London in the Puddles

Here are some photographs by Gavin Hammond, of London in the Puddles. I was looking at the Open Eye Photography blog when I came across his work.

 

The first thing I noticed was the interesting viewpoints he uses - they make me feel slightly dizzy, like I'm about to fall over. I really love the idea of seeing things through puddles, and it's one I have experimented with before. I am going to London in half term, and have decided to take some Gavin Hammond-inspired photographs when I am there, if I can find any puddles!

Loretta Lux

Loretta Lux is a German fine art photographer. These are some of her photographs that I found when browsing through the back issues of Portfolio Magazine.

 

Her photographs remind me somewhat of Alice for the surrealness, and sometimes the colours, but also with the subject being mainly young girls.

Alice

Here are some excerpts from Alice by Jan Svankmejer (my favourite film in the whole world). It is an adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. Jan Svankmejer is a Czech filmmaker and artist, and Alice is a stop-motion animation film.

I think that every aspect of this film is beautiful, if a little surreal and disturbing in places. The way it's shot, the colours and textures, sounds... not to mention the fascinating stop-motion characters. Birthday money well spent.

There Is Here

Last night, my suspicions were alerted when Mum and Dad got changed into their pyjamas at 7 O'clock, and urged us to do the same. You can probably guess how I felt when we were driving back home from Grandma's, and Dad went right past our house. I pointed it out to him, but he didn't slow down. Instead, he kept on going. By this time we were all guessing where we we could possibly be going in our pyjamas. The answer was... The Sainsbury Centre for a pyiama parade! It was really fun, although we didn't win any prizes. My favourite part was just walking around the exhibitions in my jimjams. That, and seeing There Is Here - Photographs by Avi Gupta. On the way, we took a look at the toothbrush exhibition:

 One thing I noticed when walking around, was how in in the interiors of these houses small details such as these could be picked out, and in a single photograph capture the personality and mood of the place, and tell me more about it than if a picture had been taken of the entire room.

 The exhibition shows photographs of the interiors of private homes in Washington DC and Kolkata, India. Avi Gupta grew up in the Bengali community in Washington, after his parents emmigrated there from India. You can see the influence this has in is work, with photographs taken in the two locations that hold a place in his heart.

 Finally, a collection of 25 photographs of the refreshments received when working in the different locations. After seeing this, we decided to go home for hot chocolate.

Grandma's Flowers

I had just walked through the arch into my grandma's garden, when I noticed a small strip of light from the setting sun. The light fell upon these flowers, illuminating the petals - I just had to photograph them. I am really quite pleased with the effect.