March, 2012

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Oxford: Balliol Ball 2012 part 1

Saturday, March 3rd, 2012

I was fortunate enough to be granted permission to do some roaming photography at the Balliol Ball yesterday and the most amazing part is that I only found out about the ball the day before when I saw dodgem cars being unloaded outside the college. I was walking past on my lunch hour street photography session and got chatting with some of the guys unloading the dodgems. It was a great evening that was a lot of fun and my thanks go to Omid for allowing me to attend. I’ve never been to an Oxford college ball and this one was a nice one to start with because not only do I have friends that studied at Balliol but I also photographed and designed their prospectus a number of years ago.

I’d love to photograph more Oxford college balls so if anyone out there is connected in any way and can give me permission to attend I’d really like to hear from you. Thanks.

The images below are from the digital camera that I took as a back up, the majority of my photography was all done on medium format and 35mm film which I haven’t processed yet. Those images will follow as soon as I process and scan the films next week.

Praying mantis style

Fist in the air

All of the lights. I like the mixture of formal outfits here and the girl on the left who isn't so formal.

Tell a friend

Posted in Oxford | 4 Responses »
Tags: ball, balliol, oxford

Sport: Powerlifting, Oxford v Cambridge Varsity

Thursday, March 1st, 2012

The majority of my photography last Sunday during the Oxford V Cambridge Varsity competition was done during the Powerlifting. I started off by doing portraits of some of the competitors (which I will post soon) in the warm up area. Right next door was where the actual lifting was taking place. It was a great atmosphere with clouds of chalk dust everywhere and black walls which reminded me of black boards from school. The light level was low for photography (too low I thought) but the quality of the light looked really nice and I thought it was worth giving it a shot.

For these shots I used a roll of Kodak Tri-X that I rated at ISO 1600. I thought the light level was so low that I didn’t bother with taking a light reading. I simply set the shutter speed to the lowest I thought I could hand hold steady (1/60) and kept the lens wide open (f4.5). If I had known that the images were going to turn out this well I would have shot a lot more.

[Tech info:] Mamiya RZ67 and 50mm lens loaded with Kodak Tri-X rated at ISO 1600. Processed in Kodak HC110 (dilution b, 1:31) for 17mins at 20C.