Sydney based fashion photographer, Hamish Ta-mé is one dedicated lad, who aside from his hectic shoot schedule also somehow finds the time to teach the occasional master class or speak at the odd photographic event forum. Ranking number eight in the annual Australia’s Top photographers awards for 2008/2009, Ta-mé can often be found working in his sun-lit studio in the heart of Sydney’s metropolis.
Please tell us a bit about yourself – your education and background?
I fell into photography at art school (BA.VA) where they rotated all the first year art students through the various disciplines. I had a lecturer who suggested an alternate study path could be a technical degree. This ended up being an excellent bit of advice, I transferred out of the art course and went to TAFE for 4 years doing a diploma in photography. Halfway through the course I took a year off and went to work in Milan as a fashion photographer, of course I very quickly realised that basic Italian and a tiny bit more experience would have been useful! Still, I hung out in Milan and Amsterdam for a year, shooting and assisting. Great lifestyle and REALLY important life lessons.
On returning to Australia I continued shooting fine art in parallel to building my commercial practice. I was exhibiting regularly in group shows and the occasional solo show. After a major solo show in 2003 a magazine editor friend suggested I do a Masters Degree. Once again, timely advice which led to a MA through UNSW and to this current body of work.
How did you get into photography and what drew you to it?
Like many kids I had a dad who was into photography, the cliché of holding a pose at xmas time whilst he fussed with the camera was all true! It really came together though at uni. After the initial introduction I was photography mad, staying up all night shooting long exposures, shooting portraits of as many pretty girls that would sit for me and lugging a large format camera around Europe shooting landscapes.
What equipment do you use?
I work across 3 formats, for advertising work like the recent Opera Australia campaign I shot on a H3 Hasselblad with a Leaf back, for the majority of my fashion work I shoot on a Nikon D3 and for a pocket camera I shoot on a Ricoh GRD3.
Who are some photographers you admire and who inspire you? Why?
I love photographers who mix a technical ability with a creative flair, Edward Weston, Steichen, Horst, David LaChappelle, etc as well as the many thousands of anonymous photographers who shoot their families and special events and aren’t thinking about style or technique, they are using photography as a momento-mori a visual cue.
Can you describe your style?
I reckon my work can be best describe as the result of an unholy love triangle between an art school dropout a military strategist and Roman Polanski in the Sharon Tate era.. My style is a mix of creativity and technical rigour…
Currently you are working on a project involving hiphop dancers and tricksters – can you tell us about that? What is a trickster?
The images can be described as large format prints and video pieces showing hip hop dancers as they do hi power aerial moves. They are created by compositing up to 40 images into a single image to show the arc of the flight from gravity and that perfect interstitial moment of freedom at the peak of the arc.
I initially started working with hip hop dancers and was introduced to tricksters, they are a sub group of street dance / performance somewhere between parkour (French street running style similar to the opening scenes of the Casio Royale James Bond film) and gymnastics.
What inspired this series?
I went back to University recently and did a Masters degree in Photomedia Theory, (I graduated in 2005). My major exploration was Cinematic Approaches to Portraiture and Truth where I would shoot about 200 shots in a portrait session and then make a giant proof sheet and show that rather than trying to achieve any sort of illusory truth about the subject via one single image. This approach has percolated through my personal work ever since. After finishing the degree I kept looking back to a series of hip hop dancers who I met randomly in Melbourne. I was shooting fashion week in Melbourne and on the way back to the hotel after a party heard some beats emanating from a small shopping arcade. I explored and came across a small crew of Korean dancers who met there every Friday and sat night. The setting was very simple, and the music very basic courtesy of a small beat box, but these guys where amazing. I shot some sequences on the gear I had available and these images where the inspiration for the current project. I was fascinated on so many levels, by the raw athleticism of these guys, the cultural annexation of American hiphop culture via Korea to the antipodes and something harder to pin down…the idea of purity at the peak of the dance movement. And the inevitable fall to earth.
The other interest is in visual forms that have been transposed to the purely aesthetic. In 1872 Eadweard Muybridge was commissioned to capture the movement of a trotting horse. His work was the perfect synthesis of functional scientific intent and aesthetic outcomes.
Can you explain the process of bringing each shot together and then melding them into one?
I start the postproduction with around 30-40 sequenced images in Aperture; I give them a tiny tweak in terms of colour etc then export them into Photoshop as 16bit files. These are then layered into a psb file and the simple, yet painstaking task of layer masking each one together starts.
What equipment are you using for this series and why did you choose this hardware/software?
The gear is critical to the creation of these images. I am shooting on a modified Nikon D3 which has been hacked to add extra buffer / ram. It allows me to shoot an uninterrupted burst of around 36 raw files / frames in 3-4 seconds. I shoot tethered to an 8 core Intel desktop Mac straight into Aperture. I am running 10 gig of ram and have 4tb or storage on board. I am using CS3 for the postproduction of the 2d images and final cut pro for the video pieces.
The lighting rig is also very special, it is a Broncolour Scoro pack, which allows you to dial in flash speeds and recharge times. It allows you to shoot VERY action with multiple exposures which weren’t previously possible.
What do you have planned for these works?
I am showing around 8 of these images in a commercial gallery in Sydney, Depot Gallery at Danks St Waterloo. The images are printed and framed up at 1m x 1.7 metres. The video pieces will be shown on a full HD 4000 lumen data projector onto a suspended gray screen.
Can you tell us about some of your other projects?
Aha! How did you know I have other projects going on? Surely a major exhibition is enough? Well…. Actually I think I am a bit ADHD.. Next year I am publishing a hardcover coffee table book of ten years of backstage fashion photography. I am also working on a series of new portraits as well as my normal commercial work for magazines and advertising agencies. Also I will be continuing this show and am in negotiation with several institutions to show this body of work in 2011.
What inspires these works?
I think that the urge to fly is one of the greatest dreams or fantasies we can have. We are forever shackled by the relentless embrace of gravity. These images try and show some of the explosive physicality as the dancers throw themselves into the air…hang for moment in the ecstasy of weightlessness and then fall inevitably to earth..the name of the show “La Petite Mort” (the little death) is a French phrase with a sexual edge to it that alludes to the moment of release and the melancholy moments after that.
Where do you see photography headed in the future?
This exhibition posits itself within contemporary discourse on the development of the still and moving image. We are in a transition period whereby stills photographers are shooting motion and videographers are shooting stills images. An amateur digital SLR camera can now shoot high definition video; likewise entry-level video cameras can also shoot stills images alongside the video output. This trend is driven by new-media demand and technology. Manufacturers are seeking to differentiate their products and web based news organisations are increasingly seeing an interest in short video grabs over traditional stills images.
What can we expect from you next?
A surfing holiday after the exhibition closes!
smithy says at: February 15, 2010 at 10:25 am
looks like a lot of hard work to individually mask each layer – but totally work it – nice job.