Eleanor Jane

Links 18.04.11

Come on summer... almost here!

♥ I've been gawping over the tasty looking meals over at VeganYumYum for weeks now and have found this post where Lolo talks about how she takes such delicious pictures. It's a fantastic tutorial for aspiring food photographers. While you're over there, Peabrain & I can highly recommend the recipes for crepes (who knew the egg was so supurfluous?!), aloo parathas (turns the kitchen into a disaster zone but what Indian cooking doesn't?) and the cheese free macaroni cheeseless... mmmm!

♥ Russian wedding photography gone very very wrong. I don't know whether to laugh or cry!

♥ Views from the street. Connection at St. Martins, the homeless charity in Trafalgar Square, runs a photography workshop for those who use it's services. Here some of the photographers explain the stories behind their pictures.

♥ Dear Photographers, Lady Gaga wants your copyright (& so does everyone else!). An interesting one for gig photographers. What do you think?

♥ Levitating self portraits by Natsumi Hayashi. I love these! They remind me a little of Tom Pope's work.

♥ The Green Tunnel is an interesting video for any hikers out there. A six month journey across the 2,200 mile long Appalachian Trail, condensed and reinterpreted into five minutes of stop motion. I didn't even realise people did the whole thing in one go but I'd imagine it's an awesome experience if you can spare the time.

♥ What the hell?! The new Panasonic Lumix DMC-FP7 whitens teeth, erases wrinkles and applies make-up. Why?!

♥ This is fun! Celebrities, friends & family as George Dawe's Russian generals.

♥ Giving the Russian wedding photographers a run for their money, here are 60 completely unusable stock photos. Inexplicable and often downright disturbing, my personal favourites are the young boy & the nanna in their troubling embrace and the potato peeling Hitler girl...

Zakk Wylde - Guitarist Magazine

As promised, here are some scans from the latest issue of Guitarist magazine featuring my Zakk Wylde pictures. The main shot looks awesome in print but as my scanner is on it's last legs I've included a couple of the originals here too.

The photoshoot prior to the Black Label Society gig at Bristol's Colston Hall was quick, crazy and a huge learning experience. (I've done a couple of other magazine shoots since and am beginning to realise that nothing ever goes to plan in the music industry!) Still, it was great fun, especially accompanying Zakk on stage with the journalist for a personal tour of his gig set up... so many monster guitars!

It was fascinating for me actually as when I was younger and used to get the guitar catalogues from Cranes in Cardiff I always thought his Les Paul 'Bullseye' custom was the coolest thing ever. Way out of my pocket money price range though (ooh but check out this sweet baby version if you have a mini metaller child!) so I continued to twiddle away badly on my little Yamaha!

Ffoto Week 14.04.11

I haven't done a Ffoto Week post for ages which is very lazy of me so I'm going to start again today in an attempt to encourage myself to post more daily bits and pieces. Tricky tricky when I take most of my personal snapshots on film as by the time I get them developed they no longer seem relevant in the fast paced blog world! But here goes...

1. The most exciting thing to happen this week is the issue of Guitarist magazine with my Zakk Wylde spread is OUT NOW and there's a mini version of one of my photos on the front cover! Eeeeeeeeeee! EXCITING! There's also a video tour of Zakk's onstage gear on the cover disk which starts with a short movie of my shoot. More about this in a couple of days though as I've only just got my copy of the mag and need to scan it in.

2. I picked this book up at Kevin Meredith's talk at the Third Floor Gallery in Cardiff Bay and he was kind enough to sign it for me (you can buy your copy here). It's always inspiring to meet someone who still works with film and ultimately does whatever the hell makes them happy with their photography. He has an impressive beard too (I'm all about the beards in 2011)! Kevin is everything I love about photography and the complete antethisis of everything I hate... mainly ugly, pretentious pictures. But that's a rant for another day!

3. While I'm on the subject of Third Floor Gallery, I urge you to try to catch Mi Vida Loca, the current exhibition by Joseph Rodriguez. The exhibition brings together his work from the past twenty years examining the effects of gang culture on Mexican-American families and communities in Los Angeles. Interestingly, he tells how the newspaper he was initially producing the images for kept asking for "more violence" in the pictures. I guess the truth, no matter how horrific, still isn't sensational enough for the press.

4. My friend's little girl, Elizabeth, wrote my name yesterday and I'm so proud! Last time I saw her drawing I swear she was still trying to get her smiley faces inside her heads and now she's writing proper neat letters. Amazing!

5. Finally, my phone recently drowned and I've been forced to upgrade to a fancy new model with lots of buttons (in the hottest of hot pinks of course!). Half my numbers didn't transfer over with my sim card so if you haven't already, please could all friends, clients and David Duchovny please contact me with your mobile numbers? Thank you!