23
September
2009

Back In The Room II


Gillian undressing the set after a very long day at the office. All approved by the client with just a couple of minor photoshop edits tomorrow and it's good to go.


23
September
2009

Bits & Bobs IV



Photography:
A few interesting short articles buy professional photography buyers and users over at Professional Photographer. Not that I ever intend to become one, but I enjoy reading about people who take time to share their experiences in the industry. Christof Rehage got it into his head to go walkabout for four and a half thousand kilometres across China, and document his growing beard while he was at it. Needless to say he's bonkers, but in a good way. Loving these images from the US Library Of Congress exhibition: Bound For Glory | America In Colour from 1939-1943. The colours, the people, the clothing and the landscape; wonderful and an important document of times gone. At the other end of the photography evolution chart we have the good folks at Stanford University working on an open source digital camera, which should free up the technology for others to develop apps for cameras. Great article over on the New Yorker on Robert Frank and his work on The Americans, a wonderful photographer whose images I can look at time and again. Another take on a similar theme is happening over at the 50 States Project - a photographer from each state takes a photo to a theme. Could easily see the idea expanding to Ireland - the 36 counties project - and elsewhere. Am liking this elegant photo blog from Aaron Feaver, absolutely no fuss about it. Iain Crawford's portfolio has a lot of great ideas and while fashion photography isn't my thing you have to admire someone who's so accomplished. Would love to spend a day or two with a wide variety of photographers, just to see them at work and hwo they go about doing what they do. Philip Toledano spent time getting to know and photograph the people who work the phones on phone sex lines, terrific work. Was pointed towards this article about photographing the night sky over at National Geographic, an interview with Jim Richardson, and just reading it prompted me to renew my subscription. Used get National Geographic when I was a lot younger, we were given a load of 50s and 60s issues by a friends of my parents and then they subscribed for me - William Albert Allard was probably the first photographer I followed, before I even took up a camera. National Geographic are also running a competition which is open till Oct 31st for entries. Been looking at old cameras - I blame Sinead - and thinking of maybe starting a wee collection. Not to use, heaven forbid, but the design of them is something special. I mean, how can you not admire the look of something like the Zeiss camera above. Anyways, back to the present, the Sacramento Bee has a photo blog that's full of top class news images. Over at Real Fake Judy Rush and her team show off their retouching skills. I like the look of Lunatic magazine, and there's plenty of social documentary stories to feast your eyes on. SeeSaw is another photo magazine worth checking out if you haven't already, as is Purpose. LayFlat takes the idea of a photo magazine and, well, lays it flat.

Photographers
Those that caught my eye this month: Emilio Morenatti, Carl Zimmerman, Alen MacWeeney, Heidi Slimane, Wily Ronis (who died this month), Jack Radcliffe, Stephen Tamiesie, Andreea Anghel, Simon Roberts, Kevin Cummins, Glen Campbell, David Alan Harvey, and Serge Giachetti.

Design
I really like clever wee things like this that show information as graphs, just a sucker for them at the moment - see image 1 above. Another thing I'm getting to grips with is the @font-face attribute - well, not me, the lads in the office - and the opportunities that are emerging to be freer with type and fonts. Finally it seems as though we're on the verge of being able to use fonts properly on the web rather than finding clunky ways to work around limited typefaces. Of course, typographers don't necessarily want to be putting out their work for free; it's nice to earn a crust from your talent after all. Solutions like Typekit might offer the chance for their work to be accessible/affordable to a larger audience who might not have bothered before, like iTunes for typographers. Also stumbled across Core77 again for the first time in ages, their article on how to make the client's logo bigger without making it bigger is priceless. The Google boys and girls have brought us FastFlip this month, a news browsey thingy. Not sure what to make of it just yet, I'm kind of settled in my news reading habits. Smashing Magazine have done a survey on web typography and have published their results. Speaking of type, throw your eyeballs over some type posters webdesignledger has put together...yummy. More type bits here from Ralf Herrmann's Typography Blog, with @font-face examples, and further @font-face info available here and here and here. Okay, let's end this section with a bang, or at least a boooooooom.

Misc
Lawson Clarke's site design cracks me up, as does his equally subtle approach to copywriting. Vaguely attempting to write again due to the daft encouragement of a few friends. Just doing a bit of research first and it's bringing up interesting ideas. So far there's this guy, and this, and this.
And, no, I've no damned idea what I'm at either.
End.


22
September
2009

Wide Angle Macro



Just faffing about with lenses when I remembered an old trick i used back in college - wanted to see it it'd work with the 5D. It's a cheap (free) way of playing about with macro if you don't have a dedicated Macro lens. Basically, just take the lens off the camera and flip it around so the front is butting up against the camera. Be careful not to scratch the front glass element, although if you have to be told that you probably deserve to have it happen. These were taken hand held, one hand holding the camera and one holding the lens up against the camera - I used use blu-tak back in the good old days. With the old film cameras - AT-1 and AE-1 - I used the lenses had a wee lever you could hold to stop the lens down which doesn't seem to be there on these new fangled ones, so everything is shot wide open because there's no link between the camera and the lens.

The first image with the cigarettes was taken on a 20mm at f2.8. The only way to control exposure is with the ISO setting and the shutter speed. The wider the lens the closer more 'macro' things get and the closer you have to be to the object - in this case, a couple of inches.

The second image of the credit card was taken using a 50mm at f1.4.


21
September
2009

Back In The Room


Well, that was a busy week: Maura sold 20+ paintings and I sold a few prints - better than I expected and nearly enough to cover printing and framing. Interesting experience/exercise, and not the way I planned to do things, but now it's time to get back to processing images and get these two projects Blurb'd. Just to get them out of my face so I have a clean slate and push on with the next two, or three, projects. Definitely want to do at least one 'people' based one, and I'd like to do another 'Dublin' based one as well. Have a few ideas for each so it's just a case of planning and seeing if I can get some permissions.

Anyways, the studio is back in operation after the big clean up this weekend. Gillian is busy again, buzzing about the place organizing this and that and t'other. The set builders have been in today and will be back tomorrow, possibly wednesday as well - I have no idea what happens here half the time, stuff gets built, shot and taken down it can sometimes be a bit of a blur. It's good fun though, and interesting to watch a completely different side of photography happen under your nose. Though I expect, as usual, I'll end up tweaking bits here and there when things are done - that's what husbands are for I'm told. Yeah, right.


10
September
2009

Exhibition | Part IV






A few snaps of what's in the exhibition.


10
September
2009

Books | 004 | Dog On It | Spencer Quinn

This is a cracking wee tale that fairly zips along.

Bernie Little & Chet - his dog - are The Little Detective Agency. Chet failed police dog school (he can't really remember but it involved blood...not his) but is still one hell of a detective and, as he's the narrator of this story, who are we to argue. As a story-teller Chet is wonderfully distracted, mainly by scraps of food, treats, smells and the possibility of sinking his teeth into the bad guys. While Bernie fumbles his way towards solving the case of a missing girl Chet has it figured out quite early on, but, being a dog, he can't simply tell Bernie where to go. Besides, Chet's memory isn't the best and it's all kind of vague what with the run in with the Russians, and the Bikers, and the near death experience, and his dog buddies up the road.

While the plot is nothing new the idea of telling it all from a dog's point of view is wonderful - although, of course, that's not new either. What is new is Chet, he's a great character (part Sam Spade, part goldfish, all dog) with some wonderful insights and observations about humans. Mostly though he's Bernie's best friend and their funny/loyal relationship is what drives the story on and leaves you wanting more. Please.


10
September
2009

Books | 003 | The Time Traveler's Wife | Audrey Niffenegger

Henry comes from the future, where he's married to Clare, and meets Clare as a kid. His visits are random and generally short, popping in and out of her life as she grows up. He won't tell her anything about himself or her future, their relationship, but naturally they meet in real time and get married and yadda yadda yadda.

Although the book snaps between Clare and Henry's viewpoints quite rapidly, via short chapters, the main timeline to the book is Clare's with Henry arriving and departing willy nilly. He gives her a list of dates he'll arrive, she looks forward to them, he departs, she gets on with her life, they meet in real time, he departs, she waits, worries or gets on with her life. Henry's timeline is all over the place, so much so that every so often he bumps into himself. Henry's timeline is far more interesting and has far more potential, even as a character he's got some depth. Generally though most opportunities are missed or passed over quite quickly, which was disappointing. Clare's timeline is fairly dull; a jumped up lady in waiting who, eh, waits a lot and does very little that's pro-active.

Couple of things bugged me. One is the explanation for the source of Henry's ability to time travel, some rogue DNA sequence and stress. Tosh. Okay, so, time travel as a concept is interesting and has been around for so long it's become an accepted conceit for the basis of telling tales. I have a problem with it being the result of some DNA jiggery pokery, it just doesn't ring true on any level of suspension of belief and smacks of desperation and/or laziness.

That explanation is given fairly on in the book and just grates throughout, more so because we're introduced to a geneticist who appears every so often in the book to remind us; he seems to serve no other purpose as a character. Early on in their relationship Henry predicts the doctor's child will be born with Down's Syndrome, and I thought that whole episode was atrocious. Not the fact that the Doc's kid was born with Down's but that he was also told he'd grow up to be a nice kid and by the way he'd have another child who would be normal. Just felt very sugar-coated and patronising and safe. Anyway, genetics and stress as the basis of time travel...utterly pants...and itchy ones too.

T'other thing that bugs me is that the ending is strongly hinted at about mid way through the book, yet we have to endure 200 or so pages of mundanity before we get to it. It's a relatively simple story but it plods along in the second half, dragging itself towards a pre-determined conclusion. There's swathes of dullness that could have been trimmed, it wouldn't have affected the story or main characters in the least, and told the tale in a way that didn't seem as though it would never get to the end.

I'm also not entirely convinced by one aspect of the ending, where another time travelling character is introduced. Surely that person should have appeared earlier in the story, much as Henry does, given their abilities and obvious interest in him.

Not the worst, but nowhere near as epic and enduring a tale as the hype makes out.