Friday 26 December 2008

Boxing Day Shoot - Burnham Beach

Some people like playing sport, some like swimming on Boxing Day, I like doing a shoot.

As I was down visiting my sister in Somerset I decided to take the chance of an early morning shoot on the beach. 9 miles of sand is a good reason and I know of a lovely old wooden shipwreck. Just the rotting hulk now but it's still a pretty good, if done to death location.

Everything went well, the light was pretty good, I just underestimated the chilly breeze. By the time the shoot finished I had pretty much lost all the feeling in my fingers and it had stopped being quite so much fun!

Sunday 23 November 2008

Friday was a shoot with Lisa and Natascha at Lowford Studio in Southampton (Burseldon). Despite the fact that I've known the studio for nearly 2 years, I used to know the previous owner, I've never had a chance to shoot there.

Lisa and Natascha are both law students at Solent University, although I actually know them through Lisa's husband Dragi. I've had a shoot with Lisa before and she's great. Dancing was always her passion so she's pretty used to performing. Natascha on the other hand is a complete beginner, although you wouldn't know it. Obvious talent I only hope that she continues to pose.

Wednesday 19 November 2008

Ramazzoti art colony

Ramazzoti art colony was the residency that Maja and I stayed at over the summer. I have finally got around to editing Wikipedia to reflect both the colony as well as East European colonies in general.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_colony

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_Ramazzoti

Tuesday 18 November 2008

Raven Studio Shoot

Following on from freezing poor Raven on Salisbury Plain I decided to let her warm up with a studio shoot. I was trying to capture a mixture of voyeur shots, body parts to emphasise her body (quite thin) and some shots of pain/discomfort/dispair, not that she's not happy, just I think she can pull that scene off well. The results will go to FlickR as always in the Ben Hill area

Sunday 9 November 2008

Harbour Lights Exhibition

Maja has yet another exhibition of her paintings, her 3rd this year! It starts today at Ocean Village in Southampton and features all new work not previously exhibited in this country. Obviously it's all for sale if you're looking to fill that gap on the wall.

Friday 7 November 2008

Raven Shoot

No not shooting small black birds, photography with a 'new model' who goes by the title Raven, although friends get to call her Sarah. Raven is a size 6, not anorexic, just very thin. Lots of tatoos, lots and lots and an amazing range of wigs. It was a quick autumnal shoot out on the Salisbury Plain and I'll upload the results to FlickR as usual.

Thursday 6 November 2008

Maja at the Royal Society of Portrait Artists

Maja spent the day in London today at the Royal Society doing 'painting stuff'. The day included a competitive 3 hour 'paint off' where all the assembled artists worked on a portrait of one of 3 different models. Maja won 3rd place and is understandably very very happy! I just wish I had been there but some of us have to do proper work.

Tuesday 4 November 2008

IB Studios Bournemouth

Life has been pretty busy with the academic year starting again and all that brings. Maja has 2 exhibitions before Christmas with everything to do for that and one of those is a joint exhibition with me so I'm pretty flat out as well.

With all this going on it's a wonder that there's any time to still be doing photo shoots, but none the less I've managed 2 different group shoots at the fabulous IB studios in Bournemouth. The first shoot was a group shoot through TFP Models a nice little resource for photographers, the second was an in-house shoot run by the studio. It's not the biggest studio or the best equipment wise, but they have a fantastic range of props and a very friendly and helpful owner. I would recommend them to anyone in the Bournemouth area who needs a studio for shooting.

I'll put the results up on http://www.flickr.com/photos/ben_hill/ as I get the chance.

Saturday 1 November 2008

Jenni - Seductress

Jenni is a great model, she was supposed to do a shoot with me, but somehow got kidnapped by the wife, Maja into posing for her. Finally I have had a chance to do one quick shoot with her. A bit of a strange shoot "fetish gran", no don't ask! We were wondering what we could do with an interesting old dress, a wig and some impossible shoes, the resulting character is "fetish gran", copyright us two! http://www.flickr.com/photos/ben_hill/ for the results as ever.

Friday 17 October 2008

Update on Ben Hill links

Life gets spread around on the Internet, here are some of the updated places you are likely to find me.

Facebook
FlickR
Net-Model
Pure Storm
TFP Models
MySpace
LinkedIn

Update on Maja Dzartovska-Hill links

Maja has a lot of stuff on the web, most of it fairly boring stuff. Finding her can be a little confusing as she has no had 3 different surnames! Dzartovska, Dzartovska-Hill and Hill. This is just a list of some of the more relevant stuff:

Maja's Web Site
Maja's Blog
Maja's Teaching (distance learning)
Maja at the National Gallery
Maja's Wikipedia entry

Wednesday 1 October 2008

Totton College

This year sees me teaching at Totton College (again) on the adult education side. I always love the people, I always hate the unsocial hours! This year it's on a Monday night, which is a bit of a pain as that then overlaps withthe Southampton Camera Club and this year I am only covering the AS level not the GCSE as well, which is a pity. Next year they get to have an exhibition in Hanger Farm again so I'm really looking forward to that, I wish them all luck.

Wednesday 10 September 2008

Summer Group Exhibitions

I've had a busy summer in 2008, Maja has had a major solo exhibition in Skopje at the cities cultural centre, one of the biggest spaces in the city. It's quite scary to see pictures that elsewhere fill a whole wall disappear into that vast space. After that she just had endless interviews, TV, radio, magazines etc, all very exciting as it always is.

Then we were both off to an art residency, once again we were lucky enough to get a joint place while my mother-in-law 'volunteered' to baby sit for the 10 days.

10 days in sunny (very sunny) Ohrid at the Ramazzoti Art Colony, a truly breathtaking location next to a huge UNESCO protected lake surrounded by limestone mountains. Where of course I was desperately trying to avoid taking all the normal range of tourist shots and achieve something a little more original. Of course I did take lots of sunsets and views over the lake, but I like to think I found a little out of the ordinary stuff as well.

The whole trip ended up with a lot of good luck. We held the normal group exhibition to display the work we had done, but then found out that the very same Cultural Centre in Skopje had had a very last minute cancellation and would be prepared to hold a joint exhibition of the residencies work! So back there again for Maja (different paintings this time) and my first time exhibiting in that space!

Saturday 23 August 2008

Ivan gets his modelling dream break

I'm happy when it all comes together Ivan is a young model I met through one of my usual routes net-model and we did a series of location shoots for his portfolio. Now on the back of that he has landed a place with the top agency in his city!

Thursday 24 July 2008

Skopje Zoo 2008

Back to the lovely Skopje Zoo, lots of changes, sadly not all good for me. Improved fencing is helping to keep the beavers out of their favourite lake with all the wild beaver having been rounded up. The new enclosure building programme is moving on with lots of new pens springin g up, which means close access to animals is just going to get harder as well as preventing them from going on their daily walks. There are still I'm happy to say lots of various herbivores escaping for short strolls around the zoos paths, long may it continue. The baby wolf is now too large to fit through the cage bars so he/she is now confined along with the adults.

The highlight of my all too brief visit, I asked if I might 'jump into' the beaver enclosure to take some better shots. In true 'can do Macedonian style' they said why not and in I jumped. Looking a bit closer at those teeth I'm not sure who was the more nervous out of us.

Saturday 15 March 2008

Macedonian Diaspora Football

There has been a running competition of a team of Macedonian footballers taking on various other European amateur teams. Held mostly in London the matches are fiercely fought by players who travel quite some distances to make it. The series ends in a competition to be played in Ohrid, Macedonia in the summer. While not the official photographer (they don't have one), it has given me an opportunity to practise my sports photography.