Landed Festival 2012

A highly memorble event with Ska, swing, gypsy-jazz, hip-hop and  folk-tronica galore

set in the stunningly beautiful Rhyder valley. The air is clean, I heard no emergency sirens for the whole weekend, and met loads of friendly people. The circus skills tent was busy from dawn to dusk, with a mini penny-farthing, unicycle, Diablo's and tonnes more being practiced by kids of all ages all day long. I now realise that I was so mesmerised in watching it that I didn't have a go myself, so I promise to get stuck in next year. It was a refreshingly well organised event, a light touch all round, and a focus on the important aspects of a festival, good music, nice atmosphere,  all spaces were easily accessible and a good use of the natural environment.

  I basically have two sets of photos , one from the phone camera, using Instagram  and uploaded during the event, and the others are taken on my Canon EOS 500D. The ones here are all taken on my phone and uploaded via Instagram during the event, I will post the others some point in the future....

This is the first time I had road tested my new cameraphone and the Instagram app. It was great being able to process the images right there and post them online straight away.

I was due to VJ on the Firday night, but alas after several hours I could not get the projector to talk to my laptop. 

This was made more frustrating as I had gone into the desk and seeing it all set up, projector on the rig, all the cables wired to to the desk, an actual space to put my equipment, - a plug and play gig..! was I dreaming?!

 I was so overjoyed at this that it took me sometime to  to come to terms with the fact that the projetor was simply not working.....gutted dosen't even cover it.... I particularly wanted to do some live stuff with Opaque, the shifting melodies, bizarre sound effects and sonic soundscapes, are perfect for VJ'ing to.

Alas not this time, had I been there a day before, or had the set on Saturday I may have had more time to solve the problem.... but by  the time the evenings entertainment had started it was too late to start fiddling and climbing rigs.

At least I got to create this set of images from the event, and these photos are give a pretty good feel of the vibes and visions of the weekend.  I also got to talk with so many wonderful inspiring people, took part in several workshops, chilled by the river, warmed up by the fire and threw some wild shapes to some proper festival music!

A massive thank you to Marv, Grubby, Luke, Woef and the whole Landed Team for inviting us along, it was lovely to bring the Grassroots vibe along and to be able to part of such a genuine event.
Hopefully see you all next year, if not sooner!

www.landedfestival.co.uk

Quercus Burlesque_very unusual act!

Burlesque in the Theatre Tent

Moony from Opaque

 

Piper on the Grassroots Stage

Decoupage Workshop!

Peter Conway Band on the Grassroots stage

Art in the Heart_Peterborough

Last night was the launch of the Art In The Heart project at Peterborough's Tourist Destination Centre. It has taken a couple of months to get to this point so it was nice to see it finally arrive.
For my part it is the first time
I have had my work presented as a greeting card, which is a bit surreal. The work I have produced for  this venture is the Peterborough Cathedral images discussed in a previous blog post. As I have just got switched onto the Instagram app a couple of days before I decided to create some work during the show using it, as Dawn had asked if any us could do some live work or demonstrations.
I took some photos of the cathedral as I walked there, the shop is next to it, and used those during the show.
Enjoy!

Abstract Instagram:

Yesterday afternoon I obtained a new phone, all smooth and shiny. I spent most of last night tinkering with all the toys and tools associated with it.

I had heard, and seen, all about Instagram from Twitter feeds and G+, and was keen to see what all the fuss was about. A simple but somehow highly effective tool, I was told.

The images I had seen on these feeds made me curious. The square format  and film grain look, like a 1600 ISO,  and they seemed to refresh the litany of online photographs.
It puts back feeling and emotion into these quick snaps.

I liked the idea of square frame, referring to ye olde Poloroid. I guess the square is also very useful for mobile frames and social media feeds, the square image and ajoining text look very snug on the screen, again reinventing the Poloroid with the white box for writing a caption for the picture.

The image styles available are warm with a poetic effect, conveying mood, and sensation, and reminds me of the feeling of experimenting in the  darkroom.
All in all great stuff.

To get used to this new tool  I decided to make a set of abstract images whilst
sitting at home.
The settings I mostly used were Nashville, 1977, Kelvin and occasionaly Hudson and Toaster.
I hope you enjoy them, and watch out for plenty of Instagram's from Landed Festival next weekend!

Landed Festival

With Landed Festival so close on the horizon I wanted to upload some photos from last years event to show you how utterly lovely the whole thing was.

Turning left at the clock tower in the middle of the village high street I knew we were close and I started to get very excited, staring like a child at the huge number of trees on either side of the road, then pulling into a side road and onto site to the the friendliest welcome I've had to any festival.

too lovely for words...

The first night we were treated to Dextrous Dexter and The Fingersmiths, a full on funk delight, and a large campfire at night till 3am, sheep staring at me in the morning, a Berlingo on fire, (funnier than it sounds), and generally a very calm atmosphere I felt all the tension from the outside world slip away.

The event is held in Early May. It is possibly the earliest point at which one could reasonably expect to have an outdoor festival, and get away with it, so I guesss the attendees are all waking from their collective winter hibernation, blinking in the light and remembering what it feels like to sit on grass, some of the more daring amongst us even tried wearing shorts, that scared the sheep off.

The true awesomeness of the festival is the location, sited with a huge hill on either side, with trees and everything, and..oh just so much nature it leaves you speechless and refreshed.

Now dear reader, You must understand that our contingency, the Grassroots crew, are all from the Fens, so anything like a bump in the ground, or a collection of more than three trees together, or an ability to walk into a field / forest or natual space without ditches, dykes and fences and 1000 acres of crops in your way and zero public access rights (for more on this check out John Clare and the Enclosure Acts) is an absolute marvel. No really it's like being in a painting for us Fen folk, it might be the only time in a the whole year we see a hill.

being from the Fens this is a very strange feeling....

Last year went small scale, and had the Sunday stage for our Peterborough acts, Sunday morning is kind of a dangerous time to schedule us, as was proven by the rambuctious performances we all put in, delightful in every way of course. More slapstick comedy and bawdy caberet punctuated by music than the finely tuned scheduling of class acts we can occasionally deliver. It was one of the most memorable live gigs i've ever seen.

The view from the tent.

This year however as the festival grows we have a slightly bigger remit for providing our Firebrand of Fenland entertainment-our immersive all-or-nothing casserole of sight & sound entertainment. And like flipping a proverbial coin, we will be hosting the stage on Friday, throughout the day and into the evening so watch out, there be a full-moon too.

We will be bringing music, art, poetry and even Bingo!? 
 

For a list of our line-up check out

our Grassroots at Landed Facebook page

and for all the full festival details the main website is:

www.landedfestival.co.uk/

 Tickets for Landed;
Contact Paul 'Pablo' Hance directly by e-mailing him at pablojinx@hotmail.co.uk

or by going to their Grassroots @ Landed event page here and leaving him a message:

http://www.facebook.com/events/189728657793394
The first 20 tickets sold by Grassroots come with a token for a free drink at Marvs Bar so get in there early!!!!  
 
To see the full set of photos go to my Flickr page:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lukepayn/

The other view from the tent.

Spring Equinox 2012_ A Celebration

This work was all photographed on the Spring Equinox of March 2012

and finalised  the same week.  I have always had

an interest in the idea of photography on the Solstice's and Equinox's as

they  are day's concerned with  the measurements of light levels.

The "Blades of Spring" image feels like a cross section of a plant or branch, the green life-force pushing up the middle shooting up to form the new bud, 

pushing the thickness of the branch outwards

calcifying and forming the new stem, twig or branch, reaching for the light.

"Blades of Spring"

"I could be fast like spring"

I am a lover of nature and I'm constantly amazed as I

watch the season unfold around me, the colours changing, scenes reacting

to the light as photo-sensitive paper does to images being exposed on it,

fading, changing, turning in time. Spring has the unique feeling

of catching you off guard, just as you've sunk into deepest winter,

Bam! there it is rushing into the world with a gracious tenancity.

The force of nature, the re-birth, the power of light.

     I hope I have captured some of  nature's energy in these images.

for the full set please visit my website;

www.lukepayn.org.uk

***

I have produced a lot of work on the Equinox this year, 

so keep an eye for more material which will be uploaded soon.

Medeshamstede, artwork from Peterborough Cathedral

This series of 12 images are inspired by Peterborough Cathedral.

"Medeshamstede" was the Anglo-Saxon name for the

7th century monastery founded at this location. 

"Medeshamstede"  also gave it's  name to the
village which later  become Peterborough.

This set of work came about as part of the "Art in the Heart"
project run by Dawn Birch-James for the
Peterborough Tourist Information Centre.

Medeshamstede #5

I have wanted to produce some proper work based on this
astonishing building for as long as I can remember,

and have done bits and pieces based on it, outlines, rough ideas
and so on,but never sunk my teeth into the challenge.

Dawn asked me if I would like to get involved, and that

it was based on Peterborough landmarks, so it seemed
 the perfect timeto put some energy into the idea.

Medeshamstede #8

The original photograph is my own, so there are 12

images in the series and the original photograph they all come from.

The actual size of these pieces starts at 22" x 23"  upwards.

The original photograph was taken on Feb 21st, 2012.

To buy cards and prints of these images, or for more details
and work by other artists in the project follow the link below;

Art in the Heart

to see all 12 pieces in the Medeshamstede Series  visit my website

www.lukepayn.org.uk

Medeshamstede #10

Catherine's Delight

Three new pieces of work. 

I have a set of work celebrating the arrival of Spring and the Spring Equinox to publish, and a whole new set of images for the Art in the Heart project at the Tourist Information Centre which are based on Peterborough Cathedral, but before those came out I wanted to share these with you.

The original print size will be over 2 meters wide and over a 1.5 meters high.  

Catherine's Delight #3

Catherine's Delight #2

Catherine's Delight #3