Here's a few behind the scenes pics too:
Monday, 14 December 2009
2nd Photoshoot
After lots of panic over which models to use and where on earth to shoot it, my second attempt at styling a photoshoot actually turned out pretty perfect. We found this great little coffee shop with leather, vintage chairs and some great props, and the clothes worked really well with the background. Here is the final picture: 
Here's a few behind the scenes pics too:
Here's a few behind the scenes pics too:
Saturday, 5 December 2009
Photoshoots
I've been trying to organise a new photoshoot for my student magazine, and thought I might as well upload the photo of the first one I did in November. I'm really hoping that the new one will be better than this one. I think i made a mistake in using so many models, and the styling was a little over the top. I'm really looking forward to giving the whole thing another go. Will upload the new one next week. This photograph was taken by Jonno Witts.
Wednesday, 2 December 2009
Vang Vieng
I'm currently working on a piece of writing for a Rough Guides competition. You have to describe a place you know well in 500 words and it has to have an 'on a budget' theme and be in the style of Rough Guides. This is what I've got so far:
Once just a remote town on the intersection of Laos’s capital Vietienne, and world heritage city Luang Prabang, recent years have seen a rapid economic growth in the little town of Vang Vieng. Fresh on the lips of the mosquito-bitten travellers of the South East Asia trail, Vang Vieng has a reputation which certainly exceeds its size, and quite rightly. This rural town is centred around the picturesque Nam Song River, and is surrounded by breathtaking limestone karsts with many caves to be explored for the intrepid traveller, although for most visitors, this scenery is just an added bonus, as thousands of tourists flock to Vang Vieng each year for one reason only: tubing. Something of a pilgrimage activity these days, initially tubing (which consists of floating down the river on an oversized piece of inner tubing) started as just a small event, with a few bars scattered down by the muddy waters, serving up Beerlao to the passers by. Tubing these days, however, is now an sport in it’s own right, and traditional wooden bars perched over the river offer much more than just alcohol. Rope swings, mud-slides, and events such as limbo, tug-of-war, and mud-volleyball are just some of the activities on offer, and the lucky winners can inebriate themselves further with free buckets of local whisky.
Whilst the infamous “happy” pizzas, excessive drinking, and party-culture don’t appeal to everyone, the locals certainly seem to have adapted comfortably, and instead of creating the dissidence that can be seen in much of neighbouring country: tourist-popular Thailand, Vang Vieng still enjoys a very Lao ambience of relaxation and fun, in a laid back setting. You won’t find high-rise hotels, or package holidays here, and the traditional guesthouses still retain their unbeatable prices. With everything within walking distance, and very little to do but appreciate your surroundings, it is hard to overspend in Vang Vieng, giving it a great appeal to the penniless travellers passing through, many of whom find it hard to leave, resulting in the bars being filled with working farang (foreigners). Bar work and promoting are both easy jobs to find in Vang Vieng, and will earn you not only social status amongst the travellers, but the priceless guarantee of accommodation, food, and even better, all the alcohol you can drink. If working isn’t for you, however, it’s quite easy to live on just a few dollars a day, with budget guesthouses away from the main strip still charging under 50,000 kip (less than five dollars) in the high season, and a wealth of street food vendors offering tasty, cheap alternatives to the more expensive TV restaurants.
Love it or hate it, there’s a certain appeal to Vang Vieng’s paradoxical combination of party-town and relaxation Mecca, It’s rare to find a place where local and western culture interweave so harmoniously, and regardless of the obligatory tubing, there are many other reasons to visit this unique and beautiful town now, before the inevitable westernisation takes its toll.
Arts Reviewing
Here's a small collection of articles that I wrote last year, but never really did anything with. Thought I might as well upload them.
Shanghai Living, the Hu Yang solo exhibition
China has been the focus of everyone’s conversations since the start of this year’s extremely controversial Olympics and its extensive political problems seemed only too obvious in the face of its blanket press coverage over the summer. While most people had their eye firmly on Beijing, 1490km south in China’s largest city, Shanghai, contemporary photographer Hu Yang was attempting to make his own political statement about the state of his country. The Shanghai Living exhibition featured a series of images that Hu Yang believed would highlight the current issues, not only in commercialised Shanghai, but throughout China.
Far from the sterile photos of The Bird’s Nest that featured in the papers, Hu Yang’s collection depicts a lively jumble of both wealthy and poor people living a stone’s throw away from each other in Shanghai. His juxtaposition of affluence and poverty makes a bold statement about Shanghai’s segregated economy.
Hu Yang photographed over 100 different people around Shanghai in their own houses, breaking down a very private culture and exposing the underbelly of a city where capitalism lives next to communism and slums exist mere metres from grandiose blocks of flats and high-rise hotels. Spending 14 months delving into people’s lives, Hu Yang photographed them in their most personal space – their own homes. The images are captivating because this invasion of privacy gives them an almost voyeuristic feel and provides a unique glance into the culture and the people of Shanghai.
The photos in his collection have a naturalistic feel to them, their instantaneous nature lending them a sense of raw beauty. One photo shows a rich Shanghaiese couple sat on their immaculately upholstered sofa with spotless cream and gold walls. The upright, awkward positions they are sat in and their pale, emotionless faces look as cold and unfriendly as their bourgeoisie, Henry VIII-style house. In a stark comparison to this, another photo captures a group of migrant workers lying in bunk beds in a worn-out room. The green-tinged walls are flaked and damp, and the workers have dirt ingrained into every wrinkle on their well-tanned faces.
By taking photos of people in their own homes, Hu Yang creates a very personal depth to the pictures. His subjects look so natural, so calm in their own environment that their emotions shine through. Each photo seems to have its own narrative, each face telling its own story. In one photo a fashionable-looking boy is sat in a chair staring at his extensive shoe collection. In another a man is leaning back on a wooden chair, staring at his laptop in a room that is filled to the brim with books. It is possible to derive your own stories from these photos and that is what is so exciting about them. People’s homes say so much about them and whilst some of the photo’s subjects are clearly too poor to be able to afford to decorate their houses properly, they have personalised them in their own way. One photo in particular captures this perfectly. A woman is sleeping in her bed, surrounded by pictures cut out of magazines and supermarket fliers. She doesn’t have enough money to paint or wallpaper her house, but she has still stamped her own unique mark on it.
Hu Yang’s skills with lighting and eye for palette make the photos more than just a picture book of social commentary; it makes them beautiful as art. The collection is a perfect example of how a political statement and an artist’s eye can create something that is both visually amazing and socially powerful.
Bass in your face – Tortured by Coki
The first time I heard dubstep was 2005. I was working in a bar when a DJ played the song Tortured by Coki and I was mesmerised. The irregular bassline, lack of lyrics and repetition seemed both confusing and enthralling. I had never heard anything like it, but the more and more I listened to the track, the more I found it interesting. Tortured is a fantastic example of dubstep, one of England’s newer electronic music genres. Dubstep appeared in early 2000 in London, where its unique and underground scene quickly spread to the rest of the country. It draws influences from grime, garage, and drum and bass, but has a distinctively different sound from all three. Characteristically dubstep uses looped bass lines and is very repetitive, with a dark undertone to it. Whilst Dubstep can hardly be compared to classical music, contemporary composer Phillip Glass once described the repetition within his songs to have a lulling, calm effect that makes the listener forget time as they are taken in a continuingly duplicated loop of music. This loss of time is certainly something that I feel equates to Dubstep, although rather than making the listener feel calm, Dubstep is slightly unnerving and mysterious.
Coki’s Tortured has a very atmospherically scary feel to it, which certainly matches its title. It begins with a steady drumbeat and a looped bass line which then ascends in pitch and reverses upon itself after the bass drop. Snares have a reverberated echo on them, which gives the song a sense of tension. Much like common drum and bass, Tortured uses lyric samples at intervals throughout the piece as more of a backdrop to the music than an essential element.
Tortured, like many dubstep tracks, is so simple and has so little to it that it is almost haunting. However, to make the most of it you need powerful speakers, subwoofers especially. Dubstep production company Digital Mystikz, which includes Coki, opened their own club called DMZ, which was created with a sound system made specifically for playing dubstep. The effect of playing the genre’s serenely low bass lines on extremely loud speakers is that the music quite literally creates a reverberating bass line within your chest. Enchanting.
Ghost Dances by Christopher Bruce – A masterpiece of contemporary dance.
Whilst studying performing arts a few years ago, I stumbled across a piece of ballet that changed my perception of dance forever. Far from the aging techniques used by ballets such as The Nutcracker and Swan Lake, Contemporary ballet Ghost Dances, choreographed by Christopher Bruce, is a richly unique and exciting work of art.
Contemporary ballet has its roots in The Rambert Ballet Dance Company, where Bruce himself was trained. Rambert Ballet used a combination of modern and post-modern techniques to achieve something new and versatile. Ghost Dances is a perfect example of this concurrent mix. Whilst its political basis breaks away from the fairytale narratives of traditional ballet, it still retains the serene beauty of classical dance.
The dance itself is Bruce’s response to Augusto Pinochet’s reign of terror during his Chiliean dictatorship in the 70s. This is illustrated through the use of Latin-American Folk music, and Bruce incorporates indigenous dance techniques such as salsa, giving the dance a more country-specific flavour. Whilst Ghost Dances has no actual plot, it tells individual stories of the men and women who disappeared during this time, as Pinochet secretly killed thousands of political dissenters.
At the beginning of the piece the audience is introduced to three ‘Ghost Dancers’, who are dressed in rags with faces painted to look like skulls. The Ghost Dancers remain on stage throughout the piece and symbolise death and oppression, looming ominously over the other characters. Their dance is fierce and angry, alternating between unison and solo performances. Their technique is very different from that of traditional ballet, where chorus dancers often perform in perfectly-timed unison, as the Ghost Dancers move slightly out of time with each other and occasionally deviate into different dances altogether. This gives the piece a much more natural and improvised feel. Because the dancers are not perfectly in time with each other, the audience is not given the impression of a rehearsed, structured piece of ballet; instead they are presented with something that feels more free-flowing, versatile and expressionistic.
In the next scene a group of dancers take to the stage and perform as a group, in some nameless happy occasion like a party or wedding. Whilst the scene is jovial and light, it is still darkly permeated by the Ghost Dancers’ presence in the background. The other dancers are a group of men and women who are barefoot and dressed colourfully in traditional Latin-American clothing without a tutu or ballet shoe in sight. Where classical ballet uses clothing to express the dance itself, Bruce’s choice of clothing expresses his theme. After their celebration, the performers split off into couples, families and friends and dance together, including a love dance between one of the couples. The happy pan-flute music and lively mixture of salsa and ballet expresses their happiness. They flirt by pulling away and coming together, and a set of jumps and upward moves, such as lifts, personifies their high spirits. Halfway through this courtship the Ghost Dancers seize the man and carry him away, where he remains motionless in their arms, leaving the woman alone on stage. After this she dances alone, in a slow, repetitive melancholy, performing a few simple movements over and over again. She incorporates a contemporary dance technique called retraction, which is where the body literally folds in upon itself. She pulls her head down to her chest, bringing her arms up high behind her as if in great pain. She expresses her emotion beautifully, in a way that is almost impossible to do in over-structured classical ballet, marking the mournful power of the piece.
The magic of Christopher Bruce’s choreography is its original style and dramatic inclination that result in a rare and emotive beauty. Putting a political message into his piece allows the audience to connect with it in a way that is unusual of ballet. It is both moving and technically brilliant, and its contemporary elements make it accessible to even the most cynical of reviewers. Bruce proves that ballet is not just for bourgeoisie society and I doubt that even someone who was fastidiously critical of this genre of performance could fail to be moved in some way by Ghost Dances.
Shanghai Living, the Hu Yang solo exhibition
China has been the focus of everyone’s conversations since the start of this year’s extremely controversial Olympics and its extensive political problems seemed only too obvious in the face of its blanket press coverage over the summer. While most people had their eye firmly on Beijing, 1490km south in China’s largest city, Shanghai, contemporary photographer Hu Yang was attempting to make his own political statement about the state of his country. The Shanghai Living exhibition featured a series of images that Hu Yang believed would highlight the current issues, not only in commercialised Shanghai, but throughout China.
Far from the sterile photos of The Bird’s Nest that featured in the papers, Hu Yang’s collection depicts a lively jumble of both wealthy and poor people living a stone’s throw away from each other in Shanghai. His juxtaposition of affluence and poverty makes a bold statement about Shanghai’s segregated economy.
Hu Yang photographed over 100 different people around Shanghai in their own houses, breaking down a very private culture and exposing the underbelly of a city where capitalism lives next to communism and slums exist mere metres from grandiose blocks of flats and high-rise hotels. Spending 14 months delving into people’s lives, Hu Yang photographed them in their most personal space – their own homes. The images are captivating because this invasion of privacy gives them an almost voyeuristic feel and provides a unique glance into the culture and the people of Shanghai.
The photos in his collection have a naturalistic feel to them, their instantaneous nature lending them a sense of raw beauty. One photo shows a rich Shanghaiese couple sat on their immaculately upholstered sofa with spotless cream and gold walls. The upright, awkward positions they are sat in and their pale, emotionless faces look as cold and unfriendly as their bourgeoisie, Henry VIII-style house. In a stark comparison to this, another photo captures a group of migrant workers lying in bunk beds in a worn-out room. The green-tinged walls are flaked and damp, and the workers have dirt ingrained into every wrinkle on their well-tanned faces.
By taking photos of people in their own homes, Hu Yang creates a very personal depth to the pictures. His subjects look so natural, so calm in their own environment that their emotions shine through. Each photo seems to have its own narrative, each face telling its own story. In one photo a fashionable-looking boy is sat in a chair staring at his extensive shoe collection. In another a man is leaning back on a wooden chair, staring at his laptop in a room that is filled to the brim with books. It is possible to derive your own stories from these photos and that is what is so exciting about them. People’s homes say so much about them and whilst some of the photo’s subjects are clearly too poor to be able to afford to decorate their houses properly, they have personalised them in their own way. One photo in particular captures this perfectly. A woman is sleeping in her bed, surrounded by pictures cut out of magazines and supermarket fliers. She doesn’t have enough money to paint or wallpaper her house, but she has still stamped her own unique mark on it.
Hu Yang’s skills with lighting and eye for palette make the photos more than just a picture book of social commentary; it makes them beautiful as art. The collection is a perfect example of how a political statement and an artist’s eye can create something that is both visually amazing and socially powerful.
Bass in your face – Tortured by Coki
The first time I heard dubstep was 2005. I was working in a bar when a DJ played the song Tortured by Coki and I was mesmerised. The irregular bassline, lack of lyrics and repetition seemed both confusing and enthralling. I had never heard anything like it, but the more and more I listened to the track, the more I found it interesting. Tortured is a fantastic example of dubstep, one of England’s newer electronic music genres. Dubstep appeared in early 2000 in London, where its unique and underground scene quickly spread to the rest of the country. It draws influences from grime, garage, and drum and bass, but has a distinctively different sound from all three. Characteristically dubstep uses looped bass lines and is very repetitive, with a dark undertone to it. Whilst Dubstep can hardly be compared to classical music, contemporary composer Phillip Glass once described the repetition within his songs to have a lulling, calm effect that makes the listener forget time as they are taken in a continuingly duplicated loop of music. This loss of time is certainly something that I feel equates to Dubstep, although rather than making the listener feel calm, Dubstep is slightly unnerving and mysterious.
Coki’s Tortured has a very atmospherically scary feel to it, which certainly matches its title. It begins with a steady drumbeat and a looped bass line which then ascends in pitch and reverses upon itself after the bass drop. Snares have a reverberated echo on them, which gives the song a sense of tension. Much like common drum and bass, Tortured uses lyric samples at intervals throughout the piece as more of a backdrop to the music than an essential element.
Tortured, like many dubstep tracks, is so simple and has so little to it that it is almost haunting. However, to make the most of it you need powerful speakers, subwoofers especially. Dubstep production company Digital Mystikz, which includes Coki, opened their own club called DMZ, which was created with a sound system made specifically for playing dubstep. The effect of playing the genre’s serenely low bass lines on extremely loud speakers is that the music quite literally creates a reverberating bass line within your chest. Enchanting.
Ghost Dances by Christopher Bruce – A masterpiece of contemporary dance.
Whilst studying performing arts a few years ago, I stumbled across a piece of ballet that changed my perception of dance forever. Far from the aging techniques used by ballets such as The Nutcracker and Swan Lake, Contemporary ballet Ghost Dances, choreographed by Christopher Bruce, is a richly unique and exciting work of art.
Contemporary ballet has its roots in The Rambert Ballet Dance Company, where Bruce himself was trained. Rambert Ballet used a combination of modern and post-modern techniques to achieve something new and versatile. Ghost Dances is a perfect example of this concurrent mix. Whilst its political basis breaks away from the fairytale narratives of traditional ballet, it still retains the serene beauty of classical dance.
The dance itself is Bruce’s response to Augusto Pinochet’s reign of terror during his Chiliean dictatorship in the 70s. This is illustrated through the use of Latin-American Folk music, and Bruce incorporates indigenous dance techniques such as salsa, giving the dance a more country-specific flavour. Whilst Ghost Dances has no actual plot, it tells individual stories of the men and women who disappeared during this time, as Pinochet secretly killed thousands of political dissenters.
At the beginning of the piece the audience is introduced to three ‘Ghost Dancers’, who are dressed in rags with faces painted to look like skulls. The Ghost Dancers remain on stage throughout the piece and symbolise death and oppression, looming ominously over the other characters. Their dance is fierce and angry, alternating between unison and solo performances. Their technique is very different from that of traditional ballet, where chorus dancers often perform in perfectly-timed unison, as the Ghost Dancers move slightly out of time with each other and occasionally deviate into different dances altogether. This gives the piece a much more natural and improvised feel. Because the dancers are not perfectly in time with each other, the audience is not given the impression of a rehearsed, structured piece of ballet; instead they are presented with something that feels more free-flowing, versatile and expressionistic.
In the next scene a group of dancers take to the stage and perform as a group, in some nameless happy occasion like a party or wedding. Whilst the scene is jovial and light, it is still darkly permeated by the Ghost Dancers’ presence in the background. The other dancers are a group of men and women who are barefoot and dressed colourfully in traditional Latin-American clothing without a tutu or ballet shoe in sight. Where classical ballet uses clothing to express the dance itself, Bruce’s choice of clothing expresses his theme. After their celebration, the performers split off into couples, families and friends and dance together, including a love dance between one of the couples. The happy pan-flute music and lively mixture of salsa and ballet expresses their happiness. They flirt by pulling away and coming together, and a set of jumps and upward moves, such as lifts, personifies their high spirits. Halfway through this courtship the Ghost Dancers seize the man and carry him away, where he remains motionless in their arms, leaving the woman alone on stage. After this she dances alone, in a slow, repetitive melancholy, performing a few simple movements over and over again. She incorporates a contemporary dance technique called retraction, which is where the body literally folds in upon itself. She pulls her head down to her chest, bringing her arms up high behind her as if in great pain. She expresses her emotion beautifully, in a way that is almost impossible to do in over-structured classical ballet, marking the mournful power of the piece.
The magic of Christopher Bruce’s choreography is its original style and dramatic inclination that result in a rare and emotive beauty. Putting a political message into his piece allows the audience to connect with it in a way that is unusual of ballet. It is both moving and technically brilliant, and its contemporary elements make it accessible to even the most cynical of reviewers. Bruce proves that ballet is not just for bourgeoisie society and I doubt that even someone who was fastidiously critical of this genre of performance could fail to be moved in some way by Ghost Dances.
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