Nick Heaphy Photography

Exhibition Update

2015-01-27T20:42:00.000+13:00

Somehow I had forgotten (or deleted for some reason) to include the Coffeewhore exhibition on the Exhibitions page. Have updated.

The Window Project

2012-12-01T17:37:00.000+13:00

As always I have been really slack at updating the blog. I have just realised, 4 months in that I didn't write anything about The Window Project on the blog.

Actually there is probably nothing much more to say that I have not already said on the about page so I won't... other than to say there are a couple of new images up for December.

Averagely Attractive

2012-07-16T12:15:00.002+12:00

Having seen Photo Opportunities where multiple photos of popular tourist locations were layered together, and recalling a phycology test (like this) I did back when I was at University (there was good money for poor students partaking in Phyc tests!) I wondered about layering images of celebrities together to form some sort of average representation of them.

A wet Saturday morning of coding resulted in a Photoshop script that would allow you to mark the eyes in an image, then the script would scale, rotate and position the images into a stack, adjusting the opacity based on the total number of images.

It was then just a case of trawling Google Images (apologies to the copyright holders) to gather a series of celebrity images to process to see what came out at the other end.

Averagely Attractive

Updates...

2012-07-01T17:30:00.000+12:00

Having decided to have a TV free week, I need something to do so have updated the website adding a new series of images from the Fever Hospital in Wellington (though they should probably be added to the Abandoned series which will probably happen eventually) and added an old series called Tomorrow that I exhibited in the Hatch show in 2009 (was it that long ago?...)

Expect a few more updates as I have another 5 rolls to finish retouching before trying to make some semblance of order from them...

The Hidden

2011-10-24T17:07:00.002+13:00

Some new images made over the long weekend.

The Hidden

Picked up a new little compact (already out of date even though it is brand new) for our trip to the UK at the end of the year. Decided that rather than lugging the Hasselblad around like I did last trip, that I really needed something small. While I would love to be able to find an affordable Mamiya 6 so I could keep shooting 120 film, my Trademe watch list has come up empty. In the end the size and the square format crop mode on the Canon S95 appealed enough to get a digital compact (though I will probably take the Oympus XA with some Orwo B&W too - even though I loath scanning 35mm)

Needed to try it out, hence the Hidden series.

If anyone has a Mamiya 6 that they want to sell off, let me know.

Barricade Update

2011-10-03T16:27:00.003+13:00

Trying to get through my processing and scanning backlog. Found another roll of film containing shots from the Barricade series so have put up 6 new images...

Parking Update

2011-10-03T15:23:00.001+13:00

Have finally gotten though scanning a roll of film from the Parking series. Rather than putting all the buildings on a single page I have decided to break the series up into individual buildings...

MyWellington Update

2011-09-06T21:18:00.002+12:00

Have just added 10 images to MyWellington (shout out to Karim Sahai who hooked me up with the roll of Ektar 100 that they were shot on (I know is says Fuji 400H at the bottom, but not really sure yet how I am going to change the pages style sheet to reflect different film types))

PhotoEspresso you Rock

2011-09-05T21:28:00.002+12:00

I like coffee. I like photography. Wellington has a place where both of these things exist in perfect harmony. PhotoEspresso. I can wander in, drop off a roll of film ($6 for a dev only 120), or a memory stick of images, and while I wait I can have a pretty damn good coffee. The staff are friendly, they embrace analog photography (they still have a wet lab, rare in this day and age), every 5 coffees you have you get 5 free prints (I have been getting 4x4 prints made and building a physical version of Random Wellington) - what's not to love?. If the place had a couch I might never leave.

New camera holding still type device

2011-08-15T18:13:00.004+12:00

Decided to take advance of the strong NZ $ and finally upgrade my crusty old Velbon (ex video) tripod to a nice new Manfrotto 055XProB with a flash ball head. I must admit that I am not really much of a tripod user, but having dropped the cash, I now really need to make sure I take it everywhere!

To that end, I wanted a method of carrying the tripod, but I did not really want a bag to get in the way. The goal was to have a shoulder strap that I could use with the tripod collapsed down, but also with a camera mounted and the legs extended.

Visited a local haberdashery shop and picked up some D rings, slides, clips and webbing and proceeded to raid my toolbox for cable ties and electrical tape.

The D rings were attached to the tripod with cable ties and electrical tape (the idea was that the tape would stop it moving round) while the slides and clips formed a strap that would stop the legs opening while I was carrying it. The shoulder strap was donated from an old laptop case.

Overall it works pretty well, might have to rethink the upper attachment as the D ring tends to slide around under the electrical tape when the head is not oriented with the D ring up, but not bad for $8 worth of parts.

World Press Photographic Exhibition

2011-08-14T19:31:00.002+12:00

Was a cold rainy day when we visited the World Press Photographic exhibition today. I probably should have realized that the depressing day outside would have been reflected by the imagery inside, based on mans disregard for each other and our propensity of enjoying seeing the misery of others.

Don't get me wrong, not all of the images were of war and natural disaster, however there was a significant percentage. The images of course were amazing and very sobering. I can't imagine what possess a photographer to want to go into these places to make images (though if you have not seen it, War Photograper does give some insight)

Well worth the $5 entry fee. On until 7/9/2011 at the Academy of Fine Arts

More Pieces of You

2011-08-14T18:09:00.004+12:00

Have finally added most of the pending Polaroid images to Pieces of You.

I do have a bit of a plan forming in the back of my head for an evolving exhibition of these images, with the plan to have the camera setup in the exhibition space and as people come in, they have their photo taken and the new image added to the wall, so the exhibition will grow over time.

Only problem with this plan is that all my holiday time is booked to go overseas at the end of the year, so it might be something to aim for next year.

Site Updates

2011-08-14T16:34:00.002+12:00

I have spent a bit of time today tiding up the website. I hope I have not broken anything.

The major change is that I have removed my photoblog that I started quite a few years ago. I have been trying to concentrate more on series of images rather than individual images, so the photoblog has been a bit neglected of late. In the end I decided that I would kill it completely, and any individual images that I liked I would put up on Flickr

As some will already know, I have recently moved to Wellington from Christchurch. It was pretty sad to leave the broken city (we moved for work, rather than to get away from Earthquakes) and the guys who I used to shoot with - in an effort to get to know the city better I have been wandering with the camera.

I have also put up a new series on car parking in Wellington. Wellington is a pretty crazy place for parking (compared to what I am used to in Christchurch anyway) and I have become more conscious of this since my work office moved into the central city and I now don't have the luxury of a permanent car park. Probably good for me as I am working the 30min to the office in the morning - though listening to the rain outside, I can't say I am looking forward to the walk tomorrow.

Anna | Concrete

2011-04-08T12:43:00.006+12:00

My mate Dave shoots beautiful women frequency and always waxes lyrically about how amazing they all are. Whenever I read I always think that he goes a bit overboard, but I now suspect this is because I don't shoot people very often.

Having had the opportunity to shoot the stunning Anna a few weekends ago, I now think I understand where Dave is coming from. I wonder if there is small part of a photographer that falls in love with their subject during a shoot.

Shooting one on one is quite an intimate thing, especially if it is the first time that the model and photographer have met. Both have had to trust that the other is not a crazy axe murderer, the model has to trust that the photographer will represent them in a favourable light, while the photographer has to ensure that the shots are not complete crap (especially when shooting film like I was, giving no opportunity for chimping!)

I only spent 45min shooting Anna, but it was close to the perfect 45min. Sure the lighting on the day did not cooperate so there were a couple of images that I had planned that we didn't get to shoot, but other than than it was pretty perfect.

Thankfully I did not screw up the B&W film processing (always a bit of a worry)

"She's a whimsical, tragical beauty
Self-conscious and a little bit moody" - Beck

DanCro Generator

2011-01-12T21:36:00.002+13:00

Added a new page about my DanCro Generator, a video procession application that explores the world of Daniel Crooks.

Barricade

2010-12-19T14:04:00.003+13:00

Added another project I have been working on. At the moment I feel like it is missing something, but I do have some ideas that I am waiting to fall into place that will hopefully break up the "polished and empty" look (quote from Anna that I quite liked)

Check it out here: http://nickheaphy.com/Barricade/

Pieces of You

2010-10-04T20:01:00.004+13:00

With Steve giving me a Polaroid passport camera I thought I better put it to use. After a couple of failed attempted I have managed to piece 4 images together to form one portrait. Figured that it might make an intreresting project to shoot a bunch of different people with the camera.

I have put up the first few shots on the website here: http://nickheaphy.com/PiecesOfYou/

If you are interesting in being part of the project then please contact me.

New Scanner

2010-09-08T10:24:00.002+12:00

I decided I am sick of my crusty old scanner so I have ordered a new Canon Canoscan 9000F. Would have loved a Epson v700 but decided that it way outside my budget.

Am hoping that the new scanner's software is better. At the very least the process should be quicker.

My wife is going to kill me though...

Scanning

2010-09-05T16:06:00.004+12:00

I am currently sitting scanning negatives from my holiday after cleaning up my study after Christchurch's earth quake. Unlike everyone else on the internet who is in Christchurch I am not going to talk about the earthquake, nor am I going to show you any photos of the devastation....

What I want to know is why any lab operator would cut my square format 6x6 negatives into 5 pieces. A 120 roll should give you 4 x 3 frames - which is perfect for my scanner as it will scan three frames. For some reason, I got one strip with two frames, three with three frames and a piece, that I would not even call a strip, with one single lonely frame.

Of course I dropped in five rolls for processing, and the same person must have cut all 5 rolls. Bastards!

RPS Talk - Holy Trinity - Aperture, Shutterspeed and ISO

2010-05-07T19:13:00.003+12:00

Talk I was asked to do at Rangiora Photographic Society...

When Kevin asked me to do a talk I initially wanted to talk about aperture as it features in my style of photography, however I realised I could not really talk about aperture without talking about shutterspeed - but you can't talk about shutterspeed without also talking about ISO - so rather ambitiously I thought I would talk about all three!

Now I probably don't have the same thoughts as some about what you need to know in order to produce a good image. Many will think you need to know loads of technical information about aperture, shutterspeed and ISO when in reality what you actually need to know if the effect each has on your images.

Modern digital cameras are based on their film counterparts - unfortunalty while technology has changed, the terms used in the film based days still persist. When shooting form you do need to have a much better technical understanding of the process as you had no way to see the results until you had the film processed. Often what this meant was that if you did not shoot it right you could not reshoot. Now you can immediately see the results on the back of the camera - if it is not right you can reshoot straight away

Getting back to what I am hear to talk about - because if the power you have being able to immediately see the results, knowing that the aperture of an optical system is the opening that determines the cone angle of a bundle of rays that come to a focus in the image plane is no longer required. What you actually need to know is that aperture effects how much in the picture is in focus.... but I am getting ahead of myself.

Lets start with talking about getting the perfect sun tan...

What are the thing you need to consider when trying to get the perfect suntan?

* How much light hits your skin
* How long you are out in the sun
* How sensitive your skin is to the sun

We all know that the longer you are out in the sun, the more chance there is of getting burnt. We also know that the brighter the sun is, the shorter the time before getting burnt. Finally if you have fair sun you are more likely to get burnt and you need to control how sensitive your skin is but using sun tan lotion.

So if you want the perfect tan on any given day you can adjust all three as they are all linked.

If I increase the amount of light (maybe by being out at midday) then I need to decrease either the amount of time I spend in the sun or decrease how sensitive my skin is by using lotion.

What if I decrease the amount of time I spend in the sun but still want a perfect tan?

I need to either make my skin more sensitive (by applying less lotion) or I need to increase the amount of light hitting my skin.

So what does this have to do with photography?

Getting the perfect exposure is exactly the same.

Imagine that your cameras sensor is your skin. You can control the aperture to control how much light there is that hits the sensor. You can control the shutter speed to determine how long the sensor is in the light and you can use the ISO to control how sensitive your sensor is to light.

So there are three things to balance in order to get the perfect exposure - each of them control the amount of light in one way or another.

The key is that these things all have different effects on the image - it is these things that we are going to look at.

Aperture controls the amount of light getting through the camera - the consequence of this is that the less light causes more things within the scene to be in focus. If I focus the lens on something, when you look at the aperture numbers you can think of them as the lower the number, the less things in front or behind the focus point are in focus, the higher the number, the more things in focus. This is usually referred to as the depth of field or depth of focus.

You don't really need to understand are more of the technical reasons behind this phenomena, just the effect. When you want lots of things in focus, set a high number, when you want less in focus set a low number.

Lets say we don't want lots of things in focus, so we set a low number. This means that we let more light into the camera.

Remember back to the suntan, if the sun is brighter we need to either:

* Spend less time in the sun
* Decrease our sensitivity to sunlight by applying suntan lotion

What about the opposite, we what lots of things in focus, so we pick a large number, which means that less light enters the camera.

Back to the suntan, we now need to either spend more time in the sun or increase our sensitivity by applying less lotion.

So how do we spend more or less time in the sun with our camera?

This is controlled by the shutterspeed. This determines how long our sensor (our skin) is exposed to the sun.

The consequence in terms of cameras of spending more time in the sun is that things can move while the shutter is open. If they more while the shutter is open then they will blur.

So lets say I don't want blur in my image, I need to set a fast shutterspeed (a high number on the camera).

A fast shutterspeed means I spend less time in the sun. What do I need to do in order to get the perfect tan?

* Increase the amount of light (set a lower aperture)
* Increase how sensitive my skin is to the sun

Of course the reverse holds true too. If I want blur within my image, set a low shutterspeed and spend more time in the sun so I need to:

* Decrease the amount of light
* Decrease how sensitive my skin is to light

You can now probably guess what ISO represents in getting our perfect tan.

ISO determines how sensitive our skin is to light. The higher the ISO number the more sensitive to light our camera becomes.

The trade of of making the camera more sensitive to light is that the noise within the image also increases. Again, there is a technical reason for this, but is is really not important to our image making.

So lets put this into practice. Here I have a lovely scene (camera with 50mm f1.4 setup pointing at a table containing different objects at different distances to the camera. One item contains a motor and causes movement)

Q. What do I need to do to get everything in focus?

A. I need to set a big aperture number, as this gives a big depth of field

Q. But what does this mean in terms of light?

A. Less light hitting the sensor so I need to either decrease the shutterspeed (spend more time in the sun).

Q. What happens to the same scene if we introduce movement?

A. The slow shutterspeed means we get a blur.

Q. What can we change if we want to keep he large depth of field and a high shutterspeed to stop movement?

A. ISO, we can make the camera more sensitive to light

Q. What is the consequence of increasing the ISO?

A. We end up with more noise in the image.

Q. Lets say we want a shallow depth of field, ie a small aperture number. Does this increase or decrease the amount of light?

A. Increase the amount of light.

Q. If we increase he amount of light what do we need to do?

A. Remember back to the suntan, we need to either spend less time in the sun or we need to make our skin less sensitive. So set a high shutterspeed or a low ISO number

As you can see you need to decide on the aesthetics that you want within your image first.

Do I want everything in focus or do I want to isolate something with a shallow depth of field?

Do I want to freeze movement or do I want to give the impression of movement?

When this has been decided you can use the camera controls in order to turn that into reality by adjusting aperture to control depth of field, shutterspeed to freeze or allow motion. ISO to allow you to achieve the correct balance between aperture and shutterspeed, potentially at the expensive of noise.

In my opinion the technical details behind why changing the aperture results in different depth of focus can remain a mystery, same with why a fast shutter freezes motion - the details don't matter, only the effect on the image. If you don't like the effect you see on the back of the camera then just reshoot changing one of the variables.

Questions....

World Pinhole Day

2010-04-25T18:30:00.002+12:00

After dragging myself out of bed for the ANZAC dawn service, pulled out a roll of film and loaded it into my 8Banners pinhole before heading out the door. A 1hr exposure of peoples legs in front of us should be interesting. Need to finish the roll off now...

Housekeeping

2010-04-09T21:11:00.001+12:00

Moved the current exhibition page to the past exhibition page as the current exhibition has become a past exhibition due to the fact it is not current and is in the past....

New Abandoned images

2010-04-08T21:45:00.003+12:00

Have added a few images to the Abandoned series. Also changed to a yuck Flash gallery until I finish a Javascript version that can handle all the different aspect ratios.

Gutted...

2010-04-05T14:20:00.004+12:00

Stopped by Supreme today only to find that two of the panels had fallen out of the windows. It is not the fact that they had fallen out the bothers me, nor the fact that the corners are damaged (and I suspect that faces are scratched) it is the fact that in the process of falling, they would have appeared to have set of the alarm as there is an Armour Guard note stuck in the door. That really sucks as I going to have to pay for it! Grrrrrrr.....

Am trying to cheer myself up by scanning film - which I hate doing, however some of the images appear OK.

3 rolls of 120...

2010-04-04T19:24:00.001+12:00

Processed 3 rolls of 120 film today. Another 3 to go and I will have cleared the backlog of pinhole shots. Expect new pics soon...