Focus

Some Shots from the other evening experimenting with the idea of shooting wildly out of focus - not dissimilar to the old vasoline on a filter trick, but a different look none-the-less...

Scaffold...

Still Life

 

Shot for Ize, with Art Direction by Marcos Villalba

Featured on...

 

Styled by Nikki Seymour


Featured on www.greenmystyle.com

So then....

Since the last time I posted (over three months ago!), quite a lot has been going on..

The house move has gone brilliantly, work has been continuing at exactly the same pace, only with work on the weekends becoming more and more common, my age has increased by a year and I'm unbelievably close to my annual holiday...

Tokyo last year was an amazing experience, and exploring L.A. (and Vegas as well...) should be equally as compelling.. Not only was it an amazing trip, but it ended up changing the base of my folio, and I think the U.S. will be more of the same...

I'll post some recent bits up here soon, as well...

Narrative

Fabulous piece in The Guardian today by Paul Schrader discussing narrative and posing the question 'Have videogames and reality TV given us narrative exhaustion?'. For those of you who don't know the name, Schrader is a writer of some of the most iconic films of the 20th century, such as Taxi Driver, American Giggolo and Raging Bull.

Reading it got me to think that the same points are relevant to photography - that the average viewer has seen so much visual material that they already have 'boxes' in their mind to place it into and the value of originality, as well as "Write for formats based on predictability and repetition (soap operas, crime procedurals, superhero cartoons), repackage old plots with new stars and search for that elusive "original" twist that makes an old storyline fresh".

Sound familiar?

The full story can be found here.

Poor Form...

... from me of late when it comes to posting up here.

I've been manically busy at work, am about to move house, and at the current rate, it looks like I won't have a true day off for another three weeks...

On the flip side though, I have finally gotten around to joining the Tate and National Portrait Gallery, so expect the occasional critique of their shows from me...

Car Shots

Some car shots from the other day....

St Paul's

Shot in St Paul's the other night whilst toying with a Fuji S5... For those who are interested the camera reminds me of a digital back in terms of how far you can push colour corrections and exposure....

Don't you just hate it...

..... When Apple Mac's die on you. I think my Powerbook has finally gone to the big laptop bag in the sky.

New Website

www.tomhartford.co.uk/

Off a pier...

On a pier

More Tokyo....

Thoughts on these? Please comment or email me (tom(at)tomhartford(dot)co(dot)uk)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I'm sorry that this has been a long time coming, but here's the first post of 2009... My blog is something that has suffered a lot lately - I've been really busy with work, playing tennis, getting hangover, and having unscheduled trips to A&E caused by Football...

I'm shooting my first test of the year this weekend, as well as finally trying to get my website updated (something I didn't get hcance to do at Christmas, although I did get chance to do my Portfolios, to the delight of Epson and Hanehmuhle shareholders everywhere...).

Anyway, enough of the ramblings, Happy New Year to you all.

Night Night...

Here are a series of shots from out the windows of the various places I stayed in whilst I was in Tokyo....

Happy... Sacks

Whilst I'm editing/retouching my Japan work, I thought I'd share this just to be getting on with... These are the result of a shoot I did a couple of weeks ago for Wieden & Kennedy for a product Called Happy Sacks. They're available in a range of variants and were the brainchild of Tom Seymour. For more info, and to buy them, click here and scroll down the page to the link.

Happy Landings..

... I'm off to Tokyo for two weeks now - expect to see pictures on here when I get back.

Old School - No2

Following on from my last post, this another selection from the archive... This was a collaboration between me and the lovely Joe Bamber for 2007 D&AD Student Awards. The brief we undertook was to produce a factsheet showing the cradle-to-grave journey that a white good goes on... And this is what we came up with.

Old School - No1

I was having the obligatory clearout of stuff at my parents the other day and chanced across these portraits I shot right at the start of my second year at uni - I remember really liking these at the time, and thinking that I should maybe redo these but with a totally new twist on them sometime in the near future (I've recently acquired a stack of 10x8 film which might be handy for them)...

The models were friends from around the college, housemates, tutors etc.. Until I'd dug these out I'd forgotten that I'd ever taken them, and now I'm very tempted to put three of them (the top three) into my folio... Thoughts?