Luke Burrage's Blog » LATW

Warvis Bay, Namibia

admin — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 11:47:56 +0000

Air travel is a necessary evil. Due to last minute booking of my flights to Cape Town, I managed to have two overnight flights in three nights. That’s not fun!

Also, I was really looking forward to seeing a bit of Cape Town, but when I arrived at the airport, we were taken directly to the ship and weren’t allowed off again.

Accordingly, I ate dinner out on deck, with a great view of the Table Mountain. And so ended my great South African adventure.

So on to Warvis Bay, Namibia! I took a shuttle bus from the port into town. On the way I saw Chris, another guest entertainer, wandering round and looking a bit lost for something to do. I offered a mini adventure, and we caught a cab out to the desert.

Dune 7 is about 300m high. My only plan was to climb the dune, juggle, jump a bit, and run back down.

Chris couldn’t keep up. However, it’s now about 4 days later, and my inner thighs are still giving me trouble.

Chris walking along the top of the ridge.

Jumping! This is one of my favorite things to do on a sand dune.

Chris had a go too. It took him a while to get used to it, but this is the best shot.

Soft landing.

Here’s a video I posted a few days ago. If you missed it, it contains running, jumping and juggling.

Driving back to the city. That’s the Westerdam cruise ship looming over the entire city.

I wore sandals. Chris wore trainers. He carried a lot of sand back from the dune.

Testing the weight of wooden sculptures to see if it’s possible to take them home on the plane.

The Westerdam, ship of drama. Maybe, if I ever work out what’s going on on this ship, I’ll write a blog post about it.

St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada

admin — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 12:52:31 +0000

Back in 2004 I visited Canada… for about an hour. I walked across a bridge, looked at a big waterfall, and then walked back again. Niagara Falls was very impressive, but I’ve not been back to Canada since. A few days ago I visited St. John’s, Newfoundland, at the end of a cruise. I had to leave the ship and head to the airport, but not until 4:30pm.

My first plan was to head to a small town near St. John’s. There is nothing of interest in this town, but I wanted to visit anyway. Why? Because the town is called Dildo.

This lead to much amusement when I mentioned it on twitter and Facebook, mainly due to the many puns. But it would be quite expensive in both time and money, so I decided to let that plan slide. No puns this time.

I decided to walk towards Signal Hill, a big bluff at the mouth of the harbor. It’s the location of Marconi’s first ever transatlantic radio transmissions. Such a transmission was thought impossible, but trying it out lead to the radio waves bouncing off the ionosphere instead of just running in straight lines into space.

A labrador! Although Labrador is the province next door to Newfoundland, they are represented by sculptures. There were also some Newfoundlander dog sculptures, but I didn’t take photos of them.

There are lots of painted wooden buildings in St. John’s. Unfortunately none of them piqued my photographers eye. But this bird box did.

The entrance to the harbor, guarded by cannons, with the city in the background.

Culver’s tower on top of Signal Hill.

This is the location of that first ever transatlantic radio signal reception antenna, the reason this is called Signal Hill. It’s also REALLY windy.

A small dog.

A labrador! a real one this time.

Ashley, my fellow adventurer, recently unbraided hair blowing in the wind.

The walk was much longer than expected, as we took the more adventurous route back down Signal Hill. I was fine, but someone else was wearing flip-flops.

The fishing village part of the city. Note the buildings falling into the sea. This was one of the many results of a single freak wave earlier in the year.

Ashley and me, surprisingly sunburnt.

I always love checking out second hand bookshops in all the cities I visit. It’s a pity I didn’t have time to look about much, as I had to get back to the ship in time to leave the ship.

That’s it as far as photos go! I did get some video of me juggling in Canada/Newfoundland, but due to the strong wind, I couldn’t do anything particularly interesting. Except, that is, straddle a cannon for full on phallic symbolism.

Juggling in Namibia

admin — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 08:47:38 +0000

Yesterday I visited Namibia for the first time. Whenever I arrive somewhere new I like to go out and do something fun. The evening before I asked Chris, another entertainer on the cruise ship, if he wanted to go on a mini-adventure. We took a taxi out to one of the highest sand dunes in the world, one called Dune 7. There we climbed the 300m high dune, jumped into the sand, juggled a bit, and ran back down the side. I would have maybe done more, but I had a show last night and wanted to save a little bit of energy.

Iceland and Greenland

admin — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 20:56:52 +0000

The weather was terrible at the first stop in Iceland. Seydisfjordur isn’t really a jumping place, so all I did was go to a hotel to use the internet.

In fact, the rain was so bad, I spent part of the morning watching Dexter. I finished all of season 3 in two days.

My only photo while off the ship in Seydisfjordur, some wooden sculptures.

Guest entertainers get nice cabins with windows, but often those windows look out onto life boats. I only notice the man working on the boat once I’d stripped off my wet trousers.

Reykjavik! A silhouette of the cathedral.

I visited the Blue Lagoon for the first time. I took a bus out from Reykjavik by myself because I couldn’t secure a place on the crew tour.

I didn’t take many photos, but did get some video.

The part of the blue lagoon where swimming isn’t a good idea.

Jon and Stewart.

As I met up with the crew tour at the lagoon, I decided to sneak onto the bus for the journey back to the cruise ship.

Greenland! My first time visiting the biggest island in the world. This is a glacier near the entrance to Prins Christian Sund, a channel between the mainland of Greenland and some small islands. The helicopter flew the length of the channel, to make sure it was clear of ice.

Another glacier. The ship stopped close to this one, and the officers on the bridge sounded the whistle. The blast of sound knocked a huge chunk of ice off the front into the water. It’s good to see a plan come together like that.

Kids on the ship playing their own version of Jenga.

A waterfall.

Looking back along the sound.

A typical Greenlandic village. Population: 160. Main income: seal hunting.

The village scrap heap.

A sailing boat rounding an iceberg.

Qaqortoq from the top of the hill.

The Ocean Princes and the Saga Ruby (a ship I worked on last year) anchored off Qaqortoq.

A helicopter flying past the Ocean Princess.

The same helicopter.

A test shot for a juggling clip. I stood on the edge of this ridge, and tried not to fall off the cliff.

Here is that juggling clip.

A pond on the top of the hill.

The Saga Ruby.

The Blue Lagoon

admin — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 00:27:13 +0000

The Blue Lagoon is an artificial lake, created by the outflow of a geothermic power station near the international airport in Iceland. I’ve visited Reykjavik so many times that I can spell it correctly without looking it up, but I’ve never visited its most popular near-by tourist destinations. Today I took that opportunity! Just after I arrived a crew tour turned up, so I hung out with all the people I’ve met on the ship. I got some footage of me juggling, and other crew members joined in too.

It turns out that 10cm stage balls, when wet, are very hard to launch. On my first go with 5, when they were dry, I had no problem. After that I had to resort to other techniques.

Faroe Islands

admin — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 15:30:13 +0000

My first time in the almost-country called the Faroe Islands. This is a collection of islands half way between Scotland and Iceland. I flew in, past towering cliff and rolling hills, and landed at the tiny airport. On the way to the hotel me and another entertainer chatted to the taxi driver about killing and eat whales, and the fact that Elton John was performing at the football stadium that evening.

I decided to go out for a walk, and caught a bus out to a random location, planning to walk back to the capital city, called Torshavn. Instead I ended up walking along the coast, trying to time my hike so I got a great view of the sunset at an appropriate time. I knew the hills would look good under the clouds, as I’d flown that same route a few hours before.

There are lots of sheep.

In a tiny village there is a whole house built out of driftwood.

This door was locked, but I took a photo through the hole. It’s like a museum. I decided to process this image to make it look old.

This is a sheep. It is tied on a leash. It mows the lawn of a house, and lives in a kennel. The kennel has a turf roof. This is very, very Faroeish.

A cute boy who lived in the old house with the sheep. I tired to get a photo of him, the sheep, the lawn and the kennel together, but it just wouldn’t work.

Many buildings have turf roofs. This is a classic postcard shot of an old shed.

Another sheep.

A bird and a sheep. Not a good photo, but funny.

Birds flying in front of the mountains.

A horse.

A silhouette of a horse.

Not a volcano, just a hill creating its own cloud top.

A deep gorge leading to the sea. I got a video of me juggling in front of this.

Sunset! The plan worked! I took some quite uninspired but otherwise technically acceptable HDR photos.

Another one.

A long exposure HDR shot of a small waterfall.

The lighthouse over Torshavn.

That’s all the photos! I mean, I took a photo of the Elton John concert poster, but when I walked around Torshavn I lacked all motivation for photography.

New work trip today!

admin — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 23:58:05 +0000

I hope you can see the map above. On this new work trip I get to visit quite a few new places. Faroe Islands, Greenland and Newfoundland. I hope I have chance to see and do some interesting things. In Iceland I hope to re-visit that very ashy volcano. Other things I want to achieve:
- Good photos.
- Get some videos of me juggling in amazing places.
- Write a song for June.
- Continue writing my novel.
- Get round to writing blog posts that include the photos I took in Istanbul, Croatia, Montenegro, Venice, St. Tropez, Pisa, Olympia and… um… I think that’s it.
- Record a review of a book I finished TWO WEEKS ago.

I think that’s it.

Berlin Fotomarathon 2010: one day later.

admin — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 10:15:23 +0000

How did the contest come out, Luke?

The Berlin Fotomarathon? I had a lot of fun, but now my body aches all over. I was cycling for about 14 hours. Not constantly, but when I wasn’t cycling I was laying or crouching or standing or leaning over to take photos. At about 10:30pm I got cramp in my toe, and then later in my calf.

About 400 people took part, and each person enters 24 photos. The judges have a lot to look through! There is an exhibition of all the photos in July, and the top 10 winners are announced then. I won’t be about in July to see the exhibition, but I think they put all the photos on the internet. I didn’t enter to win, but now that it’s over I’m curious to see if I win a prize. I know all my photos were technically very good, and I explored the main theme of “Time Travel Berlin” very well. As for the 24 individual themes for the photos, that you receive as you go along, I got really lucky with some, and completely copped out on others.

I started with zero inspiration, and nothing prepared. All I knew was that I wanted to do something different with my photography during the Fotomarathon, and not just go with my normal style. You’ve seen my photography… I just take photos of things I see. It’s not often I have a theme or a plan. I mean, I knew I wanted to take photos of swans the other day, but my favourite photo from that trip was the dog in front of the hospital, and that was the one photo I took that I didn’t plan!

So, the theme of the first photo was “Witnesses”, and it also had to include the paper with your number, so your photos can be identified from the first one. I was thinking “Maybe a security camera…” The next theme was “No man’s land” and I thought “Maybe the door of the ladies WC…” but knew those ideas were completely uninspired, and said nothing about the overall theme of time travel. Then I rode past a flea market, and spotted these two wooden dwarfs. They had funny eyes, looking off to the side, as though doing something naughty. I took a photo.

The photo looked a bit like this:

Then I thought, “Fuck it, I’m going to buy these right now, and they can be my models for the rest of the day.” I looked at the themes, and worked out a rough story that I could tell with the two dwarfs. It involved one killing the other, then going back in time to correct his mistake. Thankfully the later, unknown themes worked well with this. The last three were “One the edge of time”, “Nightowls” and “Berlin 2020″, so after they make friends again, I knew they would do a final time jump forward to 2010. Of course, I could only plan this after I found out at 9pm.

At some parts in the story the dwarfs had to look at photos of themselves in the past, so I took a photo of the back of my DSLR with my iPhone, zoomed in a bit on the iPhone screen, and showed them looking at that. Here is an image I used when one dwarf was showing the other how he teleported through time and space:

I chatted to some other marathoners along the way, saying “I’ve got to have a dwarf travel through time, and I don’t have a time machine! A phone booth would be good, but they don’t exist any more. Maybe I’ll create some kind of special effect on the spot.” Later on, I remembered the special effect above. You do it in camera. Hold the zoom lens, and make sure the eye is in the middle of the frame. Make sure you have a 1/30 exposure. Hit the shutter and turn the camera, not the lens, at the same time. Result: swirly time travel scene! The photo above isn’t the one I used for the final image, but it was the one that looked best on the the iPhone screen.

The favourite parts of the day, and the story, was when something happened spontaneously, and I made it part of the story. For example, at one point the red dwarf was going to spot the green dwarf across a fountain, after the red dwarf chasing the other through time to meet find him. The theme was “I spy with my little eye.” But a tourist turned the green dwarf round, for her husband to take a photo of her standing next to it in front of the fountain. First I thought “Damn tourist! Can’t you see I’m taking photos here?” Of course she couldn’t, as I was laying on the ground in on the other side of the fountain, trying to get to the same eye-level as the dwarfs. I was waiting for her to finish, when I realised the story would be better this way. Red would see green, but green wouldn’t see red. That way red could follow green for a while (the next theme was “moving”) and they could meet in a more personal way.

Also, on the second to last photo, I dropped one of the dwarfs for the first time. This resulted in a completely different ending to the story than I imagined. Better or worse, I can’t say, but certainly more abrupt than I imagined.

Overall, I had a really good day. I found out new things about photography, and about creativity, and about myself. Who knows, maybe I’ll do more of this kind of photography?

Swans in the sun

admin — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 19:07:13 +0000

“It’s such a beautiful day, I think I’ll walk.” Actually, I went to the canal to feed the swans. I took my camera, to practice taking photos without looking through the viewfinder.

As I was trying to take a photo of a swan taking bread out of my hand, a man walked past with two small dogs. Here is one. Behind are some other people enjoying the sun, and behind them is a hospital.

A swan pulling bread from my hand. Taking photos directly into the sun is quite tricky. For all these photos, to stop too much of the swans being “blown out” white, I turned the exposure compensation down a notch.

Aiming a 50mm lens without looking through the viewfinder is really tricky, but I got some good shots. I decided to process them to look like greetings cards.

Increasing exposure? Check. Boosting vibrance and saturation? Check. Decreasing clarity? Check. Over the top vignetting? Check!

This one is taken without holding the camera five centimeters from the water.

This one is my favorite.

I discovered a great way to know if the swan is in the center of the frame. I looked at the automatic shutter speed readout on the LCD. When it read “1/600″ I knew it was pointing at something dark, like the water or trees. When it said “1/3200″ I knew it was pointing at something bright, like a swan in the sunlight. I’m going to use this trick in the future if the subject the right contrast.

Also, I discovered that ND filters would be a really cool tool for photographing anything in weather like today, using a 50mm prime lens. That’s a project and a lesson for another day.

A trip to the zoo!

admin — Sun, 30 May 2010 11:01:11 +0000

Last Tuesday I went to the zoo with my parents. The Tierpark in Berlin is huge, and even after visiting twice there are a few parts I’ve not seen yet. Here are some animal photos.

A Gibbon (I think).

Ring tailed lemurs. This photo is a collaboration between myself and my father. He stood behind me, doing increasingly big and stupid movements to get them all to look our way at the same time.

Love is in the air!

I could watch the baby monkeys playing all day! Here they’d (accidentally) set up a seesaw balance type thing. A monkey each end, pivoting over a log. The monkey on top is here pushing the stick off the log.

My parents looking into the manatee tank.

Manatees like lettuce.

We reached the elephant enclosure in time to see their daily wash and foot check. Compared to actually washing elephants in a river, in India, it really didn’t compare.

Open wide…

Elephants love apples.

Lazy leopard.

Sunbathing vulture.

Prairie dogs.

A visitor’s dog watching the prairie dogs.

Tiger portrait.

Two bears, two Burrages. I made my parents pose for this photo, as when I saw the bears in the distance I thought a shot like this would look good. I should get people to pose for natural shots more often.

My dad with a pelican.