Thursday, October 10, 2013

Living Statues 2013

Once again we are here with the Rehovot Annual Living Statues Festival.

This took place last month, but I took my time editing the photos. There's just a lot of other stuff going on, and even though I have lots of good ideas for photography, I very much doubt if I would have the time to go through with them in the near future.

This year the festival moved to a new location, at the "Founder's park" which was lit up with chains of fluorescent lights, and several large glowing globes. All making nice background for the statues.

It was kinda crowded, even though it was the last day (out of three), but I still managed to find a few good angles. I made a first round with a long lens and tripod (hard to manage around the people) and then switched to flash and wide angle. As always, the real pleasing images were mostly the ones taken with my macro lens.




Nights of the Living Statues:
2011 | 2012 | 2013

A shot of the surroundings, taken before going home (it was a little more crowded during the peak hours). You can see the interesting lighting in the background, which I tried to get into as many of the images as possible.


This massive panorama was stitched from several images. I hope this full-size image doesn't screw with your display too badly. This is supposed to be the orphanage from Oliver Twist.


The chimney sweep. Also stitched from four images using the 105 from a couple of steps back. I was making portraits when I saw this shot would work much better taken wide. Instead of switching to 50mm I just shot them in a row and composited (that's not a word, actually).


This, on the other hand, is with a wide angle taken up close, while my tripod held the flash from the side. Better light, and shorter exposure makes this a lot sharper. Notice how the different focal lengths render a completely different background.


I don't even know what this is:


Archangel Michael. A lot of the best performers were from other countries. I think these guys are so good because they do this for a living back home. He was pretty impressive.


Finally an angle that was looking top-down.


John Lennon. I had taken this on a tripod with a long-ish exposure, which also made him a little blurry. The guy in the background (on the left) was standing still and was awfully distracting. I ended up using photoshop's motion blur to take him out. Since he was on a dark background it didn't look obvious that I did, and it ended up looking similar to the woman on the right, which was blurred in the original image.


You may recognize Odelia from last year... This time as the shower girl. It must be hard coming up with new ideas each year. This one I've definitely never seen before.


Some games with the processing.  The brightest colored photos make for the best BW images.


Steampunk Lady. Also a good one (from abroad). I don't know how many people in Israel even know what steampunk is, but she was pretty cool anyway.


The image below is a composite which I was lucky enough to take before she switched poses. I left the margins intentionally raw, I think it makes it more interesting, and also gives some perspective on how this images was taken.


This one was really statuesque.























"The Kid". I was just in time to catch him picking up some girl's shoko. By this time I was working with a flash on the side, so these came out perfectly lit.


The photographer.


Saxophone playing angle. Who comes up with this stuff?

A few more shots for the shower girl.





And just to remind you guys. Four years and four different setups:























I don't know if I will get a chance to photograph next year's festival. So, this, I think, sums it up fairly well. I know Odelia recently opened a facebook page for this work, check it out here.

To finish off, here are a few images I took just as I was getting ready to leave. I was working with the 17-50 since I was getting real lazy going back so far to use the 105 and pushing up close to use my 11mm ultra wide. This was comfort zone 45-50. The flash on the side, the backlight and the textures of these guys made the shot for me.


another one with the white balance cooled off to match the ambient. I was too lazy to gel my flash, but I rather like the blue light it gave me.



For many more images, go to my facebook page.


Nights of the Living Statues:
2011 | 2012 | 2013








1 comment:

  1. Fantastic photos from last year edition! Wow and Steampunk Lady is featured so amazingly! Thank you for your photos gallery,Izabela - living statue (Steampunk Lady 2013, Turquoise Shopkeeper 2014) www.lutrek.co.uk

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