Scottish Fog
My favorite days besides the clean, crisp and sunny Scottish days, have got to be the ones where the world is shrouded in fog. Sometimes you can’t even see outside your windows due to the gray curtains of mist. These are the interesting days of trying to push your way through the city, using your body as a blunt instrument and carving out a space for yourself under the mysterious canopy.
Aye, the Silvery Tay
I’ve been waiting for the right conditions to take some shots of the Tay, which is right outside my window, and finally last week a dark but dry morning arrived. I was looking to get some moody Scottish sky and ideally I wanted the far end of the Tay Rail Bridge to be shrouded in fog. I didn’t get exactly the conditions I wanted because the weather around here changes so quickly, but I did get three shots that made it a worthwhile day.
Good Reads
I just finished The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst, a book which some consider to be the bible of typography. Bringhurst is an amazing writer and poet and has the ability to explain tedious and difficult concepts with brevity and wit. I love reading books like this which give a foundation to the things you tend to do instinctively as a creative designer/photographer. It’s a good reminder that many of the design elements that simply look good or correct to us, have a scientific heritage going back thousands of years. It is wonderful to make the connections between what feels right and the underlying reasons why. It always excites me when I can take the lessons from something as simple as a book about typography and apply them to photography, design and even life as a whole. Maybe that means Bringhurst is an amazing writer…and maybe I just appreciate his search for truth in simplicity and purposefulness of form. Either way I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in understanding the role of type in design, writing and everyday life. There are some timeless messages in here.
Happy Halloween
On Saturday I had some good Scotch and participated in a mini pumpkin carving contest. Euan Gray and I teamed up to offer our take on a holiday at Loch Ness. It depicts Urqhart Castle along with St. Columba discovering the loch for the first time. Haha. I hope everyone had a good one…Happy Halloween!
Portraits for DJCAD
I just finished some portraits for the Master of Design and Master of Design Ethnography students at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in Dundee, UK. I basically had carte blanche to do what I wanted so I thought I would build a three-dimensional background to represent design and design research. I also wanted it to be white and shaped only by shadows and light. Originally I had planned to make pyramids (actually tetrahedrons, thanks Euan Gray!) of different sizes but the more focused and symmetrical background ended up making a much cleaner picture. And since these portraits were for design students and teachers, I wanted to make sure the end results was crisp and simple. For those wondering, the background is perfect square pieces of paper, folded at the diagonals and then cut down one crease and folded over. I spent one whole day cutting, gluing and arranging but it was actually quite therapeutic and calming. Here are a few results…
Fallingwater Interiors
In July, I had the pleasure of visiting the famous Frank Lloyd Wright house, Fallingwater. My wife Lena and I brought the Lubitel with us to the woods of Mill Run, PA and were able to get through one roll of film along with our digital shots. These three vantage points in the living room were my favorites of the whole house. It is an amazing space that is made to feel as if you can work, relax, and socialize all in the same room. Wright was literally a genius thinker/designer and getting to walk through Fallingwater is like walking around in his brain. It is truly a thing of beauty and I can’t recommend enough that you make a trip there if you are even mildy interested in architecture.
The Slow and Steady March of Time
It’s funny how seemingly disparate events and experiences can make such strange sense when looked back upon with nostalgia.
In (Praise of) Progress…
I finally have some new shots processed from an ongoing project I’ve been working on. In a broad sense, I am drawn to the patterns and connections in the environments around me, so I love to break down images into their most simple form and then connect them to each other. AND since I moved to Scotland a few weeks ago and don’t really know anyone yet, it’s been the perfect time to finish some long neglected projects. I am now praising myself for crossing items off my to do list (I highly suggest an app for getting things done called Remember the Milk [thanks Lena] that integrates with gmail…amazing). Check out the whole set HERE.
Thomas Pendelton is a Badass
At the risk of being super cheezy, I commissioned a portrait of my wife Lena and I for a wedding present (I’ve always like the idea of a hand painted family portrait). So, a few months ago, I asked friend and amazing tattoo artist, Thomas Pendelton, if he could help me out with the project. I sent him a few pics of the two of us and gave him a couple colors that Lena would like but otherwise there was only one rule: make what you want to make. Thomas responded with this HUGE 4′ x 4′ painting which arrived this week. Needless to say we are speechless. And we received something priceless…a custom piece of art, from an artist we greatly admire, that represents our marriage and subsequent growth. THANK YOU THOMAS! Check out more of Thomas’s work here and here.
©2012 JIM BLACKSTOCK PHOTOGRAPHY
