Matchbox

I love it when people have huge collections of ephemera which they share on flickr. These are all from this photostream. I'm honestly not being paid by flickr to say this, but it is literally the most amazing resource. How else would you be able to see all this stuff?

Portraits

Some lovely portraits and London scenes from this site here. 

Brighton monuments

I have almost exactly 5 months left living in Brighton. I will be very sad to leave, it's been the best place to be a student, but I can't see myself staying any longer. On to bigger and better things. As soon as all this Uni work is out of the way I plan to make the most of Brighton while I still can, I don't want to regret not having done everything I want to do. These are some of my favourite buildings in Brighton. From top: Brighton Pavillion. Love this building, it's so mad and out of place, but I've never been inside. These blocks of flats near where I live. There's nothing particularly special about them, but they all have these turquoise panels on them and the red brick looks nice in the setting sun. Next photo is this Greek Orthodox church a few streets away from my house which I think is also quite bizarre and pretty cool. The West Pier, obviously (it's being torn down at the moment. Makes me very sad. An angry letter was written to the MP but never sent).

Alvin Lustig book covers

Yum. Found via this here flickr page. 

West Country

Went on a little trip to the West Country 2 weekends ago. I have serious lifestyle envy! When I'm in my 40s I would love to get a nice country house here and go for walks and eat Sunday linch in a nice pub. Something to wish for I guess.

Stamps

After my amazing stamp purchase at the weekend, my stamp obsession has been rekindled. Unfortunately I have been too busy with my exam project to really do much about it, other than drool over several flickr sets. Although I found out one of my friends was a fellow stamp enthusiast which was nice. These were found via this set on flickr. No more posts until the dreaded exam project is handed in and I can return to some sort of normality. 

Serendipity

So, I've finally decided to get my arse in gear and start a personal project that's been on the back burner for years. It's a big collaborative photography project, and I'm inviting pretty much anyone to get involved.

The idea behind the project is to create a situation where serendipity, or happy accidents, can happen and create great work. I'm going to buy lots of 35mm films, send them to various friends around the world, asking them to shoot the film, send it back to me, then I will send it on to someone else. The idea is that the second person has no idea what is on the film, so they can shoot away and let chance take over. Hopefully out of all the double exposures, there will be some interesting results. I'm also looking to pick people to share the roll of film who don't know each other so everyone who gets involved would end up with collaborative artwork made with a stranger. I intend to print all the film, send digital copies to the contributors and post the results here as an ongoing project and then see where it goes from there. Perhaps a small exhibition or just some promotion and fun for all those involved will be good enough for me!

I have only just started inviting people to take part, so the project is in the early stages, but I would like to get the project off the ground soon. I don't want to set any rules, all you need is a camera that will take 35mm film and a little bit of spare time and enough money to post the film back to me. You can take photos of whatever you like, just so long as it's not too repetitive (whole films on one subject might prove a little dull. I'm hoping it's not too much trouble to ask people to carry the film around for a few days, photograph whatever catches their eye and then send it back. The only rule that I can think of would be to keep the exposure a little on the low side, seeing as the film is being exposed twice, and not to take any photos of things that I wont be able to print (most commercial printers reserve the right to censor images and also to inform the police of anything suspect...). I hope this will just be a bit of fun for everyone, and for all the hard working students involved, a little distraction from upcoming deadlines. 

SO if you're interested, email me at bronwyn_opland@hotmail.com and I will get back to you as soon as I can. 

(all the above images found via the Double Exposure Pool on Flickr)

Happy Mothers Day

My poor Mum didn't get a card today. I did send one, but it seems to have gone AWOL. As has my brother who should have sent something too. This is something garish and tacky that I picked up at a market ages ago, and I know my mum wouldn't like it but it's all I have, I hope that will do? Until the proper card comes of course. : )

Sunday Market

Just had the most epic haul at the Sunday Market. I couldn't believe how cheap things were (some people were even giving things away). My arms ached carrying it all home.

Check out myother blog, Daily Miscellany, to see the full haul.

Herb Lubalin

Another great find: the lovely Justin Thomas Kay went to the Herb Lubalin archives at Cooper Union and decided to share the photos on flickr. Follow the link here. Isn't that great? So exciting to see the sketches behind the great work. Another useful link here takes you to some photos of his posters. Makes me want to sit and draw type all day instead of worrying about my exam project...

Boundaries

These are some images I made when playing around with ideas for the boundaries project. It was quite simple really, I just printed the image, then fed the paper back into the printer and printed it again. It looks so much better this way than doing it on photoshop. The theme of the project was to make a journal based on the idea of challenging national identity. I interviewed a few people with multi-national backgrounds or who had grown up in a country different to where their parents grew up and so had to actively establish their national identity, as opposed to people who have 2 parents of the same national identity and who have grown up there. People generally fell into 3 groups: those that felt strongly about one nationality, at the expense of another, people who felt torn between several cultures and were struggling to find a place for themselves, and people who didn't feel any strong national identity and to whom it wasn't important. I didn't want the journal to be too text based, and I was playing around with this idea of double printed images as a way of visually representing the people who have to deal with multiple cultures and do not feel that they belong to any. 

circle

I found these on flickr the other day. There's something really interesting about the circular format of the photos. Found via the National Media Museum on flickr, for a direct link to the set go here. 

Hype for Type

There are so many great resources on flickr it makes me so excited! From normal people sharing collections of work and design, to professionals showing their projects and the things that they like, it's just so full of amazing stuff! These are a couple of images from the photostream of hypefortype.com . I can't afford to buy any of their typefaces but I can at least look at them on flickr! This is also really useful because each image has quite a lot of info with it about the typeface, who designed it etc. Have a look here. 

long lost film

I got another exciting film processed today. My dad gave me one of his old camera, quite a nice Pentax, but the shutter was broken so I tried to get it fixed but it's not worth it which is a shame. Anyway, it had a film in it still, which I couldn't finish because the camera was broken so I just took it out and developed it anyway. It was full of family photos from aaages ago! Some are from a holiday in what looks like France, and some of us when we first moved to the South of England so I think they might be about 1994 or something. These are the least embarrassing of the lot, I think the top photo is my mum, my little brother Miles and I in the South of France (not sure where) and the second I think is somewhere in England. I reckon I'm about 6 years old in these photos. It was so nice to get them back though, what a nice surprise!

broken camera

Ages ago I got this really old and gorgeous camera, with no idea if it worked or not. I shot a b&w film which came out ok,  mostly out of focus because it took me a while to get the hang of it. But this is the first colour film I shot on it, to be honest I don't think the camera was even designed with colour film in mind it's that old. The whole film came out like this, I think it looks pretty cool. I just can't work out if it's the camera that makes these colours or the film? The film might well have been out of date, but nor by mush I don't think. Otherwise it might be the fault of the developer. I was hoping someone who knows more about photogoraphy than me might know? I hope it's the camera because I'd like to replicate this with all my summer snaps.