Hey everyone! Hope you’re having a great week.
Another wander through the digital archives and another attempt at applying a crop. I think this one improves the composition of the shot. This was taken in Covent Garden ten years ago ouch, time flies!
Thanks again for stopping and allowing me to take the shot Hayley!
*
I’ve opened a shop on Big Cartel to sell prints and original works. You can have a look here.
Hey everyone! Hope you’re having a great week.
Another wander through the digital archives and another discovery of an unused shot – and again a slight crop applied. This was taken in Covent Garden five years ago wow, time flies!
Thanks again for stopping and allowing me to take the shot Fuki!
*
I’ve opened a shop on Big Cartel to sell prints and original works. You can have a look here.
Trawling through photos in search of a hand to draw, I came across this shot of Jean taken outside The Black Garden tattoo parlour in Central London in 2013. At the time I was very much opposed to cropping photos, but I think this one benefits. Anyway, thanks for the shot Jean.
Back to searching for suitable hands…
One of the great things about 2020 so far is I seem to have rekindled my interest in photographing people. An even greater thing is that I ran into Rakia yesterday.
We made 8-10 shots together around London Bridge and these are my favourites…
The photographs work as well in colour as they do in black and white. But I tend to favour the monochrome.
You can visit Rakia’s Instagram here: @rakiamoctar
Thanks very much Rakia!
*
If you are interested in seeing more street portraits, digital constructs and paintings visit my Instagram here or my website here.
*
In the last few days I’ve been experimenting with converting portaits I originally presented in colour on TFIPM to black and white. This was partly to test Ted Grant’s adage. Above is the new processed main portrait of Yozmit, and below the original.
Back in 2013 I must have preferred the colour version as a true representation of Yozmit’s style. Today I like the inkiness of the new version.
The original post featuring Yozmit can be found here.
*
Around 2013 I wanted to show my portraits alongside abstract paintings. For all sorts of reasons (one being I didn’t know that many abstract painters) it didn’t happen, so I started trying to imagine and make the kind of abstracts that might work with street portraits. Seven years later, I think I’m beginning to find stuff.
*
*
If you want to see other work, visit my Instagram here or my website here.
*
As some of you may know, I’m a fan of the group, The Fall, whose chief creator Mark E Smith sadly died in January 2018. This post is named after a 7″ single which was released by the group in 1982. The image above has nothing to do with The Fall, except I suppose tangentially – I’ve listened to them so much their aesthetic must have seeped into my process somewhere…
The painting below on the other hand I did “for MES” – it didn’t start out that way, but it as it neared completion it seemed to fit…anyway…
Spend so much of my time looking down nowadays…these were both taken in London in the first week of the year.
*
I’d like to dedicate this post to Patti Fogarty, who was a brilliant street photographer, portraitist and blogger (and one of the first people I “met” on WordPress). Her photographs were really something else – a celebration. I miss them and I miss her presence online. There’s a very nice tribute to Patti on Monochromia and you can see her work on her blog Nylon Daze.
*
If you want to see other work, visit my Instagram here or my website here.
*
Happy New Year to everyone who has supported TFIPM by reading, liking or commenting!
The intention for 2020 is to make this blog more like an online sketchbook, so along with the finished works and art conversations with David Cook, I’ll be posting ideas, sketches, diaristic photographs and portraits. Not sure of the exact format, but here we go…
The above is another example of my renewed interest in digital work – I seem to have strayed into the landscape format good and proper. There are paintings in the works as well.
In the meantime, here are a couple of photographs from just after New Year in Brighton, UK…
*
If you want to see other work, visit my Instagram here or my website here.
All best wishes!
Hello all, for those of you that don’t know, I’ve opened an Instagram account, which I use to post works in progress and highlights from my street portrait project. The latest addition is Ally from 2013. Thanks Ally!
The account is: @richardguest9440
A few more recent entries…
*
My Etsy shop, https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/CityStories is open, where you can find greetings cards and prints.
Richard and I have just completed another collaboration. To see the results, please visit Richard’s quite superb blog, CK Ponderings.
Here’s a sneak preview of one of my images to whet your appetite…
Richard from CK Ponderings and I work completely independently on these collaborations. We have been doing this for some time now and in the past there have been strange coincidences where we’ve chosen the same thing to photograph or shots have complemented each other really well. This time…
Richard Cooper-Knight:
Falling Slowly, 2014
I admit to being a little flummoxed by Richard’s theme this time around. It was abstract enough that I could do something with it, but for a while I simply had no idea where to start. Then it struck me. The weather in the UK has been pretty awful this winter – not the biting cold and snows of January-March 2013, but constant, relentless storms and rain that have left many parts of the country under water and thousands of families facing weeks and months of waiting a) for the water to subside and b) for their homes to dry out before they stand any chance of moving back in again. The storms have battered the south and south western coasts for ages now, making daily headlines. Listening to one of these, I was drawn to the West Pier in Brighton. Closed due to safety reasons in the 1970s, its fate was sealed in 2003 when two fires (allegedly caused by ‘professional arsonists’ wanting to avoid competition from a neighbouring pier) demolished what remained of the pavilions. Since then annual storms have slowly but surely worn away at what remains and, piece by piece, the rusting skeleton is being devoured by the waves.
Richard Guest:
Falling Slowly, 2014
For this collaboration, I spent a week constructing a multi-frame photomontage of a street off Kingsway; then, in a fit of pique, I deleted the lot – it seemed too much like style over substance (and the file size was enormous). A couple of days later, I spotted these bananas and somehow, even though they didn’t really fit the theme, they worked much better.
Oddly, even though they are of vastly different subjects, I think Richard and I have taken shots with very similar meanings…his shot, of course, is beautiful.
* * *
Richard Guest would also like to recommend you visit the blog Strata of the self. It’s ace!
* * *
The Future Is Papier Mâché 