David Emery Online

Olympus and Panasonic have just announced a new type of sensor for digital cameras, which is probably the biggest innovation in this space we’ve seen in a very long time. It means that they can now make interchangeable lens cameras without the bulky mirror box, meaning (hopefully) we will get much smaller cameras that retain the image quality (and lens swap-ability) of an DSLR.

Photographer Phillip Toledano documents a series of photographs of his elderly father; beautiful and heartbreaking.

Yesterday I popped down to DPMHI in Soho to check out The Cool Kids ‘Bake Sale’ – think an in-store, but with cookies and beer (what event isn’t better with the addition of cookies and beer?). It was – of course – great fun, and was all in aid of promoting The Cool Kids’ album ‘The Bake Sale’ (hence the cookies…) which is out in August.

The Cool Kids aren’t the normal indie-shmindie that normally graces these pages; they’re hip hop, and good hip hop at that. It’s not a genre that I normally frequent in quite frankly, but ‘The Bake Sale’ is one of my most listened to albums of the last couple of months. It’s got groove – if you’re not normally a hip hop listener I heartily recommend it.

Here’s the video for ‘Black Mags’ as a little sampler – for more check out their MySpace:

Of course, I took a few photos while I was there – need to get a wide angle lens though…

Regular readers (and irritated friends/co-workers) may know that this year I’m undertaking a photography exercise called Project365. The concept is simple: everyday, I take a photo. Come rain or shine, illness or busyness each and everyday a photo must be taken.

So far, I’ve managed it.

Just.

Unsurprisingly, some days it’s harder then others. The inspiration isn’t there maybe, or the opportunity never arises. More days then not are almost exactly the same for me, on a general scale, as I imagine they are for most people; wake up, go to work, go for lunch, do more work, go home. Repeat.

This isn’t so much of a problem to start with – each of these different activities has quite a few photos in them; your walk to work, the immediate area around your desk (and your colleagues – sorry again!), the park you have lunch in etc. Then their are the less regular traditional photo opportunities to mix things up with – mostly gigs in my case.

However, after about 3 months or so the burn kicks in. You’ve taken all the easy pictures, the ones that don’t take any effort. You find yourself in a panic at about 11:30 in the evening prowling round your flat, camera in hand, desperately searching for something you haven’t photographed yet (or to photograph in a different way – maybe I didn’t use flash last time I photographed my iPhone?).

So in that spirit I thought that recognition of this bizarre facet of the human psyche is in order:

Project365 Was Difficult Today

It’s just a Flickr group for the moment (not enough time to do anything more fancy; got photos to take…), so if you’re a fellow Project365-er please join a submit your ‘difficult’ photos – I know you’ve all got them (just for clarification, difficult doesn’t necessarily mean bad, just difficult). And as some form of inspiration, here are some of mine:

Simple but perfect – a blog showcasing exceptional news photography, with nice and large photos.

Well, I’ve been a bit busy recently and for that I apologise. Hopefully now I may well be past the main hump of stuff that has kept me far too occupied, of which I will show you some of shortly. Of course, every time I think things may get quieter they get busier, but it’s far better to be busy, isn’t it?

It’s not all work work work though – there’s been plenty gig going and music watching eating into my time as well. Last night was bar far and away the highlight though, with Bon Iver playing St Giles Church in central London. I’ve gone on about Bon Iver here before and with good reason – his album, ‘For Emma Forever Ago’ is probably my favourite album of the year, packed full of amazingness (which should really be a word).

It’s a beautiful piece of work.

Somehow though, live it manages to be even better; I’d go as far as to say that yesterday may well be my favourite gig of the year – if not the last few years, for that matter – with only Radiohead at the BBC running it close. The setting – a proper, active church – was perfect, and the audience was hanging on every note; you could have heard a pin drop. Not only that, but live the songs seem to take on even more power and more emotion, helped out by the two other musicians (Bon Iver is actually a guy named Justin Vernon) pitching in with three part harmonies.

I’ve never heard such an amazing reaction from an audience as well – it was verging on a standing ovation after every song. Particularly impressive when you consider that the audience had a significant amount of media and press amongst its number – never a set of people that seem to care to much at a gig (although that was no doubt helped by the lack of a bar – it’s a church!).

He’s back playing in London in September – I can’t recommend it highly enough.

So the Great Escape 2008 has well and truly been done. It was unsurprisingly great fun; the music was good, my panel talk was very interesting and stimulating and it was great to meet up with lots of people (even if I did dash back to London a little early so didn’t spend quite enough time with any of them).

Of the bands seen, I think Fanfarlo and The Futureheads at Digital on Thursday were probably the highlights – Fanfarlo’s indie pop gets better every time I see it and it was great to see a band like Futureheads in such a small, intimate venue.

As always, here are some photos – you can see all of them on Flickr:

Fanfarlo

The Futureheads

Dead Kids

Late Of The Pier

One of the more interesting opportunities that cropped up recently – and contributed to the distinctly lax attitude I’ve seemingly been taking recently with decent length blog posts – was to photograph behind the scenes at the shoot for the new Nick Caves and the Bad Seeds video. It was unsurprisingly immense fun, even more so because not only did it have the aforementioned Nick C. and co in it, but a host of other famous names including Beth Orton, Will Self, that guy from Green Wing, Andy from EastEnders and Peaches Geldof:

That is by far and away my favourite photo I’ve taken, and I’m still trying to get over the oddness of being in the ladies loos at a seedy club in Soho on a Sunday afternoon taking photos of Peaches Geldof…

I’ve taken this opportunity to add a Photography section to this site as it seemed like I needed somewhere to highlight all this stuff going on – this taking photos lark seems to be getting serious now, which is nice. If you need a photographer (music related really – I’m not doing weddings…) let me know.

I would love to embed the final video as a nice way to end this little self-congratualtory ramble, but it doesn’t seem to have found itself online in an embedable form yet so you’ll have to make do viewing it on The Sun’s website (yes, that ‘The Sun’) which is also using a rather large version of that photo above.

It’s all a bit strange really…

Very interesting article on the cover for the Editors latest album. I’m not particularly a fan of theirs, but the cover and the other bits of photography used are really quite nice.

I’m interested to see what the Flickr team can come up with when it comes to video; I think Vimeo comes closest to getting it ‘right’ but there’s still a lot of room for Flickr-style improvement.