Been a really busy week.

On the weekend I got back from an awesome photography trip to Paris to see some shows.

We saw Paris Photo which is always totally overwhelming, a real melting pot of inspiring photographs and prints, both old and new, with this huge hall in the Carousel de Louvre full to the brim with glamorous photographers and gallery owners and then lots of poor looking students gazing at massive prints and looking amazing and lost at the same time. Good fun. We also saw an exhibition of photographs from the war in Afghanistan by VII photographers which was very powerful, and on the last day an exhibition of the finalists of the Prix Pictet 2009 (won this year by Nadav Kander for his Yahtzee series) which was amazing.

In between then and now I’ve been to London from Brighton and back again to see Arsenal Vs. Standard Liege (2-0) and then tomorrow I’m back off to London for Arsenal Vs. Chelsea on Sunday and before then on friday I’m assisting Ben Roberts and the BJP’s Vision conference where he’s talking as well as Martin Parr and Eugene Richards. Should be a really good day – hit me up if anyone reading is gonna be there.

I’ll finish this post with a recent 6×7 shot from the Emirates. Plan to shoot alot of medium format in the near future and I also have alot of rolls to get back from the lab to scan and post.

Take it easy,
J.

“Fy fan … hur kan ni svenskar dricka snaps?” ”Det var som att doppa tungan i ett tabasco- bad”
Man skall inte använda det som man sörplar i sig en bouillabaisse soppa Gordon Ramsay, utan snapsen skall avnjutas t.ex med en sillbit. Nu kommer snart julen och då avnjuter jag gärna julmaten med några snapsar Skåne.
Har du smakat på det engelska ölet av typ Ale Gordon? På tal om fy fan menar jag.

For some reason, I like this picture loads really.

It's been a long day

I took this snap at the “India International Trade Fair” The picture was part of the banner educating people about “Tiger Conservation” and was in the Jharkhand State’s Hall. I tried to take the picture from my camera in such a way that it should look like I took the original shot. I hope I have succeeded in my attempt.

Okay, I can’t contain myself any longer. I was going to wait and post pictures of the van once I had truly finished with everything, but I’m so utterly pleased with myself today that I have to jump the gun and tell you about the components now!

So here are some photos of the van, showing it empty, then with the bed frame installed, then with the platform in bench mode. Support doors swing out and the platform unfolds to go to bed mode, which currently also locks the shelving in place (I haven’t thought of a better way to secure the shelf, so for now I can only drive in bed mode).

I’ve made panels for the windows out of polystyrene insulation covered in shaggy burgundy fabric… I’ll leave most of these in place; the side mirrors on the van are quite convex, allowing the same kind of visibility as a delivery truck.

And today I finished the cover for one of the mattresses… this is what I’m so pleased about. After sewing twenty little squares of reinforcing fabric onto the back of a big piece of faux fur, I put twenty snap pieces in place such that the whole thing wraps up and covers the mattress, but can still be unfolded and used as a blanket! The snaps are almost invisible, they disappear under the fur. The mattress gets narrower towards one end, that’s to match the contours of the side of the van.

For me this is further proof of how constraints feed creativity. I only thought of using snaps because I didn’t want to have to learn to use a sewing machine, and now I have a product that makes me even happier than a plain old sewn furry mattress cover would!

Okay, so now I just need to make one more cover like that (ugh, that means sewing another twenty little squares), then I’ll post pics of what it looks like with all the components together.

Coolest Pickup in the World...

With all the Jedidiah travel the past three months have been a bit of a blur… so I got a new camera phone to help me remember.

Jared Swafford is a kind soul who’s cooler than I’ll ever be… I slept on his couch a few nights, and cruised his pickup too.

Check out his top notch designing: http://swingfromtherafters.com/

A few lomo snaps from Russell at his pad in Cardiff.