Duble publication whammy for montage portraits

Posted on 24th Apr 2010 by lomokev

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.

Check my previous post about the show to find out about who else I will be exhibiting with.

The show will be open on: May 1st, 2nd, 8th, 9th, 15th, 16th, 22nd and 23rd 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

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lomokev at Bright Click on April 21st

Posted on 16th Apr 2010 by lomokev

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

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The magic of content aware fill in Photoshop CS5

Posted on 13th Apr 2010 by lomokev

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.

Posted in News, Software | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Open house exhibition in May

Posted on 6th Apr 2010 by lomokev

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

Posted in Brighton, Exhibitions, News | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Print up for sale at charity auction

Posted on 25th Mar 2010 by lomokev

print up for sale at charity auction

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.

Check the brightwest web site to see the other items up for auction.

While I am on the subject of twitter you can follow here @lomokev.

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Brighton street style in March’s Brighton Source

Posted on 6th Mar 2010 by lomokev

source street style march

My trend spotting for Brighton Source magazine continues, the March edition is out now. You can pick up The Brighton Source for free at most cafes and pubs in Brighton. This is now going to be a regular thing with Source, I have already submitted my shots for the April edition so I now have a huge back log of montage images to up load to my montage portrait flickr set.

I also have two of my montages portraits (matthew montage and erinisfunky montage) on display at the Iydea cafe at 17 Kensington Gardens, Brighton until the 30th April. The ones on display are not just straight print outs from Photoshop but are made from real 6” by 4” prints go and check them out.

Am also planing a joint exhibition for the Brighton open house festival witch will be open every weekend of May. I will be showing some un scene montage portraits. For more info on that watch my my blog, twitter or join my my mailing list by mailing info@lomokev.com asking to added.

Posted in Brighton, Published | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Barnes and Noble Hot Shots infomercial

Posted on 3rd Mar 2010 by lomokev

Barnes and Noble have spotlighted my book, Hot Shots, on their website. It’s in the form of a video witch looks more like an infomercial than a review. In case you are wondering how I found this it was not though ego surfing, I am far too busy for that. I found it out from Google alerts it’s the best way to keep track of what people are saying about you online. Unfortunately the video I talk about in this post so no longer on the Barnes and Noble website.

In reference to what is said in the video I would just like to point out that the images in Hot Shots are not organized by color, that was an idea when I first started putting the book together but I soon realized that it would be impossible. I would also like to point out that most of my photos are not blurred!

If you want to see an accurate representation of what my book is like, you can check out the video below or you can download a 16 page PDF sample. Hot shots is currently being reprinted after selling out its 2nd UK print run and 1st US print run. After being printed in China they are placed on the slowest boat in the world, so currently one of the only places to get a copy of Hot Shots at the cover price is from me. If you want one hurry as I only have 9 left! If you would like a copy my PayPal address is kevin@analogintelligence.co.uk. If you are worried whether you can trust me just check my eBay feed back profile, if you can’t trust good old lomokev who can you trust? When you pay me on PayPal make sure you leave instructions on who you would like the book signed to. If you don’t have a PayPal account you can send me a good old fashioned cheque, just e-mail me on info@lomokev.com and we can arrange it.

Posted in Books, Press | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Time lapse tutorial in DSLR magazine

Posted on 22nd Feb 2010 by lomokev

In the last year and a half I have been getting into my time lapse photography as you can see from my time lapse set on flickr. I shot my frist time lapse of a sand castle being constructed on Wooacombe beach, its a bit rough around the edges because the exposure goes a bit wonky at one point. I also totally miss read the tide table and had to spend 5 hours on the beach while it went dark waiting for the tide to come in. It was a blessing in the end as you can see the villages lights come on and reflect in the wet send as the tide comes in.

Because of the experimenting I have been doing with time lapse, Digital SLR User magazine asked me to write a tutorial on shooting time lapses for there extreme issue. I managed to squeeze my acquired knowledge into 1000 words. I needed some behind the scenes shots of a time lapse being shot for the article, as I did not have any I shot this sequence on parliament bridge especially for the magazine. The magazine is on the shelves in the UK for a few more weeks so go check it out.

The music is buy Malcolm Goldie, Malcolm is a good friend of my who had this bit of music “laying around”. He changed the timing on the track just for the film so I could use it, what a nice chap you should all go over to his site and check it out. His Michelle Plays Ping Pong video is well worth checking out to.

One of the things that I did not mention in the article is that it helps you you have company as once the camera is set up there is not much to do! I would like to thank lomoD.xx who spent 2 hours with my on parliament bridge.

Posted in Tutorials | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments