on the internetz.
Last week was the final week of my Portrait Course at Central St Martins. It’s been a great ten weeks. Not only have I learnt a lot, gotten to play with a lot of proper studio lighting kit and had lots of willing people standing around having their photo taken, but it’s also been a lot of fun. Bonus! Big thanks to everyone on the course and of course to Peter for teaching.
Last night, Montreal friends Sunfields played the last night of their two week UK tour at The Windmill in Brixton. It was a great gig, in a great *very* un-London feel venue, and I’ve uploaded some photos here. There’s also a video floating around of their lovely, catchy new song Kiss Shy (we expect proper release soon, please…) recorded on the first night of their tour.
It’s been splendid fun seeing the lads over here doing what they do best – play great music and get drunk in their smiley, friendly Canadian manner. Just wish I’d been able to get to some of the non-London gigs. Until the next time though – whichever country it is this time – bon voyage, chaps.
Another marathon session of going through photos clearing the backlog. Always fun to look at photos you took over three years ago to work out which are ‘good’. When I filter photos I’ve just taken I always find it really hard to abstract my emotions from the event as opposed to what’s there in the photo. As Terry Gilliam says, if it’s not on the screen it’s not on the screen. Given the number of photos still to go through I should be pretty good at it sometime soon – or at least I’ll be more brutal about it.
(Not) Geishas in Kyoto
At the end of April this year we were lucky enough to head to Korea & Japan for two weeks. This was our first trip to this part of the world, and although it was way too short we did manage to squeeze in a lot – albeit mostly food. Oh, and taking some photos. About 7,000 of the buggers. I fear that I’m not quite at the ‘one exposure, per motive‘ level that I aspire to, and the side effect of this lack of in-viewfinder editing is a large amount of in-Lightroom editing.
So, as usual, apologies for not having posted any photos yet apart from the above, they will be up as soon as possible along with a full travelog. In the meantime all I can say is: Japan & Korea – you want to go to there. And we want to go back as soon as possible.
The photograph as contemporary art – Charlotte Cotton. This book breaks down recent trends in photography in an attempt to give a background as to the rationale that drives practitioners of the photographic arts. The explanations and backgrounds are interesting and informative, complete with a selection of prints of the artists in questions. As someone who is interested in extending their photographic practice this background is essential reading, with my only gripe being that a larger sized book would provide much better access to the photos in question – perhaps a coffee table reprint is in order?