Sneaker Summit

Better late than never. I shot these in February at the Sneaker Summit in Dubai. Was a great event, almost too busy to allow for photographs, but I managed to get a few shots.

I was testing out a Leica M6 which I'd hired. Great camera. Shot these on Ilford 3200.







© 2011 Jerry Balloch

Shooting my way out

I've been suffering from a lack of inspiration recently, creative block, whatever you call it. Maybe because things here in Dubai are starting to wind down for the hot summer ahead, I dunno.

Anyway I decided that enough was enough and I needed to shoot my way out of it, so hatched a plan - get a bunch of folk over to the studio, provide some malted hops and fermented grape juice, props and something relatively soft to land on. The results were great. We all had a good laugh, made fools of ourselves and I got to break this creative funk I'm in.

I shot on my Nikon D3 and the Mamiya RZ 67, mounted them both on a tripod with a T bar, sort of a Drew Gardner vibe. Kept the lighting setup simple - two Profoto 3x4 softboxes left and right, one 5ft Octa high above. Used Profoto Compacts in the 3x4s and a 7b head in the Octa.



I made a slideshow of all the D3 pics.

Jumps and Japes from Jerry Balloch on Vimeo.

Here are a few fave shots, there's more back on the site.











I shot these with the Mamiya RZ 67 on Ilford 100 Delta. Processed them myself using Ilfosol 3 developer pushed 1 stop. It's pretty tricky freezing action with a manual focus lump like the RZ but I'm happy with the results, it's a great camera ti use.
















©2011 Jerry Balloch

New year, new bike, first photograph.

It's taken a while to get going, 2011. Very slow start to the year. Lots of work overspilled from 2010 and has been keeping me from starting 2011. All out of the way now it's time to start again.

I got a new bike, a Charge Plug Freestyle. That's it up top in pretty much my first photo of the year. Got big plans for pimping it. I'll post the results here, all shot beautifully natch. Started the transformation already by swapping the front brake lever for a Gold Finger, reminds me of my first BMX. Also, replaced the grips with Genetic Vein hot pink ones. They truly are retina burning, it was pretty much illegal for me to shoot it in colour, health and safety n all that. Plans next include a new wheelset, thinking Velocity Deep V's or maybe even an Aerospoke on the front. Whatever happens, I'll shoot it and post it up here.

©2011 Jerry Balloch

5D mkII Test footage for Desert MX short

Desert Bike Teaser from Jerry Balloch on Vimeo.

I'm about to start working on a short film of Desert MX here in Dubai. I've decided to shoot on the Canon 550D so I have the ability to shoot at 60fps for slo-mo. I shot the test above on a 5D mkII. This is my first go at shooting moving image rather than stills so it'll be a steep learning curve but I'm looking forward to seeing how it all turns out.

Jump Photoshoot

Jump photoshoot from Jerry Balloch on Vimeo.

There are some shots from this shoot over on my site and on my behance folio. This is a video of all the shots taken during the shoot. I'm going to pull a few more out over time. Very good fun. Thanks to all who took part in it, it was a blast.

©2010 Jerry Balloch

Other Leading Brand – overshirt

Worked on these self portrait/product shots of my new overshirt for Other Leading Brand. I'm almost at full production stage with these, just tweeking the designs a little and nailing down fabrics. It's great being able to control the look and feel of the brand as well as design the shirts themselves. Got a shoot planned for next week with models for the shirts to save me jumping around. Will post the results.




©2010 Jerry Balloch

Red door portraits

A couple of portraits that I took after the LSL shoot on the mamiya rz67. Shot them on expired Ektachrome and then cross-processed them. Love the separation between the person and the door behind. The dappled light is due to it being a fantastically sunny day with some big old clouds rolling by, lots of trees in garden too. Definitely going to use this location again.

©2010 Jerry Balloch

littlesister lucy

I did a fashion shoot for littlesister lucy yesterday. Shot digital and film. Once I get the film developed I'll post some images, in the meantime this is one of the digital captures. It was a really fun shoot. I shot with my brother, so we both got to do our takes on the outfits. The model was Ling, she did a great job considering it wasn't as warm as it could have been out there!

©2010 Jerry Balloch

Nice Moment

Another couple here from the 6x7 project. This time I was shooting my Dad as he did some leather work in his book room. I'm shooting available light on Ilford Delta 3200 here. Getting some nice shots when my youngest son walks through, completely ignoring me and the camera and starts talking to his grandpa, click, caught it. Really delighted with this shot...



©2010 Jerry Balloch

Beach Black and Whites

I'm still in the UK, been a great summer. I've been working on this personal project documenting the people close to me using my Mamiya RZ67 as a way of really getting to know the camera. It's going well and I have a bunch of images scanned and ready to share. My plan is to make a book with them 6x7 - 6 images each of 7 people. I'm using a variety of film stocks as well as trying to capture what the person means to me rather than 6 straight portraits of each person. It's a really nice way to remember this summer and the things I've been up too. More to come...



©2010 Jerry Balloch

Quick update

The beard is coming along nicely. Quick self portrait above using the Mamiya RZ67 and some Fuji FP-100b polaroid film.

I'm heading back to the UK tomorrow for 2 months to escape the heat of Dubai. Planning on shooting a lot of personal work on the RZ to really make use of it, can't wait. Plus it will be great to hang out with family and friends for a decent amount of time instead of the usual rush trips.

I'm also going to be working on a fashion project over the summer. Will talk more about that later. You can get a sneak peek over on my flickr page here.

©2010 Jerry Balloch

Bentley Supersport

I had the fun task of shooting a Bentley Supersport at the end of last week for a magazine. The timings were very tight to say the least, we also only had the Bentley, no chase car, so it limited our options somewhat. Still, got to drive around in it to the few locations we had mapped out which was great fun, that car can shift. Location one was a tunnel about an hour or so from Dubai, ideally would have been better to have another car to shoot from while moving but still managed to get a good looking shot. Then on to the white village up on a hill for some static shots. I've a bunch more to edit but thought I'd post a few here. I'll upload tear sheets when the article is published.



©2010 Jerry Balloch

Polaroids

One of the frustrating things about living in Dubai is the availability of certain things. Since buying the Mamiya I've realised that you can get any film you want in Dubai as long as it's b&w Ilford! You want polaroids? No. So I ended up placing a big order with B&H, ignoring the shipping charge (ouch!) and waiting for it to arrive.

It was worth it though, so nice to be shooting film again. I shot a bunch of tests last night with b&w Fuji FB-100. Still getting used to the camera, but I thought I'd share a few here. All shot available light at f2.8/f4. I shot a roll of film too so I'll see how it comes out. Next up colour!





©2010 Jerry Balloch

RZ67 Pro II

I've just bought myself a Mamiya RZ67 Pro II medium format film camera. My reason for this was to get back into shooting film. It's all too easy nowadays with digital to fire off countless frames without really thinking too much about it, kind of on autopilot almost. So I decided to get myself a film camera again for my personal work, slow things down a bit and see where it all takes me. I think it's great to experiment as a photographer, I used to shoot film but somewhere along the way I sold my film cameras and went fully digital. Don't get me wrong, digital is great, I love it, and for my commercial work it works well, but I just felt something missing, a need for something different. Let's hope that this camera, this process, can fill that gap. It'll be great fun finding out if it does. You never know, I might end up using it on some commercial jobs.

I bought the camera second hand so I ran a quick roll through it the other night while cooking dinner to see if it all works. I'd forgotten the difference between f2.8 on medium format vs. 35mm, that's some shallow depth of field. Here are a few shots. I'll post more of me getting used to shooting film again here as and when I do. It'll be good to see where it all ends up.







©2010 Jerry Balloch

Image Problem

I appear to have a bit of an image problem, well not me personally but my blog here.

I've recently switched to cargo collective for the layout and hosting of my website and along the way my blog images have been vaporised. Not Cargo's fault I may add, purely down to me. So until I can fix it you're going to have to put up with every one on my pictures looking like a small blue question mark. I'm sure I'll remedy it soon.

Zipp Wheels - art of cycling

Part of an ongoing personal project I'm doing documenting the art of cycling. The craftmanship, design, and finishing on some bike parts often gets overlooked. I've taken it upon myself to photograph some of these pieces and hopefully do justice to the amount of work that went into creating them.

Zipp Wheels are handmade in Speedway Indiana.

©2010 Jerry Balloch

NYC trip

I was in New York at the start of last month for a few days of glorious spring weather. I've got a few shots to work on from the trip but in the meantime here are a some I made earlier.


6th Avenue


6th Avenue


A/C


Wooster Street

It's an amazing place, so much to see and do and a real stark contrast from the deserts of Dubai. Hopefully I'll get back there soon for some more shooting and a trip to the hallowed B&H camera shop which was closed the entire time I was there for passover - timing!

©2010 Jerry Balloch

Matte Box Experiment

I recently bought a Matte Box for my camera to hold ND filters. I'm really happy with it and was playing around with a wideangle lens on it and came up with this.



I dug the framing it did to the image so I tweaked it a bit in photoshop to give it the lo-fi look. Not the be all and end all of an image but the look is stored in the back of my head somewhere for when I can use it properly.

©2010 Jerry Balloch

Watermark Magazine

Got a copy through of The Princess Yachts magazine Watermark today, featuring 3 pics I shot for their story about the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix back in November. Bagged the story opener DPS which is a nice shot of a Princess V65 with the Atlantis Hotel in the background.



Two shots on the following spread too. The quality of the magazine is really good, nice weighty satin stock used which really pops the images off the page. First publish of the new year.

Still on a nautical note, I've just finished two shoots for Yachts Emirates magazine here in Dubai so should have some more images to post of those soon.

©2010 Jerry Balloch

Jellies

Happy New Year!

Last year was a good one so this year has a lot to live up to. Got lots of plans on what to do creatively this year but am going to take it slow. Nothing worse than starting of all guns blazing only to falter after a few weeks.

Took this pic of Jellyfish yesterday, my second pic of the year. First one was of my fridge! Random, but I'll explain that later. Truth be told this is actually three shots merged together so really it's my second, third and fourth pics of the year. Going to get it printed real big. The colours are just amazing, so warm.

©2010 Jerry Balloch