Album art and portraits

A couple of months ago I started working on album art for an upcoming folk album for Sarah Jones. The album has officially gone on pre order for a 1st of September release and is available from Sarah's Topspin store.

The album has a strong personal, social and political message and as such we had to come up with a concept that would represent this while having an instant impact. So the base of the picture was made black and white with little elements made colour which draws the eye into each of the elements.

Each of these colour parts represent something of Sarah and the album with the pin-board representing more of a journey and thought process than being representative of a real pin-board. A preview of a couple of tracks from the album can be found on Sarah's you tube channel and is well worth viewing as the songs are simply superb.

Along with finalising this project I've also been working on a couple of web sites and a portraiture project about the people of a small Herefordshire village. Although I'm not ready to display any of these photographs yet I can reveal that it will be the subject of my first exhibition which I will be putting on in the village either in November or at the start of Spring next year so keep an eye out for more information on this in the future.

Stock Photography

Well it's been an interesting week, I've just completed my first product photography commission for a medical supply company. I had bought a new light tent and constant lamps for the job and must admit that it exceded my expectations in terms of quality and results, PhotoSEL PPC146 for those interested, however I do have two gripes with it, firstly there is not a chance that I'm ever going to managed to work out how to make an 80cm cube fit inside a 10cm x 2cm bag!

My second gripe was that the backdrops crease far to easily. The white backdrop was easy to get around this problem as I fired a diffused flash through the back of it however it got harder when I was working on the blue drop, it all worked out well in the end, although I'm going to try and find some 80cm wide seamless paper rolls for future jobs, well here are some examples of the 350 products I shot!

F1 and product photography

The title of the post sums up my next week really, this weekend Katy and I are going to the F1 at Silverstone! I've been following F1 for a long time but this will be the first race I've attended and while I'm going as a spectator I will be taking my camera along so expect a few photos in an upcoming blog! To say I'm excited is somewhat of an understatement!

I will be taking Monday off to recover, sort of, but from Tuesday I'm going to be producing stock photographs for a medical supply company so I've ordered a new light tent and 55w constant 5400K lamps.

I meant to update this, no really I did!

It's been a bit of a long week and a half and despite my best intentions my blog has been suffering!

I've been busy working on album art for an upcoming folk music album (watch this space as there will be more information on this at a later date) along with getting some of my artistic prints available on Folksy this was part of a larger plan to get my work out there but was brought forward after I sold two of the prints after someone looked through the prints I'd produced for a holiday let so it encouraged me to get them on sale.

I've also pushed my new web site live while it looks a lot like my old site the whole back end has been brought up to date and the code is much neater. It's a little content light just now but over the next week or so I'll get photos and content up there.

Along with all this I've finalised the portrait project I'm going to be working on over the summer, which is going to be to photograph the people in the village of Goodrich, Herefordshire it is an extension of a National Identity project I did at Uni towards the end of the academic year, the long term goal is going to be to get an exhibition on in the village but for now I need to get the flyers printed and put up around the village!

A day of photographic exhibitions. almost

There have been a few photographic exhibitions I've been wanting to visit but haven't had the time to, so I thought as Katy had a maths assignment due soon that I would give her a bit of peace and quiet and get out and see them. First up was a trip to Fabrika for the Leicester College year two FD Photography and Video students, which was as much of a scouting trip as it was to see the work produced. The exhibition was very interesting, some really good work on show but it gave me lots of ideas of how I'm going to display my work next year!

Next up was a show which I didn't think I was going to get to, Keith Coopers, 'Leicester from a different angle' which was due to finish on the 31st of May but due to the popularity of the show it has been extended to the 11th of June. Unfortunately though, the Leicester People's Photographic Gallery decided today was a good day to close early so when I rocked up an hour before the place should have closed it was already locked up!

On wards I went to my last show of the day, Paul O'Leary's show at the LCB sadly though the gallery space is closed on a Saturday!

I'm going to check when the galleries are open again but with two bank holidays, two days in Northampton, a photo shoot in Herefordshire and the Wychwood Festival at the weekend it's unlikely I'll manage it next week.

For tonight it's time to enjoy a couple of Tyskie and a little bit of gaming! Oh and my web hosting transfer is moving along nicely just need to wait for my old host to update the IPS tags and the domain will be transfered.

Domain problems

I've had my domain (http://www.deviantdog.co.uk) hosted with the same company for the last few years and other than the odd problem with data transfer speeds I've been fairly happy with them, however at the start of April they forgot to renew my domain which left me with out a site on line.

After contacting them I then spent a very frustrating 30 days (yes 30 days!) trying to get them to renew the domain and get my site up and running after my 5th (or 6th, I forget) live support chat I finally got hold of someone competent who did in 2 seconds what his colleagues has failed to do for the last 30 days and got my site working, despite expressing my displeasure at the length of time it had taken to get resolved I wasn't offered even an apology nor was any form of contact from their customer complaints forthcoming. However given my schedule and various deadlines that were looming I choose to forget it and move on.

So fast forward to yesterday when I was developing my new (and shinier) site and the frustration of having to wait some 2-3 minutes for a 15KB page to load, I contacted my hosts and had a further whinge about the service I was receiving.

Queue a day of frustrating emails with a complete and utter idiot who couldn't get through his thick skull what I was trying to complain about and thus today I canceled my account (well I think I have, he's said the billing team will contact me, w'll see if that actually happens though) and I've chosen to move to Fat Cow hosting part of the reason for this is that they have a great name which plays to a slight cow obsession I have, however the main reason was because they are a 100% green hosting company! Time will tell how easy the process is but fingers crossed these guys are better than my old hosts.

Uni year one done!

It's still hard to believe that today was the last day of my first year back at uni! It seems like yesterday I was arriving for my first day full of nerves and trepidation as to what I'd let me self into. As a mature student (the wrong side of 30!) there was certainly an extra pressure that this was the last chance for me to realise my goal of becoming a professional photographer again but thanks to a bit of hard graft and some great fellow students I've not just passed but justified my decision to return by producing some of the best work of my carrer.

I'm in the process of moving my domain (see next post for a rant!) but as soon as I've got some stable hosting available I'll post up some images of what I've done.