Electric Pig » Canon

Shura @ Archway

Electric Pig — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 18:52:56 +0000

I went to one of my lil’sister’s gigs this week, somewhere in Archway, deepest, darkest Norf London. Shu plays guitar and sampler and sings her own songs, accompanied by a boy with the curliest hair since Keegan’s 70′s mop (been watching too much World Cup recently). She can be found on the web here and here. The gig was good, Shu sung well and was well received I thought, with just some work needing doing on the time she takes with initial looping. I must add that the guy who started off the night, whose name I believe was Craig Ingham, had some of the best patter between songs I have ever heard. Much better than the usual thanks and introduction to the band that we got when I was young…

I wanted to try to take some photos at the gig, partly for Shu’s prospective website, and partly just for photo practice. It turned out to be quite a good venue for photos, as I had a decent sized seat and a little table in front to hold my bag. I found I could just about get away with a couple of shots at 200ISO, but most of the shots are at 400 or 800 ISO. I had better focus with the 50mm at f1.8 than I had had last time I had tried to shoot any shots of one of her gigs, with slightly less blur, but it still wasn’t great. I took far more shots this time though, so there was bound to be some degree of sheer quantity of shots yielding slightly more good ones. There wasn’t really room to move around when the music had actually started though, hence the similar angle for most of them. Sorry about that. There’s some more below. Click to see them bigger.

Form & Function

Electric Pig — Sat, 15 May 2010 14:27:47 +0000

Bored, I finally got round to processing some old photos of the Tokyo International Forum which I had never bothered doing. I guess the International Forum is probably my favourite building in Tokyo. It’s one of those buildings that doesn’t disappoint when you see it for real. The size, acoustics and, (whenever I’ve been) comparative lack of people allow you to sit on one of the benches and appreciate the actual architecture. I haven’t found a similar building in London where the quality of the architecture is matched by the amount of access the public have to saunter around inside. I end up going there pretty much every time I’m in the area, and then end up making some excuse to go here too. The photos below were taken at various times in the past 8 years, with a variety of cameras. Click the photos below to see bigger versions:

He Flies!

Electric Pig — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 22:23:26 +0000

Texture

Electric Pig — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 11:52:41 +0000

Deer Park & Isabella Plantations

Electric Pig — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 12:15:40 +0000

Click to see bigger versions!

Shu

Electric Pig — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 19:01:55 +0000

From my lil’Sis’ gig in Notting Hill. Unfortunately shot at 1600 ISO thanks to the low light and then worked on in PS. She was very good.

SOAS Library Panorama

Electric Pig — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 14:27:23 +0000

This is a ten shot panorama of the main reading room in the library at SOAS. I’ve been taking shots there all week, and I think that this is probably the best one, although I’m still not completely happy with it.

Rainfall

Electric Pig — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:40:29 +0000

50mm f1.8

New HDR Technique

Electric Pig — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 00:49:14 +0000

Trying out a new HDR (from single RAW), technique. Quite liking the results, they seem to be better when the subject has some kind of stone or rock in it. Not sure about the one of the little boy – not particularly keen on the HDR effect on people. In fact, I’m not sure how much I like this really strong HDR effect at all, but it is pretty interesting…

Yukarin!

Electric Pig — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 05:38:14 +0000

After visiting the vaguely disturbing Yasukuni Shrine last week, my Dad and I wandered over the road to the Nippon Budokan to have a look at the cherry blossoms that were in tarty bloom. We decided to go inside to take a look at the venue (one of Japan’s most prestigious, where the Beatles – amongst many others – played), where I had never been before. Just inside the massive stone walls, there were thousands of people, mainly mid 20s/30s men, queueing up. Figuring it might be some kind of heavy metal concert (there was a lot of black clothing on display), we had a wander to try to work out what was going on. It turns out that it was a concert by Yukari Tamura, a (possibly) famous anime & video game voice actress and Akiba-kei pop-star. The queue was not to meet her, nor to get into her concert, nor even to buy concert tickets, but just to buy the official concert merchandise, including cuddly rabbits, doilies and photos. Not having a video camera, I put my camera on rapid photo mode, and made this little animation of the (really a little scarily long) queue. The music you can hear is from her album. When you’re listening, bear in mind that she is 32 years old. Any geeks / Members of her Mellow Pretty Fanclub /Rabid Otaku people who may want to just download it can do so here, otherwise, click the picture below.