From places I can't say (II)

Much the same as the last post.

-PM

April in Enniskillen

Pardon the radio silence over the past month, but I am currently living and working in an area devoid of phone signal and internet capabilities.  Not that this is a bad thing, it means that my fishing and table tennis skills are improving steadily, but it means that I am falling behind in blog updates and current affairs (I will have recommit to buying newspapers).  Although I have been photographing daily for work (and pleasure) there are not too many that I can release, but I will make an effort to post more often.  I'll be in Enniskillen for another month so I should really bring my medium format cameras to the country and spend the evenings and weekends by the loughs.

The news in short: I am currently working on a period drama (oil lamps are better than candles, fact).  Offshore has been submitted to the Belfast Photo Festival.  I am very excited about my copy of Selgado's Genesis arriving (I wish I had a spare £2000 for the 'sumo' edition).


More coming soon, but here are a few images to keep this space ticking over.

-PM

Nazis stole my Christmas...

[Still from Dead Snow, 2009, dir. Tommy Wirkola]

Well, sort of.

Throughout December I was working on a BBC4 drama, entitled An Innocent Abroad (nothing to do with Dead Snow pictured above), and this wonderful job consumed all of my time.  Working with specific period props and dressing was invaluable experience, as well as tackling onscreen smoking (I have a new appreciation for the standby props team on Mad Men).  The feature is set during WWII and follows P.G. Wodehouse - more information can be viewed here.

[Christmas, on the set of An Innocent Abroad, Belfast, 2012]

I had banked on working on my photography coming up to Christmas, and so this was unexpected.  But a job is a job so it must be done, and it was a fantastic script/period so it was a pleasure to work on. However, as I was working out the logistics to my Offshore project, for the forthcoming O U T | T U O exhibition, and submerging myself nightly in photographic theory and Rathlin research, I managed to mentally juggle both: props by day and photography by night.

The role of 'standby props' involves taking plenty of pictures anyway, so I was never far from a camera (and we happened to be using plenty of vintage cameras too, for our wartime journalists).  My images from the sets of An Innocent Abroad obviously cannot be shown, but I can show other photographs that I took during the filming process.  With another possible group show coming up later in 2013, focusing on the spectacle of filmmaking, I was drawn to photographing what we consider normal on set, or as part of everyday, that isn't - giant balls of light, for example.

There are also images of beard trimmings, fancy coffees in fancy homes, ninja antics, manual car rocking, and flash bulbs. But I'll save those for another time.

-PM