Yesterday came out the new issue of MODNA, the leading fashion magazine in Slovenia where you can find also my editorial shot 500 meters under the surface in a working coalmine… So how the hell did we end up shooting there? Well the story actually begins 2 years ago. I was commissioned to shoot a portrait of Dr. Milan Medved, the director of coal mine in Velenje. He is a huge guy, real miner, but really opened, talkative and friendly so I could not resist the temptation asking him if there would be any chance that I could do a shoot in the mine. He really liked this idea and he said that we should discuss that in details some other time… And than came an end of the summer so I went back to UK…and another summer came and I was thinking about this shoot quite often but again I didn’t find the time to shoot there, went back to London when I received an email from mr. Milan what is happening, when are we going to shoot in the mine… And this finally kicked me in the ass and not long time after that I went there to have a talk about the shoot and I went around the mine to check the location. After you step in the building on the top of the shafts you also step in completely new world. I got miners socks, underwear, shirt, pants, jacket, belts, shoes, helmet, gloves, protecting glasses, headlight, self rescue -breathing device and a tag. Than you enter the lift that takes you to the depth of 400m in just couple of seconds. Darkness, in some shafts there is cold in some hot, then you have the smelly ones, the wet ones, dusty ones… When  you are walking around you meet a miner or two time to time and you greet with traditional SREČNO (good luck) and my ˝guide˝ Miran knew most of the man by the sound of their voice since you try not to flash everyone in the face with your blinding headlight. And it is quite funny when occasionally you almost step on some miner sitting on the floor in the dark eating his lunch…

We will return to the mine again a bit later… Well I suggested to Tadeja (PR of the coalmine) that we could do a shoot for Modna there… She was happy, Modna was happy so… lets do it… So in November I flew from London to Ljubljana for a weekend and we did the shoot.

You can imagine the reactions and the comments of the miners, when this aliens- women came to this exclusively mans word. It was funny for sure! I do not want to go into the details.

But I have to say it was quite a hard shooting… Lots of different locations, different lighting setups, finding the right time to shoot on certain location so there is enough miners there or that there are not there… etc. We were working long hours again and when I came home I just collapsed into the bed.

And when I was shooting with miners (non of the photos of miners are in the mag ) they gave me all sorts of typical miners tobacco products to try and of course they have a big laugh when they were looking a guy in skinny jeans making strange faces while trying that… But what the hell..When in Rome, do as the Romans do…  And what was it…? Well there was a chewing tobacco soaked into the šnops  (strong home made brandy). I don’t like even this things separated, not to mention the combination… And then there were half of the miners… just don’t swallow the juice…and there was another half..of course you have to swallow… BUT… I know that, I guess from the Westerns (John Wayne) that swallowing would give you a nice diarrhea! … And the other thing that made us all cry was sniffing the tobacco… Me, because I am not used of that thing stucked in my nose and them because of laughing… Well we had fun indeed…

I had a fantastic team to work with me on this:

Styling by Alenka Birk and Barbara Žgalin

Mua: Saša Godejša

Hair: Matej Komar

Models: Una B. and Hana

Coordinator: Miran Beškovnik

Retouching: Mr. B

Least but not least my lovely assistants: Uroš Žuraj and Marko Ocepek

And thx to Rok – Nikon Slo.!

And the photos…My selection is a bit different that in the magazine…

Backstage photos by: Marko, Matjaz & Uroš

Hmm, I never write about the technical site of the shoot. So if you have any questions just shoot!

Aaaa… I wrote the MUST SEE link section but it didnt show up in the blog!

Weeell… The first link today is http://www.ted.com/ one of the most inspiring, interesting www ever. Here you can find videos about art, design, photography, business, ecology, science… Check it out!

And the other link is even more academic- http://www.americansuburbx.com/ Here you can find amazing interviews, articles, essays about different photographic legends. A website that keeps you busy for days!

I am always postponing writing my blog thinking…well I have nothing to write about..this is not interesting enough….why should I write about that… And than now more than 10 days passed and there were so many smalls events that I don’t have time to write about them all…. Hmm…

Well one of the most interesting things that happened was a huge sale of uniforms by Angel costume shop. They were selling 240.000 pieces of uniforms, helmets, army equipment, hats, shields… Most of this objects, uniforms were used in different movies including Saving private Ryan… Since the Torture Garden party I felt in love with uniforms so I had to get some… The concept of pricing was simple… Jacket and helmets were 20£, hats and trousers were 10£ and than you had to dig into the countless uniforms on hangers and try to find the one that fits you the best… Navy, army, police, postman, bouncer, pilot …you name it they got it! Finding the jacket was not that difficult, bigger problem was to get the pants in the right size since there were no place that you could try them on… But nooo..That wont stop Matjaz… I did not come to Zone 4 still a bit ill to buy pants that wont fit me. And than the trying pants comedy begins… You are standing in the corner of the hall waiting that the homeless guy with police helmet on goes away and than you pull your pants down and manically trying to put that tight ridding trousers on… Well putting them on was not even such a big problem.. But putting them off is another story… You see that some people are approaching to your corner, and you are standing there in the underwear  fighting with the tightest pair of trousers that just does not want to come off… It was hilarious and even more hilarious is that I decided to buy those trousers! Well.. I also got one complete uniform, another jacket and a American ww2 paratroopers helmet from Tom Hanks… I have no clue when I am going to wear all this.. But you just can not resist the temptations…

I went to see amazing WordPress photo exhibition that is still on in South bank Centre. I have finally seen Peps photos that I didn’t manage to see this summer on the best photographic workshop – Fotopub. I just loved the photos of homeless people from Brazil, gypsys in their fancy houses that reminded me on Niš (Serbia) where I had a chance to shoot one house like that myself…  Uff… If I start talking about this show I could describe every series.. I just love them… You have to check out this exhibition! I noticed that East European and Chinese photographers are getting stronger and stronger…

Another nice show that I saw was Weegees exhibition in Michael Hoppen Gallery. The selection is not the most impressive but it was great to see finally some original prints and not merely books and magazines…

The last show that I wisted and I must say that really impressed me was the show of the MA students on London College of Communication – 28 stories. There was some really impressive series of images. From the top of my head I would say that I liked the most series of Valentina Schivardi that took photos of her neighbours at their  homes. It somehow relate to my concept for final mayor project. And I just loved the set of images from Brett Van Ort. On the exhibition there were 3 big prints of beautiful landscape photographs… And on the corner of the frame there was a pin, that you could remove and open (move) that landscape image and on the other side there was a photograph of the landmine on white background with some basic information. Brett was taking photos in Bosnia where are still thousands of minefields that now 15 years after the war look like harmless, beautiful landscape….

Beside the exhibition there was also a really interesting conversation on “The New Ecology of Photojournalism” by  David Campbell, Lucy Davies, Ed Kashi and Simon Norfolk. The conversation was about changing world of photographers. How the needs of the market are changing and how you have to adopt these changes if you want to stay in the game.  It was also nice to see some people from the Fotopub there… Paul Lowe, Steve Forrest, Marcia Chandra…

These days I came across 2 really cool series of photography online.

First one is by Platon. He photographed some of the most influential world leaders on the meeting of the United Nations. Really impressive achievement! Respect Plato. Although I don’t like the photos to much it is a fantastic series. Check it out herePortraits of Power. What do you think?

Another slide show about eldery music makers in the States by Jimmy Williams… I don’t want to write to much about this…just check it out.. Really cool series and fantastic music.

Also my rss feed if getting bigger and bigger since almost every day I find some cool blog that it would be nice to follow. So from now on I am going to post 2 links each time of the blogs that I really like so you can check them and see if there is something interesting for yourself.

First one this time is The Big Picture . I am in love with this blog! Big photographs of different photographic agencies, each time on different topic.

The second one is A Photo Editor. I think this is one of the most popular photographic blogs… Really interesting and educational reading!

And did you chech this link from the last blog post…?

And the photos from the uniform sale… Like you can see me and Ben had quite some fun there…

I bought same uniform than these two guys…

I didn’t shoot and did much these days in general… Actually I wasn’t feeling to good so bed was my best friend for couple of days…But now I am up and running again. I shot a fresh set of street fashion today and next week I am finally shooting some crazy makeup work of amazing MUA and a friend Kristina Vidic. I finally started reading  books for my dissertation so room is full of interesting books. Most of the books are about nudity, pornography, erotics so interesting reading indeed. I have to say that the most popular posts on my blog of all time (according to statistics)  are actually essays that I posted last year… Abouth Fetishism in photography of Helmut Newton and about Male voyeuristic gaze in film still fashion photography. Even when I was doing a research for the dissertation these 2 essays are often 1st hit on Google…

Dont click here yet…

The effort that I started writing this blog in English instead in Slovene is starting to pay of. First of all it is getting more readers, my photos were featured on one of my favourite blogs -  Top 10….Every Day and I even got an offer for an advertisment… Well if Johnny Rotten can do a commercial for a semi skimmed milk… well than I can have a commercial for some cooler stuff on my blog as well…:D So what is this thing…? It is one of those things that If you would ask me what reminds me on the high street fashion,  it would come to my mind first..or second… but the third for sure! If I like it is another thing but, anyway…you can even win it on this link – CLICK HERE CLICK HERE CLICK HERE!

Oooh… another commercial… My room is now completely booked already but since my flatmates are going home for holidays as well there is still chance for a cheep, nice room rent in London… SO just write me an email if you are interested! And don’t write me in the end of January…are you renting room now as well…? NOOO… But you can get it now!

Oh and I even had a small interview for really nice blog – Pepermint. But is it in Slovene I am afraid…

This week I also attended a huge uniform sale in Angel warehouse, but I am going to write about this later this week…

These days I have visited couple great exhibitions and I started to prepare one myself. It is going to be something new, fresh, futuristic…  More about that sometimes soon…

I am going to be brief about the exhibitions that I saw, but I hope that is going to be enough to make you go there yourself!

1. Showstudio exhibition – Amazing place in Somerset House, playground of Nick Knight and a peek into the future of fashion… Interaction, video, Internet, personalisation would be the keywords of the future… I couldn’t agree more. I was hoping to catch the live shooting – Nick Knight shooting Natalia Vodianova (my favourite model!) for Vogue!!! But I was to fucking late, so I missed it!  In the Showstudio they have a one sided mirror? dividing the huge studio… Sou you can see the whole happening there (also you can see everything live online!) and they do not see you… Great!

2. Martin Parrs retrospective of photobooks in Tea House… So many people hate his work, but… He is great photojournalist no matter what.. Fantastic humour, great moments… He has published 60 books already and on the exhibition you can see most of them, and also buy lots of them. There are also some nice huge prints of his photographs…

3. Beatles to Bowie (The 60s exposed) … Nice photographs of musicians from the 60s… Hendrix, Beatles, The Who, The Rolling Stones… It is nice to go on an exhibition where 90% of visitors are singing or humming the oldies Goldie’s hits that you can hear in the background… Crazy times have to say.. David Bailey rocks!

4. Photographic portrait prize … Is one of the exhibitions that is held annually in National Portrait Gallery and is one of the must see exhibitions for me every year… I have to say that for already 4 years I see there very similar motifs … Some rape victims (from Africa), some people with cancer, some chawy girls, some invalids, morbid topless girls…. Nothing really new on such a vast field of portrait photography…. But… still..a must see…

I have almost forgot! Its time for holidays soon! So that means that there is going to be some rooms available in our lovely apartment in East London, a place for art lovers, good food lovers and party lovers… Room is going to be available from 12.12. till 10.1. Is it spacious room with double bed, couch, balcony and there is a kitchen where you can cook, 2 tube stations 5 minutes away and (night) bus 3 minutes away! Let me know if you are interested… I have already some regular happy guests!

It has been awhile since my last street fashion post so here you can see some groovie people from Portobello market. I wisted one crazy exhibition of street art, sculptures, graffiti etc… A bit more male fashion this time…

Last weekend I spent in Barcelona. I guess when travelling around the word people think, that everything that is close to you is not good enough… Well may be that this is also a reason that I haven’t been in Barcelona before, but I manage to travel around Russia, Asia, Central America…To bad… It is a great city! I just love the contrast to the London… It was warm, easy going, sea side, good food, people playing guitar on the street while drinking beer, everywhere smells like in Kingston… … But there aretwo things that I liked the most there… Ther are pigeons in the city ofcourse, BUT they have also a vast population of parrots, flying around the city! Nice, small, green parrots! You simply can not hate the city with occasionally green sky full of parrots!? And the other thing is Bicyng. Bicycles that are part of the public transport only for locals. They have stands with about 20-30 bikes every 300 meters all around the town where you can take a bike, drive around for 2 hours before you have to put it back on any stand anywhere around the town, where if you need bike for longer you just wait for 10 minutes and you can take it again… + The city is quite small, with nice wide streets so the cycling is really great and not a battle for the life like in London… The other two highlights (beside being with my love of course) were also… A local restaurant that looks like a fish market. When you come in you see the counter with ice and all kind of fish, shells, octopus, lobsters, shrimps, squid & co on it… And than you just show what do you want, how much of it and how do you want to be made… And than you pick the food up when you are called. Mmmm..Fantastic and CHEAP!     All the time I was bugging Maja…when are we going to meet Manu Chao, where does he lives…?! … Well we haven’t meet him this time… But on the last day in Barcelona I was walking around the city and I heard some great music… I followed the sound and there it was… A great 8 member band with trumpets, double bass, drums… Dancing, jumping and playing great ska, funky, etno music.. Just what I needed! I even bought their cd for the support and that was also the only souvenir from Barca… The band is called Microguagua, so if you have a chance to see them anywhere… go for it! Of course we can not write about Barca without mentioning the Gaudi… Great stuff, love him! Hmm, and I almost missed the plane on the way back because there was no bus to airport that suppose to be…?! So we needed to take a bus to a town near bye and than take a cab… Whatever…

This time a bit more photos… The photos on the end… I was standing on the top of the escalator and I was wondering how many people are going to look up to the camera… I was not that visible, but people do not run downstairs like in London, so they are a bit more curious/ aware about the soundings… I think it could be a nice series If I would stay there for a day or two…5…365…

Sagrada Familia

Parrots

Gaudi Park

THE restaurant

]]> http://matjazz.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/weekend-in-barcelona/feed/ 4 Krokar _MAT9860 _MAT9906 Raw00125 _MAT9881 _MAT0223 _MAT9896 _MAT9924 Raw00099 _MAT9932 _MAT9928 Raw00145 _MAT9847 _MAT9892 _MAT0023 _MAT0044 _MAT0195 _MAT0144 _MAT0153 _MAT0189 http://matjazz.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/halloween-bday-party/ http://matjazz.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/halloween-bday-party/#comments Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:54:48 +0000 matjazz http://matjazz.wordpress.com/?p=2322 ]]>

Well this Halloween started like that… Should we go out tonight? I thing we should, it is my Birthday tomorrow…lets celebrate… But we don’t have anything to ware…Hmm… lets check the local Charity shop… Bingo… 2 shirts, 2 jackets ready to be demolished… Quick run to overcrowded costume shop on Old street to get some fake blood, some face paint and we were almost ready… We got almost ready at home and we looked quite scary already but at Marja’s place in Mile End where we had a meeting point we added also some wax wounds, face powder and Bday hat and voila… Finito… The party continues in Shoreditch where I finally manage to see amigo Silky dj-jing… Fun night…

I just came from Barcelona, tomorrow I am flying to Slovenia so I am a bit busy to write some more… But… Coming soon…

Before

After

Before

After

Bday present

This year was the 3rd time that I went to see the peace demonstrations. The peace procession walks from Hyde Park to Trafalgar square where you can hear speeches, some Bob Dylan style musicians playing on their guitar etc. It was inspiring as always. To see people of all ages, races, beliefs marching together for world peace… I know I sound pathetic but you can really feel the energy and devotion of that people. I think it was the first year that came around 300.000 people? I have to check the number in my old blog post again… But this year came only about 3000 demonstrators…? What happened? Are the people so worried about the recession that they forgot about the war in Afghanistan where are still lots of the British troops…? But what cheered me up the most was that I saw and took the photo of the same grandpa with the anti war poster that I saw and took photo of also last year and the year before! So this time was the 3rd time that I accidently came across in the crowd of thousands! I had a quick chat with him since I was so happy to see him again… He told me that he demonstrates every weekend in his hometown! (I couldn’t figure out which tow this was, since the grandpa has new false teeth, so those SSSSs were too much to handle in that noise, but I will tell you the next year when I meet him again…) And exhibitions again… I checked my favourite Hamiltons gallery where I was again the exhibition of Roger Ballen, I visited Whitechapel Gallery, another 2 boring exhibitions that are part of the East London Photography month BUT the best exhibition that I saw was not even photographic. It was an exhibition of young contemporary artist (1983) Ben Ashton in the old funeral bureau? on the Brick Lane. He challenges us to look at what we are seeing and to question it by giving us a different perspective on a familiar world. Me and my flatmate Andraz even met him at exhibition so we had really nice chat about his work. He told us that he was inspired by Victorian newly discovered toys as kaleidoscope, stereoscope, re discovered camera obscura… But what inspired me the most is that he build all those thing, and believe me there was lots of the weird huge boxes there and he build all that thing by himself + not to mention of course all the paintings and ok there were also some photographs that he create. Shit.. I could write for a while about all his works, but… Just google him up… BUT…ok.. one of the things that I liked the most… There was one big box of octagonal shape with two holes to look through on each plane. And when u looked through you could see 3d – stereoscopic image of a tied guy (all the photos, paintings are self portraitures of the artist). And since there were 8 planes and 16 holes to look though…well you could see this 3d image from all the side… Well, now I guess it sounds boring, but… you should see it by yourself… Soon is coming the blogpots about my B day parties… Halloween and Dj Shantell…

aaaaa..this wordpress is fu**** me lately… I can not upload all the photos… So there are some more photos coming if I can sort this out…

The legend!

Fashionista

The exhibition

greesy

flatmate in cameraobscura

The author

The most interesting things that happened for me this week were The Wonderbra house party at my ex flatmate Majas new place, the annual Peace demonstrations, my fist football mach in UK – Arsenal vs. Liverpool, attending couple of exhibitions again and stretching my brains to come up with a faaaantastic idea for my final major project and dissertation (which didn’t happened jet… )

Maja lives with two CCs (Creative Croatians) a bit off the Brick Lane so about 10 minutes away from our house. Fine company especially when the theme party is happening. Since the theme was Wonderbra and I haven’t drank enough beer in my life to grow my own boobs, Maja promised me to lend me her bra to use it. I didn’t put too much effort to fill my bra so I only put two oranges in to have my B coup full. Some other people on the party were much more innovative so you could see there a milking bra, bling bling DIY bra, knitted nipples, duct taped nipples, burlesque type bra, painted on DD boobs etc… There was even a reward for the best bra/boobs. I think there is no need to explain that it was much fun. I came home wearing big bra with red dots on that serves as a decor/gloves holder of our hallway now. And considering the photos… No it was not such a mayhem there just camera around my neck was quite busy shooting everything that looked a bit odd.

Football… I went there with Benjamin that put a lot of effort to get these desirable tickets before they were sold out. I came straight from the college to Arsenal and Ben quickly slipped in something more comfortable for this match – a red shirt, so we looked at least a bit like Arsenal fans (they have red-white track suits). And then we followed the red river of people to this holy place of UKs No1 sport. We had good sits just above the goal. Well just above is a bit too ambitious to say since we were in row 117? But nevertheless it was a fine view and we enjoyed big time. We even tried to learn some fans song but we could not understand a word they were saying/singing –except Arsenaaaal, England… And hmm… If you hate Tottenham, stand up! We didn’t see any of the ˝famous˝ hooligans I guess because we were sitting in between hot dog eating families and couples. No alcohol drinks were allowed on the stands so the biggest fans?!?! went 5 minutes before the halftime to the bars so they did not cue too long to get the most expensive beer… (3.40  for 2 decilitres). There were 60.004 spectators so about 996 did not show up to fill up the remaining seats.

The finale score was 2:1 for Arsenal… Liverpool – wankers ( I learned that as well)!

Well that’s all folks.

New posts are coming soon… Should be interesting since Halloween is coming, my birthday, concert of DJ Shantell and first of all the post about peace demonstrations…

Aja, da ne pozabim.. Na moji polici se praši en sexy rdeče vijolčen Olympus FE-4000. Povsem nov digitalček z 12mio pixli, 26mm širokim kotom, 4x digitalnim zumom…ravnopravšnji za v žep in super božično/novoletno darilo! V torgovini se prodaja po 150eur, pri meni pa dobite lep 30% popust!

Coloseum

Arsenaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal

He is shooting aaaaaaand…

goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooal

what? Where is the ball…?!

The host in Burkini… (burkha+bikini)

Knitted nipples

Milking boobs WON the thophy!

If u dont have outstanding boobs u have to be at least funny…

Hairy boobs…

Framed boobs…

Disco boobs

blured boobs

boobs are getting wild

I hate when people play with my boobs!!!

No boobs here… I just liked the view out of the window…

Last year lots of my blog posts started with I love but I hate London… And it looks like this year is going to be just the same. I adore all this possibilities, various things to see, to doo, to engage with but in the other hand it makes me desperate because there is no time to do everything. Should be researching for my mayor project and dissertation? Going around discovering the city? Visiting all this exhibitions? Looking for work? Shooting for magazines? Do some sports? Hang out and party with people? Reading fantastic books from the college library? Watch some movies? Fly to Barcelona to visit my girlfriend? Fly to Slovenia on a photo shoot? I wish that day would have 30 hours and a week 10 days so I could do at least 2 from the list in one day!

Well day before yesterday I actually manage to do even 5 things! Jeeej… Went to college, I meet a friend photographer, went to see 2 great exhibitions, I did some research for my major project (mp) and I have even saw a movie before going to sleep.

The first exhibition that I saw was called Polaroid and you can still see it in Atlas gallery till 28^th of November. I never liked Polaroid’s to much. I guess I saw a Polaroid camera for the first time in a circus when I was about 5 years old and a sad sad clown with the smell of alcohol coming out of his big red mouth pushed a baby chimpanzee in my lap and took a photo of me. My parents bought that Polaroid even through (or because of that?) baby chimp smacked my face before leaving… The next association linked with Polaroid’s is that it became really fashionable in last few years so it was used in all possible designs, CGP-s, shirts and I saw mostly untalented people using it to express their ˝artistic˝ side and that is why I didn’t like them to much… Until yesterday…

I must say that Polaroid’s have some special power – aura. Like the artist Marc Quinn once said… They are like a sculpture of a photograph. When you press the button, the Polaroid comes out of the camera, and image is transformed into an object… There is only one of a kind, unique piece, one size, which is so small that you have to come really close when you are walking around the gallery and you have to take some time to think, deconstruct the image…

In the gallery you can see and also buy Polaroid’s taken by David Bailey, Andy Warhol, Helmut Newton, Nobuyoshi Araki, Walker Evans, Robert Mapplethrope, Elliott Erwitt, Rankin… The prices for this small photographs varies from 950 £ to 13.400 £. Everlasting dilemma…to buy a new car or a unique masterpiece to hang at home on top of the fireplace (let’s be realistic…a dusty radiator).

The other exhibition that I saw was the exhibition of notorious Damien Hirst at The Wallace Collection. Waaaw, what a setting! Exhibition is held in a mansion in middle of London where you can see the as the brochure says the finest collection of art ever assembled by one family. Crazy… Numerous rooms all filled up with huge paintings, golden chests, clocks, chandeliers, carpets… Even more impressive as some much bigger castles and collections that I have seen in Bavarian and Austrian castles… And in one of the mansions rooms you can see Damien’s – No Love Lost. (25 new paintings). I am not an art expert so it is hard to tell at this point something really relevant but I liked the works and I would not mind if the Skull with Ashtray, Lemon and Cigarettes would hang next to Newton’s Polaroid above the radiator in my room.

What else…? Yesterday we went to see famous comedian Pablo Francisco. I saw lots of his clips on youtube that I really liked, the venue was only 10 minutes walking from my place, so why the hell not… The venue was crazy Ard Deco building and it was perfect for such event. But this time it was for the first time that the ˝warming up˝ comedians were actually much better than the star comedian! Those guys had some really cool jokes but Pablo… It looked like he was on cocaine and he was only doing stupid funny noises, the movie announcer guy voice (see the clip and you will know what I mean), Schwarzenegger, same trick with his hat falling of his hat all the time and that was it… In about 40 minutes of his show he made me laugh 2,5 times which is a really bad outcome since we pay 25£ to see a star comedian that borrow his voice to some characters in The Simpsons and The Family Guy… The ’strange taste’ in our mouths was soon washed away in Georges Tavern with a pint of Guinness and live Brazilian music.

Polaroids

Hirst…

Just one of the rooms in Wallace collection…

Mr. Pablo…

Saviour of the night…

I must say that this year’s ˝investment˝ into the underwater case for my photo camera was a great decision. One of the proves that the investment was good is that the case is not lying in the part of my room where my old MUST HAVE telescope lies accompanied by MUST HAVE rock climbing shoes, must have tennis racket and the other must have but rarely used things…

Not only that I am still using it quite often, it also benefited big time to my fashion photography business. The reason I bought it in the first place was to shoot for college competition for CPL aromas. Photos produced in first 2 photo shoots brought me the first prize on that competition and they also got me into the best 6 photographers in Google photography award. Like you probably know already were those photos exhibited in Saatchy gallery in London which is absolutely a great success. Well more recently I saw that those photos were used in Sample magazine published by the UNI and they also got me another two commissions for fashion editorials.

And actually this long introduction is only because I want to write about my most recent underwater editorial that I shoot for the biggest Slovenian fashion magazine – Modna. The best part this time was that I was working with a wonderful team of 2 stylists, 2 models, makeup artist and 4 assistants and that my only task this time was to shoot the photos. I did not have to be bothered by booking the models, getting stylist, MUA, location… Well I was still closely involved in organisation and I was helping to get the best location, models, props, assistants… But since that was my 4^th underwater shoot and the biggest one I had to do something new and interesting… What would that be? What could make my shooting hard as hell? Weeeell, first of all to shoot this time in the pool that is more than 2meters deep and not only 150cm like in previous times, that I want to shoot with several lights and not only two of them, and that I will put inside the pool not one, not 2, but 20 huge balloons! Putting the huge balloons under the water cause us 1000 and one problem. First how and where to get so many balloons (thx to mr. Balonomanija for huge help with that!!!), than how to fill them up with 500 litres of water in a decent time, how many air has to be inside that balloons are going to float in the water and how many weights we have to put on that they won’t run away when they are in the pool. Despite the fact that I had 4 assistants helping me it still took us hours to arnge everything to be perfect! We arrived on location at 16.00 and I came home at 3.00. I guess the funniest part of the shoot were all the different techniques how of my lovely assistants how to sink me to the bottom of the pool and pulling me out for each shot. Coz when you hold your breath you cannot sink really got to take a shoot and also floating all the time above the water especially with the camera and synch cable to trigger the fleshes attached to it was not the easiest thing to do… Don’t ask how we did it but next time I am getting a scuba gear for sure!

And again… Special thx to fantastic assistants Ciril, Uroš, Klemen and Kaja! I could not do it without even one of them missing! And of course without the big boss Alenka, stylist Barbara, MUA Luka and great models Jana and that I am sure are not going to another pool for about 4-6 years after this experience… Oh and a specialy thx also to mr. Jaka Vinsek for hit technical support, to Milos and his diver friends, Perci, Andrej…

Well the magazine with my cover and 10 page editorial is the shops since yesterday so go get it! Just in case you cannot get the magazine in jour local store you can see the photos below…

This time we were shooting on – 2 meters… For upcoming shoot for Modna we are going to even bigger extremes! We are going to shoot -500 meters under the surface, but that is another story for the next time…

Oh… If you missed yesterdays exhibition with my (Yugoplastik) photo exhibited on East London Photo Month, you still have chance to see it… It was a fun fun fun night out on Brick Lane… 3 photographers, 1 architect, 1 dr., 1 mua, 1 clothes designer, 1 graphic designer, 1 human rights guy and one entertainment law guy!

Credits:

Photographer: Matjaz Tancic

Stylists: Barbara Zgalin, Alenka Birk

Makeup and hair: Luka Leskosek

Models: Nikolina R. (Talia models) and Jana K. (Bronz)

Assistents: CIril Jazbec, Uros Zuraj, Klemen Ilovar, Kaja Pogacar

And here are some backstage photos by Ciril Jazbec

Filling up the baloons

Patent for fireing the flashes under the watter by Jackec…

Dont feed the models…But do feed the photographer!