we catch up and drink wine, bitch about clients, exchange stories, and generally reminisce. It’s good.
But when he leaves I worry.
I worry that this may be the last time.
He has been tempting the Gods for too long with views of his backside scrambling for cover.
One day I fear they may reach out and claim him and we will all be the worse off.
This time I decided to do some pix of him in case I don’t get the opportunity again.
Keep your head down you mad sod !