Here is a painting commission of Machrihanish Beach (near Campbeltown) that I completed earlier this week:
Not only is this my first painting since July, but surprisingly it is my first acrylic painting in 12 months (according to the blog history)!
I can understand why I've not done any major paintings in the past 3 months, and I'm aware that I've not painted on a regular basis since my Film-inspired Painting Series exhibition last December, but I still find it hard to believe that I've not touched my acrylic paints in 12 months.
On Thursday I finally got time at work to finish editing some of the footage that I shot of Mr Spin performing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival way back in August:
The video above is the first part of Mr Spin's wonderful street performance: Consisting of amazing hat tricks, devil-sticking, and one-ball manipulation.
I got to film the full 30/45 minute performance, which includes more devil-sticking and hat tricks, along with some crazy juggling and extreme unicycling! I intend on making a second video to showcase those tricks too, however the footage appears to be missing from the work computers, so until someone locates & re-loads the original tapes we will just have to wait...
On Friday night I was at Mucky Mulligan's in Perth to film metal band Kill The Commodore as they played their first home gig since appearing at Bestival a few weeks ago.
I used my [very] recently purchased Sony DCR-SR58E Handycam; which is a big step down from the kind of camcorder I have access to at my day-job, but it'll do for now until I discover whether a bigger camera would be worth it...
The little Handycam is very much just a point-and-shoot type of camera, which is simple enough to operate, but its manual controls (via touchscreen) are dreadful compared to the high-end camcorders that I have been used to at work. As a result of that issue (along with the short time I had to get familiar with the camera) my footage was rather hit-and-miss with numerous automatic controls conflicting with my manually-operated intentions. I also found, as per the warning in the operating guide, that loud noise (ie: live music) can interfere with the camera - to such an extent as to automatically cut the recording process after only so long on several occasions!
My above video, We Will Not Be Moved (live), should hopefully become the first of several to get edited from Friday night's gig footage; with the rest of the videos getting posted as they are finished.
At work this afternoon we went for a location-scouting walk along the old railway line (and tunnels) near Bridge of Allen in Perthshire. The old line runs almost parallel to parts of the M90 motorway, which I regularly travel on, yet until I conducted some research last week I had no idea that the line was ever there... One of the random facts I picked up last week is that part of it was bombed by the Nazi's during World War 2!
After parking our cars on a farm road in the middle of nowhere we went across an over-grown railway bridge and then walked the trail for about 1.5 miles; during which time we had gone through two very long, pitch black tunnels and encountered numerous decaying objects (of the mechanical variety).
I had never encountered a tunnel that can compare to these (while on foot), so thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and I think it would be a great location to film all sorts of things... Indeed I was actually asked last month about filming a music video there for a metal band! So now that I know what it's like I can't wait to push ahead with that idea.
On another note, I used my digital stills camera to experiment with some time-lapse photography & experimental stopmotion (similar to Pixelation) on the way back to the cars. I haven't really done much time-lapse or pixelation before, but I am planning another music video (for a different band) that uses this kind of filming technique, and so thought this would be a good opportunity to experiment with the process.
For this experiment I basically just took a photo every 2 seconds (roughly) while walking along a short part of the trail leading up to the second tunnel.
I had a good idea of what the footage should look like when played back as an animation sequence; but because I was photographing while walking (and without a flash) I had no idea whether or not it would turn out any good... To be honest I expected that the footage would be all blurry and randomly jump all over the place, but I think it has turned out surprisingly readable. You can judge for yourself by watching it in the video below:
And to conclude, here are some other photos from the day...
(This final photo is more or less what you see without a torch - and that's relatively near the entrance!)
