I wrote some words about London Underground that you can read here if you want to.

Looking at Moni’s photos is like stepping into a fairytale. She creates an exquisitely quaint dreamland, lit by milky sunlight and peppered with sunkissed greenery. These pictures look like snippets of a wonderful forest adventure, of jumping over streams and picking berries. Moni also has some beautifully simple self-portraits bathed in white light, marvellously capturing the texture of the hair and the delicate position of tentative fingers. I have always been mesmerised by the beauty of hands: the flexibility of the dexterous digits, the creases in the skin, the fumbling action of the fingers when they are unsure of themselves.

These pictures are all about the gorgeous intricacies of life. The light, the growth, the complex experience of a living organism. The world seeps in from all edges, vast and unwieldy and demanding attention. What I take from Moni’s photos is a sense of peace, a fundamental calm within the chaos of our world. They make me feel tiny, as if buzzing around with little wings, skimming puddles and resting on leaves, looking out shyly at the plane of vision with infant wonder as the dust dances around my rosy, peeking face.

Photography is, more often than not, the endeavour to capture and thus make sense of a dizzying world, and Moni does that well, and very sweetly, with these dreamy photos.

All photos taken from Moni’s Flickr.

Rosanna Jones is an experimental photographer heavily interested in portrait and fashion photography. Her darkroom fiddling, heavily applied to one particular photo series of hers, really brings her work into it’s own vast space and blows a heavy breath of liveliness into the images in question.

Her Darkroom series is dark and messy, just like life. Threads of human life, fraying at the edges, left in a damp attic for years to wither and crumble. Like a life abandoned or a life wrecked, the photos carry with them a curious narrative, not an explicit story, but a visceral sense of life and living and all the personal mysteries held within. The rich blacks and spooky grey tones render the pictures as if they were peeks into caves or wells, with secrets and complexities lurking deep inside them. The messy scratches and marks call up all those uncertain emotions we know so well; confusion, anxiety, fear. They bring to the surface of the images a sense of a life being slowly erased, an allegory for the effect of time and history on individuals: we will all fade, after a while.

Blurry, grainy realities and splodges of mystery fluids with double exposures creeping out from underneath give these photos a feeling of the occult, too. Her subjects seem lost in a bubbling ether of witchcraft and dark leaves, though even in their menacing surroundings their humanity seeps through inevitably, leaving an unstoppable imprint of themselves.

Photos via Cargo Collective.

So often I feel like my art is lacking, like it’s devoid of emotion, expression, anything. Artist anguish is something every creative person has to overcome, but how? Sometimes looking at other people’s art makes everything worse and you’ll end up stewing in morose jealousy as you desperately grasp for something to pull you out of your miserable slump. Beating that jealousy can be a daunting task, but at some point you’ve got to find some self-acceptance.

One of the most effective methods of negating artist anguish, for me, is to take a step back and think about why I make art. It’s all very self-indulgent, and at the core is an activity by which I replenish and solidify myself and my twitching identity through the production of something. Whether messy and childlike, or detailed and calculated, my art is an expression and it should be made with that in mind, regardless of quality, medium, aesthetic, etc. It is mine and it is for me. If it’s awful I can take the textures made and re-use them, or slop paint on top and doodle new and nonsensical things when it dries (or before it dries).

I think maybe it’s good to approach art without thinking about it. Sometimes thoughts are too intrusive, and destroy your enjoyment of a thing. If you don’t become lucid and enjoy your art-making, then the chances are that you won’t get much joy out of your art. Perhaps many artists would benefit from drawing up a manifesto, a note about what art is and always should be for them, to come back to whenever the anguish hits.

Here’s mine, as a list:

Toyokazu Nagano’s photos are sweet, perfectly combining a dream-like palette with fascinating story-telling. Each frame seems to burst with life, sucking you into the lives within. Nagano crafts these little stories elegantly through sets of pictures, taking the viewer’s hand and leading them across a soft, pastel landscape. His portraits stand out in their effortless capturing of personality through simple expression and composition. It’s as if one is looking into a different world.

Nagano’s photos also showcase the everyday, and serve as a collection of the myriad cultural normalcies and nuances of his life and the lives of his subjects. They remind me of sitting at a train station and watching all the strangers walk by. Little snippets of lives collecting into bright, cute, and humourous narratives. Most of all I love the many adorable pictures of children laughing, jumping, playing, and generally being lovely.

I love photos and photo series that concentrate on the normal, the everyday. They remind me of what photography is really all about; time. These kids will grow up in the real world, but in these pictures they’ll stay the same forever. The places, the colours, the expressions - all these things will stay the same, bound together in an image forever. Their shared palette of milky Earth tones is like a choral lullaby for the eyes, lulling one into a sense of cloudy wonder. If I’m ever missing, look for me there, in the grass, and the sky, and the light.

All photos taken from Toyokazu Nagano’s photostream.

Prints taking up too much space? Old compositions eyeing you up from an overflowing drawer? Why not try cutting them up and turning them into a nice new work of art?

What you’ll need: A selection of prints, scissors, glue, and possibly some blu-tack.

Step 1: First of all you’ll need to pick out a good picture to use as your background. I looked through some landscape shots and chose a nice picture of Big Ben surrounded by a bright blue sky.

Step 2: Next, find the other bits that you’re going to stick on, and cut them out. You could use multiple images of the same subject (like I have), you could work from a theme like body parts or flowers, or you could be more spontaneous and erratic in your selection and just see what your final image turns into. Here I’ve chosen a series of pictures of a Cornetto.

Step 3: Here’s the fun part! Arrange your various bits and pieces onto your background, using blu-tack if you wish to temporarily affix them, and watch your masterpiece unfold.

Happy collaging!

An integral component of photography is its ability to record moments of history. It’s the enchanting power of the camera, enthralling us since photography’s conception, that drives many of us onwards in our individual quests as photographers. Most of us feel drawn to this idea of capturing moments forever, creating our own personal museums of images and their attached feelings. 

After historical images are captured comes the question of how they are going to be displayed, if displayed at all. Historical photographs connect the personal with the widespread, the social aspects of the time or place inevitably intertwined with people’s personal responses.

And with evolving technologies come new ways of displaying artefacts to the world. 

I found a wonderful blog that showcases some fascinating images. It concentrates on gothic subcultures around the world in the 1980s, when “goth” was at it’s peak, at its most raw and earnest. The photos come from many different countries, and many different people, but it’s interesting to see the fluid connection of human consciousness shared between all of them.

It’s a wonderful way of cataloguing a culture that has long since expanded into a vague dribble of a messy collage of what it once was. In a saturated digital world, it can be difficult to find what you really want, but when you do find it, it’s glorious. May my most sincere thank yous find their way to the internet librarians of the world.

See more at nowthisisgothic.tumblr.com.

I got my Lomo Oktomat for Christmas in 2009 and snapped away during the holiday. I thought it would be a great camera to have because you would technically be getting more photos, as each frame contains the 8 mini photos that make up one picture. I thought the design was cute too. I loved the bright red of the main body and the colourful bits around the lenses.

My first thought was that it would be a great camera to mace funny faces at, because it would record the movement, so this photo was made:

I love the way it came out so dark.

The main great thing about the Lomo Oktomat is the fluidity it allows you in your photo-taking. Any movement is captured perfectly, so you can get great shots of fast-moving subjects, such as pets or vehicles. It brings a certain livelihood to the images to see a sequence of action captured, and then of course you can make them into nifty little animations, like so:

(I used PicSlice and Iaza to make these)

Here are the shots from my experimental first Okto roll.

Unfortunately I only managed to get this one roll out of it before it stopped working. I’m not sure why, but future rolls would come out completely blank. I figured that light must be coming in somewhere and exposing the film. It’s a real shame because I loved the camera a lot, but I’ve heard a lot of Lomo Oktomat owners saying that their Oktomat broke, so perhaps it’s time for Lomo to make a sturdier and more reliable Oktomat 2? I’m sure it would be a welcome and celebrated improvement. For now though, I’ll stick with the Disderi Robot 3 for all my multi-lense needs (I do quite fancy an action sampler though).

Nestled in Friars Street in Stirling lies a cute little music shop stuffed to the brim with various merchandise, and occasionally housing a small cupboard leading to Narnia.

They stock a nice selection of comics and some amusingly misspelled patches that I’m told are from Germany, along with what they claim is the biggest collection of vinyl in Scotland.

By fortune of being related to the lunatics running the place, whenever I’m around I get to drink tea, choose music to play (Split Enz 24 hours a day), and try to coax Mr. Tumnus out of the cupboard.

The staff are mostly friendly as long as you don’t try to take away their apples.

So if you’re around, do pop in. Even if it’s just to have a good chortle about this picture:

Europa Music on Facebook.

Sparks are one of the weirdest and most exciting bands to enter the world. Look at them. Look at them in these plentiful images of yore.

Sparks are not only musical purveyors, masters of glittering rock synth disco glam topped with cream and kittens and satirical lyrics, but they are also sexy, sexy fashion icons.

Made in 1970, Sparks were woven from strands of moustaches and self awareness and hand-washed before being delicately hand-painted by moths. Cameras quickly heard the call of the synth and hastily cantered towards Ron and Russell Mael to record the sweet curls and folksy jumpers of the trilling Russell, and the cold gaze of the business dentist Ron, so that we might lap at the luminous and effervescent sounds they produced on a celestial Monday.

Their graphical output causes many a household pet to cock its head and stare, transfixed, as profound realizations of all of space and time peel from each image and pour like warm milk into their overwhelmed minds. For this reason, Sparks were declared illegal in 1983 and anyone caught with Sparks paraphernalia was fed to Toyah Wilcox. Widespread protesting soon forced the ruling bodies to accept that Mael fever was here to stay.

Behold, the finest analogue photographs ye ever shall view, in which we see the glorious artistic splendor of the Mael brothers at their highest level of terrific-ness. Russell Mael is shown in exquisitely fanciful patterned jumpers with his bush of mighty curls dancing lightly on top, and Ron Mael wears his eyebrows carefully straightened and irons his legs to achieve that formidable linear style that people are so often talking about.

Thank you Sparks, for all you have given us.

All pictures were taken from Sparks on Last.fm

My first camera was a big blue Fisher Price camera when I was four years old, in 1995. I was given it to record my trip to Florida with my Dad and Grandma. I don’t remember the holiday very much, aside from becoming completely enamored with Froot Loops, but fortunately I have the few pictures I took to act as memories.

I vaguely remember Sea World (I got myself a nice cuddly toy killer whale), and I have an extremely fuzzy memory of the ET ride.

A month after the holiday, my dad was dead, and analogue photographs became an integral part of my memories of him, tying them together like visual threads.

In any case, cameras had been a firmly embedded part of my early life. As expected, my family recorded everything and now I can look back on the dated furniture and terrible haircuts with a wistful sort of joy.

I even had a posh baby shot done:

I now present you with a progression of my growth from pink-faced baby to grump-filled adult:

I always very much enjoyed snapping away with carefree abandon, and as anticipated, I have grown into quite the photography-obsessed adult, occasionally ridiculed for the sheer amount of plastic cameras bulging in my bag at any one time.

Disappointed with an abundance of rubbish prints of shots that went wrong? Building up a shelf full of photographic embarrassment? Never fear, here’s a way to make use of those sad photos.

As a poor unemployed artist with an expensive analogue photo habit, every bad shot reminds me of the neat little hole it’s making in my wallet, and simultaneously I yearn for delicious boards and canvases to butter with acrylics to my heart’s desire. So what better way to get rid of those displeasing prints than to turn them into something I can be proud of?

All you’ll need are some correction fluid and a pen or two (markers are best for the glossy photo paper). Simply dump some correction fluid on your photo and tip your photo or use the correction fluid’s brush to form a pleasing shape. Then just leave it to dry. Sometimes this step alone is enough to transform your photo into something lovely.

Once it’s dry, just draw something else on top! You could also incorporate collage (handy for when a section of a photo turned out great), or anything you like. Let your artistic side loose, and don’t despair at bad photos anymore. Every one is an opportunity.