Norwegian Light

Updates. Monthly updates are in, aren't they? Kind of like National Geographic.

I've always liked the idea of trying to replicate the glow of fluorescent tubing and neon lights. There's something strangely comforting yet totally alien about the way it falls on things. Intense light in dark places. There have been quite a few films this year that have utilised this look to excellent effect, such as Spring Breakers and Only God Forgives, both I believe having been critisized on some sides for being more style than substance. A dangerous road to walk down.

I've done a some tests in the past using bounce boards to create the effect of natural window light, so I used this same technique, but with coloured gels to create that sort of night time street fluorescent glow. 

I'd arranged to do this shoot a few months ago, but my model pulled out at the mast minute and the whole test was mentally shelved. Luckily, a recent student at my work was keen to be involved in shooting some studio portraits, and so we did! Ingvild is a total natural infront of a camera, and we just had a nice day taking photos and talking about films and television!

So that's probably enough words, time for the pictures! We tried a real mix of angles and fills, and also tried throwing some more colour in there. It didn't work too well on this first one, which I think is a lovely shot of Ingvild but the blue spotlight behind her head seemed to create more of a neutral grey tone. We fixed that in the later ones though

Verdict = Success.

I know it's tempting fate to say I will be updating this more often, but I do already have a few more posts of work I've been doing over the last month lined up. So if you're the easily excitable type, you can look forward to that.

Craftiness

The award for hardest to read title ever goes to...

HELLO. So it has literally taken me over a month to finish off writing this post, just because there have been so many things I've been trying to do! But here we are. Welcome. Let's get started

I feel like this every single time I finish a blog post

Crafts. I've been trying to figure out how to start this post by standing at a train station platform and saying the word "crafts" to myself in a variety of different accents. It hasn't really helped me in anyway apart from to at least make it look like to the casual skim reader of my blog that I may have written, or attempted, some form of introduction.

Are we done with that? Yeah? Yeah. Good. 

So, I wanted to write a post about crafts, like, arts n' crafts, but more specifically about some of the lovely people I have met in the last few months who have just blown me away with their megaskillz and awesome products. Brighton is a great place to be if you have a creative idea, and want to be surrounded by helpful, friendly creative people who can offer you bucket loads of advice and support. This has been highlighted especially well in the last month by the Brighton Etsy Team, who have recently been running "Mentor Month", in which some of the extremely talented members of the team, who have had experience in running their online brands for a while, offer help and advice to the less experienced members. A true collective thing of beauty.

Anyway, a bit of context to why I've had the opportunity to meet so many lovely folks, then. If you've read my blog, looked at my Flickr or talked to me in the last two years, you probably know that I am a friend of a girl named Karli who, along with her man friend Jacques, run Designosaur, an awesome jewellery designer. We've known each other since univeristy, where I studied Photography and she studied Product Design.

I'm sure you can already see the links forming in this story.

So since her final year project, and pretty much since the creation of Designosaur, I have just sort of hung around and helped her with any bits and pieces she's needed photography wise. Over the years, she has been a very helpful photography assistant to me since we first met and started hanging out. So our ratio of helping each other has somewhere probably evened itself out along the way.

Read about Karli and see a lot of photos I've taken of her over the years here -
http://uniqueandchic.co.uk/geek-thursday/2951/

Through just visiting her at craft fairs and events that she's helped organise, I finally started to be able to put some faces to names I'd seen online quite a lot and also names to faces of people that I recognise from visiting craft fairs around Brighton for the last five years. So I'ma write a little bit about some of these delightful folks, and force their etsy, twitter and facebook links down your throat so you buy their things. 

helloDODO
http://hello-dodo.blogspot.co.uk/
http://www.etsy.com/shop/helloDODOshop
https://twitter.com/hellohelloDODO

I feel that helloDODO make things that pretty much summarise what a lot of people like about Brighton. And by that, I don't mean that what they sell has actually anything to do with Brighton itself (though a few designs do, of course!) What I mean is that their designs are bright, colourful, cute, cheerful and funny. AND INFUSED WITH ANIMAL RELATED WORDPLAY (ok, maybe you can't describe Brighton with that last one. I wish you could). There is so much pun, honestly, it's just wonderful

Party Animal

Bear With Me

Hello Hello Dodo

The Quick...

Lovingly screen printed, you can get prints, tote bags, t-shirts, badges (who doesn't love a good badge?). I currently have two of their prints hung on my wall!

Caleigh-Ill Art
http://www.caleigh-ill.com/

http://www.etsy.com/uk/people/caleighill 
https://twitter.com/caleigh_ill 
https://www.facebook.com/caleighill.art

They all have great names. I'm saying this because I think one was called Bob. No relation.

The illustrations of Caleigh Illerbrun are definitely my favourite things at the moment. Possibly one of my favourite things that I've found this year. Often focussing on animals of the woodland or forest variety, they tread the line of dark and slightly creepy yet insanely cute at the same time, and that is a fine line to tread. Her series of "naked owls" illustrations and hand painted owl-Russian-dolls hit both of those boxes perfectly, and reminds me a little of soem of the reasons I mentioned for loving some of the artists I mentioned in THIS post about drawing and illustration (re-reading it, it's not a very in depth post. But WHEN DO I EVER WRITE IN DEPTH POSTS? Never, right?)

I also love these paintings that she has created, so much that I bought three prints which I have just hung on my walls! They're printed on a wonderful kind of cloth that really adds some amazing texture to the images. How exiting... but anyway, each image has such curious potential to an amazing story behind them - what are these creatures? Why are they where they are? What other things inhabit these strange landscapes. I want to know. Immediately. 

Comes in A3 and A4 prints, phone cases, stickers, tote bags, russian dolls. Funnily enough, I found that I actually have one of Caleigh's stickers on the back of my acoustic guitar that I must have put on there about a year or two ago from a craft fair!

ilikecats

http://www.i-like-cats.co.uk 

https://twitter.com/tobyoliverdean

http://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/ilikeCATSshop

Cats. What could ever be more appealing as a gift for a loved one or for yourself than cat related goodness. And you wouldn't want to buy cat related things from someone that didn't love, or at least like, cats. AND THAT IS WHERE TOBY COMES IN, with his brand name and URL proudly declaring his love of felines. Lovely simple, joyful illustrations of cats, I have bought things from him on more than one occasion for my cat-loving mother. I actually just sent her a card in the post. THAT COULD BE YOU SENDING CAT-CARDS IN THE POST.

I really need to rein in the use of these capital letters.

Mooshpie
http://www.mooshpie.co.uk/
https://twitter.com/mooshpie
http://www.etsy.com/people/mooshpie
https://www.facebook.com/Mooshpie

Lost Girls

Mooshpie! MOOOOOSH! Such a great word. And such a great style to match it also. Simple and cheerful but at the same time managing to hit being strangely nostalgic right on the head. I feel like a lot of Cheskas work would have fit right in on my bedroom wall when I was younger. She also has a shed-studio, which I think is just the best thing ever.

Bear

Fox

Kate Rowland
http://katerowland.co.uk
http://www.etsy.com/people/kateslittlestore 
https://twitter.com/helloiamkate

I only discovered Kate Rowland at a craft fair in Brighton a few weeks ago, and I have decided this - If there's not at least one badge or necklace in this array of fantastically designed pop-culture references that makes you go "I MUST HAVE IT, TAKE MY MONEY", then you and I are probably not going to get along, and you should leave now and educate yourself. And then return and buy some things. Twin Peaks, Game of Thrones and Arrested Development. AND SPACY THINGS. All the best things. She's also got some totally rad illustrations and paitings on her website. Yes, rad. What? WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE SERIOUS USE OF THE WORD RAD?

Award to worst formatting of a blog post ever goes to me. I truly have accomplished something today.

I also made this video at the Brighton Etsy Craft Party. It's got some lovely music on it

Good memories of a fun evening...

I liked it there

It has been a relatively draining week on all aspects of my brain and body. I have been in annoying physical pain for about three days due to the mother of all toothaches (a small part of me wanted to write teethaches there). Whatever reasons there are anyway, I have been sleeping badly and have had no chance to write this post. Or even have any thoughts about what to write about. So I'm going to post some photos of my trip to Japan that I took in December 2012. If you're friends with me on facebook, you probably will have seen a lot of these before, but that's kind of your fault.

On a side note, I have, however, this week, produced some work that is going to be potentially going to be used as a piece of album artwork (for one of the songs on an iTunes released album and in the booklet of the physical copy) and also a portrait piece that should be being shown at an exhibition evening in May. More on those in a future post maybe.

Anyway. Here are a handful of photos which I took that I like that remind me of things I did there that make me think of how much fun it was and how much of a massive experience it was for me. The images fall somewhere between pure holiday photos for my own memory and something a bit more special that I would be proud to show people. As a photographer, you're always looking for the best image of anything you're shooting, even if you're just taking an image purely for recollective purposes.

Bright, shiny, beautiful Tokyo

Streets like this (not this exact one) are pretty much what I saw as soon as I got off of my subway train  in Tokyo to meet my sister. It might have been the 11 hour flight and the lack of sleep and the absurd amount of films I watched on the way over, and I know this sounds stupid, but I was completely bowled over with joy at just how much Tokyo looked like I had imagined ("We're not even in central Tokyo. It gets better than this.") The signs were neon, the whole area we were in was weirdly empty for that time of night, the smell of delicious food coming from each side street we passed. There was something about those thin, tall side streets that just did it for me, with their hanging lanterns and occasional foliage. I can't really explain it, but I was incredibly excited and jet lagged at the same time. Kind of like if you have a big coffee when you're tired and hungover, your body and brain is trying to deal with all these different things at once.

I guess I had some thoughts on the flight that I would be really disappointed for one reason or another after wanting to visit for so long. Hyping something up too much in your head and all.

Fran, probably lit by the light of a convenience store

The other thing that was exciting, apart from actually being in Japan and seeing my sister for the first time in a year, was that my amazingly good friend Fran, who I also hadn't seen in a very long time, was going to be in Tokyo also. Obviously, much fun was had, and it was great to have another friendly face to ease me into the culture and teach me basic Japanese phrases on long subway rides.

Shinjuku Station. Fuckin' huge

I loved the Tokyo Underground system. It might have just been that the trains are about three times as big as the underground trains in London, or it might have been that their version of London's 'Oyster' card had a penguin on it, but I thought it was great. And just after two days of being in Japan, I was navigating it on my own like a pro. This photo is of Shjnjuku station, apparently the busiest train station in the world, clocking in with 36 platforms and over 200 exits (according to wikipedia).

I also loved how mental the Tokyo underground map was.

Brilliant

Seeing that I mentioned a penguin in my last paragraph, here's a penguin from Toyko Aquarium.

I like to imagine this penguin is not actually in water, but flying through the air towards me

Yup, that's a penguin. For some reason I have an obscene amount of photos of penguins from Tokyo Aquarium. I don't even know why.

Moving on...

Winds over Neo-Tokyo

This is one of my favourite images from my trip, and it also happens to be one of my most viewed and favourited photos on my flickr account ever. It was featured on alafista.com's daily feature "Today's Japan Photo" a few months ago. So yay. It was taken up the top of the Tokyo Skytree, which is just a bloody huge observation tower. On a clear day, which sadly it was not, you can see Mt. Fuji. So many of the buildings are tall in Toyko that there's not many places where you can really just take in the mind blowing vastness of the entire city. It just stretches off in every direction.

Waiting for Cat Bus

A trip to the Studio Ghibli museum was probably one the most magical experiences of my life. Apart from the museum shop, that was definitely one of the more terrifying experiences. The whole museum is not only a tribute to the creative work of Miyazaki and all those involved in the studio, but also a huge homage to the art of animation and film itself. There is a room that includes a little study of three or four animation styles, including some crazy live-stop motion animation achieved with strobe lighting, culminating in a short piece of work from the early days of the studio about the evolution of man, shown from a 35 film projector that has had it's insides put on show, and the mechanisms moved around to create an amazing roller coaster tangle of film. You also get a ticket to one of three short films shown in their cinema, again, projected in a traditional fashion. If anyone reading this ever goes to Tokyo, I INSIST that you go to this museum.

Seeing that I mentioned the evolution of man in my last paragraph, and therefore, by proxy, monkeys, here are a few monkeys from the monkey mountain in Oita, the second stop of my trip.

Staring into your soul

This monkey did not appreciate me getting this close

I have never seen so many monkeys in one place. So. Many. Monkeys.

These are a few images taken from different areas around Oita, where my sister lives. The top image was taken at the Usuki Stone Buddhas. We went quite late in the day before going for a delicious meal. It was raining, we were surrounded by bamboo forests and huge statues. It was very quiet, apart from the occasional bird call and the snapping of sticks as animals moved around in the foliage.

The second two images were taken atop a mountain near Beppu, which you get to by going up a cable car type thing. There was a lot of snow up there.

So there we have a small collection of photos from that time I went to Japan. Here is a video I made from some of the footage I also shot while over there (got a bit over excited that I had my new Canon which could shoot video also.) S'also got some stuff from our hop over to South Korea also.

yay.

Patient People

I have been blessed over the years with an extraordinarily large amount of patient people who I have somehow convinced to help me out in some form or another with my photography. Be it getting them to dress up in ridiculous outfits for test shots, physically assisting me on a shoot or just asking them to sit patiently while I tried to figure out what the fuck I was aiming to achieve when it came to lighting, angles or facial expression, I have had amazing groups of people around me since I first attempted photography about seven years ago.

I can already tell I'm going to get immensely lost in my own thoughts when trying to write this. I'm suddenly remembering things that I had kind of forgotten had even happened. Buying creepy plastic animal masks and being in the woods around Maidstone in Kent with my first girlfriend and my best friend, making the most of the tall, bare trees to create some Wicker Man/Lullabies to Paralyse-esque imagery

Even now I've just spent about three quarters of an hour looking through photos from 2005/2006 instead of continuing to write this. Such big ideas we had.

lol?

And there goes another hour of looking through folders of images I'd locked away in my memory banks. It's a strange thought to think I've been capturing moments of my life for such a long time...

I mentioned this idea for a post to Karli Dendy (http://www.designosauryeah.co.uk/ - now all professional looking with my images on there being put to good use!) and told her I had one of her to use. She objected. So I'm not using that one and I've found a better one, because she's not the boss of me (apart from when she pays me for photography, then she is).

Ok, well, here goes. Get ready for an image overload of wonderful people.

Jack helping out on the first ever Designosaur shoot

An alternate photo from this pretty little shoot with Elisha

Katie helping with a lighting test and assisting on my shoot with the projectionists of the Odeon Cinema, Brighton

She didn't want her photo taken, but I insisted. Trafalgar Square.

All round good egg, Fran Wrigley

Karli's a little tied up at the moment, can I take a message?

Some outakes from my university portrait project

Back in the day, these ladies were a fearsome force to be reckoned with

A day where I insisted on going to a number of coffee shops with Helen to improve my casual portrait skills

What do shadows do?

Adam Woodfield - best and safest studio assistant around

Ceci n'est pas une Jack

"No, it's too heavy, it definitely won't go out to sea..." he said.

The Hanover Cougars

Take a well earned break at the Duke of York's cinema

Sometimes confused, sometimes happy, always Barnes

And those are just but a few of the kind souls that have helped me over the course of my time as a 'photographer'. Beautiful beautiful people, all of them. Honourable mentions to Katy L, Jon O'L, Tom O and Lauren K, who, at some point in my life, I have had standing around waiting for me to make them do silly things.

I'm glad I have this chance to either glance or bury myself in my memories. It's a great opportunity to be as self reflective as you feel. On my life, on my photography. Though getting lost in all your photos is a potential danger, as I have proven to myself this evening.