I Break Horses – Hearts
Beautiful track and video…
Queens of the Stone Age at Roundhouse
Was a fantastic gig – they played the first album in full which was fantastic. I took a few pics on the LCA but they didn’t come out well so these are the best ones.
After smashing through the album they also played 8 extra lesser heard tracks:
Burn the Witch
Make It Wit Chu
Monsters in the Parasol
Hangin’ Tree
I Never Came
Little Sister
Sick, Sick, Sick
Go With the Flow
Helping clients write their brief
Often when we get enquiries we are not given much information in the way of a brief. Clients don’t really know how to put a brief together and why should they? The first thing I try to do is to see if we have common ground with regards to the budget they have to spend. By asking for a ballpark figure I find that I waste a lot less time with enquiries that are not in the right price bracket.
Depending on what I am given I try to put a story together that would describe exactly what the site will do. This can be very basic but serves better than a simple list of features as it helps the client understand exactly how it will work. Consider this snippet of a verbose list:
“Scheduled RSS feed syncing.
Automatic deletion of events from calendar after due date.”
Some tech savvy clients might get that straight away but this is a better way in my opinion:
“Every hour the news section of the site will have stories from other sites added automatically. Building on this when an event has finished it will be removed from the site automatically.”
Friendlier and more relevant don’t you think?
I always think of briefs in the same way as business plans – let’s make a shorter living document that we actually refer back to rather than a 90 page monster that impresses the investors but no-one else.
Pug
Random evening started with asking to photograph this Pug…the owners were a cool couple who have just started their own business around recruitment. Good times…
Jane Doe and the Undesirables gig
Got a chance to photograph Jane Doe and the Undesireables playing a gig at the Prince Albert in Brighton. My first live gig photography (with more than a point and shoot) but I think it came out okay. The band were super happy with the pictures and I loved them live so good all round I guess!
Some drinks and a little music
Had a great meeting in Southampton and some early drinks to celebrate. Not my best photography but I like the pictures anyway. On the train home I was kinda smashed and loving the music I was listening to (Metronomy, Every Time I Die and Best Coast) so I snapped a couple of from the hip shots of my fellow passengers.
Late Night Beach
One of the strangest nights I have ever had. These 14 year old guys had been drinking (I know right!!) and swimming in the paddling pools on the beach in Brighton. Amazing bro love between them and they were very happy for me to take a picture (which I emailed to them)…a surreal backdrop to one of the weirdest (and saddest) conversations I have had…
CMS
People mention Content Management Systems (CMS) all the time but many people are not sure what they do and why they might need one. Simply if you change content on your site regularly (and you should!) they are really handy, will save you time and improve your site.
Basically think of a CMS as a way of changing what is on your site. Not usually design but text, images, products, videos or whatever content your site has. There are lots of CMS packages around – Expression Engine, Textpattern, Joomla and Drupal being some you may have heard of. If you write a blog you will have also used a CMS like WordPress or Blogger.
Some can be very complex to use but very powerful – conversely some are stripped back to just the needed features. It all depends on what you need to do as to which is the right choice for the project.
A CMS can also be a store of information that is collected on your site – for instance when used on an e-commerce site Mozzarella (Buffalo’s CMS) has order information, PDF delivery notes that can be printed out and contact form enquiry information stored inside.
And as Google likes new content you might even improve your search engine ranking….
Sunday walk
Wanted to test out depth of field effects on a new camera so we went for a stroll close to home. Another nice day out in Brighton today with gorgeous weather.
Holga
I have had a Holga for too long without taking any pictures on it – was a present from my girlfriend. I won a place on a course at Garage Studios taught by James Kendall.
Beautiful day as the Brighton Marathon was going on so very good conditions for a photowalk around town. Pretty pleased with the results for a first go will definitely do more although £10 to develop/scan is quite pricey.
