Lack of posts

Well, I’ve been busy doing other stuff, innit.

Impressive recycled truck tarp bags vol.2: DIY!

You may remember me writing about these rather cool bags. They’ve been around a long long time and they’re good, but they are rather expensive. I’d like one , but what could be better than making your own? DIY is punk as fuck. And it costs less!

Maxmized Minutae’s tutorial shows you how to DIY a courier bag for under five dollars (!) with salvaged tarp, buckles and a bit of shop-bought velcro. He got the instructons from eeio (see below).

Eeio shows you how to do it here http://eeio.blogspot.com/2004/12/recycled-banner-golden-mean-messenger.html. These are much more impressive, he uses an old innertube as a lining for the edges of the bag flap. He’s also added  clear plastic with tarot cards in

These are pictures from the first bag he made. Click the link above to see an even better one.

The Detrimentals

The Detrimentals just cut their first 5 track EP yesterday. If I get my arse in gear I should be taking some pictures for the cover. Meanwhile here’s a picture of Mark the drummer and Chris the lead slacker (not sure who took this but they should definitely use it on the inside CD cover)

© whoever took it <p

Pic

Here’s one I took of Emily the other day

© 2006 Lee Buckley

Emily recently recorded a CD to raise money for the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, which resists & campaigns against the demolition of Palestinian homes…

Buy it here

http://www.myspace.com/emilyfchurchill

eBay scammer gets scammed!

This cheered me up a lot this afternoon. Read how a potential eBay scam victim turned the situation around and scammed the scammer, here.

I hate film sometimes*.

Lee says:
arghh m shittin myself about these pics man, she aitn comin til half 5, wont it be dark by then? i bet it will start rainin. and i dunno how best to balance my lights (2 strobes + natural light)…. its times like this that i wish i had a digital cam

Lee says:
photography must be a piece of piss with digital… no guessing… jsut check the screen n the histogram n u know straight away that u got the right exposure

Lee says:
but film,… FILM! fukin pain in the arse, gotta wait til the next day to see if u got it right or not, and even then u probably only got 6 good pics out of 36

*actual MSN conversation

I’m all for DIY, but…

WTF is the point in all these dodgy DIY photography devices? First the flash umbrella hat, and now the cornflake packet on-camera softbox???? FFS man!

I mean WTF man?

I thought my DIY macro studio was crazy, but at least it was practical (and it didn’t make me look like an escaped mental patient).

Anger as Nikon sponsors “rights-grabbing competition”

Nikon is sponsoring the Opodo travel photography competition, whose terms and conditions clearly state that every entrant loses their rights to the images that they submit. Which means that Opodo is free to profit from every single image submitted to the competition (e.g. by selling them to other companies, or using them in advertisements), without paying any of the photographers any money whatsoever.

The terms and conditions for the competition are actually pretty difficult to find. In fact I can’t actually find them myself. The average person isn’t going to be able to find them easily even if they bothered to look - most people would be uploading images without realising that they’re giving up their rights to them. Luckily, the T & C’s can be found here.

The terms of the competition provide Opodo with an instant royalty-free photographic library, allowing it to use every photograph submitted to the competition forever without paying the entrant. The term ‘transferable’ would also allow it to sell its licenses to other companies. The value to Opodo of having such an asset could be estimated in the millions of pounds, making the eleven-month competition immensely profitable. - EPUK

Read the full article, plus comments from plenty of Nikon users, here.

Lostinbabylon says: Always read the terms and conditions before you enter a photo comp. Be sure that it’s a genuine photo comp and not just a scam that enables a company to get their hands on shitloads of free photos for their own profiteering purposes…

Buy my stuff!!!

I’m selling the following stuff on eBay. Tell all your friends. (click the links to go to the relevant eBay auction page). I’m so skint, all the money I have left in the whole wide world is about 50p in 1p and 2p coins. Times are hard.

Sennheiser PMX 200 neckband headphones

Photographic Lighting - Essential Skills.

Andolf Smiffler

Sackman A.K.A. Mark “Let’s Kill Jill” Hill told me all about Andolf Smiffler. It was a while ago though, and I can’t remember. But he’s a good MC… check him out here http://www.myspace.com/andolfsmiffler

“Confusing” 9/11 Photo

I thought this was an interesting debate, so I thought I’d post a link to it…

“On Sunday, Sept. 10, Frank Rich of the New York Times wrote a column (TimesSelect only) about a “shocking” 9/11 photograph by Thomas Hoepker. The picture, which was taken on the Brooklyn waterfront the afternoon of 9/11, is reproduced here. On Tuesday, Slate’s David Plotz criticized Rich’s analysis of the photo. Yesterday, one of the people in the picture, Walter Sipser, wrote to Slate to take issue with Rich and Hoepker’s interpretations. Today, the photographer himself joins the debate.”

http://www.slate.com/id/2149675/

Dirty Sanchez Movie!

I can’t wait to watch this film. It’s out on the 22nd of September.

Click image for bigger version

I think I’ll take their advice and bring a sick bag to the cinema with me. I expect to leave the cinema with a more muscular, toned face as a result of excessive cringing…

Trailer on RupertMurdochSpace

Death of a Whale

Ave a look at this photostory, by Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert on EPUK… I thought it was interesting.

“I feel I have to shout, it’s too horrible to watch. To shout to get them to kill the mammal, this thrashing and slow death is taking too long.”

http://www.epuk.org/First-Person/death-of-a-whale

I’m Bored

…so I’m going to make a list

Good list

1. Tea, splash of milk, 1/2 a sugar
2. Bottle of Asahi, slightly below room temperature
3. Dub, turned up way too loud, so that the bass tickles your ear drums and clogs your ears up with low frequency vibrations and earwax
4. The occasional roll-up, with some sweet tobacco, smoked outdoors with a big warm parka coat on while it’s raining
5. The satisfying click feeling when you press the button
6. The sound of film being wound on
7. Remembering exactly where when and how you got each scar
8. Hugging someone called V

Bad list

1. Sofa’s that stink really badly of fags
2. Having to sleep on list item no.1
3. Staying up til 3.43am and beyond, knowing that you are supposed to be working at 8am the next morning
4. fighting with someone called V
5. Not being with someone called V
6. brothers who steal from you , especially when you’re skint, it’s blatantly obvious that the case of blank CD’s was full when I brought it in here, and now approximately 50% of them are gone, did they think I wouldn’t notice, etc.
7. Not having a cup of tea or a beer

Urban75 Photos

Critical Mass, Trafalgar Square. Photo © 1995 Urban75

The editor of Urban75 makes some really good photo reports, and writes some very interesting factual articles about the places he’s been. The photo reports include London, New York, Chicago, Greece, and my home town, Birmin’am!

He also covers Glastonbury Festival, Big Chill, and various protests such as Critical Mass and Mayday. And there’s more - check them out here - Urban75 Photo Gallery.

Impressive recycled bags

Messenger Bag. http://www.freitag.ch/

Freitag make their unique, stylish bags by hand, from used haulage truck tarpaulins, car seat belts, bicycle inner tubes, and used airbags. The result is a strong, waterproof, and environment friendly bag (it’s re-use of materials that would otherwise be thrown away, avoiding consumpsion of new or recycled materials). Clever, innovative re-use of materials going on there, and they actually look really good.

You can design custom bags too. They have an online custom bag creator where you place the stencils on a picture of the tarp (avoiding the bits that have already been cut out). You then order your design, they cut it for you and you get your custom bag delivered.

Screenshot from http://www.freitag.ch/f-cut/start.html

If you knew how much they cost, though, you’d puke.

Interview with The Firkster

It was 2am, I had drank too much tea, I was bored, and extremely tired. What better time to interview the Firk?

Awesome piece of photo equipment

This has got to be the best piece of equipment I’ve seen for photography.

Not only will it vastly improve the quality of lighting obtainable from a standard TTL flashgun, it will also make you look like a complete nutter!

Despite the fact that it makes the user look like an escaped mental patient, it really would work very well. It’s a clever idea as it allows you to shoot with your normal TTL flash away from the camera via an extension cord, but you’re free to hold the camera properly with both hands (normally you’d have to hold the camera with one hand and the flash in the other hand - making it difficult to compose the photo and hold the camera steady).

Just so you know how it works: The reflective surface of the umbrella is much larger than the flashgun, so it distributes the light more evenly than the flashgun alone would. It’s also in a higher position than where the flash would normally be. This enables you to produce portraits that have far softer, natural-looking lighting, subtler shadows, and no red-eye effect.

It’s such a great idea, and practically it would work very well. But you’d just look too stupid wearing it.

See Mi Yah Remixes

Very interesting. I never imagined that roots reggae mixed with techno could work. It’s pretty ridiculous. And that’s why I like it.

Click here for a listen.

Favourite Jah-maican booze

I thought it would be fun to write about my favourite Jamaican drinks. This will be different though: I’m a lightweight, I get drunk on a rather small amount of alcohol, and I’m going to drink a couple of measures of my favourite Jamaican drinks before I write about them each one. So here goes…

(Writing after 5 bottles of Dragon Stout) The bottled secretions of the legendary Jamaican Red Dragon has quite a sweet, caramelised malt taste to it, with very subtle chocolatey notes. It’s a bit thin for a stout - it’s more of a dark beer and it doesn’t have as much body as something like Guinness, for example…. but to be honest I think it’s better off for that. It’s easier to drink in the summer and/or with a meal than something like Guinness, and it’s an easy drink for a lager drinker. `Basically it tastes nice (preferably chilled) and it’s worth the £1 per half pint. The seven point five per cent kick-ass alcohol content is an added bonus if you like getting pissed

(5 Dragon Stout, and 3 bottles of Red Stripe) As for Red Stripe, I can’t understand what the fascination with it is. In my opinion it’s watery and it’s f**king crap, there’s nothing special about it.There are much nicer lagers out there. That doesn’t stop the Custard Factory from selling it for £3 a bottle though… rapacious bastards.

(5 Dragon Stout, 3 bottles of Red Stripe, and 4 shots of Wray & Nephew) Wray & Nephew… don’t get me started on this stuff. I remember drinking it neat when I was young, then my mates called for me on their bikes. I went out withh them and crached into numerous parked cars. They had to return me home so I could sleep it off. 63%! fock off. its too fucking strong