There are only 3 weekendsThere are only 2 weekends There is only 1 weekend left to see the open house exhibition that I am involved in. I am showing a new set of portraits, shot in a montage style, of the people who make Brighton the special place it is, from journalists to drag queens and paramedics to fashion designers, they’re all there. So far the only place to see these images is in the open house, each picture is made up of 5 to 7 real 6″ x 4″ prints lovingly stuck together by hand without the aid of Photoshop. It’s not just me in the show my wife Rockcake; and Partially Obscured are also taking part. Rockcake is showing her jewelery and Partially Obscured, AKA Su Wilson, is showing her glass work.
Our open house will be open for all of the weekends left in May: 29th and 30th. We are open from 11am to 6pm.
The show is at :
Flat 8, 72 St George’s Road (opposite the news agent in the new looking building)
Brighton, BN2 1EF Google map of location
Our show is under KT9 in the Artists Open Houses brochure. For more info on Brighton Artists open houses check the AOH website.
Jonas Lara a LA photographer faces charges of aiding and abetting two graffiti artists because he was taking photos of them painting. He refuses to plea bargain so is going to court where he could get a sentence of up to year in prison. If convicted he will also lose his place at college where he is signed up to Master of Fine Art course. So far the court appointed lawyer has refused to consider his rights as a photographer as a defence. Lara started a legal defence fund so he can hire a real lawyer but time is short as his court date is set for May 11th. If you wish to donate you can do so at his legal defence fund paypal page or send payments though paypal direct to:
donate@jonaslaradefensefund.org
Johnny Mørup wrote a piece on me and my use of film and Lomo cameras, the article is in the Danish paper Børsen which I am told is the Danish equivalent of the UK FT. I think it says nice things but I don’t understand Danish so can’t tell. If you want you can download the PDF of the article and give it a little read, that is if you speak Danish.
This month it’s a been a double whammy for my montage portraits. They have been published in their regular spot in The Brighton Source magazine. But this month Photo Pro Magazine’s Charlotte Griffths wrote a piece about them in there portrait issue. Both mags are available ‘till the end of the month, I was a bit late with posting this have had a lot on with work and my new little arrival.
The Brighton Source magazine:
Photo Pro Magazine:
I have been using this montage style to shoot a set of portraits of people who make Brighton such a special place. From Dave Sawyers who has swam in the sea all year round for the past 40 years, to Nick Baird a paramedic with 22 years service in the Sussex Ambulance Service, to the super sexy Ophellia Fancy girls. As I have been shooting these portraits I feel it is the start of something bigger and is the beginning of something that I will be doing for long time. At the moment I have not posted any of this new work online, the only place to see it will be at my open house exhibition which will be open every weekend in May.
I am going to give a talk on film photography and its place in our digital age at a new event called Bright Click on the 21st of April. It looks like a really interesting program of talks from some grate photographers, some I know and some I don’t. I think one of the most interesting talks will be from Emma Critchley. I first met Emma a few years back when she was photographing some of the Brighton swimming club members when she as a student at Sussex uni. She now is studying for masters in photography at the Royal College Art. She shots amazing under water photographs and some only lit by moonlight.
The Event will be at the Sallis Benney Theatre at University of Brighton on the 21st April at 7pm. Get your tickets by going to www.wegottickets.com and searching for “brightclick”
Sallis Benney Theatre
University of Brighton
Facuitly of Arts and Architecture
Grand Parade
Brighton
BN2 OJY
Adobe made a set of announcements yesterday (April 12th) about there Creative Suite software. The most interesting part of that announcement is that Photoshop CS5 is going to be more magic than software because of the inclusion of something called content aware fill. Basically it will make it child’s play to remove unwanted elements from an image. I don’t really shout about the Photoshopping that I do to my images, for the most part I just remove dust and scratches and do a small amount of color correction. Sometimes I will tweak the composition slightly to get it perfect buy moving things around and cropping. I believe as long as you can’t tell its photoshopped then its all good. Content aware fill is going to make that job a whole lot easier! Check out how it works:
Most people would not associate me with the use of Photoshop but below are a few examples where I have slightly tweaked things in the past but using the heal and clone tools. I can’t wait to get CS5 as there are lots of images in my library that I think I can make grate using Content aware fill. Click on the images below if you want to check them out on flickr.
I cropped the image of the girl to remove some distracting elements if I had CS5 maybe I could magic-ed that stuff away with out having to crop the image?
Because the lomo LCA’s far from perfect view finder I managed miss some of the handle out of this image. By copying and pasting and blending I managed to make the top slice of the image.
The way that one of the cops head interested the diagonal line bothered me so I shrank him a bit.
When I took this image I was waiting for just one cycelest to be in between the 2 parts of the pier and when it did happen there was a 2nd guy. Using parts from an other photo taken from the same view point I removied him, be intresting to see what content aware fill could do here.
The Idea of content aware fill is not new as Photoshop has content aware scale in CS4 and it was available as a 3rd party plugin for CS3. Gimp has had content aware fill for some time in the shape of a plug-in called resynthesizer. I remember going crazy for this youtube video showing content aware scale when it 1st surfaced in 2007.
As with everything its made it way to the iPhone. Never has the slogan “There’s an App for Everything” been more true as there is now an iPhone app that lets you content aware scale, its called Liquid Scale check it out.
During the month of May I will be exhibiting at an open house exhibition as part of the brighton festival with my wife Rockcakes; and Partially Obscured. Rockcakes will showing her jewellery and Partially Obscured AKA Su Wilson is a glass maker. I will be showing work that has never been seen before on flickr or anywhere else, so make sure you keep a May weekend day clear to come check it out! The show will be in deepest darkest Kemp Town (Brighton).
Our open house will be open every weekend in May:
May 1st, 2nd, 8th, 9th, 15th, 16th, 22nd, 23rd, 29th and 30th from 11am to 6pm.
The show is at :
Flat 8, 72 St George’s Road (opposite the news agent in the new looking building)
Brighton, BN2 1EF Google map of location
A 50cm x 33cm print of my London Cycling image will be auctioned off at the Brighton Twestival tonight (25th March 2010) to raise money for Concern World Wide, a charity dedicated to fighting poverty world wide. Twestival is world wide event where Twitter users met up to socialize and raise money for good causes. If you are not attending fear not as you can also bid online. I don’t mean to blow my own trumpet but last time a print of London Cycling was auctioned off for charity it went for $1000. That said it was in room with a few dot come millionaires before the credit crunch but here’s hopping that the Brighton massive can try and beat that! The iPhone is in the image to give you a sense of the size of the image.
