Neil Alexander, Manchester based portrait, travel & landscape photographer » Inspiration

Goodbye George W.

Neil — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 05:44:00 +0000

Just been catching up with some of my feeds and came across another blinder from Zoriah.

“There are things that U.S. soldiers are allowed to talk about with the press and others they are not. One of the things they are not allowed to voice is their political opinion, especially if it goes against their commander in chief. In the privacy of latrine stalls on military bases in Iraq and Kuwait, however, it is quite a different story.” – Check them out here

Still life project

Neil — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 04:53:18 +0000

Still no further work of my own to post on here yet I’m afraid. Although I have put some time into formulating ideas for my next project. I’ve decided that it’s going to be along a “Still Life” theme – I’ve never really done any “proper” still life before, one of the reasons being is that it doesn’t really float my boat to be quite honest. But I figure that you never really understand something until you actually give it a serious attempt. I’ve been looking at quite a lot of work in this area lately, especially the earliest stuff – the work of Florence Henry, Berenice Abbott and Irving Penn. Some of which I was really quite taken with. Here are some examples:
Irving Penn – Cigarette No. 37:

Berenice Abbott – Soap Bubbles, 1940s

Karl Blossfeldt – Poppy Seed Heads

Florence Henri – Composition with ball and mirror, 1930

I’m particularly impressed with the work of Florence Henri, and considering how long ago she made these and how many images since draw references from her work, they really are seminal works.

Finally a couple of news items.
If you’re a follower of Scott Kelby or any of the NAPP guys, then you can’t failed to have noticed that the PhotoShop World expo is on at the moment. Whilst there, Adobe have started teasers for the new CS4 suite. They’re going to do a special webcast on Tuesday 23rd September, and you can sign up here.
If you live up North (in the England), then “Ways Of Looking” – a new media festival kicks off in Bradford and Leeds this weekend coming. There’s a whole raft of shows scheduled to run right through to January next year – Check out the schedule here.

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Aerial Photography

Neil — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 12:09:21 +0000

Just a quick post for today. The wife and kids have gone out and I’m off to the gym shortly followed by the football. The season has started again…. at last!!

Anyway, I saw this link titled “60 Incredible Aerial Photos You Must See” in the show notes for the PhotoNetCast podcast Episode 9 which is some fantastic aerial photography from Yann Arthus Bertrand. There are some stunning images on this page and these are definitely a must see.

Totally amazed, I then I did a bit of googling on the photographer and found his own site (Click here). This is a truly outstanding project he’s been running – he’s amazed over half a million aerial photographs taken in some 100 countries! There’s a whole host of environmental information on there and some other photography projects he’s been working on (which are also worth a view). I was totally overwhelmed by the content of this site – it has to be seen to be believed.

There’s also another site of his (link here) where there are 2000 aerial wallpapers to download complete with descriptive captions…. FOR FREE!

Truly an inspiration! Already googling helicopter hire…

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Monday Monday…

Neil — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 07:10:23 +0000

I’ve been a bit quiet this last week on the blog front due to family issues, but I’m back now with a vengeance.

I stumbled across the sublime work of Steen Doessing over the weekend. He grew up in Denmark surrounded by water – rivers, lakes & oceans, and manages to produce the most tranquil, calm yet dramatic images. He nearly always uses long exposures, from several minutes to several hours and uses a full frame Canon DSLR and a Hasselblad. Check out his work here – www.steendoessing.com – it really is worth the click.

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