Luke Burrage's Blog

Olympia and Katakolon

admin — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 10:37:37 +0000

Today I’m in Katakolon, Greece. As a port, it’s not particularly interesting, but about 30 minutes away is the site of the first Olympic Games, called Olympia.

For those following this blog, you’ll notice I did a few cruises in April, but never posted the photos, and now I’m finally getting around to it. Today my only plan is to sit in a cafe and use the internet, but back in April, myself and some other entertainers from the Prinsendam went on a mini-adventure to Olympus.

Three cruise ships in the harbor.

I didn’t take a horse and carriage ride.

On the train.

You’re not allowed to take bags into the Olypus site.

Blossoms and rocks.

Columns.

Photo opportunity!

More columns.

The olympic arena.

Me on the start line.

Lining up for a race…

Just for the photo.

We never did have a race.

Piles and piles and piles of rocks. I mean ruins.

I got a video of me juggling here. Before being told to stop by the security guards. In fact, if you did ANYTHING other than walk and look, they told you to stop.

A bit of this column is missing.

It was great to visit so early in the season, as there were very few other tourists. On a day like today it will be heaving with humanity.

Then I had no more rocks to photograph, so I switched to photographing people.

Long exposures in Dubrovnik

admin — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 10:47:22 +0000

Back in April, after spending a week in Istanbul, I flew out to Croatia to join another cruise ship. I had to spend a night in Dubrovnik, which has a beautiful old town surrounded by high castle walls. I’ve only ever visited during the day, when it is packed with tourists, but now I had chance to explore when it stood empty.

I decided to try some long exposure photography, both in the streets, and at the sea. The smokey water effect is a nice one, but I’d never really experimented with it before. As the lighting faded, I tried out lots of different settings.

In this photo, the sun set a while before, but the still-visible clouds means it could pass for an overcast day. The problem here is that the water isn’t moving enough, so it looks fake, but not in a pleasing way.

The main street.

Looking back at the castle.

Reflections of street lights add to the effect… though I got a bit wet in this spot.

More smokey waves.

It’s right on the limit here, as the street lights are overpowering the remaining light from the sky.

A cathedral.

Steps.

Me.

While none of these photos are particularly interesting, when I find that perfect spot at the perfect time, and I need to capture flowing water with a long exposure, I’ll probably be able to get it right first time.

Photos from Istanbul

admin — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 11:14:29 +0000

Istanbul

I just visited Istanbul! I didn’t take any photos though, as I was only there for a few hours, and just visited the juggling shop. But back in April? Due to volcanic ash clouds, I was stuck in the city for a week.

In that week I did loads of tourist things, and took loads of photos. For some reason I never got round to posting them on my blog. So here we go…

Day 1. After going to the airport and back, I had an evening and a night on the Prinsendam. I took a look around the city, thinking I might get a flight home in the morning.

Overlooking the Bosporus.

Lovers in the park.

My fellow adventurer from the cruise ship.

Fountain at sunset.

The Blue Mosque.

Ugliest statue ever?

Haja Sofia, once the biggest cathedral in the world.

Spice market.

The Taksim area of the city. Shopping, food, bars, clubs, etc.

I went out to eat with a friend I made at last year’s Turkish juggling festival. Then we saw a movie as part of a film festival (Life During Wartime, including a Q&A with the director). Then we saw a band.

Day 2. I managed to time my strandedness perfectly! It just so happened that on the Sunday, all the organizers of the Turkish juggling festival got together to discuss the 2010 festival. I popped over for the pre-meeting-party on Saturday. Deniz has a cool studio apartment in Istanbul, perfect for a juggling party.

Day 3. While the turkish jugglers made plans for the festival, I visited the city once more. My destination? The Haja Sofia. The history of this building is incredible, and I’m not going to recount the stories here. Check out Wikipedia. Or better yet, listen to the podcast called 12 Byzantine Rulers. It’s very entertaining, and very educational, and one of the reasons why I’ve wanted to visit Istanbul for the past few years.

It’s fucking huge. Just huge.

I mean huge.

There are two bridges across the Golden Horn, a spur of water that separates two parts of Istanbul. There are always hundreds, maybe thousands, of people fishing from the bridge. It’s quite impressive, especially as in all the many times I crossed these bridges and took photos, I never saw anyone catch or land a fish.

The spice market again.

I got back in time to watch more organizing by jugglers.

Day 5. What happened to day 4? Well, I didn’t take photos every day. By now I was staying on couches in different parts of Istanbul. Actually, mainly with Sinem and then PJ.

However, I wanted to look around the royal palace and harem. Again, quite an interesting place.

All these courtyards and rooms were once filled with beautiful women and testicle-less men.

Me, in a mirror. I have testicles.

No photography allowed.

A model of the palace grounds. It is now purely a museum.

Day 7. I suspected I didn’t have much longer to in the city, so wanted to tick off the last few tourist sites and sights. First, I had a turkish massage. It was pretty awesome.

Of course, I didn’t take my camera into the massage place, but this was just outside. It’s the pillar which all roads and measurements were taken from during the Byzantine empire. This was the center of the empire, in one way.

Istanbul, or Constantinople as it was called back in the day, was besieged many, many times. To make sure they had a water supply, the various rulers created cisterns under the central squares in the city.

Now the cisterns are mostly empty of water, and serve as tourist attractions.

One pillar has a hole in it. Inserting your thumb and twisting your hand brings good luck. Or so I presumed, as people lined up to do it.

I did it too.

The cisterns are old, but they were made from even older building materials. There’s just so much history in Istanbul, it’s piled on top of itself.

A cat.

The inside of the Blue Mosque. It’s about as big as the Haja Sofia.

My final stop in Istanbul, the old city walls. These repelled all invaders for centuries, and still look imposing today. Unfortunately I didn’t feel comfortable taking many photos. The entire length of the walls seemed to contain nothing but a massive sleeping area for homeless people. I found it rather depressing, and only stayed for a few minutes.

That wraps up the photos from Istanbul!

Photos from Lublin

admin — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 12:28:25 +0000

Lublin Carnival of Magicians! Actually a juggling convention, tightrope convention, street show festival and carnival all in one city at the same time. What a concept, and what a success! This is the same city and team who are hosting the EJC in 2012, so now I’m super excited for that too.

I performed in the Saturday Gala show, plus two street shows. I also took part in the Juggling Battle, taking third place (I was robbed!), and won the combat and coin juggling in the games on Sunday.

More importantly for this blog, I took loads of photos! High resolution versions of these photos will be along in a few days time.

I took the train. My first time in Poland, too.

A massive rain storm on the first day made me worried.

Info tent.

Volunteers needed!

Rain…

Tight rope walking between buildings in the old city center.

Fire night on Thursday.

More fire spinning.

Declan and Jeff sharing tricks.

Kids area.

More tight rope walking.

Pol and Freddy.

Getting ready for the Friday Night Gala.

House of Intrika.

John Daniel Fricker.

Jan Frisch.

Frida Odden.

Argentinian aerialists Paramo Cero.

Feet.

Morgan.

Mr. Toons.

Finale.

Juggle Battle in progress.

Winner and second place in the Juggling Battle.

Pol and Freddy in the gala show.

Marion.

Audrey.

Live music from the show.

Emilia Tau and Leo Cristiani

Awesome act by Alessandro Maida!

When I sat down to eat in, a fire breather started performing across the street. I’ve never taken photos of fire breathing before, and I didn’t leave my table…

Not bad shots though.

Juggling games! I could only take this photo because I’d just won the previous round of combat, so I was already through to the final. Which I won, of course.

Tossup!

Declan performing in the city center.

Pol and Freddy wait for the distraction to walk away before starting their show.

Video: Work It Out Yourself

admin — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 21:42:51 +0000

A step along the way to a full length, three person theater show that takes place entirely in this one room. I’ve still got a long way to go, but after two years of working I had to share something!

This video is not representative of the final show, but just something I worked on for a few weeks.

You know, just a few weeks, after thinking about it for a few months, based on a few years of work that are in turn based on a few decades of ideas and practice…

Download the music here (mp3, music only released under a creative commons 3.0 license).

If you want to know how I made the video, click here.

Moving mess

admin — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 19:58:00 +0000

I realized that the photos I’ve been putting on craigslist to sublet my apartment are really old, and after the spring/summer decorating the place looks completely different now. I still want to do more work. For example, the flooring in the dining room (I want nice wooden floors instead of carpets, but I don’t have the time or motivation to do that now, and the old floor was so shit it had to be covered with something), and I still want to put a fireman’s pole from the bedroom to the living room area. Also, the photos in the dining room are still not any kind of final choice, and now I’ve blown some images up larger as tests, I’m not happy with the cheap frames.

Today I moved various amounts of mess around, and took photos that will hopefully encourage people to want to stay here while I’m away. The reality is that I’ve got juggling clubs strewn across the floor, and the couch looks more like an office with all the papers and books than somewhere to sit.

So if anyone wants to swap places to live, I’m looking for somewhere in New York for most of September…

Photographing Jugglers – my journey

admin — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 15:28:01 +0000

Inspired by an email, I’ve decided to share a bit about taking photographs of jugglers.

Back in 2000 I attended the British Juggling Convention, and I took along a digital camera, and I put a few hundred images on my website. My website grew into one of the most popular juggling website over the next three years, for many non-photography related reasons, but it started by posting convention photos.

I kept this up until 2003 when, due to an animation I made going viral, my web server crashed and never recovered. I stopped taking so many photos, and writing up long reviews about conventions, and concentrated on my new job as a professional juggler.

Then, in 2007 because I was traveling so much, I bought a DSLR camera to document all the places I visited. My photography skills slowly improved, until I actually considered myself to be a pretty decent photographer, rather than just one of the first jugglers with a digital camera, a website, and lots of free time.

In 2009 I decided to make daily photo blog posts from the EJC. I did this because unlike previous years, I had no official organizing duties, and wanted a goal to fulfill for the convention. I got a good reaction on my blog, and was very proud of the photos I captured.

However, taking photos of people juggling isn’t something I’d practiced much, as I was far more used to photographing animals, cities, landscapes, interesting local people and other travel subjects. I had more practice by photo blogging at the Sundance Turkish Juggling Festival 2009, and worked out better work flows, to get images from my camera to the internet more quickly.

Up until this spring, I just posted my photos on my blog. The point of my blog is to post everything I create or do, including music, videos, photography, writing, reading, philosophizing, etc. It gives me a lot of control over presentation, but isn’t well suited for people to respond. Leaving comments on a blog isn’t hard, but I must admit it’s something I very rarely do.

Then I was invited to photograph the House Of Intrika fashion show at the Berlin Juggling Convention this year. Lots of my friends took part so instead of just posting the photos on my blog, I put them on Facebook too. The response, compared to an average blog post, was overwhelming. In two days I had well over 200 comments and “likes”, and dozens of people involved, or who had friends involved, added me as a friend.

So this year, at the EJC in Finland, even though I had to organize six shows in six days, I decided to carry my camera with me as much as possible. Along with two revelations, one technical and one philosophical, I suddenly enjoyed taking photos during shows, rather than hating and avoiding it. Trying to strike a balance between taking great photographs and simply documenting what is happening is difficult, but I expect it to get easier as I continue to get better at effortlessly capturing magical moments.

I posted the resulting photos to my blog and Facebook every night, and once again I got an amazing response. I could hardly keep up with all the commenting and liking and photo tagging, as hundreds came in every day. Also, by the end of the convention, I had hundreds of new Facebook friends.

Another result, or at least an indicator that I’m getting better at photography, is that four juggling magazines have asked permission to use my photographs in their articles or as front cover images. Pretty cool!

Thanks for reading, and thanks for coming along with me on this journey.

Every EJC 2010 photo with links to high resolution versions.

admin — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 21:27:47 +0000

Many people on Facebook and elsewhere are asking for full resolution versions of my EJC photos. The best way to view the photos quickly is by using Facebook, as that way you can see who is tagged in each photo. The other way is to go to each individual blog post, and scroll through them all in a suitable size.

Finally, a thumbnail of every photo is posted below. Only these thumbnails link to the full size files, not the other images on my blog or Facebook. If you see a photo on facebook or the blog posts you like, find it here to download the original. Alternatively, here is the entire list of every photo.

All photos are released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License. That means you can use the photos for non-commercial reasons, as long as you give me credit and link back to this website. For any other use, email me.

On Facebook:
EJC 2010 day 0 – setting up the festival site.
EJC 2010 day 1 – Saturday 24th July
EJC 2010 day 2 – Sunday 25th July – Opening Show, Marco and Wes
EJC 2010 day 3 – Monday 26th July
EJC 2010 day 4 – Open stage show and Compagnie Ea Eo
EJC 2010 day 5 – Wednesday 28th July
EJC 2010 day 6 – Thursday 29th July
EJC 2010 day 7 – Friday 30th July
EJC 2010 day 8 – Gala Show

On my blog:
EJC 2010 day 0 – setting up the festival site.
EJC 2010 day 1 – Saturday 24th July
EJC 2010 day 2 – Sunday 25th July – Opening Show, Marco and Wes
EJC 2010 day 3 – Monday 26th July
EJC 2010 day 4 – Open stage show and Compagnie Ea Eo
EJC 2010 day 5 – Wednesday 28th July
EJC 2010 day 6 – Thursday 29th July
EJC 2010 day 7 – Friday 30th July
EJC 2010 day 8 – Gala Show

Juggling in Helsinki, Finland – International Juggler 2010

admin — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 21:23:34 +0000

I’m on the way home from the European Juggling Convention. I took just under 2000 photos, but I made no videos at all during the entire 9 days, except when I helped Nathan with the EJC Live streaming. So here is a clip of me juggling under the Sibelius Monument, Helsinki. Music: Valse Triste by Jean Sibelius.

EJC 2010 day 8 – Gala Show photos

admin — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 08:21:02 +0000

Last night, after the party on the hill, I finally got to bed at 11am. I woke at 3pm and made it to the hall at 4pm. After food and chatting and hanging out, it was suddenly time for the Gala Show!

I began by doing a “Not The EJC Gala Show” show for the live streaming, then switched to taking photos from back stage. After the show I avoided anything important, and went to bed the earliest of any night of the convention so far. It was a very lazy last day of the convention.

Enjoy these Gala Show photos!