Night Crawling in Bristol

      A few weeks ago I took an online course in Low Light photography on Lynda.com. I had been meaning to go out in the dark for some time but I am not really one for wandering around alone at night especially hauling a rather large expensive camera! Last night I went to visit a friend who lives down in Stokes Croft in Bristol. On my way out I took some photos of the plants and shrubbery around my house. 
       These first images were super super dark and blurry, I had to push my ISO right up to 6400 to get anything while my camera was handheld. Also the white balance on Auto was terrible. In hindsight I should have had a fiddle with this when taking the images but was kind of embarrassed skulking around our estate in the dark so I didn't take many pictures. The joys of working in RAW meant I could push the white balance completely in another direction without damaging the image too much and it was crazy what came out of some very super orange images. 

       Here are a couple of the final images, they were quite soft in the end and pretty grainy I think next time I will use a tripod and longer exposure. 

       I then drove over to my friends house, this area of Bristol is known for graffiti and there is some pretty amazing artwork around. I didn't venture far but I got a few interesting images. These mostly just needed brightening up, I had less issues with the white balance so I just had to push the contrast a bit to bring out the details in the graffiti. 

       I would like to do this more but I think I might get a friend to come with so I don't feel so worried about wandering about in the dark! There are some pretty interesting streets in Bristol which would make for some great photos. 

Woman Magazine Circa 1954

My last post featured some very wonderful old typography books from the days when letterpress was the norm. This blog features some more very retro imagery and type from an amazing magazine found in my grans flat. The "Worlds Greatest Weekly For Women" dated March 20th 1954 has survived over 60 years and has some truly retro, beautiful imagery which I thought I should share!

First we start with the slightly sexist, housewife orientated imagery, which truly shows the era and how much things have changed.

God I love the fashion in these, sometimes I wish my work uniform could be replaced with circle skirts and blouses!

Moving on to slightly creepy children and babies.

And a clown...

These are some of my favourite bits of type from the magazine:

So much retro goodness! Let me know which of these are your favourites :) 

Vintage Letterpress Goodness

I have always had a love for the craftsmanship that goes into old things. I have nothing against new and contemporary design, but I think there is something about things which have been around for a long time that gets me intrigued! 

My grandfather Frank Maskell worked as a typesetter, I always remember him noticing mistakes in newspapers after all the years he had spent proof reading. I also remember them having type cases on their walls for many years which held various nik-naks along with some beautiful pieces of lead and wooden type.

I never really appreciated type until I was half way through my degree. Plymouth has one of the biggest collections of lead type in the country, and while I only had a couple of sessions in that room I loved all the mechanics which went into making even just a few words of type! 

I have inherited some beautiful things from my grandparents, I am hoping to do a few blog posts to share them but this one starts with type. More specifically - vintage font books, I love the smooth paper and slightly faded pages in these. I also love the huge variety of fonts which you can flick through for inspiration.

Love these decorative borders!

HOT14 Plymouth Illustration Show

I took a trip down to Plymouth last week to catch up with some uni friends and check out this years degree show. It was interesting to go back and see the work all the third years have been making to motivate myself to start something new. I am currently in the process of moving house which is taking up a lot of time and thinking space but I have a nice little dresser in my new room which I will be turning into a desk I hope :)

I find it interesting going to these shows because there is such a wide variety of drawing styles and themes. I chose my course because they encourage you to follow the style you work most comfortably in, rather than getting you to try what they like and criticising your work otherwise (which I have heard from some people). I have linked to the people whose work I recognise, comment if yours is here and you would like me to put a credit under!

Sammy Arnault-Ham

Lydia Coventry

Lucy Feebs - wish I could bend like these awesome ladies

Ross Ingliewicz (one of my favourites!)

Hope you liked these, over the next couple of weeks I will be bringing you some pictures of the product design and photography work to continue this series - let me know what you think of these!