Cold evening on Place Flagey. The lights in the church looked welcoming but I’m really not trying to make any big statement here!
Flagey Church
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Mr SMART
Julek Jurowicz is a bit of a celebrity in my circle. He co-founded SMART – a non profit organisation which handles contracts for artists and other people working on short contracts. Thanks to SMART people like me don’t have to pay through the nose or suffocate under a pile of paperwork in order to work independently. They also publish helpful guides, provide trainings and fight for the rights of those on short term contracts. It’s not perfect – there is still a fair amount of paperwork and my salary is not always paid quite on time…but all in all, it’s a great idea/help that is being rolled out in France and will no doubt spread further. Julek is ridiculously busy and has been doing this for 20 years but still lights up when discussing the latest fight with the national employment agency involving artists’ right to subsidies. Sam the dog is the office mascot.
2012 it is
Happy new year! I hope it’s a good one (and that the Mayas had it wrong). Back in comfy Brussels after a really nice xmas – I may have to stop wine and food in 2012 though!
A selection of shots from the Lot et Garonne and Dordogne – everyone should visit (and when they do, stay at my parents B&B!). I also managed to catch up with François & Aurélie who were xmassing nearby… we picked a half way spot on the map and ended up in La Roche Chalais where the one restaurant will stuff you to the gills for 12 euros – what more could you ask for?
Seasons Greetings
I’m cruising down to the South West of France tomorrow to do the whole Christmas, family, overeating, under exercising, constant state of mild drunkenness thing… should be nice. I’ll also be meeting my newest nephew for the first time (the one who waited for me to leave Madrid to be born, so I’m not sure he’s quite as keen on meeting me come to think about it…).
I won’t be blogging while I’m down there but I will be shooting so I’ll have a bunch of material for when I get back. I’m also going to post ’11 from 2011′ to kick off next year – I’m quite looking forward to selecting the best moments. It’s been a pretty good year.
In the meantime the weather has been pretty mild in Brussels but we did have one evening of proper snow… so that’s my xmas card of sorts.
Working Hard
I like the style of these meeting shots from a gig last week. I wanted to make sure I grabbed some good portraits and edited them to look modern. I will get back to the daily blog format thing beginning 2012 but I’ve been making a lot of changes to how I organise, store and edit images, all improvement I think so while I get to grips with all of that I’m holding off a little. You can check out the whole meeting set on flickr.
Transparency International Headshots
I’ve always been a big admirer of Transparency International – which has the vital mission of fighting corruption in order to create change in the lives of those most affected. It was cool to shoot their headshots and meet the (very photogenic as it turns out) staff. Posting a couple of outakes.
TEDx Brussels
It was pretty fun to shoot the TEDx event in Brussels last month – the theme was ‘a day in the deep future’ (as in 50 years from now, when I could possibly still be alive, how exhausting!). Thought provoking stuff about singularity, the future of health, cars, open source and so on. Standout moments: John Bohannon – Dance your PHD, Peter Hinssen – The tiger and the rock and Leila Janah – The microwork revolution. I finally got around to setting up a flickr account which may or may not be useful, I’ll test it for a bit and find out – more TEDx shots over here.
Pink Ribbon
Breast cancer awareness month rolls around in October each year. Sanoma media, with it’s numerous publications, reaches over 60% of the female readership in Belgium and the ‘Pink Ribbon magazine’ is distributed for free alongside all those publications in order to promote breast cancer awareness. This year, the Pink Ribbon team decided to build a website and keep the campaign rolling throughout the year. I was asked to set up a temporary studio at a recent event and add to the ongoing collection of such shots on the facebook page (you can even upload your own shot by downloading the cover art from the website).
Some Faces
I took a little break after hitting the one year mark… a few weeks of leaving the house without feeling guilty if I didn’t bring my camera, time to redo my website, make it simpler, faster and so on – mostly thanks to my brother, James (he makes really good music, you should buy some). Anyway, it’s not quite ready… still figuring out a good system for ordering prints – should take a couple of weeks. In the meantime, you can always email me a request. The last month has been pretty busy, mostly client work – I’ll post a small selection tomorrow, when I’ll be fully done with my editing. For now, here are a few faces I’ve met this month.
November 6 2011
Et Voila – this blog is a year old today. I’m quite pleased about it really… I haven’t posted every day religiously but I’ve managed to drag a lot of shots out of my daily wanderings.. which is nice, and the blog is definitely a motivator, also nice.
Anyway, there are 30x40cm prints to be won by the first three people who send me the correct answer (do not post publicly though!). I’m sending you on a little hunt through some of my favorite shots of the last year… each photo will have a clue (in bold) to the next one. I will give you a year and an event, you will need to find the right day and month and move on to the photo posted on that day.
A little tip: you don’t need to manually cruise through all the shots… there are the categories to the left, and, better still, a search box (if you enter August 18 for example, you should find the shot faster!).
on this day in 2008 – Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, the largest bankruptcy filing in US history