PEDERSEN

My very good friend and occasional employer, Mr. Aaron Pedersen, writes/posts/blogs on a far more clever and interesting one than mine entitled "Amateurs Borrow, Professionals Steal." He has an online magazine launching soon, ATTN Magazine, and also runs the Edmonton half of 3ten Studios, where I play with Wacom tablets and make obscure 80's Mancunian music jokes.

Flickrista

Flickrista.com is a website dedicated to showcasing the best of fashion photography posted by members of the photo-sharing website Flickr (as if I had to explain that). Photos posted range from simple to no lighting set-ups, to large sets, heavy make-up and tons of photoshopping. A great place to check out the competition and curse at them with jealousy via your computer monitor.

Chris Heads

If you've ever had to experience castings before, you know well how draining they can be. Chris Heads seems to have a great time traveling the world and documenting the gorgeous girls who appear at his casting calls or go-sees in his appropriately titled blog, Go-Sees. He also keeps another blog, 365, where he showcases a more "behind the scenes" look at his life as a photographer.  His prestigious client list currently includes: Harper's Bazaar, Vanity Fair, Elle Italia/US/UK, Glamour, GQ, The Guardian, and a "few" others... Easily two of the most entertaining blogs to come from a fashion photographer.

Terry Richardson for Pirelli

Terry Richardson shot the new 2010 Pirelli Calendar. Here's a pretty cool video they released on the making of it.....Plus, Lily Cole is in it. Sigh.

The Making of the 2010 Pirelli Calendar from Rafael Rubira on Vimeo.

Pretty Much Neverything

I quite honestly ordered this book almost 4 years ago with some Canon points card online. It'd be nice if it was actually released one day. The good news is their Stern portfolio has been released in hardcover and that should tide me over for now....

Kate Moss is Not My Lover

Kate Moss, Inez Van Lamsweerde, Vinoodh Matadin and a little Michael Jackson......

Go-Sees

An interview with Juergen Teller talking about his famous book "Go-Sees."

Matt Irwin

Matt Irwin seems to be popping absolutely everywhere lately. Dazed, Love, Vogue covers, Victoria's Secret and judging by some of his latest "tweets," an upcoming Hermes campaign. I've been a big fan for a few years now and he just seems to keep getting bigger and better. Check out his blog, which is a mix of mid-nineties music references and great photos. I particularly enjoyed a post about the very menacing brain Krang....Time to go watch National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.

Taschen is re-issuing Helmut Newton's gigantic and insanely expensive book "Sumo" in a smaller size and about ten times cheaper. Hurray!

The Face

Rumour has it my favourite magazine is going to be put back in print soon....

While we're on the subject of Mario Testino, I came across this CNN episode of Revealed featuring the man himself. It's posted on Youtube by someone named Bruce Weber....THE Bruce Weber? I have no idea, but it would be pretty funny.

Booooks

I recently picked up a few new books while in London and here at home. First one of two is a portfolio for Mario Testino, by Stern Publishing. This is the first one that I've managed to get ahold of (that I've wanted), and I love it. They act almost like a giant magazine of the featured photographers work, under 100 pages, and a few ads in the front of the book and on the back cover, which actually just seems more funny than annoying for some reason. There are tons of "issues" and as far as I can tell almost all my favourite photographers have at least one dedicated to them including Peter Lindbergh.....

This particular Peter Lindbergh book is published by Assouline Publishing out of New York. Though small in size the book is quite thick and features selected editorial work from 1996-1998, occasionally accompanied by the relative article.

And last, but definitely not least, is my favourite (and most expensive!!) purchase, Guy Bourdin's
"A Message for You," by Steidl Publishing. It comes in two volumes, the first compromised entirely of his career-long muse, Nicolle Meyer. I'll be honest, I didn't realize it was the same model being used in many of his shots but seeing them all together she becomes more and more recognizable each time she appears while still managing to look completely different in every shot (if that makes any sense). The second volume is made up of Mr. Bourdin's polaroids, sketches, contact sheets, and letters (hence the the title of the book), and gives almost a voyeuristic view of his career. Almost, if you can read french. If you're a Guy Bourdin fan, this book is without a doubt worth the hefty price-tag.

Bren Bren

My dear friend Brennan Lloyd came by Edmonton for a couple days about a month ago and I took some pictures of him and his busted up shoulder. When Bren isn't busy modelling for and hanging out with Ryan McGinley, or recording and making music, he's running his new pedi-cab service in Vancouver, Bren's Bikes. Definitely one of my most random friends and favourite people.

Best Day Ever! (involving another man)

I met Rankin in London today at Rankin Live! Probably the best thing ever.

Dearly Departed

Rollie recently stopped by my house so I could take some pictures of him before he left for the greener grass of Montreal to record.

RVCAxErin WassonxNowherefastxTomandMe

Tom has finished the edits on my photos, and here they are. They are also being featured on the RVCA Canada blog. Expect to see them in the second issue of Nowhere Fast Magazine. Thanks Dre!

Agata, Pre-Tom Gunia-ing

I'm doing a collaboration with my friend Tom Gunia for my friend Wesley's magazine nowherefastmagazine.blogspot.com. I had a new and interesting thing happen to me this roll around....Problems with my shutter. You can see at the top of the photos a black line.....that's my shutter leaf. There's a possibility this is all due to a too fast shutter speed while shooting with the flash, I really hope that's the case. Anyways, look forward to Tom's illustrations! Thanks Agata!

Two Blogs

www.purple-diary.com

I thought I'd share two blogs I really enjoy, and have somewhat of a relation to mine (minus the success, fame, talent.....ok not so similar but I like them). The first being that of Purple Magazine's creator, Olivier Zahm. He posts almost daily from the looks of it, and it's mainly a diary of just him and his famous friends in fashion or art going to afterparties or getting naked. Apparently he's using a Canon G9, and does a more than sufficient job of taking some enjoyable pictures.

www.hedislimane.com/diary

Hedi Slimane of Dior Homme fame also has a very, very well shot diary of all the amazing musicians he hangs out with, concert photos, and of course, models. I'm almost really angry at how talented he is, I don't think much more needs to be said. Also, he shoots with a Contax G2!

for the record I have ZERO permission to use these photos and both are property of the respective owners. don't sue me!

A Couple Videos for Sunday

Staying in the same vain, I found this video of Terry Richardson shooting Kermit for a supreme ad a long time ago and though maybe I should share it again. Apparently the audio has been disabled, so you'll just have to imagine Black Sabbath playing in the background.



Erin Wasson x RVCA • Fall 09 Collection from RVCA on Vimeo.
I've really been enjoying Kenneth Cappello's work for a while now, thought I would share. I'm extremely jealous he gets to shoot so many rappers, I couldn't imagine anything more fun haha.
kennethcappellblog.blogspot.com

Seven Photographs That Changed Fashion

Continuing with my theme of just watching people take pictures instead of actually doing it myself, I watched "Seven Photographs That Changed Fashion" starring non-other than Rankin himself. It's a documentary following Rankin as he attempts to re-create seven photos by seven very infleuntial fashion photographers at the top of their game. You get to watch the entire process from start to finish, and see (sometimes) exactly how the image was made. It was a BBC Four documentary so at this moment I haven't been able to find it anywhere but Youtube, apparently there's a torrent floating around somewhere as well. A billion stars out of a billion.

So recently I've become somewhat obsessed with everyone's favourite fashion dandy, Mr. Karl Lagerfeld. I've watched a documentary on him and bought his book "The Lagerfeld Diet" and can honestly say he's got to be one my new favourite people. From his collections of ipods and shirt collars to his dieting advice (lose weight because you want to fit into the clothes you like, not because someone told you to....couldn't be more honest haha), he departs wisdom wherever you care to look. Even in traffic safety.

Apparently my last post has suddenly been erased so I'll do a quick rundown of what it was about because I'm far too lazy to type it out again. 2 good movies on photographers: Helmut by June is a documentary on Helmut Newton shot by his wife June using a camcorder she gave Helmut as a present and he didn't want. The most interesting part was seeing how simple the gear he uses is. Surprisingly funny. NEXT.

Life Through A Lens is a documentary on Annie Leibovitz (obviously) and is an extremely in-depth look at her life. The most interesting part of this film for me was seeing how insanely large the productions are for each of her shoots. The film goes a little far with praise from movie stars, but is overall very, very good. DONE.

If for whatever reason you can see both posts, please let me know.

Feb 8th/09 Courtenay and David

I went out to my friend Tom's on Sunday to shoot a "creative" for my portfolio. It was potentially a nightmare scenario: no make-up, no hair, no stylist, no SHOES. These are some photos from it, completely unedited. You might notice there aren't many shots including feet....
Shot on Fujicolour Pro 160 on a Contax G2 with a 28mm/2.8 and a reflector.

Boogie

A few books came in for me yesterday by a photographer named Boogie. From what I remember reading, he was born in Serbia and later moved to Brooklyn, which is where two of these books were shot. They are all b&w and really, really grimey, especially "It's All Good," where there are numerous shots of people shooting up, smoking crack, or holding guns. Don't ask me why I have a morbid curiousity with this stuff, I think I just need to see real pictures of it so the next time so the next time I'm at a bar and someone says "Hey Jan, wanna go smoke a rock of crack and shoot up some hey-ron?" I'll know better and respond "No thanks, I'll stick to my Vodka Slimes and Jagerbombzzzz." But seriously he's got two other books (they haven't come in yet for me) , go buy them. They're shaped similar to the old Garfield books, which makes them a bitch to fit properly in a bookshelf, but completely worth it.
http://www.artcoup.com/

Todos Santos 08/09

There were wild cattle and horses everywhere, and nowhere to run. This bull was far more uninterested in us then the pack of horses running at us down a one lane dirt road. The weirdest part was they actually stopped, moved off the road, waited for us to pass, then continued on. I would've just ran us over to be honest.

This is actually someone's yard, located right beside a couple broken down cars and a burnt out house, right in the middle of town.

Roof of burnt down house. Holding up well it seems.

Ice cream! Don't think I ever saw this place open, along with most of any other business within the town anytime in the afternoon. They take their siestas very seriously here, so if you want to eat at a local restaurant don't bother between the hours of 12pm to about 8pm.

This giant dandy had the brightest red pants I've ever seen, and was extremely tall.

Bust old house.

Police, also taking a siesta.

Traveling family of hippies outside the church. I didn't hate them as much as I hate regular hippies because they seemed extremely sincere about the whole thing.

Roof of the church. I always take shots like this, I don't know why. I like roofs.

I think this was the only fully Buddhist/Scientology temple in the entire town.

Johnny buying a hat he soon after started destroying so it didn't look new. We thought it might keep every third person from thinking we had any money and trying to sell us a bunch of Mexican themed garbage, but we completely forgot all three of us are blindingly white.

Future Professional Hat Salesman, or FPHS for short. And seriously, what is that guy in the back getting all contorted about?

I guess I should also note I shot all these on an Olympus Trip 35 with Iford XP2 400 film. I still can't believe the shots that thing takes considering it's more than likely over 20 years old, no autofocus and almost completely automatic. I'll probably keep it forever and considering it's all metal there's a good possibility that'll happen.