Frantic's 15th Birthday

Frantic! I cant say more for it! 

For those who don't know, Frantic is one of the last big nights from back in the old school raving days!

Tidy, Timeless H.H.A(witch was Frantic) have all gone away but Frantic is still going strong.

Last Sunday night was Frantic's 15th birthday and the one rave of the year that I always book off and for the last few years SHOOT! I have been to every one since there 6th/7th and its always been a great night! I will always do my best to dance shoot spin or just be crazy for a night!

 

I knew it was going to be a good night when my bus pass shop got robbed so I had to walk half a mile to top up... Yes you know its going to be a good one with a start like that! Normally I would not mind but I was carrying a big ass camera bag. I really felt the weight on the way down there.

Frantics birthday was at "KoKo" otherwise know as Camden Palace and I got there so early that I grabed a coffee before hand. Getting inside and walking down the famous tunnel I saw that the club it was rocking, the lights and lasers shone and everything was set... or was it?

When we got in I was given a wrist band, a RED one... I got to the back stage area and was told that I cant be back there unless I have a GREEN band. So I got to drop off my gear but unable to go back there, Thats going to be a bit of a pain. This is one of the nights where I can put my gear down and not stress about it all night long... Skinny not to happy about it!

The night in itself  was banging! Non-stop music (Well almost non-stop a small 1min mess up) The people were jumping and everyone was having a great time. The dancers from Twisted Bliss did some amazing sets with 2 amazing shows by Hannah Rowland doing her fans and a amazing umbrella routine. This girl knows what shes doing and can put together a set better then anyone else I have seen from the rave world! 

All in all... Frantic is still one of the best nights out there, and I would tell anyone to check it out if they have an event near you! I really dont think this event is going anywhere soon but dont count on it... You never know what might happen so get to it and go dance your ass off!

One new thing to the Camden palace layout was the o2 cannon, I know there is one A BIG ONE in Ibiza but something tells me that was the idea but this is after all England... its nice and it does look really cool but if you have been to Space and seen theres then you know what your missing!

FULL set are on my site, click this LINK to see all the cool and crazy images from an amazing night out!

Skinny... The Pro Spotter!!

Today I did completed one of my goals for when I first started with photography.

Today I became a Pro Spotter on DontStayIn.com (DSI), DSI is a raving website that I joined back in 2002. Think facebook for ravers before facebook eas even through of... A online meeting place for everything clubbing, Pics events and chatting... This was the way that most of the random's in the club seance  stayed in contack with each other.

One of the biggest bits of DSI was the images, every night had 100s of pics shot by the ravers themselfs otherwise know as spotters but The Pro Spotters are the elite, They took loads of amazing images that looked great and looked just like what you was seeing at the time!

I have been a spotter for DSI for a long time but never could get great images on my little point&shoot... Then a few years ago I got a dSLR (SonyA300) and since then I have been working towards getting some of the amazing images that I saw getting taken back in 2005.

Well today I got my wish, after working hard at it for the last 2/3 years I got the news that I was being made a pro spotter! This is were most of my event style photography comes from, (I am sure if you are reading this blog you know my light spinning images).

Today is 31/08/2012

Today is the day I became a ProSpotter!

I AM SOOOOOO HAPPPPPPPPY!

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Now I was hoping to add images from the last few years to this blog BUT for some reason DSI is down right now... So I will have to add them later!

The Peg!

Now this is something that I have taken part in at both Play and Southern lights festival, Yet I still don't really understand it. We buy loads of pegs, write a message on it and then like a ninja in the night, We clip it onto someone. 

Now there might be something I dont know but all i know is that its fun. I also love to see how your pegs get pushed around the camp, half the time end up back on the person that made it! 

Now you may see them in many of my pics if you look close enough, but some are not so subtle (as above) Some people had there tents cover in them this weekend!

the new thing this year was that we found a way to make projectile pegs, Clipping them together in a way that we could toss them at someone and it would clip on them without going anywhere near them. Now this is a hidden skill that we cant share as it could bring down the world as we know it!

No one was saft from pegging this year, not women or children or even babies and owls!

The best thing about camping... its intents!

I am just back from Play festival and with some of the images now up on the site I feel like I should say something... So here we go!

Play festival is a juggling festival in Wales that took part last week from Wednesday till Sunday and dam it was fun. Many jugglers came from all over England and a few from outside the UK, With work shops every day, shows in the evening and then fun and games for every other bit of the day. 

This was my only festival of this year (I only do one as I don't have both the energy or the money) and I am happy that i chose this one, I did alot of photography and spending time with firend I only really get to see one day a week at spits. I did not do much in the way of spinning but I did come back with a buz to learn both hat and club juggling (and flow wand as well).

5 days of camping with loads of juggler, spinners and fire artists with an amazing setting and both wet and sunny weather... Even now I wish I was back at Play - Roll on next year!

So far there are 3 days worth of images on my site (Skinselliott.webs.com) New images should be up in the next few days!

FreeLoader Pico

With PLAY coming up I have been getting myself ready for this festival. One trouble I have with festival is that you can never take enough power for all your toys... This is where FreeLoader comes in.

FreeLoader is a small Solar powered battery that you can charge up your tech with. 

There are 3 models that I know of ranging from aroun £15-£70

1. FREELOADER PICO £15

2. FREELOADER Classic £35-40

3. FREELOADER PRO £70

Now The one I would like is the Pro modle as you can charge up d-SLR battery's in that one as well as many other items, Trouble is I dont have that much money. A friend had a Classic when they 1st came out but once again, no money.

At last years Southern Lights festival my iPhones battery lasted nearly the whole event but died on the way home, All weekend I turned off my phone while I was sleeping and I could not film as much as I would have liked. I use my phone for alot more then just calling so this year I got myself a FreeLoader PICO.

From 10 hours of sunshine you get a full battery and can charge your ipod for 14houers, your smart phone 35hours and I am sure I can get a full charge on the kindle(Not that you need it for that as it lasts a month by itself)

I will get back to you with the full review after I have tested it more (This weekend) but so far it looks to be working well

WORD OF WARNING!

For some reason this edition did not come with an apple cable so for some devices you will need your own usb cable... Gel cases are going for around £3 and I would say get one if only for the belt hook that does not come with the Pico itself

Queenies 30th

Wow this feels like a long time ago now but it was the last thing we did before we headed off to Sweden.

The led up to this party was a lot of fun and a little stress at the same time. Her man wanted to make this a great party and make it one Queenie would never for get, So between the 3 of us we got to planning  (Me but mostly Fluff and the Man). It ended up being a meal with all of Queenies friends at a Mexican place. The twist was that we told her that it was only going to be some low rate BBQ at the flat.

The Man (who im going to be calling M for the sake of my typing "the man" over and over again) M put so much work into this fake BBQ that it almost became funny hearing his next plot to confuse one of the smartest people I know.

Anyways This night ended up being a really cool night and I hope that she had a great one as well. I have not worked on the images yet but Ill post one up here so you can see what is to come!

This Is Going to Take A While!

Ok since I last posted (12/7/2012) I have been doing alot, Spending most of the time in the south of Sweden with the Swedish family.

There has been some images posted on my site so if you would like to check them out you can find them on this LINK.

I will try adding some images from the trip and give you some insight to the background of shooting them.
Some will be new and others are from the gallery from the site! Enjoy

Nik Software - HDR Efex Pro

The other week I saw a video on a lightroom plug-in called HDR Efex Pro ii by Nik Software. But I had some trouble finding this program I was able to get hold of a copy of the older version.

Now I have only use this program once but the finished image did look very nice. It was not an HDR image made up for 3 different exposed but of 2 different images I took at last weeks beach burn.

In other words I just added 2 images with one thing different in them, kinda like just cutting it out and pasting it in. This was the final images I ended up with.

Using the tools inside of HDR Efex Pro I think I did a great job and the efex came out very nice!

You can export right from Light-room into HDR Efex Pro

As a plug in it works from LightRoom4,  HDR Efex Pro can export from LR to HDR Efex Pro, Saving you time and letting you just fix your images and not making you waste your time.

Presets and different viewing options

It has over 32 different presets that you can add to your image, but then you can make your own presets if you wish. Plus you can  tweak  and change any of the settings you wish using the tools inside the program

Adjustment point let you edit just one area

With-in the editing tools there is also a Adjustment tool, that lets you pump or reduce some parts of the images to give you even more tools to tweak the pic to just what you wish to end up with

Save and done

Once you have done all your edits and got the look you want, Click save and its done! It will import it back into LR for any final edits and then your done.

Back inside LightRoom

Now this is not the best image in the world but you get the idea, If your into HDR then this plug-in is a good way adding some great touches to your work. Plus it lets you work alot faster and you dont need to use Photoshop (But you still can if you wish)

The Final Image

 

Boat Parties

After a bit of a crazy start to my weekend with the beach burn, Next on the list of things to do was the party on the Thames (Looks to be a theme this weekend).

The boat party was to bring in four different 30th birthdays from a group of my friends, Now you know I don't bring out names on here (and you know who you are). The night started early on Saturday and went on till the early hours - before hitting another club and all in all I was out of the house for nearly 24 hours!

It was fun making a tiny little boat look like a massive club night, but I think I did a good job of bring in the fun to the images!

The Boat! 

The Dancers

Battle of the Lashes 

The Chair Everyone Wanted

Smooth!

Full set of images on the site (LINK)

Burn and Shoot

Beach burning can be fun but without having the fuel it can kinda suck. 

Good thing I was going mostly for shooting and less for spinning, I did have a little spin using a friends fuel and the snakes got to burn this time around.

I was trying some new ways of shooting on the beach burn, My normal way of shooting the burns is to use a long shutter speed to get the tails of the flame but this time I wanted to shoot fast so I got the detail in the flame.

This was also the first time I got to use my wireless triggers. I shoot over 600 images and not one miss fire so I can tell you that they work very well. Only trouble I had was when I was not shooting the fire I had some focus issues but that was more to the fact that I did not have any light to focus on.

Most of the shots were shot at 1/200 at aound f/5.6,  Also using an orange gel on an off camera flash. The last 2 images on this blog are using a longer shutter speed to give you an idea of the different styles of shooting Fire.

The full set of images are on my site (LINK) Hope you enjoy them!