By Royal Appt - Artur Conka

Every single Summer I head out to see photography student grad shows.
Whether at Free Range or in an independent gallery or in a factory or a garden shed, I will try my darndest to come see the work.

I remember what it was like to be a fresh(ish) faced student type heading down to London, all nervous & excited & relieved & blissfully unaware of which of the grad portfolio stereotypes I was about conform to. Hell you're to busy hoping someone other than your Mum will turn up to the PV!

But conform they all do, generally. There's the self portrait nude one, the gothic dolls head one, the intentionally out of focus one, do I need to go on?
It's not a bad thing, it's expected, that's cool. But it can grate a tad, bit like being stuck in a Groundhog Day with really bad wine.

So when an artist and their work catches your eye, goodness how they standout and give you the wibbles. Or is that just me?

Now I'm being bold and calling it early, but I think you'll understand why, because Derby student Artur Conka is the one for me this year.
His project Lunix IX is an incredibly sensitive and beautiful piece of documentary film making, giving a voice to the people on Slovakia's biggest Roma ghetto. Watch for yourselves and bear in mind Artur is only 22yrs old!!!



You can find out more about Artur here <=

Thoughts For Photographers

Oy! You lot!
Stop stuffing your Twitter streams with web links!

As a community us photography folk have been playing in the Twittersphere for quiet some time now. So it baffles me to still see photographers, assistants and agents for that matter, constantly telling their followers to go somewhere else.
Because that's what you're doing every time you post a URL into your 140characters.

It's fine on occasion, of course. You want to remind people to visit your website, show them you've been featured somewhere fabulous, sure, but engage with your audience and show your conversational side. Twitter is a personality platform after all.

Inspiration

Did you know that David Boni's photography for The Strangler's album launch was the first ever billboard campaign to be held to the Watershed?
Shown on digital billboards it was only up between 9pm - 5am. Amazing!

 David is repped by A Pale Horse.

#peoplereadingactualbooks

From @clarapandy

As many of you know I do loves me some books,

an awful lot of books actually. 

From the smell, to the beautiful covers & of course the adventures inside, books set my heart aflutter. 

So you can imagine how I feel about eReaders *shudders* The damn things are everywhere! 

How am I supposed to see what people are reading now? 

So I'm taking a stand, a quiet one mind, and taking snaps of wonderful people I see out & about people reading actual books. And I've started the above hashtag on Twitter.

Here are some of the shots so far. And not just from me because, Twitter being the lovely place it is, people have started joining in.

Feel free to join in too and if you spot anyone you know in the pics (and can prove it) I'll send them a book token to encourage their papery love.

Thanks to @fabhat, @Tim_A_Roberts, @tomwatkinsphoto and @clarapandy for sending me your pictures. And special thanks to @cameraportraits for sending me a link to a great NYC book reading project. Glad to see I'm not alone :)

My finds so far

From @Tim_A_Roberts, @FabHat & @TomWatkinsPhoto