MeMag - Me Magazine

Throughout 2005 Basic Hip Digital Oddio is presenting a grand variety of vintage childrens records for download in MP3 format. Visit Kiddie Records Weekly and have a listen to those lovable crooning role models of the ’40s and ’50s.

Basic Hip… is also the home of The Online Guide to Whistling Records and the Live365 broadcast Space Age Pop Music. Space Age Pop, by the way, happens to be one of my favourite musical genres/concepts.

“We see this wonderful part of our past slowly dying out and are concerned that one day these recordings will be completely forgotten. Our mission is to give them a new lease on life.”

Found through GmtPlus9

Here, to kick off the Rejected-category, is an early cover I made for Mats Dahlberg. This one I rejected myself. It started out as a vintage circus poster but quickly turned into something that looks like the cover of a childrens album. Nothing wrong with that, it just doesn’t fit the music.

This was one of Dahlberg’s own drawings, to which I added the background, shading and light cone.

Why is it that almost every time someone hires me to design or photograph something for them because “we have seen what you do and we love it” they always still seem to want to do all of the design themselves? Why why why?
Why hire a designer and then not listen to a word he’s saying? First they start off by saying that I have complete freedom to interpret or invent or do whatever it is that I do. Then a few days later, as I am well into working on this, they start adding little extra conditions, like for instance… the photos all have to feature them standing on one leg with paper bags on their heads and toothbrushes sticking out of their asses. Or some other really bad idea. Actually that’s probably a bad example because I would love to see a cover like that and so would you, I know you would. But for now, let’s just that represent a very typical everyday bad idea.

“It’s not usually what I do”, I say diplomatically… “Don’t you think that people standing on one leg with paper bags on their heads and dental hygine products protruding from their posteriors would look sort of odd on an album cover for a collection of ’50s love songs?” This is the point where they always look at me like I have just plopped out of my mothers womb right there on the carpet in front of them. Innocent, naive with very poor skills regarding how to behave in public. “It has to look professional”, they lecture. “Toothbrushes are very popular. Most people own at least one! Adding a few toothbrushes to the record cover would make that record equally popular”. At this point I have usually resorted to insecure smiling and nodding in fear of getting my liver cut out and eaten by the obviously insane person in front of me.

And these little nuggets of new criteria always seem to come to me after I have already spent days setting something different up. Like yesterday, on the end of my photo-shoot for the cover of a certain album. I pack my gear and get ready for departure. We all shake hands… and then it comes: “Right… we have to talk soon. We have to decide what we are going to do for the cover!” “Er… ” , I say. “Isn’t this the cover”? A smile, like a child has just spoken and said something cute yet stupid… “Oh no… this cannot be the cover. Think… think paper bags! And toothbrushes! I’ll call you early on Sunday and we’ll discuss that”.
By then, of course, my head will have exploded and I will be completely dead.

Finally one of the many music CDs that I did the cover for last year has hit the stores, almost a year after I was first offered to do the cover photo and design. Usually I find that out of all the web pages, logos and CD covers I have made, only a small fraction ends up as a viable product. Most of these small business ventures pack it in before they even have the chance to put up their web page or print up their business cards. For every success story there are obviously plenty of failures, and someone like me who only have small clients with small budgets probably see more of the dreams that don’t come true than the ones that do.

But this gentleman I predict will make it here in Scandinavia. It is a very impressive collection of melodious Swedish singer/songwriter ballads. Quite pleasing to the ear. I predict a hit or two this upcoming summer. I’ve listened a lot to this one myself.

Last year I spent a lot of time looking for a Diana camera, -one of those old bluegreen plastic things that you have probably seen countless times at flea markets, yet never given much thought. Once I had decided that I needed one, I couldn’t find one anywhere and after a few weeks of intense hunting I placed an ad in an online photo magazine. The response was quick and I got my plastic camera and payed way too much for it, which was fine because it still came to very little money. Plastic is not expensive.

Diana cameras exist under dozens of different names. Mine is called Snappy. On the second hand market, the ones that are actually named Diana usually cost a lot more than the ones called for instance Windsor, Crown or Dories. This is because the Dianas are considered the originals, -hence the higher collector value. Personally I believe that one of these isn’t more original than the other and that they are collectively referred to as Diana cameras simply because whoever first started using one of these old toys to take artsy soft “serious” photos happened to own one that was imprinted with the name Diana.

In any case you can get some very appealing results with one of these things. So far I have only used mine to take a few test rolls, but the results seem pretty good. For some reason every photo I have taken with this camera has been perfectly exposed, which is a bit of a miracle since there is only one shutter speed and I have no idea what that is. The camera comes with no less than three aperture settings: sunny, cloudy and partially cloudy. So far it seems that when using 400iso film, these settings are actually very accurate. There is also a bulb-setting and a nice focus indicator where you can guesstimate the distance. And of course it’s beautiful to look at as well, which is important.

People who use Dianas also tend to gravitate towards the Holga, which is another medium format plastic camera. Holgas aren’t nearly as charming as Dianas tho. First of all they aren’t really toy cameras, -they are just very cheap plastic cameras that are made new in china to cover the huge demand for old plastic cult objects such as the Diana. The Diana holds a great many advantages over the Holga: They look better and the photos are softer. With the Holga the photos you get are just slightly annoyingly blurry. It just looks as if the photographer isn’t very talented. With a Diana the photos are just that much softer to make it look as if it was done on purpose. The Holga is also more prone to light leaks than the Diana and it has the viewfinder off to one side as opposed to in the middle on the Diana. This makes it more difficult to get a straight horizon with a Holga. Symmetry becomes difficult. And the Holga film advance doesn’t really work well at all so the film spools need to be padded with folded pieces of paper in order to get at least some film tension. Finally, the Diana gives you 16 frames on a roll of 120 film and the Holga only 12. This is because each Diana frame is slightly smaller than the full width of the film so you get 4 extra frames of blurry plastic delight to each roll.

The Holga does however hold a few things over the Diana: The shutter tends to produce a lovely dark iris-effect like you might see in early silent movies. Also, if you want to include the film edge numbers in your finished print the Holga, being a 6×6cm format camera, gives you these numbers right outside the edge of your photo, whereas the Diana with it’s smaller frame size just over 4×4cm, gives you a thick black border between the edge of the photo and the frame numbers running along the side of the strip of film. The Holga is also higly customizable due to the fact that new cameras that can be cannibalized for parts are easily obtained at a low cost.

Personally I prefer the Diana-style camera. The photos just look better and it’s easier to use. I’m hoping to come across a few extra copies since there is some individual difference from camera to camera and the photos from one Diana may look better than the photos from another. Also it would be interesting to try and build a Holga-style shutter into a Diana to get more of the previously mentioned iris-effect while maintaining the allover soft dreamy look of the Dianas plastic lens. For this kind of dangerous plastic surgery, parts are needed. So the search for Diana continues.

Toycamera.com
Huskudu.com
Plastic surgery made easy
Holga Tune-up and Modifications

Yesterday, by mail, my new used Hasselblad lens arrived. Over the years I’ve had an inordinate ammount of trouble finding a second lens that actually works properly and that doesn’t cost almost as much second hand as a new one would. I have bought a couple of them, but they were all broken and had to be returned. Given the fact that I live only a couple of hours drive from the actual factory, one would perhaps think that the marked would be flooded with used Hasselblad equipment. Not so. A lot of the equipment is very hard to come by and only finds its way onto the second hand marked once it is more or less worn out by the previous owner. You never come across any equipment that has once been bought new by the person who now wishes to sell it. Everything is bought used from someone who has bought it used from someone who… etc. And everyone wants to make a profit. Or at least make sure that they don’t lose any money on the deal even if they did drop their camera into a lake and had to dive down after it.

At the moment though, it seems that I have actually managed to get my paws on a lens that works perfectly. Now the question remains what I’m going to use it for and how I’m going to find the strength to lug more stuff around.

Be sure to do a bit of reading before ever attempting to buy used Hasselblad stuff:
How To Buy A Hasselblad
Fungi in Photographic Lens
Photo.net’s Medium Format Digest Forum - Hasselblad

Yes, those wacky americans have finally done something to make the Bible more accessible to the modern masses; they have turned it into a theme park! For only $29.99 you can now be present at THE most famous execution in history. You can also get a Jerusalem Gold card, which entitles you to see it over and over again as many times as you like. What fun. And educational too! Everything is historically accurate. Signs and mosaics are in easy to read english. Every best bit of the Bible is accurately reconstructed here along Florida’s picturesque Interstate 4. There is even a gift shop. Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and AMEX are accepted.

Disclaimer: Food and beverages are not permitted to be brought into The Holy Land Experience. But don’t worry… I’m sure they have some bread and fish there that you can enjoy.

Found through Gord Is Dead

I hereby announce the opening of this weblog. I was planning to write a long poetic intro speach about beginnings, but given the fact that I started this entry by misspelling the word “Beginnings” in the headline twice, I think that a bit of rest would be a more productive use of my time at the moment than speechwriting.

Setting this thing up over the past few weeks, I have given more thought to structure and form than actual content. I have no great journalistic ambition that will drive me through hours of daily blogging. Nor do I have great illusions of masses of regular readers. There won’t be mny. What I do have is a need to occationally dump the contents of my brain onto a canvas of some sort in order to retrieve some mental storage space that may be put to better use. I can see this as becoming such a canvas. As I build new portfolios of work I often have the urge to show sketches and rejected ideas to others. Here I will be able to do just that.

Anonymity… I was reading today about the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and how they have set up a guide entitled How to Blog Safely (About Work or Anything Else). “Anyone can eventually find your blog if your real identity is tied to it in some way. And there may be consequences. Family members may be shocked or upset when they read your uncensored thoughts. A potential boss may think twice about hiring you,” the guide warns. I have given some thought to my own online anonymity. Knowing myself, I will probably spend a lot of my blogging time complaining about various people and things that piss me off. After all… I don’t really get along that well with most people. It may be a good idea to have links from this weblog to my regular web pages, but not the other way around. It doesn’t really bother me that a potential client might stumble upon some prosaic diary-snipplet that contemplates the most efficient use of toilet paper. I never put up much of a facade when I have to meet a new client anyway. But I am already a bit paranoid by nature. Perhaps I shouldn’t give myself further reason to look over my shoulder. There really isn’t any sense in talking about people behind their backs if they are actually listening. It may lead to conflict. And in real life, as opposed to screenwriting, conflict is best avoided.