Charlotte Sometimes

Tag: black and white

Mythlore Costume – Finished!

With a scant twenty-four hours before he’s due on the field at Mythlore I handed over the costume to Simon and it was at last gone from cluttering up my flat!

So here’s the pictures of the final stuff. Please excuse the unwilling model.

The robes were… a sticking point. I started making them up in pale grey and blue and they looked horrible. Like this… (excuse second unwilling model).

I’m not kidding. They sat pinned to my mannequin for weeks without being sewn because I just couldn’t face it. Eventually it started to become critical so Simon and I decided that a short wallow in some Antique Grey Dye was the way forward.

And hey presto, in 24 hours the magic happened and both the robes and the armour got finished and covered liberally in Fullers Earth!

I also distressed the robes as much as I could without ripping and destroying them. You’ll spy seams that have been pulled through deliberately, and I wanted to simulate a slightly clumsy wearer by stretching the front of the loose weave linen robes *after* I’d sewn the more stable cotton bias tape around them (did I mention that I made somewhere around 24m of cotton bias tape by hand for these robes? I have mentioned my pain several times to Simon). Basically I put my foot on the bottom of the robes and yanked upwards on the collar to make it stretch around the feet where he’s fallen over it.

The only bit I’m not quite happy with is the way that the back hangs. However that might be rectified in PtII – The Return of the Minoan Robes.

Would I do things differently? Sure. There were many lessons learnt, especially on the armour. However I think it all turned out more or less ok.

I’m kind of sad sending my first completed costume out into the world. I’m hoping it has fun at Mythlore this weekend and Mr Pennington doesn’t get them all slotted within thirty minutes so that they can go to the pub.

As a little added extra I wanted to show you these in a beautiful black and white. Some of you might know that I used to work full time as a product photographer and it’s really my passion when it comes to photography. Portraits and products (and a bit of architecture). I’d love to, one day, shoot products ahgain more regularly, but for clients who want something a little bit different.

September 19, 2014
My own Vortographs

As a follow up to my previous post on Coburns photography, this is my own rough attempt at something approximating a Vortograph.

Inspired by a mashup of Coburn, Hockney and the Diana Mini camera I have (in white… of course…) this is what I shot.

You will have to excuse the dodgy scanning – the lab didn’t quite get the nail on the head and I’m trying to work out the best way to get them rescanned.

February 5, 2014
Vortographs

I was reminded this morning of Alvin Langdon Coburn‘s Vortographs, creating in 1917. He was the first photographer to ever show abstract photographs in the history of art. He was a satellite member of the Vorticists movement and photographed both Pound and Epstein as part of the set of images.

The tool he used was something that he called a ‘Vortiscope’, three mirrors attached together in the form of a triangle in 1916. Later he photographed pieces of wood and crystal on a glass table and in the autumn of that year he experimented further with mirrors and the Vortiscope to shoot portraits in silhouette.

He initially labeled his work as cubist however later he picked up the Vorticist label. The exhibition at the London Camera club in 1917 included prefaces by both Pound and Coburn, however their collaboration was to be short-lived as Pound had little appreciate for the photographic medium and what Coburn had managed to achieve with it. This divide led to Coburn withdrawing from the Vorticist movement and really from photography altogether.

By the year after, 1918, Coburn had formed links with an artists colony in Wales where he pursued his interests in Freemasonry, astrology and the occult.

And here are his photographs.

February 5, 2014