Winter Blues

I love how blue seems to creep in as a major colour of Winter. My Winter blues has kicked in now the snow has all dissapeared and sadly melted away. Without forgetting the true meaning of this this time of year, I adore how brands + retail go all out, to cash in on the religious event.

I was able to brave the worst of the snow and drove up to Birmingham for my annual pilgrimage to UK's largest outdoor German Market, where every stall looked like Santas Grotto!

I did however, manage to take many digital photos in the white stuff as well as getting to grips with my recently acquired Canon AE-1 film camera. This oldschool relic has a multitude of shutter speeds + exposure settings that have been perfect at this time of year to capture Christmas lights.

Seasons Greetings.

the bigger the better

This image has been a wallpaper on one of the mac's in the design studio since September and has always caught my eye. So I finally decided to look into the work of American photographer Greg Crewdson. His style and techniques are well known for being large scale and rather elaborate with most focusing on American small town suburbs and rural neighbourhoods. He brings the use of light into the equation due to his fascination of the 'poetic condition of twilight', which give a distinct signiture to his photography. Each image is a staged scene with actors on a large set, a crew and the use of lighting and other special effects like fake rain, smoke and dry ice, all affecting how you see the image.
His collection “Beneath the Roses” came together with work from over six years and was completed in 2008. The image below is of Massachusetts in Winter (obviously) and is hanging in the V&A photography gallery. It is needed to be seen, as this small image does not do it justice. With so much going on, details and aspects of the image can be easily missed. So well brought together, his techniques would prove to be powerful images for an advertising campaign.
You can clearly see from this small selection of his photography, that a lot of time and work goes into setting up the scenes. On a much less grand a scale is a small creeative project I brought together last month using a few Swansea Met Art and Design Students. Below you can see the effort that has gone into staging this image, that was a part of a small series that were meant to play a trick on the viewer. Let me know what you think!