CASSIA BECK PHOTOGRAPHY INTERVIEW

Saturday, 17 May 2014 15:00

Like donning a pair of rose-tinted specs, Cassia Beck's photography makes the world one shiny, happy place. Whether she's shooting plastic toys, beautiful blooms or the carousel at her local fairground in Brighton, UK, everything comes coated with a little bit of sugary sweetness, making us want to step outside, take a big breath in and embrace all the lovely things that life has to offer.

We asked the clever lady a few questions about her work.



What is your name and how old are you? My name is Cassia Beck and I will whisper my age. 37.

Where were you born and where do you live now? I was born in London and now I live in Brighton, UK.



How does where you live affect your photography? Brighton is hugely inspiring for me with its bohemian atmosphere and colourful houses. There is a huge beach and a pier with fairground rides. All of these things have shaped my style of photography.

When did you first know you wanted to be a photographer? When I bought a Holga camera after feeling inspired by a friend who owned one. There was nothing technical about it so it was a fun introduction to photography. There was, and still is, nothing more exciting than getting the film developed; the results are always unexpected.

What kind of subjects interest you the most? I love the fairground, it feels mysterious and a little magical to me. I only ever go to the pier or the fair when they are empty. I don't like going on the rides, just photographing them. I have lived near the sea since I was a child, I find the beach is a good place to unwind and take pictures. I am always happy to photograph flowers, too.



Is there a certain camera or type of film that you wish you could own? Not really. I have an extensive collection of cameras, old and new. They all have their own characteristics that appeal to me.

What kinds of ideas are you working on at the moment? I am currently working on a year-long project called 'Mundane'. My aim is to photograph something ordinary and boring every day for the next year. It's hard work and I am only on day 10! I want to challenge myself to take beautiful photos of things we see all the time but don't take much notice of. I worry I will get bored and don't want to bore other people, but that's the point, otherwise it wouldn't be a challenge.

When it comes to taking photos, do you have more of a controlled/set-up or spontaneous style? Definitely more spontaneous. I tend to just walk around and take pictures as I go. When I set up a still life, I prefer it to be simple so I don't plan much in advance. I always use natural light for my work, so as long as I have something interesting to photograph and good light, I'm happy.



What advice can you offer on finding your personal style or aesthetic? Take lots and lots of photographs of everything you see. Use lots of different cameras until you find one or two you feel you can't leave home without. Personal style is all about the subjects that appeal to you the most and the type of camera you use. When I am in a rut, I set myself a project so I begin to think outside the box.

What are the hallmarks of a great photographer? When I look at other photographers, I always think they are great if they have a distinctive style you can spot a mile off. It shows when they are photographing something the way they see it rather than trying to recreate someone else's style.

What are your thoughts on the rise of mobile phone photography and Instagram? I do love taking pictures on my mobile and use Instagram every day. I don't think it matters what you use to take photographs, as long as you have a good eye.



What do you enjoy doing when not taking photos? I love making collages when I am not holding a camera. It has been a hobby for years and now I sell my work online under the name of Violet May. The rest of my life revolves around my children. We can be found at the park, getting creative at the kitchen table or watching films.

Where can we see more of your work? Online, you can see my work on Etsy, Flickr andSociety6. When my toddlers are a bit bigger I want to start showing my work in galleries again. I have kept life pretty simple since having them.

• photography
 
• england

source: http://www.frankie.com.au/blogs/photography/cassia-beck-photography-interview

NICH MCELROY PHOTOGRAPHY INTERVIEW

Saturday, 16 November 2013 14:00

Nich McElroy is an American-born, Canada-dwelling photographer with a love of adventure and knack for capturing some pretty darn eye-pleasing scenes. Whether snapping magical woodlands, seaside escapes or mountainous terrain, his pics make us want to ditch the couch and blanket and set off on an expedition of sorts. We asked Nich a few questions about his work, and just where his inspiration comes from.

What is your name and how old are you? My full name is Nich Hance McElroy, and I'm 28 years old.

Where were you born and where do you live now? I was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota (roughly), and have lived in Vancouver, British Columbia for about a year.

How does where you grew up and where you live now affect your photography? Well, where I grew up is a different place altogether, but it isn't far from Vancouver. I lived in Seattle from 3-18 and went back for a stint in my twenties. It definitely informed some of the biases in my photography. The weather is famously bad, which means that it's easy to find atmospheric light. I think that Seattle kind of fine tuned my sensibilities about avoiding flat or bright light. It's also chock full of pretty places (mountains, forests, lakes, an inland arm of the Pacific Ocean) to explore. It always feels a little bunk to assume that people who are from pretty regions especially love scenery or something - of course everybody does, right? - and in some ways I wish that I was from a place that doesn't have the natural beauty Seattle has, just because it inevitably makes you lazy as photographer. You can just put a mountain in the frame and say "voila!" As a foil I think about the Dutch Masters, or the really talented contemporary Dutch photographers, on this. If you live in a flat country that's largely below sea-level (which is its own sort of beautiful), what do you? Maybe you get insanely sensitive to light, you actually give it the weight and presence of a whole landscape, just through incredible attention to its nuances.



What areas, things or people in your neighbourhood do you most like to photograph? I don't photograph very much in my neighbourhood. There's a Mason-Dixon line in Vancouver and a lot of talk about East vs. West Vancouver (confusingly enough there is also the "West End" and a separate municipality called "West Vancouver" - go figure). I live in East Vancouver, which is cheaper and younger and many other things different than West Van. I spend at least an hour a day walking my dog here, and inevitably I snap little photos (mostly camera phone) of the laneways near my house. By far my favourite discovery has been all of the neighbourhood gardens, especially as the northern hemisphere has moved through the summer months. Every alleyway will have a dozen of these pocket patches of green, often shoe-horned between parking strips and buildings, but growing food, herbs, and ornamentals. I haven't really found the right photographic register to document these yet, but that's what I'm dreaming about photographing in the neighbourhood. Photographing makes my walks longer, so the dog likes it, too.



What do you shoot on (digital or analogue) and why do you choose to use that type? I shoot film because it looks better. My (very limited) experience with digital photography almost gave me an ulcer. Even with a camera phone, I don't know how you choose an image when you've taken fifteen variations, and how you care (in a kind of precious, paternal way) about each image if it's just a part of a sequence. I naturally veer toward a scatterbrain, so fewer choices helps me produce better work.

Is there a certain camera or type of film that you wish you could own? I flirt with the idea of stepping up from a 6x7cm medium format camera to a 4x5 inch view camera, but I'm also sensitive to the economics of picture taking.

Is there a running theme to the work you create, or do you just make whatever comes to mind? It's actually both, insofar as I'm a single individual with discrete interests and a more-or-less coherent aesthetic. So I shoot whatever I fancy and then winnow it down later. I let my mood or aesthetic sense at a given time produce work and I sort out what's what in the editing process. Sometimes I'll see a little glimmer of something in past work and I try to pick up and follow that thread, but I'm not very systematic. Systematically unsystematic.



What kinds of ideas and things are you working on at the moment? In my photography? I guess that I'm really curious about the ways that we naturalise artificial things (like agriculture, animals, parks, etc), and also - this is the story that fewer people know - convince ourselves that natural things are totally artificial. This is a way bigger, hairier, more theoretically loaded debate, but I've been really intrigued by the natural places that we've forgotten are natural; like, say, the Los Angeles River, which is a real river, right in the center of L.A., that until a couple of years ago was mostly considered as a place to race cars through in action movies (and Grease). In a similar vein, I'm doing an artist residency on Rabbit Island in Lake Superior next summer that will explore some of this stuff, but in a setting that's only recently been inhabited and developed.

What kind of subjects interest you the most? I'm kind of an omnivore when it comes to these things, but I'll say that I've been less and less convinced by my own brand of landscape photography. I think that going back to simple color/tonal/spatial arrangements and more strict portraiture is interesting to me right now, simply as a way to try batting with the opposite hand. I always have, and always will, take portraits of the people that I love, but less and less of these photographs are finding their way into my sets or my broader thinking about photography.



Do you prefer to create set-up photographs, or just wander the streets until you see a photo? I sort of wander the streets (hills, fields) until I see a photo I can set up; but I'm not a studio photographer, no.

If you were to teach a photography appreciation class, what kind of lessons would you try to teach your students? This is such a great question. I recently read Rolland Barthes' Camera Lucida, which is probably the most nauseatingly talked-to-death book ever written about photography, but his basic terminology is helpful. Barthes talks about the "punctum" as the thing in an image that really gets you. I guess that it's literally what reaches out and pokes, pricks or punctures you. I think that I would compile 100 images for which I can identify a punctum, and of course sort out, in some thoughtful way, why. Is it stylistic/formal? Is it how you historicise a photograph (this is a picture of so and so or such and such, a very sad/happy day)? Does something else adhere in a photograph? We  agree on certain images as powerful, so it wouldn't just be the subjective Uncle Nich Photo Hour. I think that I would go through all of that and say the same to them what I said to myself recently: if there isn't that thing, whatever the hell it is, that pokes you, and maybe gets under your skin or into your heart, or scares or excites you, don't bother liking it. Perhaps more strongly: in a world so insanely saturated with photography, be completely comfortable with not appreciating all (or even much) of it, but don't lose sight of the inherent power of certain images. They will feed you better than breakfast.



What is the strangest thing or thought that has inspired a photo? I worked on a musk ox farm in Alaska for a handful of summers and one of the older bulls, maybe 14 or 15, which is ancient for an intact male musk ox, died. It was the weekend and we couldn't get our vet out to perform a necropsy, so we opened him up ourselves to see if there was an injury or trauma, or some obvious illness. In the process we pulled a huge pile of musk ox viscera onto a blue tarp. I'd spent the whole summer photographing the peaks and glacial valleys around the farm, and suddenly this rounded pile of musk ox guts kind of spoke to me (not literally) as a bizarre sort of landscape scene. The photo's in my "How To Be Alone" series if you'd like to see it.

What other budding photographers do you love? Carl Wooley; Chris Coyle; Suzanna Zak;Lina Scheynius; Jennilee Marigomen; so so many others!



What do you enjoy doing when not taking photos? I read, walk the dog, ride my bicycle, drink Scotch.

Where can we see more of your work? nhmcelroy.com, nhmcelroy.tumblr.com, and instagram.com/nhmcelroy

• photography
 
• canada

source: http://www.frankie.com.au/blogs/photography/how-we-live

446 // smitten travels: catalina island

I’m back with a bit more from our trip to Catalina Island. A few highlights were…

That pretty little hideaway in the first photo, called Descanso Beach. There’s a beach club there that you can hang on the beach without paying (or rent beach chairs or a cabana if you want the full experience), and its also where we rented kayaks out for a couple hours. Our kayak trip was easily the best part of the trip, we rowed past seals and dolphins and loved just drifting around on the crystal clear water. We took a two person kayak because Rupe is a zealous rower and it means I get to take breaks and float along for the ride. :) The woman that worked at the rental desk told us where we could kayak out to see leopard sharks in the shallow waters just past Frog Rock (she assured us that they were harmless so I was in). We thought it would be pretty cool but had no idea how incredible it was when we finally happened on them and suddenly there were literally about 100 sharks swimming around our boat!

Walking around the old Casino, ((top photo in this set) you can take tours of the inside but we didn’t get a chance to. It’s on my list for next time), renting golf carts and touring around to the two high points above the city (middle image & last image), playing mini-golf, and hanging out on the docks on a warm night well past our bedtime were the rest of the high points.

You guys gave me some incredible tips on Instagram before we went and we had a blast checking some things off the list. Next time I want to see the buffalo!

iPhone images by me (more on instagram @sarahshermansamuel)

source: http://www.smittenstudioonline.com/smitten-travels-catalina-island/

DIY // BEFORE & AFTER OF MY BACKYARD WITH HOME DEPOT!

MAY 2, 2014

photos by Kimberly Chau Photography 

It actually pains me a tiny bit to upload the before photos of my backyard with all of the pretties I post here on S&C, but you won’t get the full effect unless I do, so this one’s for you guys! My full makeover reveal is on the Home Depot blog today where you can see all of the extra product details, a quick and easy DIY to disguise an ugly air conditioner, and possibly the most random way you could ever use shower curtain liners for decor (can you guess how?!). In the meantime, I’ll give you the before tour…

When I first moved into this house there was nothing but black tarp and messed up pebble stones. My dad actually put in the concrete stepping stone pad and walkway, and filled in the stone just so that the area wasn’t a complete eyesore and the water were drain away from the house. I still never used it much just because it wasn’t something that was within my budget or a huge priority right away.

Now that it’s been a little over a year, it was due time. With the right sized outdoor dining table, some accessories, a whole lot of elbow grease, and DIY power, it looks way different!

The left was before, and the right is what it looks like now. Thanks to resilient plants and fake grass, it actually looks lush in the middle of the busy city! I liked sticking to the modern cool grey color tone because it went well with the metal siding and clean lines of the stones and I’m really glad I stuck with it, I love the outcome. 

You can see the rest of my backyard DIY’s here: my DIY faux grass stepping stones, my DIY succulent accent wall, and how to disguise a huge air conditioner.

photos by Kimberly Chau Photography – *Materials for this project were courtesy of Home Depot

source: http://sugarandcloth.com/2014/05/before-after-of-my-backyard-with-home-depot/#more-10133