Spike Milligan (and me)

Last night a video came up as a suggestion on my YouTube feed. It featured an interview by Joanna Lumley of Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe. Lumley is filling in for Terry Wogan which causes some confusion for Milligan. Spike's were always interesting interviews - it was hard to keep him on topic, any topic. This is a very good example. Oh, and there is a very polite gatecrasher. The video is at the bottom of the post - its worth a look.

During the interview Spike mentions Woy Woy and his parents and it reminded me of my two 'encounters' with him...

Spike Milligan, Civic Theatre, Newcastle (1980) ©Paul Foley

In the 1960's my family lived on the Central Coast. One Friday afternoon, probably sometime in 1969, Chris Finn (my school mate) and I were on a bus to Woy Woy to spend the weekend at his place.

There was a guy sitting up the front talking in funny voices and with various mad facial expressions. He had the whole bus in stitches but I had no idea who he was. The driver was all over the road.

Chris told me he was some comedian from England called Spike and that he did things like this whenever he was in town visiting his parents.

Years later, I was commissioned to photograph Spike Milligan during a performance at Newcastle’s Civic Theatre. 

He was brilliantly funny. And this was despite him devoting a small part of the show using my presence in the pit as a foil for his jokes. The audience couldn’t see me and the jokes weren’t about me personally - it was just perfect improv. 

During the show there was a short intermission while a pianist played on stage. It was during this that I was backstage sitting on a riser in a dim pool of light changing film.

As I concentrated on reloading my cameras I barely noticed when a shape sat near me. I did notice, though, when he hunched over and began making sobbing noises.

I took myself away from loading and looked at the person beside me. It was Spike. There were no tears, just a soft, forlorn sob. 

I looked for a few moments and motioned to ask if he was ok. He just turned slightly away - I took it to mean he didn’t want to engage. I couldn't easily move away - the cameras and film were spread in front of me and it was the only place with any light at all. 

We each stayed there in the nearly invisible light. I finished loading the last camera as the pianist finished his piece and then Spike was up and walking out past the curtain.

The second half of the show was even better than the first.

These photos are scans from old prints I made from the Ektachrome (tungsten) slide film I used in the day. Back then I used Olympus OM1n and 2n cameras so the lens was most likely a 180mm f2.8 (manual focus of course).

One day I'll have to dig the job folder out of storage. It was back in the day when clients got the original slides so I'm not sure what I'll find. Most likely just the outtakes.

Spike Milligan, Civic Theatre, Newcastle (1980) ©Paul Foley

20th October 1989 - Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe interviewed by Joanna Lumley on the live BBC1 chat show "Wogan"

Post © Paul Foley/Lightmoods

Bathing Beauties - The Tweeting Queens of 2014

A few days ago I was asked to participate in the media launch of the ‘Australia Day Your Way’ initiative for 2015. In 2014 The National Australia Day Council partnered with Twitter and the National Museum of Australia to promote the sharing of images using  #australiaday .

The Dawn Patrol © Paul Foley Visit the Gallery

Over 70,000 tweets and 30,000 images were shared with the #australiaday hashtag and 5 people who published images on Australia Day in 2014 have been chosen to attend the launch event in Canberra on January 16, 2015. Probably due to some clerical error I am one of these people! 

I love the celebration of Australia Day - especially when it recognises the complete story of our country. From it’s people living here for the centuries before Captain Phillip’s arrival through to the multiracial peoplescape we live in today. In truth, I have always considered every day Australia Day - even the occasional awful ones as we witnessed this week.

A few days before Australia Day this year I selected some pics from my archive to post on the 26th to celebrate some of the Australian faces I had photographed over the years. 

One was ‘Bathing Beauties’ and I was so happy to see that it selected by The National Australia Day Council. 

I made this picture quite a few years ago at Newcastle Ocean Baths. I was down there one dawn on an advertising shoot when I heard loud splashing and laughing demands from behind me to ‘Take our picture!’ I turned around to see these four wonderful, feisty and definitely not shy women. How could I refuse?

So the four other selectees and myself will be in Canberra on January 16th to tell the stories behind our pictures and invite all Australians to tweet their own pics on January 26th using #australiaday. I hope you will take a few moments on January 26th, 2015 to tweet your favourite Aussie face and don’t forget to add #australiaday

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Merewether Surfboard Club, Portraits, 2014.

These portraits are being made to celebrate the club’s 50th anniversary. It is hoped that all members will be photographed in time for the June, 2014 celebrations.

Merewether Surfboard Club - Portraits - Images by Paul Foley

Surfing is inextricably linked to photography. With this series I have referenced both traditional silver based photography, originally made on glass or tin plates, as well as some of the contemporary instagram looks that pay homage to these authentic processes.

Touchy Feely Photographs

In this digital, online world it is always great to see your work on paper, be it a fine art print or as a double page spread in a well printed magazine. The world of magazines and newspapers moves further from paper towards pixels each day and I was pleasantly surprised when a real magazine showing one of my pictures arrived in my post box recently.

In September I wrote about the 'See Change' panorama shoot I undertook for Newcastle City Council. The usage agreement allows for the client to get a lot of mileage from this picture so I was very happy to see it used across two pages in OUTthere magazine's 'Windowseat' section.

click on the photograph to purchase your own fine art print

OutThere is the national in-flight magazine for Australia's largest regional airlines, Regional Express (REX), as well as New South Wales' AeroPelican Air. 'Windowseat' highlights a different facet of Australia each month and on this occasion celebrated Newcastle's listing in Lonely Planet's 2011 Worlds Top Ten Cities.

Many thanks to Guy Pendlebury and Edge Custom Media for the high design and reproduction values they insist on for their work. The surfers at sunrise picture looked beautiful!

For those of us who like to hold real paper photographs and/or display them in our homes please visit the new Collectable Photography website. The prints are personally made by me and limited to editions of 25 or less. For stock photography please visit Lightmoods 

The Newcastle 'See Change' Panorama

Recently a client sought to purchase usage rights for one of my stock images to be used as a long narrow banner in an airport. While the picture looked great as part of their bold branding design the filesize itself was too small for the extra wide reproduction.

I suggested that we shoot a new picture in a format more suited to the output size required. To keep costs down I recommended my Commissioned Stock pricing model. While this doesn't suit all assignments it fitted perfectly here.

Essentially, a commissioned stock shoot is one where I make a picture to suit a client's brief but am also able to include it in my online stock library. The fee is negotiated according to the usage required and the production costs involved but is significantly lower than a traditionally commissioned assignment.


Newcastle SEE CHANGE - Images by Paul Foley

Please click on the pictures to see them larger or to purchase a print

I decided to shoot a multi frame panorama with the RAW files to be processed in Lightroom and then stitched in Photoshop CS5. This would give a very wide file with enough pixels for the extra large reproduction.

Once this was sorted we had to get the shoot organised and done quickly. Gemma, the client, sourced two willing surfers, Chris and Simon, to be the models. This may seem obvious but shooting lifestyle or sports requires believable models who know and understand the situation being photographed. Besides, who else but surfers and mad fisherfolk are going to turn up at a beach before sunrise!

Susan Gilmore Beach was selected as the location and we set aside the following Friday for a pre dawn meet up. Of course it was winter and would no doubt be very cold.

I checked the beach the afternoon before to sort out the best way to get around to the rock shelf in what would be darkness. The swell had come up and, although the tide would be low when the sun rose, we would still have to walk across a very rocky and wave swept shoreline to get to the location. In the dark. Surf reports were indicating high surf conditions for the morning with the weather expected to be clear and bright. The thing was, though, we needed to get around to the location before the 'bright and clear' part of the dawn.

On July 4th in 1884 an American clipper celebrated it's last Independence Day. The 'Susan Gilmore' was wrecked on the small beach that would remember it in name. On that day all 14 crew as well as the ships' two dogs, cat and bird survived. Although the Susan Gilmore's demise was met in much stormier conditions, tomorrow would be July 8th,  2011 and the surf was expected to be high and charging in. Lucky for us the timing turned out to be coincidence and not omen.

The next morning I arrived to find Chris sitting on the bonnet of his car peering into the darkness. The noise and barely visible lumping shapes told us that the surf was big. While Chris waited for the others I went down to see if we could get around to the shooting location without drowning the talent, client and equipment. We couldn't. Did I mention the dark? By the time I got back the others had arrived and were in Simon's van watching a surf movie. Oh, the rigours of modern surfing!

Eventually, in murky, predawn light we headed around to the little beach. Gemma and I zigged, zagged and hopped close to the cliff base. Chris and Simon, in wetsuits and carrying their boards, waded through waves sweeping across the rock shelf.

Aside from the more accessible time of day during which they occur I do prefer shooting sunsets to sunrises for one important technical reason. As the sun sets the best light arrives - you can see the colours strengthen and become more vibrant. At sunrise that beautiful light emerges from the dark and leaves very quickly. This sunrise image would require 9 separate frames to be stitched together. Each panorama would take several minutes in quickly leaving light that wouldn't be back for 24 hours and would never be the same.

Timing is everything in photography and even more so with this picture. I would have to time the first shot on the extreme right with the incoming waves as I panned to the left a few degrees at a time. From an elevated position on a large rock I shouted across the noise of the surf to arrange Chris and Simon how I wanted them to stand and to place them at the spot that would be captured in the 7th frame.

After what seemed like a long time for the guys to be standing in the cold water and freezing wind the light on the horizon achieved a pleasing glow. A series of waves began their journey from right to left. I shouted "Shooting", Chris and Simon returned to the planned pose and I panned with the waves, stopping at pre-determined degree markings on the panorama head to make each frame.

We made a few more panos then headed back to the carpark and then down to Merewether Beach for a cuppa at the kiosk. Protected from the wind by the surf club the guys could warm up as we watched the big waves being ridden by those surfers who had made it out the back.

The picture is now hanging at Newcastle Airport which is a very modern regional facility servicing the Hunter Region on Australia's East Coast. The banner features the 'See Change' Newcastle logo - strong vibrant branding being used to attract visitors, business and new residents to Australia's seventh largest city.

I'm quite biased about Newcastle because I grew up there. Although I moved 160 kilometres south to Sydney about 7 years ago some of my family and many friends are still there. It really is a great place to visit, live and do business with.

A successful photograph is the sum of the team that works on it and special thanks go to Gemma, Chris and Simon.

Credits
The Surfers: Christopher Tola, Simon Drinkwater
Client: Newcastle City Council
Client Rep/Producer: Gemma der Kinderen
Agency: PeachAds / Megan Duncan
Equipment: Canon 1Ds Mark 3, Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens, Acratech GP Ballhead
Software: Lightroom 3 / Photoshop CS5

Meet me in Sydney's Royal Botanic Gardens for one of my DSLR Portrait Photography Workshops this October and November