BORUT PETERLIN in a rabbit hole of photography

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Sorry guy for not blogging these days, but I’ve been super busy preaparing material for Arles festival. I decided to make another version of 5am book. I started this project in Fabrica in year 2000 and since 2003 I’ve made like seven versions of the book, but after my postgraduate studies in London College of Communication I stoped making new versions, although when I traveled to Kosovo, Bosnia, Croatia, Ukraine, Germany, France, China I was still photographing.

Oh… the concept… It’s very simple. I wanted to photograph in different places of the world at the same time of day. I’ve chosen 5am, because it’s so ambiguous  time of the day, when parties are ending and work starts, when day it’s not over, but it also didn’t start yet,… AND THAT BEUTIFUL MORNING LIGHT!!! The serenity of quite morning after a loud night. It’s pure magic! I’ll build a website with this material during the weekend.

My work flow is that I gather all the files in one folder. Then I make a broader selection, then I print all pictures and place them on the floor (wall is better). Then I was making a linear story and while doing that I was making pairs of individual pictures. I gather pairs into clutters and thinking how and where should I include them in the linear sequence. Then I put this raw sequence in digital form, print it out and lay it down again. Fine tunning was done in Indesign. From 250 pictures I edit it down to something like hundred and six images. From Indesign I exported it to PDF and today I’ve ordered prints in the lab. As you know my wife is binding books (alenkapeterlin.com) so she’ll make a lovely book. I also order a book in blurb.com, but uncompressed book in CMYK is 1,4 GB and that will take like 24 hours to upload.

Anyway what I want to say is I work really hard and I’ll make my posts more simple with less text and more pics. Here is one that I really love. Ministers Mitja Gaspari and Ivan Svetlik last Wednesday in parliament on celebration of 18th anniversary of Slovenia’s Independence day.

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Matjaž Tančič is a photographer from Ljubljana and a student of photography on a fashion college in London. He send few pictures to Google Photography Prize contest and among 36.000 applications he was short-listed among six photographers and he’ll have an exhibition tomorrow in Saatchi & Saatchi gallery. At the opening winner will be declared.

Mladina will write an extensive article about his work and commissioned me to do one of my far-out portraits. I was super happy because I knew Matjaž will be up for crazy pictures and furthermore will help me with the organization. When we were brainstorming how to do the picture I thought on Airbus airplane as a background and Matjaž as fallen angel pulling the plane. I called my friends friends to get the access on the Jože Pučnik airport and Matjaž called his friends to get the wings, styling, make up and Kaja Pogačar to assist us with the shooting.

Of course we couldn’t get Airbus, but we did get access to smaller planes. I chose Cessna 172, because of high leveled wings. The hardest was to get the angle where details of Matjaž (wings, chain, make up, styling, expression) were visable and still have the airplane recognizable. Since plane was rather small I decided to illuminate the wings from behind and keep background dark. We moved the airplane so it was aligned with roof windows. We did this picture really fast and then we had to move the airplane and make a space for other plane to exit. Since we were all excited we decided to do the picture of an homeless angel with helicopter. A colleague from Mladina asked me why metaphor of fallen angel and the best answer was Why not? I’m not payed to interpret my photos!

Then Matjaž suggested to do another picture with crate that was standing in the corner. I liked the natural light, so we didn’t even use flashes.

Anyway, which photo do you prefer? I’m affraid there is not enough space for three portraits. Please vote for one!

Thanx to Alfa Histria, Aviation Service.
Styling: Miro Design.
Makeup: Ana Lazovski.
Assistent Kaja Pogačar.
Photography: Borut Peterlin.
Commisioned by Mladina.

PS: photo Kaja Pogačar
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I’ve made a portrait of Jure Robič for Peugeot / Futura just before he went to USA for RAAM, Race Accross America. He is really kind person and we enjoyed the shooting. Next day I was listening a conversation with him on a radio and journalist asked him when he decided for a bicycle among all the sports he try them out? He answered that when he was a little boy his family was going for a trip with their car Fičo (Zastava 750) and while they were climbing Vršič pass (1611 m) two cyclist overtake them and it took ages that their car catch them in the valley. He was describing that he was astonished by the freedom of movement that bicycle allows, so the same day asked his mother if he’s going to be excellent in school she will buy him a bicycle. Of course on the end of the school year he had all straight A marks and he received a bike with five gears. (I think was something like this bike). Jure Robič is leading the RAAM race and you can follow him live on Internet on www.jurerobic.net.

Anyway it made me thinking how small everyday events change children’s life. And now I’m thinking what small everyday event will inspire my daughters for life? Will I recognize it?

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Marjetica Potrč is one of the most renowned Slovenian contemporary artist. She is exhibiting at Venice Biennale for the forth time (first time was in 1993 with Irwin collective. This year she is exhibiting on the main exhibition curated by director of Venice Biennale Daniel Birnbaumas. (VEČ in Slovenian)
In Friday’s issue of Mladina weekly we’ll publish an article about her artistic path, work and vision. More Hi-Res images available on http://archive.borutpeterlin.com.

Klemen Globočnik, an artist and together with Matic Zorman an author of project Masacre of Average (Masaker povprečja). He was portrayed when a balloon of water burst behind his head. I had this idea already in the end of February, but we had to wait so the temperatures would be warmer. Readers of my blog will still remember that at the time I shot the cover page for Mladina weekly HERE and already at that time I learned all the tricks how to shoot bursting balloon. I knew Balcar 1500 Ws is not so fast flash that would freeze water drops and in this case that was a great effect.

Well this time it was much more difficult. I wanted to make picture more interesting by hiding gravity. As you can see water is evenly around his head. My camera was on the ground, Klemen was leaning above the camera and behind his head was a balloon and a studio flash with 1500 Ws. Then I asked Tina to burst a balloon and in that moment I triggered hand held flash Nikon SB900 that triggered Balcar as well. Of course we were all wet, but camera was in Ewa Marin bag and Nikon flash was wrapped in an ordinary plastic shopping bag. We made five tries, but second one was best. I’m publishing behind the shoot images. I would like to brag that it was high end production, but it’s not. As you know Striptiz is shot on no-budget policy, but at least in that way recession can not do any harm to my work

Portrait commissioned by Mladina weekly.
More Striptiz portraits on www.borutpeterlin.com
Thanks to Klemen, Tina & Bojan Brecelj on who’s parking lot we wet it.

This is the image as camera recorded. You can see myself and Tina above Klemen.
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For Striptiz, creative portrait rubric of Mladina weekly, I’ve done new portrait. Ana Sluga will have an opening of her exhibition tonight, 9.6.2009 @ 19.00 in Equrna Gallery.

When I received an invitation to her exhibition I liked the work immediately and started to think how to do a Stritpiz portrait. I like the raster on her images, so I thought to build a picture on raster effect. I thought many, many scenarios. When I suggested to Ana a water reflection on the floor of the gallery, she doubted it could be done, so I brought with me also a Plexiglas glass as an alternative if micro water puddles will not work. It did work, so we were making puddles for more then an hour. Floor was not perfectly flat (I didn’t thought on that) so our micro puddles were joining into a micro lakes. Our first plan was to make perfect order, so puddles would be circles, aligned in straight lines as raster on her painting, but it turned out differently. I didn’t mind at all and I became even more curious how it will turned out.

The inspiration for this portrait is a picture of Jeff Mermelstein‘s book Sidewalk where a pedestrian is wearing a sunglasses and in which there is a mirrored image of a building across the street. Unfortunately the book is in my storage place, so I can’t show you. The only technical trick for the picture is that aperture should be f 1/22 and light should be bounced more or less straight into the lens. It’s quite a difficult to view the image in aperture in 2,8 and shoot it at 22. I suggest to build a light shaft with large foam boards. Since I don’t have a budget, I helped myself with 200mm lens and busting contrasts and blacks in post-processing.

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Last week I’ve done so much work, but I still haven’t completed all, so just photoblog for now.

Nataša Mirtič is a painter, specialized in graphic arts. The idea for this portrait came one morning, when I wanted to photograph my kids in beautiful, blooming grass field, but just that morning farmer mow the whole field. I realized that if I want to do something with this grass fields I need to do it now, so I was thinking who and how should I photograph with this grass fields. I called Nataša Mirtič and she was up for it, so last Sunday we made this portrait. My first idea is to mow grass in a shape of a tea cup and she would have a picnic with a tea cup, but on the spot we decided to remake one of her art work and we made a detail from her graphic art painting. .

For the perspective I used a ladder and a tripod which I was holding under 90 degrees angle. I used 14 mm lens.

Commisioned by Mladina
More creative portraits on my site www.borutpeterlin.com

PS: I’m sure our devoted reader JeanChristophe “čefur” Couet will be interested how I did the picture. For the picture I used usual Tomo Vinković tractor and when driving I used sixth gear and add power on 78%. For mowing the grass I used Husquarna lawn mower that I used under full power. On the picture you see a protection of blade. That protection is useful for mowing in a vineyards, so a vine is protected from the blade, but it doesn not work that well with large grass. I reckon if I would had a lawn mower without that protection the picture would gain 5,6% sharpness.