Thursday, November 29, 2007

f1.8

I've borrowed a really nice f1.8/50mm prime lens off of my friend Ben recently. It's an absolute beauty! I'm a big fan of shooting at night, and this lens makes it even easier and more pleasurable still. I had a little wander around Soho etc on Sunday night, to see what I could get it to do. I kept the camera set on aperture priority and stopped it right down to f1.8 the whole time. It's great being able to shoot, hand held, so easily in those conditions and achieving some crazy DoF! It's really good fun, and I'll definitely be saving up my pennies to get one of my own in the new year...
I've uploaded some of the best from the outting to Flickr.

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Wednesday, November 28, 2007

AOTM - November 2007: David Downton



Travelling to work every day, I pass many posters on the underground (as you can imagine) advertising various things, most of which get largely ignored (by me at least). There is one that catches my eye everyday, however. It's a poster for the V&A exhibition The Golden Age Of Couture: Paris and London 1947-1957, and it features a painting from Mr. David Downton. I can't actually recall now where I first came across Downton's work, but I know that I loved it from the off! He is very different to other AOTM's that I have posted in the past, mainly because he works exclusively (as far as I'm aware) in traditional media. He has a fantastic ability to capture likeness, but at the same time remaining loose, and textural. His work is mainly known in the fashion industry, but a fair chunk of his work is also seen in other publications, magazines and newspapers. Keep an eye out for it, I bet you've seen a lot more than you realise...

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Sunday, November 11, 2007

EastEnders...

Considering I didn't get to bed until about 3am last night, today has been surprising productive and full. After a lazy breakfast etc, I finally managed to get my act together enough to go off in search of the latest offering Banksy. Just off Bethnal Green road in East London stands a fifteen foot tall flower, which follows the double yellow lines from the road, and up on to the side of a house. The piece also features a man sitting on a paint tin, holding a yellow paint splattered roller. I've seen endless photos of it on Flickr which I have, of course, added to. The photos certainly don't do it justice, and I wasn't expecting it to be a large as it was! It must have taken some doing! Impressive.


After I had carried out the necessary photographs, I decided to wander along Bethnal Green road towards Brick Lane and see if I could spot anything else. Brick Lane was packed! There is all manor of markets and things along there at the weekend (apparently) so I enjoyed a slow stroll along, taking photos and looking and the different things on offer. As I made my way along, I spotted some posters for an exhibition called
NineteenEightyFouria. I was intrigued, so I headed in. It was certainly a great find! The massive, open plan space was full of mixed media screen prints of various sizes. The images reflected the theme of George Orwell's book NinteenEightyFour, but visually were very reminiscent of early twentieth century communist posters. They were superb, and I throughly recommend heading down there to see it if you can.

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Wednesday, November 07, 2007

On the cover...






It seems that recently, most of my artistic time has been spent creating covers for the ever growing series of live, fan made CD's and DVD's from TheHipTracker. I really enjoy making these covers. Not only do they provide me with an outlet to give something back to a community that has given me so much, but they also give me a focused project to keep me ticking over, as well as somewhere to try out new techniques and ideas. It's also nice as it gives me scope to use type, thus giving me a nice mix of illustration and graphic design - winner! So, with all that said, I thought I'd share some with you on here. I'd like to hear what you think...

Most, if not all over the above can either be downloaded as part of the torrent from the tracker, or from The Unique Motel or covers.hipfans.com

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