Art in the Gardens

Covent Gardens in London is by far one of my favourite place to visit within London and I don't know why really. It may be the architecture of the buildings or the bustle of the street or maybe it could be the fact that in every corner, there may be someone doing something weird or wonderful.

Or perhaps it's because of snog nearby...

On that subject of snogs, the Christmas tree at Covent Garden is an unusual, unique and very special interactive art exhibit and we all love that. In short, the tree has lights that shine when a couple underneath some mistletoe kiss. My mother just had to have a go...

If you're in Covent Garden, have a go, it's for charity!

The Dark North

I've always seen my photography as a hobby and less of a skill of showing accross emotion or an idea and I kicked myself not to get a horror shot in time for Hallowe'en but I did take a photo a while ago which only now have I seen the works I can do with it. This is a shot I took to the Angel of the North:

This kind of portrayal came about from what the artist, Antony Gormley had said about the piece:

"People are always asking, why an angel? The only response I can give is that no-one has ever seen one and we need to keep imagining them."

I see angels as the type of creatures which will come up and eat you up for dinner. My thoughts on an evil angel are probably not unique but I can say that I agree with Gormley and say that people should continue to imagine the angel and the images that they can make.

What is art?

As a photographer I'm involved in the artistic community as much as a painter would and I am most definitely not afraid to call myself an artist. But I've grown to hate the word art. I believe it's a word that is far to general in the definition. Art is always defined as a creative way to show imagination and perhaps to convey a message.

This is art!

This is art...?

Recently, art is being defined by people as using paint and a cavas to picture something with only a few recognising photography, literature, music and even digital painting. As a photographer I'm angry and a bit worried about this change in definition. I'm no longer considered an artist anymore and I think this causes for irrational behaviour:

Ban the word 'art'!

In all seriousness though, what comes to mind when I say 'art'?

Crank up the contrast!

I need your help, dudes...

I'm having a bit of trouble with the focus of this picture and It's been bugging me so much so that I'm planning on shooting it again. Any advice you can give me?

The Gallery: A Smile

My brother has a funny smile. It amazingly does not exist. I could have taken another one where he did smile but that is quite hard to do so I settled for a photo which I perceive to be my absolute favourite portrait I have taken. I touched it up and of course, I changed the colour settings a bit and Joe seems to like this picture a good bit

This was taken in Cardiff next to the water feature outside the Millenium Centre. Pretty, isn't it?
Isn't it?!

Editor's Note: The observent one's among you would see that it's also the picture in this month's logo.

A photographer's note

I've been meaning (to write this damn blog) to get into the habit of taking photographic notes of subjects that I find quite interesting among my daily routine when I'm without my camera. Not only this, but uploading these said notes. I took a couple today which I will have to get around to quite soon and I will be sure to post them when I have taken these photos.

Anyway, I'll be trying to make a habit of taking this pictures with my phone as a visual reminder of things I find lovely and forgetful.

Feature Sunday: A Study in Pink

*This post will be using Flash so please read in a webpage and not a reader*

So, I said I was going to keep this as a weekly thing but I guess that idea has gone out the window completely so I'm going to try and do it as much as I can. For you see, I've started writing this on Wednesday (and finished on Thursday) and this is more of a random selection of photographs I have picked out after picking my theme a couple minutes of thinking (and I would love you to suggest a couple) Anywho, here we go:

© grace-note

© lessio

© one-little-thing

© morphine7

© Jahanzeib

You have go and love these people's stuff. 

Thank god (SEE WHAT I DID THERE?!)

So yeah. Lovely to see that this whole 9/11 Qur'an fiasco is no behind us and the day went peacefully along, I guess. While on the subject, I would like ya'll to go check out the photographs the BBC took throughout the day; some of them are magnificent.

Anyway, have a good evening.

The Gallery: Back to School

Incidently, as I post this, it is one day before I have to be back into school for another two years; Yippie! For those wondering, I have chosen to take a diploma in digital applications whilst taking up physics too and I think you would agree that if you know me well that they are quite good choices. So, my picture, I guess:

These were both taken last night because annoyingly, true artistic instinct comes to me when I'm ready to go to sleep. but anyway, this is the word 'Learn' in many languages and in regular fashion, I would like you people to guess what languages are there. A couple are obvious and a couple are not so obvious.

Have fun!

Life in black and white

I was trying very hard to not let my next blog post be a photo one but I couldn't help myself; I promise I shall write some more. I do try!

Anywho, after being to London, I have started to learn an effect to my works. See, my camera can take black and white photos much like any other camera you can buy and I've also seen quite a few black and white photos whilst looking around websites like Flickr. They seem to send some kind of good emotion and make pictures stand out really well. I would like some critiques in the comments, if you don't mind.

This last one is a personal favourite of mine, I must admit. The image is of my parents and my mother is planning to get it professionally printed. I feel so happy about that. I also have the free prints that came with my camera to use and I must pick the best ones really soon.

The Gallery: One day in August

So, back to the amazing world of The Gallary which I try to do every week but of course, I often fail at that. So a couple of days ago was the bank holiday weekend for those living in England and Wales and it rocked. This week's topic is to head into the spontaneous and just take a photo of something on Sunday 29th August and report back with it and boy was it fun. After seeing a new building on the news, my father insisted on going to London for his day off, conveniently on the 29th. Yippie.

A little game, if you will: Guess where these photos were taken and you might get a prize. Or not..

Thoughts on copyright

As far as copyright law goes, I believe we need them. People can't go about using, copying and remixing works willy nilly, particularly for professional's works. However I'm no professional; I'm hardly known in the vast space of the internet. So instead of copyrighting photos, I allow people to share them on their own blogs for illustrating a point for example, and I like the idea that somewhere, someone wants yo use my photos so who am I to stop them. This reason alone is why I love the Creative Commons licenses and and would think that any photographer who isn't get money off their work or it's a great hobby of theirs, is a fool for not becoming part of this.

Now, obviously, these aren't for everyone. If you wold like to make a couple of quid of your photos, perhaps this isn't the best way forward however if all you're doing is taking pictures as hobby and particularly if you want a bit of recognition, it's the best way to see copyright in my honest opinion.

Self Portraits..

These are a couple of practise shots I did a couple of days ago in learning the joys of aperture and shutter speed. I was introduced to this kind of photography by a fellow photographer and creative writer, White Sabbath and I do like the idea of it; it has quite an artstic feel to it. Of course, these aren't the first self-portraits I've done but I do like these quite a lot.

Learning new tricks...

Today I was learning off this excellent blog I have subscribed to; Digital Photography School and some of the lessons are excellent and the one I did particularly was the posts on aperture and shutter speed. With my new knowledge I took this picture of my mouse which I did all by myself using the camera's features.

Macro Monday 100

Okay.. Now for something new. Macro Monday hosted by one of my new favourite blogs Lisa Chaos!

So these are all taken in the back garden of mine, a couple taken when it was rainy and a couple when it wasn't. Enjoy them!

Feature Sunday: Food

So I've changed how I'll be featuring things. Of course, I'll be taking artists I know whilst sometimes heading for people I don't. I'm also going to be doing features on artworks of a certain theme and most of them will be photography but maybe I'll extend to other forms. I'll start off easy with a suggestion I had got from @nickie72 on twitter which was 'food'. Many thanks to her!

The artist I'll featuring this week goes by the name of bittykate on devaintART and she also blogs over at Whisk Kid (which I subscribe to) and as the name suggests, she bakes. I've picked a couple of her food stuffs I would love to be able to bake (an indulge upon)

Okay so this one.. I'd kill for.

She does sushi too... *Girly scream*


All of the recipies for these works are all available at Whisk Kid and I really suggest you subscribe to her blog.

Photo Manipulation - 'Vintage' colour

So.. a new colour effect I have learned about from the wonders of the internet kinda works.. Now, granted that you need to have the right kind of photo for this kind of effect as shown by this first photo...

 I would say that the colour hasn't really become over-exaggerated as the photo below this however I do like how the colours look more decayed like an old photo. Perhaps more contrast and it'll be there.

This is my favourite self-portrait at the moment with a more warm cross-processed effect than the 'vintage' one but it was done by messing with the settings a little more to make it look more over processed.

A lot of luck required!

I've started to enter more contests both online for publicity and in my local newspaper for prizes. I suppose it gives me the motivation to keep up with doing photography and perhaps maybe I'll meet new people along the way. It'll also teach me some new tricks about my camera.. Hopefully.

The Gallery: A photo I'm proud of

Firstly, with this post, I will totally feel like an egotist. And I shouldn't really; I'm generally really modest about my photography and I think quite little of it. Both my parents, particularly my dad, often drop their opinons upon my work like my mini little critic crew so to speak.

For the photo itself, there are so many to choose from as I feel that I should be proud of all photos I take and to an extent, I do. But instead of leaving it at that I figured I'd pick one and boy was it difficult.

© Andy Harmon

This photo was one of the first I had taken with my new camera of this flower (which once again, I have no idea of which species) but it was one of the first macro photos I had taken and why it makes me proud? Well, it's something I submitted as a competition entry and even though it's not a winner (yet..) it's still one of my favourites.

I must say though, I've had such fun with this particular gallery entry!