Eleanor Jane

Links 13.01.12

Courtney Love's goal board - © Peter Murdock

♥ Courtney Love takes xoJane on a tour of her West Village, NYC townhouse. The decor is totally not what I expected with lots of antique furnishings, a little bit chintzy really!

♥ Iconic photojournalism of 2011... with added Lego!

♥ What do you think of these colour photographs of Russia over a century ago? Now, I know colour photography has been around a lot longer than many people think but for some reason I still couldn't believe these were 100% genuine at first. It took a lot of reading up on the process to convince me.

♥ On a similar theme here is some fascinating colour movie footage of London from 1927. Everyone is so smartly dressed and wearing a hat. How proper!

♥ These rare lenticular clouds, usually only seen over large mountain ranges such as the Himalayas and the Andes, were photographed in the skies above West Yorkshire recently. Apparently these cloud formations are the single biggest explanation for UFO sightings across the world (but personally I believe little greys are always to blame!).

Links 06.01.12

© Hedi Slimane

♥ Woah, so Frances Bean Cobain is no longer the little grunge baby in the iconic Stephen Sweet pictures of Kurt & Courtney at home. With those genes she was clearly never going to be anything less than an incredible model but something about these photos leave me feeling oh so unsettled.

♥ Encourage your wedding guests to get creative with their snaps with this cute idea from Etsy.

♥ Barbie & Ken get married. Posing my Barbie dolls for impromptu fashion and wedding shoots is exactly how I got into photography so I adore this. The standard is much higher than what I achieved in 1993 with a Kodak 110 camera but I should really scan those old pictures in for a bit of a retrospective blog - Ffotogirl: The Early Years!

♥ 20 Myths About Becoming a Professional Photographer (& how to avoid falling for them).

♥ Kids' drawings are hilarious and Imagine Awesome is one of the funniest websites ever! The artist Garrett Miller re-imagines the drawings the way he thinks the child intended them to look if only they had the skills.

Christmas Gift Ideas for Photographers 2011

It’s CHRIIIIIIISTMAAAAAAAAS! Umm, how did we get here so quickly? I feel like I’ve only recently got back from my summer holidays and already I’m a quarter of the way through my advent calendar and planning what nibbles to serve at my mini winter solstice party. Still, I love this time of year so am definitely not complaining.

This December I'm looking forward to putting up the tree & hanging our Mickey Mouse bauble from Disney World, getting all scarfed up & going walking with my Peabrain to spot Christmas lights and find a nice pub for dinner, wrapping loads of presents (& hopefully having enough spare time to volunteer with my friend Andrew to wrap more presents & pack up food parcels for the elderly), finishing my crafty gifts and scoffing myself silly at our Christmas eve tea (mmmm Mr. Kipling's mince pies!).

Anyway, as usual I have compiled a guide of Christmas gift ideas for photographers (& please check out the galleries from 2009 & 2010 too if you're still stuck for ideas). I hope you find it useful unless of course you have been super organised and already done your Christmas shopping in January, like my nan!

1. Lonely Planet’s Guide to Travel Photography is perfect for any photographer with a serious case of wanderlust (& if you’re a squillionaire you could even throw in a couple of plane tickets too!).

2. If you thought the Gorillapod was clever… you haven’t seen the Monsterpod! Marketed by Photojojo as the “tripod equivalent to the hoverboard”, it sticks to over 1,000 surfaces and objects, hangs upside down, tilts & rotates to any angle with a pivoting tripod mount and is waterproof and dirt resistant. It looks ideal for those awkward self-portrait moments where the only viable option is a lopsided, stony precipice!

3. Over the past few years I’ve tried not to get so anxious over missed shots. As Linda McCartney would have said, “Don’t worry, it’s on the soul camera.” But for all the shots Linda didn’t miss, Linda McCartney: Life in Photographs is the definitive book. When the Taschen catalogue dropped through my door with this on the cover I knew instantly that I needed it. Linda worked at a time when photography was much purer and I can’t see how anyone would fail to be inspired by her pictures.

4. This USB negative/slide scanner may not be the thing for preparing high resolution scans for exhibition prints but it looks amazing for messing around with plastic fantastic “toy” camera shots or rediscovering your old snaps from ‘90s school discos!

5. How come whenever I have upgraded my camera body, the only thing to get progressively worse is the free strap? Hmm. The straps at My Funky Camera are highly recommended for both their sturdiness and being super cute proving that not all practical gifts have to be boring! Sadly for me my favourite designs have all sold out but I’m sure you could find something suitably stylish.

6. Camera Armour - the gift of protection! If only this came in pink…

7. Last year I had New York: A Portrait of a City for Christmas and LOVED it so much I had to ration the time I spent looking at it to last longer. Taschen have now brought out a Los Angeles version which looks equally as fascinating.

8. The Stella is the latest offering from Epiphanie, queens of the non-hideous camera bag. It’s a bit of a girly one but I am so tempted to buy this as a Christmas gift for myself. Totally vegan too!

9. Formula One actions are like a goodie box full of expired film… for your digital camera! Check out some sample edits here to see how other photographers have used the actions in post production.

10. Wires & plugs drive me crazy and I have managed to break three card readers this year so this product seems too good to be true for me. Automatically upload & backing up your shots via wifi? No wires? No plugs? No flimsy plastic card readers hanging out the side of your laptop? If only they made a compact flash version!

11. My wedding assistant Simon first introduced me to these Westcott Apollo softboxes. Use them with your off camera flash gun for location shoots where dragging your studio lighting around would be too awkward. The softbox itself folds down like an umbrella, clever clever! It’s a great bit of kit and I’m sure most location photographers would be thrilled to pieces with one.

12. Remind your photographer friends that pictures are best printed out and enjoyed!

13. Creative, experimental types will love Kevin Meredith’s Toy Cameras book. It’s a bible for all things plastic fantastic!

14. You can’t argue with the fact that all serious photographers need a good set of prime lenses and a 50mm f1.8 is a nice, affordable place to start. Try here for Nikon & here for Canon.

15. Everything is more cheerful in colour. These portable USB hard drives from Verbatim make the rather joyless task of backing up work slightly less dull.

16. At first glances I thought this camera bag looked like a terrible ‘80s monstrosity but it’s beginning to grow on me. Lots of space for extra bits & pieces means it’s great for a day trip and it comes in purple too (which is probably why I like it!).

17. I know I mention Moleskines every year but they really are the perfect notebook and now they come in PINK! Woohoo!

Links 25.11.11

♥ Three photo projects to try on your next road trip. Sigh, If only I could cartwheel!

♥ Wedding photography in the midst of a natural disaster.

♥ The Dumpster Project. I can’t believe I haven’t shared this video before. Makes me feel a little less guilty about all the "treasures" I’m hoarding in my gas cupboard.

♥ In case you were ever in any doubt, this clearly illustrates that the difference between professional models and non-models is incomparable. I debated with myself for ages about whether posting this was inappropriate incase it came across as a cheap dig at the girl's appearance, which I don't mean to do. I'm sure she is attractive. But a model is so much more than a pretty face. I'll remove if it offends though.

♥ Portraits of gay couples just married in New York City.

♥ Two cheeky photographers bluffed their way into the Governer’s Ball after the 61st Academy Awards and snapped some amazing candids of the Hollywood elite. I'm impressed by their nerve!

♥ When you're feeling blue, Hyperbole and a Half is instant happy. Even the bleak posts.

♥ I want my face on the side of an airplane!

♥ Poetry bombing. Augustina Woodgate sews lines from her favourite poems into clothes at the thrift store. It's kind of the sartorial equivalent of finding a love note scribbled inside the musty pages of a second hand book.

♥ Here's a stylish photography cheat sheet for beginners.

♥ & finally, Dear Photograph is a bittersweet reminder that time passes far too quickly and there is never long enough to say goodbye.

Links 24.06.11

© Tracey Emin

♥ MusicRadar have just uploaded a video of the Zakk Wylde photoshoot I did for Guitarist magazine waaaaaay back in February. Rawwwwk!

♥ Naughty naughty! Five ways to improve your boudoir photography.

♥ This series of articles by Angus Young is an excellent guide to the world of film stills photography, a vital but often ignored part of the industry. It fascinated me particularly as despite having a few friends who work in film & television I've always found that area of photography completely impenetrable.

♥ Mission Everest: A Tale of Two Brothers is a super inspirational documentary. I wish they were my brothers (along with my regular little brother of course!) so I could join them on their adventures.

♥ Love Is What You Want. I'm eager to see Tracey Emin's major retrospective at London's Hayward Gallery. As your stereotypical female art student, coming of creative age in the later years of Sleazenation, Dazed & Confused, Saatchi mania and mainstream acceptance of the YBAs as credible fine art, Tracey Emin was an inspiration to be bold and true in my own practice. Whether her work will still move me over a year since I fell spectacularly and irreparably (it seems) out of love with the contemporary art scene (an event which I've never really explained on this blog) is something I'm curious to find out.

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...

Links 14.03.11

© Ryan Schembri

I was so caught up watching Australian photographer Ryan Schembri talk at the Focus on Imaging show last week that I completely forgot I was supposed to be well on my way home. I was super exhausted by the time I left the NEC (& it takes a long time to get back from Birmingham when you forget to get off the motorway!) but I didn't mind so much as his presentation left me feeling really positive and inspired.

♥ The New York Times compares satellite images of Japan, taken before and after the disaster. Move the slider to see the destruction caused by the earthquake and tsunami. Donate to aid efforts here.

♥ Yuri Acrurs, the world’s best selling stock photographer, shares his secrets and actually makes shooting corporate stock images look like fun times!

♥ Blind photographer Pete Eckert talks about his photography and “standing in the shadow of sound.” Blindess is one of my worst fears so this is fascinating.

♥ Why free labour is costing too much. Sonia Dyer discusses why the culture of working for free means many talented people miss out.

♥ Caravaggio, the bad boy of baroque!

♥ To be honest the results of most photography awards bore the life out of me but submissions for the Hereford Photography Festival 2011 are now open and it may well be worth entering. Just remember to spice it up a little!

♥ If you’re an aspiring documentary photographer in South Wales who needs a bit of direction on a current project, join New York photographer Joseph Rodriguez for an intensive four day workshop at Third Floor Gallery in Cardiff next week. The gallery website says, “Photographers who seek to collaborate in a personal way with their subjects are invited to participate with the aim to produce a short visual essay that reflects a deeper, more intimate understanding of a person, a community or themselves,” which sounds wonderful and I would totally jump on this opportunity if I had a relevant project on the go. Spaces are limited to 12 students and there is a £200 fee.

♥ Woohoo! Keven Meredith (aka lomokev to flickrites) is going on a mini tour of Brighton, Bath and Cardiff, giving talks about his work, influences and how to make the best of Flickr. I'm so excited!

Links 11.02.11

© Mr. P. Brain

Hello everyone! I'm back from California; land of endless dusty roads, packs of howling coyotes and tasty Vanilla Coke! I’m still waiting to pick my films up but in the meantime here is a snap Peabrain took on his iphone, somewhere along the road between Mojave and Death Valley not long before a US fighter jet swooped over our heads and nearly knocked me off my feet in surprise! I’m not sure what plane it was but it gave me quite a shock as I looked up from eating my lunch at the roadside to see it practically on top of the car while Peabrain, completely oblivious, rummaged in the boot for more snacks. It had long gone before the zooooom of the engine finally hit us and I’d manage to stop gawping long enough to shout, “LOOK!” The Western USA is one giant military testing unit!

So, what has been happening in the photographic world since I went away?

♥ Street Photographer’s Work Discovered a Few Days After Her Death. This is incredible, both in the quality of work and the story that accompanies it. Vivian Maier was a French immigrant living in Chicago and during the period between the 1950s to the 1970s it seems she was a compulsive street photographer, taking thousands of rolls of film and rarely sharing them with anyone. In 2007 estate agent John Maloof bought a box of negatives from a house clearance auction for a book he was working on about his neighbourhood. But when he started to scan the negatives he was astounded by raw talent and skill in what he found. He immediately bought up all the other boxes from the auction and began rescuing them from obscurity. To date there are over 100,000 negatives, thousands of prints and countess rolls of as yet undeveloped film. The photography is faultlessly beautiful and all the more poignant considering what a private person Vivian was. We know very little about her yet thanks to her abundant documentations and the efforts of John Maloof we can share in her world. I’m looking forward to the upcoming book and documentary, the production of which you can help fund by donating here.

♥ The Julie Project. When photography becomes humanitarian.

♥ Graffiti snails roam London. London artist Slinkachu is back on the streets setting up scenes with his miniature people, only this time they have some slimy friends. It seems a little bit cruel to me…

♥ The Ten Most Overrated Artists in Art History. I don’t agree with all his choices but this is very amusing all the same and touches on something I’ve been wanting to rant about for a while (but am trying very hard not to!). Just because something with apparent merit or importance looks like a load of old rubbish to you, doesn’t mean you simply don’t understand it. Sometimes it really is just rubbish!

♥ Modern perspectives of a city scape. Here are the winners of the National Gallery’s photographic competition which the judges thought best reflected an innovative take on the notion of a view.

Links 10.12.10

I'm currently on a self-imposed holiday from photography after three long, hectic months of commercial work so it has been tricky trying to prise my thoughts away from Winter Solstice and Christmas (my favourite holidays of the year!) to catch up with this week's photo happenings online. Luckily I have managed to cease my Google research on Moroccan inspired Christmas decorations and toasting sugared walnuts (oven bake or toast in a pan, which is best?!) long enough to assemble these few interesting links for you all.

© James Mollison

♥ Where Children Sleep is a project which documents children from all over the world and their 'bedrooms'. It's a moving and often unsettling portrait of the inequality between rich and poor. I would like to see the book in full as I'm concerned it might mislead viewers into making the assumption that the less impoverished children are somehow happier or more fulfilled as I don't think this is necessarily always the case.

♥ This 80-gigapixel photograph of London is the largest 360° panorama in the world! Zoom in and you can peep in people's windows and snoop through their back gardens.

♥ Celebrities at My Party is the creation of Everett Hiller who throws a party each year with his wife and adds celebrities into the pictures before sending them out to his friends. Brilliant!

♥ 4 Princelet Street, London... oh my! Rent 15 incredible rooms in this Georgian townhouse for photographic shoots, filming or private functions. It's absolutely beautiful, there's nothing more to say.

♥ Ian Flanigan's stop motion road trip video is a huge inspiration for my own upcoming USA road trip in January. It's almost convincing me to take my DSLR along too (I usually only travel with film)... decisions decisions!

♥ Lonely Planet suggest the Top 5 destinations for photography around the world.

Christmas Gift Ideas for Photographers

Ding ding ding ding ding ding CHRISTMAS!

If I was still a small ffoto girl my Christmas wish list would definitely consist of as much Playmobil as Santa could carry, stationary galore and hoards of vintage Bunty annuals (but in those days we simply referred to ‘vintage’ as ‘old’!).

Sadly (or perhaps, more sensibly) as I’m an adult these days my heart’s wanton material desires mostly consist of the entire contents of Accessorize, a never-ending bottle of Viktor & Rolf’s Flowerbomb and stacks of paperbacks from Amazon.

But of course, I am also a photographer and there’s nothing more likely to excite a photographer than a nerdy themed gift! I’ve compiled a selection of the best offerings online in the gallery below. If you can’t find anything for your ffoto beau, take a look at last year’s gallery for more ideas.

1. Use your fast lenses to create twee-tastic night scapes with The Bokeh Kit from Photojojo.

2 & 3. Keep analogue alive with two of the most crisp, vibrant, beautiful 35mm films around; Kodak Portra 400VC and Kodak EXTRA 100. Fantastic prices on 7dayshop make these exciting little stocking fillers.

4. Taschen publish such incredible photography books, they're on my Christmas list every year. New York, Portrait of a City is a comprehensive look at the most photogenic and visually stimulating metropolis in the world - just browsing through the examples on Amazon is enough to get your heart racing! Yes please, Santa!

5. For Polaroid fans try Magnetic Polaframes - have new age fun with a vintage feel turning your run-of-the-mill rectangular snaps into regular quadrilaterals!

6. Kevin Meredith is an inspiration to any photographer stuck in a creative rut. Play muse and gift them his new book, 52 Photographic Projects. That's a new project each week throughout 2011; plenty to keep the fluff from gathering around their brains!

7. A package from Moo is always a treat and photographers forever need new promotional material for websites, blogs and show openings. Not to mention that Moo very helpfully allow a different image per card which means that a pack of business cards can also double up as a mini portfolio. They don't seem to offer gift vouchers but you could always pop an IOU in their Christmas card.

8. The ultimate novelty gift for photographers - the Nikon lens mug! For rivals from the Canon camp there is a mug to suit too.

9. When all is exploding around you, keep calm and snap on.

10. Gritty, grainy, 1950s America with an introduction by Jack Kerouac - Robert Frank's 'The Americans' has been on my Christmas list for the past two years. Maybe this is the year?!

11. I love this cute owl usb stick. He's waterproof too so may even survive if you accidentally dunk him in your tea during an all night editing marathon!

12. You might have seen me mentioning the Lomo Spinner in my links post the other day. It's a bit of a pricey gift at £99.99 and possibly a bit gimmicky to get too much use out of but it certainly looks like fun!

13. These birds on a wire photo clips are awesome!

14. Moleskines seem to be the pre-requisite planner for all creative types these days and they've just brought out lots of different colour versions if you're fed up of the usual black or red. Pink all the way!

15. I'm still on the search for the perfect camera bag. This Crumpler Banana Hammock might not be it but it's totally nifty and looks perfect for a day shooting out & about.

16. The Strobies XS Flash Bracket will solve many of your location lighting woes! It takes all s-fit accessories so is a great portable solution if, like me, you can't be bothered to drag your Bowens kit everywhere but still want to make use of the softboxes & other bits.

17. Oh go on then. Just a little bit of Playmobil!