bikes and things

I kind of used to like LinkedIn. It was interesting to see who is now working where from University, what your old boss is up to, as well as where former colleagues had ended up and their positions. It was also quite useful to see how some of the connections in the Architecture industry work, reinforcing the fact that every Architect in London knows everyone by no more than two degrees of separation (or so it seems at times). It was also useful for seeing people’s profiles before and after events and then following up on something you’d talked about. I had even got some photography work through it too.

I use the past context to describe it because then at some point it stopped being a professional network and became a wannabe Facebook clone and started doing this bullshit kind of stuff below.

As someone who prides himself on professionalism this stinks. It’s cheap and nasty and kills it as a platform of any real value to me. Lets also not forget the recent “endorse someone” feature.

Mike Smith has been endorsed for Microsoft Word…

It’s at this point that I really do fear for the future of the human race.

So many bikes here it’s untrue. Always makes me smile when I see it full like this.

For some reason this reminds me of Childhood half term / summer holidays at my Grandma’s house watching day time TV. A superb supercut of what has to be the Daily Mail of TV. Makes me shudder to think of him.

So good.

Slogans for the Early 21st Century
Douglas Coupland
2012
Installation photo at the Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto, September, 2012
Photo credit: Jennifer Rose Sciarrino
Courtesy of the Daniel Faria Gallery

I was browsing the AJ website the other day when I came across this post showing the winners of the AJ/Open-City photography competition. All of the images are great but this one really jumped out at me.

And then I saw it was by Chris Romer-Lee of Studio-Octopi and it’s his daughter in the picture. The space is fantastic and although you can’t see the face of the little girl you can almost feel just how enthralled she is by what is going on on the table. The shadow play and tones are simply fantastic as well as the details within the image – the cobwebs, the timber floor, the trees outside, the lamp that just catches the light and also the seemingly pure white table in an otherwise drab and run down space. Upon speaking to Chris, and asking for this image, it transpires that the studio where this was shot is under threat from development which is tragic. I’m hopefully going to visit soon and have a look round and fingers crossed they make it through.

Image © Chris Romer-Lee.

Not sure where I found this but below is a video introduction to Robert Burley’s project recording the various disappearing film companies (Kodak, Agfa etc), which he has been working on since 2005.

It seems shocking how quickly film is disappearing and he notes that he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to finish the project. The book is available on Amazon and I think I’ll be ordering a copy soon. It doesn’t look like I’ll be getting the pleasure of shooting large format anytime soon. More information and images can be found over at PetaPixel.

Seemed to have taken a lot of pictures this weekend, some professional which I can’t show yet, and some for pleasure which of course I can. Some fairly dim flat light on Saturday but a superb Autumn day on Sunday. GB’s worth of shots into the Lightroom library. Took the D700 out instead of the X100 this time. Always forget how super sharp it is with the 50mm ƒ1.8 on.

And my personal favourite was this dog keeping a watchful eye over the people on Lordship Lane.

I’ve managed to get another awesome print swap sorted in the last few weeks. I’ve done a few of these before, some have worked out well, some have ended up with me just giving a print away (or paying for one upfront) and not getting anything else back. But this one has been very successful.

Print swapping is a superb way of getting decent art or photography on the walls for not a lot of money. It’s just the cost of a print and some postage obviously. However it’s a bit of a nervous process asking someone whose work you admire to swap with you. After you’ve got over this then it’s simply a matter of agreeing print sizes, which shot they want and what type of paper or print process. This time I swapped a picture of Corbusier’s Saint-Pierre Firminy, which was shot on an Olympus OM-20, 50mm ƒ1.8 and Ilford HP5 400, with Daniel’s shot of the Hayward Gallery on the Southbank. His was shot on a slightly larger 4×5 HP5 sheet of film – the quality shows too.

Can’t wait to get mine framed and on the wall with the others. I have a few more planned too but can’t afford the framing so will have to stagger them.

I was pleasantly pleased to see this last night on my bus ride home from a quick shoot in Queens Park. Great to see Ström Architects getting such great publicity and obviously nice to see my shots there too.

Incredible to see my current camera of choice laid out in all its complex technical and engineering beauty in a “things organised neatly” style. Amazing to think of the precision of design that goes into this.

Interestingly enough I couldn’t find a decent enough image to use on this blog post and the embedding options at 500px aren’t great. So for $2.99 I bought this image to use. My currency converter of choice says that it’s £1.88 which is fairly reasonable really. Less than the price of a coffee to reward a photographer for their hard work. Plus I get to get a decent high res file at 1920px wide for my desktop background.

Image © Martin Kozák

Via PetaPixel