The Ducks Photo Blog

Yesterday saw the Gumball 3000 Rally set off from London headed for Paris on the first stage of a 3,000 mile trip. Finishing in Istanbul in a week. The display of super and hyper cars taking part was quite breath taking. So enough of my ramblings here’s a selection of pictures.

One of the first cars past us was this Bentley in the outside lane and completely missing the slip road to the Euro Tunnel, he wasn’t the only one!

The guys in the Orange BMW M3 GTS were the first to hit Paris. Well done guys.

The ever awesome Bughatti Veyron, even winding down it still sounded as if it was going to devour anything around it!

A truly stunning Ferrari 599 GTO finished in chrome. Yes you read right CHROME!!!!!!!

The guys from Team Galag (http://teamgalag.com/) all the way from Saudi

This has cause a fair amount of discussion. I think its based on a Renault V6 chassis and engine. In a classic Renault 4 shell wow!

A Gumball honeymoon! congratulations and good luck guys

Awesome paint job (if you can call it a paint job!) on this Bently Continental

Don’t forget to check out my other images at www.rubberduckdoes.com/Gumball3000 . Also all the info on the rally on the offical website www.gumball3000.com. Also the best unofficial site www.gumball-3000.com which is full of everything Gumball.

Now I haven’t blogged about any of the motorsport work I am doing as I want this blog to reflect the variation in the work that I do. However motorsport is becoming a sizable chunk of what I am doing so I have had a little rethink.

So as the official photographer of the Lydden Hill Race Circuit here in Kent I thought it about time I wrote a little something about what I get upto.

I don’t want this to become another in depth dissection of Rally Cross, there are other sites around that can offer you that, albeit you have to subscribe to their services!  Instead I want to portray what it’s like to shoot a variety of motorsport from bikes to cars.

Of course the first motorsport blog could not come with much more pedigree than a FIA European Rally Cross event! a full on spectacular.

15,000 spectators flocked to Lydden to watch the weekends racing

The Easter weekend of 2011 saw 68 competitors from all around Europe including Finland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Holland, Belgium, France, England, Scotland and Ireland. And over 15,000 spectators converge on the Lydden Hill Circuit to watch this year’s highly anticipated opener to the European campaign.

Americas Tanner Foust was also back for a second year to pit his skills against some of the very best in Rally Cross.

Tanner Foust very fast in practice on day one

If you have never seen or even heard of rally cross here’s a very quick rundown thanks to Wikipedia

But all this apart it’s very fast some race meetings can have over 20 races in a day! Add to the mix that the super cars are as fast as F1 cars from 0 to 60! And you have an explosive mix and an entertaining spectator sport that features loads of action. The guys at Codemasters also think so as they have included Rally Cross in the new Dirt 3 Playstation and X-Box game.

So there’s all the background now onto how I spent my Easter!

My first thoughts were just of the variety of amazing cars in the paddock;  Ford Fiestas and Focuses, Skodas , VW Golf’s,  Volvo C30’s, a Renault Twingo, an insane Mitsubishi Colt a bio fuel powered Saab and not forgetting the awesome Citroen C4’s.

Toomas Heikkinen from Finland in his bio fueled SAAB 93

Bert Theunisse in his Toyota Yaris

I spent 2 days in dust shooting load spitting simply insane cars race. I had a plan of writing a blow by blow account of the weekend but you know what I’m just going to show you some images!

The British hopes for a victory in the super cars were with local sensation Liam Doran. Unfortunately his weekend was marred by engine troubles. He eventually finished a very respectible 4th

Kents own Liam Doran although dogged by engine troubles finished 4th

Norways Gunnar Hunsbedt pushing his much anticipated Volvo C30 to its limits

Kent's Pat Doran in his Ford Focus kept fans on the edge of their seats

Norway's Sverre Isachse picked up where he left off last season dominating the weekend

Norways Andreas Bakkeru on his way to an emphatic win in the Super 1600 class

Sussex based Julian Godfrey was the best placed Brit finishing a well deserved 2nd in the Super 1600 class

Lars Oivind Enerberg winning the Touring cars gave Norway a clean sweep for the weekend

Ireland's Derek Tohill the defending touring car champion could only mange 6th place in his eye catching Ford Fiesta

Many more images from the weekend can be seen at http://lyddenhill.rubberduckdoes.com.

If you follow my ramblings here you will know that I like to take the road less traveled when I come up with an idea. Well when I decided to shoot something simply entitled ‘Spring’ the cog in my head started to turn, very slowly!

I wanted to create something that purposefully looked false. My initial thought was to do a number of different shoots and then comp them all together in Photoshop. However tru to form I really wanted to get as much right in camera, that and I had the urge to build a set.

I have found this great local space that I can use (http://www.dadonline.eu/content/studio-space-0 for larger studio shoots, its massive, heated and has 24 hour access) This would be perfect.

Don’t ask me how or what gave me the idea but I wanted to bury a model in soil upto her neck and make it look like she was ‘growing’ out of the ground!

A quick call to the very talented, and extremly busy Emily Rose about the make-up (http://www.emilyrosemakeupartist.co.uk/) I had this mad idea to make our models eyelashes look like shoots, the quick response from Emily was  ‘sure no problem’ so that was decided then.

Obviously we wouldn’t be able to bury a model alive so I had to think of a way to make it look like it. I concocted a set that comprised of a tabletop with a hole cut out of the middle. We could then position the model and fill the soil around her.

Once I hit on the idea of the saw tables the only other thing to think about was the lighting. I wanted the final image to have a sunrise glowy feeling. This would mean that I needed a huge amount of ambient light that I could control. After a phone around I still didn’t have enough light (thanks to Alan over at Dover Design Photography for the loan of some studio heads).

This was going to need some lateral thinking. I was actually on another shoot using my Lasolite Hilite when it occured to me that I could use that as one huge diffused light source. I would then use a gelled and gridded strobe off to one side and low which I could dial up or down to give me less or more fake sunrise. I also opted to use a beauty dish directly above the model as my key.

The shot above shows the final set-up before we added our model. the boom stand on the left isn’t extended here the platform was to allow me to get above the table enough to give you a sense of standing over the ground.

This shot shows the setup with our model inplace and the beauty dish overhead as well.

I must say that Emily and her assistant Katie Searle did a truly outstanding job on the makeup.

Our model the beautiful Christina Timson also deserves a gigantic thanks not only for her patience but also for allowing me to pack soil and dead leaves around her and make to to sit still for nearly an hour until small creatures were spotted amongst the leaves!

My assistant for the day was the talented Gwen Mortimore, she also shot the BTS images above.

This shoot was always going to be a little different from my other shoots as there was just one image that I was aiming for, normally I like to have a few images that I want to get. So heres what actually came out of the camera. It was so close but didn’t have that fantasy look I was wanting

So after a little Photoshop work which included:

• the usual levels and selective colour tweaks
• light airbrushing to take out some stray soil on Christina’s face
• some skin smoothing
• hair colouring and tinting
• eye colouring along with a ‘star burst’ iris

The final image looked like this:

For ages now I have been wanting to do a water based shoot. A fairly easy plan, except for one thing where to actually shoot it.

I did a fashion shoot for a magazine towards the end of last year at a local hotel, I got to know the manager fairly well and I just asked him if I could take over their spa sometime to do some shots. ‘Yeah sure’ was the response it was that easy. A real lesson in ‘if you don’t ask you don’t get’. So I had my location sorted at Wallett’s Court Spa and Hotel (www.wallettscourthotelspa.com). Its a very nice boutique type hotel if your ever in White cliff country in Kent not far from Dover. I highly recommend it.

I wanted to split the shoot into two parts

• A part submerged shot which should in theory get a keeper in the bag without much trouble, I always like to have a ‘if all else fails’ shot
• A splash part which would be a much harder one to control.

I wanted to try out a new MUA as well in the guise of Gemma Parnell (www.makeupbygem.co.uk) who didn’t even make that wide eye gesture followed by the word ‘you want to what’  She immediately came up with a plan for water proof make-up.

The submerged part I decided I was going to use snoots and grids to keep the light tight and focused as I wanted to get as much right in camera as possible and I also wanted the impression that the model was a dark liquid.

I must admit most of my pre-shoot preparation went on the second splash part. I wanted to create a kind of water sculpture and use some gells to colour the splashes. I quickly decided that cross lighting was the best way to achieve what I was looking for.

The lighting diagram here show the simple setup I decided on the water was to be thrown from the same side as the gelled strobe and the beauty dish should just pick out the models features and any splashes that went forward of the model.

Even so I didn’t want to leave anything to chance so I managed to persuade my 4 year old daughter to ‘suit up’ in her wet weather gear and stand still for a little while in the garden so I could test the theory. Apart from her flinching when I actually threw the water as you can see it worked all that I changed from this test shot was to dial up the gelled flash to camera left and added the beauty dish to the right hand one

The first part of the shoot I decided to shoot in the jacuzzi here are a couple of my favorites. The first one is shot using just one strobe but its gridded and high above the camera

This second one is has been snooted and brought down to thew same height as the models head

There are a few other examples of all the shoot on my Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/RubberDuckDoesPhotography).

Next up was the water splash part of the shoot which meant a complete reset for the lights and model so using the setup I had previously planned this is what we had

To the left Gemma the MUA and my assistant Zoe are armed with beakers of water which they then unceremoniously hurl at Amy our model. OK its a little bit more directed than that. One was aiming at her head the other her waist. I did join in for a bit but to be honest i kind of messed things up! here are a couple of the results.

Finally this shot was if I am honest was what I was planning on getting over anything else. I shot it during the last burst, after I had chimped the burst and saw this one I called time

During the evening I ran a camera doing time lapse which I wanted to use for promotional purposes. I must say a huge thanks to my mate Rowland Deem aka Roland the Bastard as I sent out a panic message to him for a sound track, I sent him a very rough version and he sent me back something which basically fitted my edit nearly exactly, dude you are truly talented!

And finally I want to thank the team again Gemma Parnell for some truly awesome (and very waterproof) makeup, Amy Roberts for allowing me to hurl water at her! (Model Mayhem ID #1394768), Zoe Nash my intern/assistant who even when given shi awful jobs did them with enthusiasm and unquestionably and lastly for Wallett’s Court Hotel for allowing me to take over their lovely spa for the evening.

Its always nice to hear feedback and peoples opinions until next time dear reader when hopefully I will have something even more unusual to tell you about.

As the year draws to a close I’d like to invite you all to vote for my top 10 images from the past year. I have trawled through the 25,000 or so images taken over the year and narrowed it down to the 50 here. They are a mixture of images I have taken professionally and some  I have taken in my own time.

I will let this run until the first week of January 2011, so have a vote and tell your friends as well. I’ll be offering one of the following to the person picked at random.

• A mounted and framed print of your choice
• A  beauty shoot with make up by a professional makeup artist you will be given 2 10 x 12 prints from the shoot to keep
• A half days photography tuition on how to take a good portrait by yours truley

How to enter

Simply rate 10 of the following images and then leave your name, an email address I can contact you on (dont worry the email address is only viewable to me and not the wider world)and indicate which of the prizes you want as a comment.

I will make the random draw during the first week of January as long as there are 50 comments here, so tell your friends to come and vote!

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Any questions get in touch in the usual way.

I am constantly amazed at what work presents itself. Until recently motor sport wasn’t even on my list of things I’d like to photograph in my spare time let alone be part of my working life. But now when theres an event or a track day you will now find me cameras in hand, press vest on at Lydden Race Circuit.

It really can’t be further from some of the editorial I do everything happens quite literally at 100 miles an hour, light is a law unto itself. And after a days shooting I have in excess of 2,000 images to reduce down! There are loads more images from a couple of tracks days I have covered on my website http://www.rubberduckdoes.com/lyddenhill/ all of which are available to buy.

I have also started doing a lot of work with the nice people over at EK One Magazine, with plans for future full blown fashion shoots in the near future. So watch this space.

I also met up with Eddie Craven again earlier in the month and this time Charley Boorman was joining him for the day. It was a great day and so good to catch up with Eddie and what he has been upto since I saw him at the beginning of October.

I have also been doing the usual amount of portraits.

Over the next couple of weeks I will be selecting my top 10 images that I have taken this year, I am going to create a nice year book using Blurb a little like my project 52 book. If you want to suggest any that you think I ought to include please feel free to mention them here. They can come from here, my website (www.rubberduckdoes.com), my Flickr account (www.flickr.com/photos/rubberduckdoes/) or on Facebook (www.facebook.com/RubberDuckDoesPhotography) If you haven’t already why not join the fan page.

 Thanks to Tom for putting this together

Behind the scenes – Matt Bristow (Rubber Duck Does Photography) Pierre Garroudi shoot. from Dover Design on Vimeo.

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The Beginning

Way back in August I was invited to view the latest collection of couture fashion designer Pierre Garroudi (www.pierregarroudi.com). My initial reaction was Pierre who? High fashion is a long way away from portraiture, editorial, PR and advertising photography the world I am used to. However I very much believe in nothing ventured nothing gained.

So, I went and met Pierre at his gallery in London and saw his incredible garments. When I visited he was just finishing his new ‘Turquoise’ collection. After a couple of hours of chatting, him about fashion (Pierre’s enthusiasm is infectious) and me about photography.

I left having agreed to two test shoots with the plan that we would submit the final images to various magazines. The first shoot was to be at his gallery and one on location. However due to other work commitments, holidays and other general stuff the shoots weren’t going to happen until October.

The Team – or as somebody (not me I add) named us the ‘Dream Team’

The first thing I had to think about was my team. Now usually I work pretty much alone and with the minimal amount of gear so that I can get to an assignment get setup and having thought about what I am going to do, do it without having to relay any of my thoughts and ideas to anybody else, simple right? For a start I knew I was going to have to get a top class makeup artist and an equally brilliant hair stylist and even more shockingly I finally succumbed to the idea I was going to have to find an assistant, something I have actively resisted in the past.

I had had a particular makeup artist (MUA) on the radar for some of the portfolio work I do for a while. I just liked the style she worked in and as a bonus she lived close by in Canterbury. So I contacted Emily Rose (www.emilyrosemakeupartist.co.uk ) and after a meeting, where Emily didn’t glaze over while I rambled on about what we were going to do, she agreed to become my MUA for the project.

The next member of the team, rather surprisingly for me, was filled by my good mate and fellow photographer Alan Langley (www.doverdesign.co.uk) who lives just up the road from me in the same village. I haven’t really mentioned to Alan just how much the offer meant to me. Alan is in my opinion probably in the top 5% of wedding photographers in the South East. His work is truly amazing. With Alan on board I knew I would have another pair of eyes looking at things in detail a real safety net which would allow me to get on with shooting my ideas.

The last member of the team to sign up, and by no means the least, was the one and only Vicki Lord (www.vickilord.co.uk) hair specialist extraordinaire, based in Herne Bay. I already knew of Vicki by reputation as other models and Emily had sung her praises to me. The first time I met Vicki I knew if I couldn’t persuade her to be part of the project I wouldn’t be happy. I needn’t have worried as luckily for me after I told her about my ideas for both shoots she was completely on board.

It’s often quite difficult to convey ideas to other people but between the four of us the initial planning almost seemed to do itself. Now if your observant and have actually read what’s typed above you’ll have noticed something that at the time I didn’t pay any attention to. The fact that we all lived in pretty close proximity to each other in Kent and that none of us are London based. All too often London is the only consideration for fashion shoots I wanted to show that Kent has a wealth of talent.

Shoot One

Location: The Pierre Garroudi Gallery, London
Date: 10th October, 2010
Clothing: Pierre Garroudi
Lead Photographer: Matt Bristow
2nd Photographer: Alan Langley
Intern: Thomas Langley
MUA: Emily Rose
Hair: Vicki Lord
Models: Amy Roberts, Alisha Mckenna

OK this was always going to be a nerve-racking experience for two reasons. The first one was that the team although individually experienced and talented hadn’t worked together. The second was that we were marching into Pierre’s gallery to basically take it over for the day and I wasn’t sure how he would feel about it.

So my idea was that I wanted to create a passing nod to Surrealism and Dali. I wanted to create a set, not easy when we are not in a studio and we have to transport everything from Kent by car. So we took black and white floor tiles and laid a floor!  I just felt it would add a nice contrast to the colours and texture in the garments.

The lighting was going to be a challenge as I wanted to create an Art house type feel to the images so lots of snoots and grids were used. The snoots to light a nice circle of light at the feet of the model(s) and grids to pick out detail in both the garments and the hair and makeup. For some of the shots we were using up to 6 different strobes to get the lighting effects I had in my head. The hardest thing was stopping any light spill, I knew we could just get rid of any unsightly in post but I wanted to get it as near as we could in camera.

After a lot of setup and testing we were ready I also wanted to create background interest in the form of another model seemingly ‘floating’ in the background. I quickly decided that we were only going to shoot Pierre’s Red collection as this is what looked best with the set and lighting.

After a long day we had the shots in the bag. Dark and moody showing the couture texture in Pierre’s designs. I was happy.

Shoot Two

Location: Drop Redoubt Fortress, Dover
Date: 19th October, 2010
Clothing: Pierre Garroudi
Lead Photographer: Matt Bristow
2nd Photographer: Alan Langley
Intern/Assistant: Thomas Langley, Holly Hawkins
MUA: Emily Rose
Hair: Vicki Lord
Models: Amy Roberts, Hayley White

The second shoot took a little more thinking about. I wanted to take Pierre’s designs to locations where they would never, ever normally be found, a real juxtaposition. Pierre also wanted me to shoot his latest ‘Turquoise’ collection as well. I really wanted to do something with decay as I thought the muted colours of rust would really contrast the colours of the garments perfectly. But location after location wasn’t suitable for one reason or another; one was actually dangerous as it had sheets of asbestos lying around the place!

I was just about to admit defeat when the thought occurred to me that the team was all local, even the models for this shoot. Surely I could do something with this, where locally would fit the bill? It took only a couple of moments for me to think of The Drop Redoubt fortress on Dover’s Western Heights.

I have been completely fascinated with the place ever since we moved down here 7 years ago. I was lucky enough to get access along with a few other photographers earlier in the year so I went and trawled through my catalogues for the pictures I had shot back then, yes absolutely perfect!

Now all I had to do was to get the access as it’s not open to the public! I so I sent Paul Wells from the Western Heights Preservation Society an email detailing what I wanted to do, I was expecting rounds of emails checking this and that but Paul’s answer was ‘I don’t see a problem with that’.  So I arranged to meet Paul at The Drop Redoubt so I could have a proper look around and take some reference pictures to show the team.

I hadn’t been into any of the underground parts during my previous visit as between November and March you can’t enter them as they are protected because of the bats nesting in there. So as Paul took me around I started to get more and more excited about the location it was pure gold dust, I actually felt like jumping up and down while giggling and clapping my hands!

I the day of the shoot arrived and the weather was perfect, those lovely fluffy white clouds backed by perfect blue sky, the externals would be a breeze. However because of the good weather it meant that the temperature had dropped, Amy and Hayley did a fantastic job it was freezing and I was wearing 3 layers!

For this shoot I had decided that I was going to use a stripped back 2 lighting approach, but we wear shot at a number of locations around the fortress one of them I was shooting the models across the moat. The plan was that Thomas would set up the next location while Alan and I were shooting.  This worked well and meant that the waiting around in the cold the models had to do was kept to a minimum.

I also wanted to use a smoke machine in some of the shots to give that ghostly effect and we planned to do this with the last few sets, I must admit that the final results were exactly what I was looking for.

A huge thanks to everyone involved without any of you none of these would have been the success they were. A particular thanks to Thomas Langley who took all the behind the scenes shots. Theres also a few shots over on Alans site http://doverdesign.co.uk/?p=1224 Thomas has also blogged about the shoots as well

Keep an eye out in various magazines as some of the images are to be published, I’ll put an update here when they do.

Well Friday the 1st October saw my first exhibition open at The White Horse Inn, Dover. I really didn’t know what to expect. So I had a variety of prints framed up and a couple of canvasses prepared 24 in all some local ‘Project 52′ images the rest were shots I have taken locally since my return to professional photography.

The weather on the night was of epic biblical proportions which understandably kept a few people at home.

The 25 or so brave souls that did brave the weather were rewarded by the fantastic hospitality that Jeanette and her staff put on. The prints will remain on display in the pub for as long as Jeanette wants them there so if you ever in Dover why not pop in and take a look, I’m sure Jeanette and her styaff will extend a warm welcome to all.

There was a great party atmosphere and I just want to thank everyone who did make the effort to come along.

The day after my exhibition, nursing a slightly sore head, I get a call from Amanda at The Warrior Programme asking if I could do some promotional shots of Eddie Craven who is walking around the coastline of the UK some 6,000 miles! I of course jumped at the chance.

I met Eddie in Dover, he is one of those people you take to immediately. I don’t think we actually stopped talking at all for the whole 3 or so hours I spent walking with him. To hear what has motivated him to undertake this colossal task is truly inspiring.

His dream is to raise funds to set up a permanent centre where ex-service men and women can find sanctuary and receive treatment for their condition.  Eddie talks about his inspiration: “I honestly think there should be a centre set up where ex-service personnel could just go and talk and get help. If there were somewhere for sure there wouldn’t be so many ex-servicemen and women in this country who are absolutely done in.”

If you would like to donate a little to the cause please visit www.justgiving.com/EddieCraven.

We set off along the White Cliffs heading towards Ramsgate. I of course took the wrong camera bag and struggled with a shoulder reporter type bag. I hope to hook up with Eddie later on in his walk I will make sure that I take a ruck sack. The following day I could barely move and I had only walked 6 or so miles! I could barely lift the pack that Eddie was carrying!

This was the last shot I took of Eddie from the other side of a valley on the White Cliffs. So if you spot him around the coast somewhere, hes easy to spot as he has a Union Flag sticking out of his pack, go and say hello and ask him about what he is doing and let him know that there are people that know what he is doing then sit back and watch the infectious smile appear on Eddies face.