Padded Gloves, Shin Pads, and Shooting The Moon

Over the past few weeks I've been working on a series of student induction films for the Uni to use, working closely with my colleague Chris Leese. Chris is also working on a promotional short for the gym where he trains as a kickboxer, and we had the idea of shooting some material in our Shoot Studio at the Uni. So that's what we did! We set up some harsh, moody lighting, and got some shots of Chris putting his fighting pads on and doing some shadow boxing, and whilst we were filming it struck me that this was a great opportunity for an impromptu photo shoot. Chris sportingly agreed to it, and we squeezed in a quick 15 minute shoot:



The lighting was mostly from a single overhead 300W spotlight, pointing straight downwards, with a little fill light coming from two dimmed and diffused 300Ws off to the sides. I felt that the result was very pleasing, and Chris was quite chuffed with the outcome as well. We ran through some poses, and then Chris shadow-boxed some more whilst I shot away:




Sometimes, when life presents you with a photo opportunity, you'd be mad not to take it!

The full set of photos from this shoot can be seen here: "Chris Leese: Kickboxer" set on Flickr.

Regular readers will know that I have a bit of a fixation with shooting the moon. The face of the moon that we can see from Earth barely changes, so most shots of the moon are pretty similar, but there's still something special about our planet's satellite. A clear sky and a view through the trees behind my house gave me this view during last week:



It was the first time that I'd gone for a more stylised shot of the moon, and I was quite pleased with the result. It's not perfect but it's not too far off what I'd intended. I couldn't resist taking a regular moonshot though, it had to be done!



This past Saturday, I was in Grimsby for a family celebration (parents' 45th wedding anniversary, sister's 4th wedding anniversary, mine and Yol's engagement, and my birthday too!) and after dinner I took the chance to go out into the garden and shoot the full moon. This time the clouds were giving the light a lovely diffused aura effect, and so I snapped away at a variety of exposures to see what I could get:



At one point the moon was partially covered by a sash of cloud:



But the clouds parted long enough for me to get a birthday night full moon shot, and so I took the chance:



Just had to be done!

The updated gallery of moonshots can be seen here: "Moonshots" set on Flickr.

Thanks for reading!