I wanted to begin with these ‘behind-the-scenes’ photographs; a big glass fishbowl-like vase, a wooden spoon and loads of floating sequins. My mind’s eye kept showing me the special effects sequences from Disney’s unloved 1979 live-action film, The Black Hole, so I set about recreating something similar on my kitchen table for the The Kick-About No.99 (inspired by the Hubble EXtreme Deep Field photograph of the cosmos).
Rather awkwardly, I first produced a whirlpool inside the fishbowl with the wooden spoon, which saw the sequins sucked downwards, and then, as quickly as I could, I pulled out the spoon and photographed the vortex at various exposures. I got different results each time, with some exposures turning the spinning sequins into completely smooth, metallic rings. It was a messy, imperfect set-up, and a frustrating one because I needed more hands (not least because I always missed the best and deepest whirlpools because I was putting the spoon down and picking up the camera).
All of that said, some of the resulting photographs (and there were many), I was pretty excited by and I had a lovely few hours channelling my low-budget film-maker self.
Red's Kingdom 
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