london with the lens, baby!
Posted by Kenny
18th December 2007
We just came back from a one amazing weekend in London. We lived in London for a while in 2001 and everytime we go back we are reminded that it is simply one of the best cities on earth.
We did some fun stuff! Our favourites were:
Meeting up with old friends over some extraordinary food in Ubon. The attention to detail was outstanding.
Hanging out in our favourite cafe in Soho. It’s tiny and almost impossible to get a seat, but frankly, it’s the best coffee we’ve ever had. Anywhere. And we drink a LOT of coffee.
We were blown away by Doris Salcedo’s installation in Tate Modern. I saw her talk on Tate Shorts and love that when this exhibition ends, the ‘crack’ will be filled in, but the place where it was will always remain visible and will form part of the lasting fabric of the Turbine Hall, even as new works enter. Extraordinary.
We marvelled at the early morning sun on the pillars of St Pauls.
We soaked up some Christmas atmosphere.
We loved this dude - who was dancing to a band who were playing at the Frost Fair on the south bank. He was so cool! And had all around him totally captivated with his funky moves. He loved being photographed and we connected through taking his picture. It made our morning.
London rocks!
ulster bride
Posted by Kenny
17th December 2007
So this month the first in our series of ads will appear in Ulster Bride. We’ll be doing a different ad in each edition over the next year. It’s our first experiment with advertising. Normally all our work comes through personal recommendation but we thought we’d try and get ourselves out there a bit more. Would love to know what you think of the ad. Here it is:
We plan to focus on a different dimension of our photography with each ad. This time we have focused on detail. Janet is much better than I am at putting people at ease and capturing moments of relationship whereas I really love getting ‘in close’ to capture elements of detail. For me photography is about “really seeing”. So what on earth does that mean?
Bill Brandt said in 1948, long before our age’s obsession with numbers of megapixels:
It is part of the photographer’s job to see more intensely than most people do. He must have and keep in him something of the receptiveness of the child who looks at the world for the first time or of the traveler who enters a strange country. Most photographers would feel a certain embarrassment in admitting publicly that they carried within them a sense of wonder, yet without it they would not produce the work they do, whatever their particular field. It is the gift of seeing the life around them clearly and vividly, as something that is exciting in its own right. It is an innate gift, varying in intensity with the individual’s temperament and environment.
This really stood out to me when I read it and captures some of what I love about photography. I love finding tiny parts of objects, or fragments of moment that would otherwise, perhaps, go unseen
Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii
Posted by Kenny
5th December 2007
Other than being a man with a tremendously long name, Sergei was also quite an amazing photographer for his day. I was reading about him on a flight back from London earlier in the week and was really astounded by his images of the former Soviet Republic. He was commissioned by Tsar Nicholas II to document the Russian Empire using a pioneering colour-photography technique in the early 1900s.
What I loved about his images so much was that they look like they were taken so recently - mainly because of the colour. Seriously, Tblisi just looks like it could have been last year! We have a bit of a thing for the former Soviet Union. We have worked throughout the former Soviet Republic mainly in Armenia, Tajikistan, Georgia, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. I couldn’t believe that Prokudin-Gorskii’s images were taken in the early 1900’s!!
Check it out. It really is amazing. www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/gorskii.html
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