Self Portraits

Yes, Yet another project in my never ending addition of projects one after the other, eagerly started but questionably continued. However in all fairness my photo a day has been...inconsistently consistent in the sense that although I may miss a few I do keep going with it...regardless of updates or not, and this blog is evidence of my continued attempts to consistently document and present my work in a (supposedly) clear and concise manner. So as I was saying, I was initially inspired by this project thanks to photochallenge.org whose January Challenge (waaaaay back when) was a daily Self portrait. Of course this resulted in a few very quickly shot self portraits.

At first I was a little skeptical of the Idea, often hating beeing in front of the camera rather than behind it, however after a couple of shots I began to enjoy it, to the point where I've continued with self portraits and am taking it to a whole new level. Initially my goal was to just shoot myself, in a small different way each day, but now that's evolved into larger projects taking up a slight bit more of my time, and photoshop skills. Something dearly lacking as of late.

Anyhow I'll stop rambling and present my latest piece. Frost Fire Mage!



Enjoy!


EDIT: Aditionally I actually finished this a few weeks back, but I opted out on uploading it to get the warcraft logo and the STFU logo out. Some of you may have read a few posts back about a new Geek Blog comming up including yours truly ;) STFU and get to 80. Site and Intro video presently in production, more details soon.

A return to the Blogosphere's!

Hello all! I once again return to the wonderful world of the Blogosphere! I would like to apologise for my sudden disappearance (once again) as University work has as usual taken over my life with the comming of filming for my major project, involving hours of preparation, and over 10 days of constant filming from 5 am wakeups to 1 o clock bedtimes. However now that that has been finished and I slowly edge myself back into my normal life, photography and my little corner of the Interwebs. This little block has also prevented me from doing much photography also, leaving little to bring you up to date on.

My last substantial shoot, was one I did in Egham for the Royal Holloway SU. They recently did their very first Bollywood play and as part of the promotions I did some photoshoots depicting some of the characters. A lot of them were group shots which I'm quite proud of considering this is my first proper group shot, I was able to light them quite well.

As for the rest of the shots I stuck to a pretty basic setup, of two lights, both with brollies. I had one low, and one High pointing respectively at the subject on either side of them.

The end is Neigh!

As many of you know I have been neglecting my photographic duties and blogging (However my twitting remains unaffected which means you should get on it too :) www.twitter.com/sbalani) due to two very large film productions I am in positions of power in consuming all my time and the little sanity I have left. It doesn't help that the production I am directing has had everything under the sun, moon, and possilby flying pigs go wrong with it. The role of the main character has had its actors dissapear or pull out THREE times after the actor's had made some sort of commitment, we're stark broke and budgetless, my DOP currently has food poisoning, I've just pulled my back, Locations have temporarilly become unavailable, and the University stocks cant even supply me with the right lights. In addition to that I'm very behind on paperwork, prop acquisition and sleep which I o so desperately need has become a commodity rarely achieved even If I do actually find the time to put my head to pillow, there's no guarantee I will awaken hours later fresh and ready for another day's work... My final fallback is my oh so beloved mana potions. I'm hoping they will produce enough energy in me to boost me through this foul production (Its cursed I tell you cursed!) and keep me alive till the end of the month. Anywais I havent blogged for a while and thought a rant was necsessary to justify my resolute absence...words of sympathy or loaded guns would be very appreciated at this point :) and a hope that the universe will decide that its fucked with us long enough and go bother someone else, particularly since we're running out of lube...

Comming soon...

Security, Protection and Photography.

I'm sure many of you have heard, and been in outrage at facebook's recent change in contract and policy as blogs and news sites all over the interwebs have been in outrage at facebook's indiscretion in proclaiming ownership over the content we place on their website. If by chance you have been living under a rock and havent heard of this facebook policy, or havent kept up to date with it, let me bring you up to speed.

Initially Facebook laid down a policy indicating that all content that us, the users, upload on facebook becomes property of said company. However at the bottom of the clause there was a subclause indicating that this ownership would expire when the content was deleted or if we shut down our account, therefore returning full ownership to us the user, and only documented copies of our content would remain with facebook, for of course...documentation. However recently Facebook decided to remove this clause, thus making all content ever placed on facebook theirs. This of course presents a problem to many of us digital artists who use facebook as a form of networking, publicity, and having our work viewed through the networking system that they have developed by facebook taking ownership of the images that we place on there. However the chances that facebook would contest the ownership of the work placed on there should it ever be used, or of facebook abusing this clause and use the artwork for their own purposes are of course low, the chance is still there, scaring many artists into not publicising their work, or downright not using facebook at all.

This brings to question of where do we draw the line? Have we reached such a point where we are happy to live in a society where our privacy is is continously beeing lost for convenience and protection? In certain cases I think Facebook goes to far with the contract clause, when easily alternative options are available which would have the same efect, particularly for the purpose that facebook is claiming to require the ownership for. Since facebook has become such an integral part of the web with its content beeing streamed, replicated, streamed and reproduced, in order to protect itself from the abuse of its content they supposedly need to claim ownership so that problems dont arise in these situations. However rather than claiming ownership, Facebook could create a clause stating that by accepting the agreement facebook has the licence to use its content at its own leisure. This way facebook is free to allow its content to behave as it does on the web, and users continue to retain ownership of their work.

Overintensive security measures though, dont only affect photographers and artists on the web and on facebook but also in the streets, especially as governments become more paranoid and police forces begin to abuse the power in the name of national security. Living in a city where a cctv camera is located every 10 steps or less, I'm quite happy to on film in the name of providing a secure environment which is used to catch criminals and true threats to national security. not a drunk taking a piss behind a tree. However when Jailtime is a possibility for simply photoraphing a police officer I begin to wonder why? On Photo District New's website Today one of the main articles was of a police officer arresting a photographer on the New York Metro for taking pictures of a train. It truly Befundles me. I have pasted the article here (can be viewed on www.pdnonline.com) because when I try and click on the article link i get a blank page, but just so you all can get the gist of it

Arrested for Photographing a Train: "It's Almost Embarrassing"
© Robert Taylor	An amateur photographer was arrested and cited for unauthorized photography after taking pictures in a New York City subway station. The charge, for a crime that doesn't exist, has already been dropped. More

An amateur photographer was arrested and cited for unauthorized photography after taking pictures in a New York City subway station. The charge, for a crime that doesn't exist, has already been dropped. More Supposedly the more link will take you to the full article but its just a blank page. Something that they will fix soon I hope.

They have also made it an arrestable offense to photograph a police officer in the UK, however at least the metropolitan police has been kind enough to recently have a few talks at some photographer meetups regarding photography laws, which can be found online, and I belive photocast.net even did an podcast on it (its number 23 I believe)

to Conclude I hope my readers have a better awareness of what is happening in security in protection out there and how it affects us, and for those of you who did know the comment button on this blog is there for a reason, comment on it! Let me know what your thoughts are!


EDIT 1: A fellow photographer reports on his knowledge and an incident he recently had regarding security and photography http://wildlifephotographer.blogspot.com/2009/02/by-arresting-photographers-weve-lost.html

Valentine's Shoot

Well considering my track record, a day and a bit late is not bad, not bad at all. And so here are my images representing yet another of Capitalism's forms of extortioning and controlling us through further Ideas of Consumerism. Albeit it is still a fun Idea and a good excuse for a pink, flowery theme. and so with further ado, the images

White London

So as I'm sure many of you know, especially those living in London, (I would highly reccomend you go join the Darwin Awards if whilst beeing a resident of London remain completely oblivious to this) that we recently had a rather extreme bought of snow. Strong enough to almost completely topple the public transport system. Tubes were out, and not a single bus roamed the streets (something that even the Blitz didnt stop!). But as many of you know, especially the photogs, that neither hail, nor sleet, nor snow, nor an overbearingly scary thunderstorm will stop us from roaving out there to snap our images (considering that description I've just realised photographers are the Ideal FedEx Employees). In fact it drives us to do so that much more in hopes of getting those extraordinary Images. and So I have here for all you to enjoy, my attempt at getting such Images as i troved around Kings Cross and Hyde Park in search of....Interestingness, although I found out later the place to be was Big Ben, I am still proud of some of my achievements.