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

VJ workshops for the iCreate project with Beat This

I have just embarked on an exciting run of workshops with Beat ThisCiC, running from January to April of 2012.

Beat This (CIC) have been running a project called “iCreate” which has taken groups of pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds and given them a ten week project where they will create visual and audio content with the aim of producing either a final recorded piece or a live performance, (or both!). It's all about process and connecting different artistic disciplines. So using photography, video clips and artwork to be used later in VJ'ing alongside a finished recording or performance. The groups have been developing their own pieces as individuals and engaging in group decision making, combining their output in the final instance as a collaborative piece.

one of the images produced by the students using NuVJ equipment,

I will be presenting the groups with the VJ'ing element of their projects.

By the time I come in they will have worked with other Beat This practioners and developed and created some artwork, some video clips and be close to finishing their music track.

Then we will load all this up into the awesome machine known as “NuVJ”, more on that another time.

 Despite having done hundreds of workshops, and having also perfomed live visuals of one kind or another at hundreds of events, I have only done one VJ workshop before, so these sessions have been a wonderful learning experience for me too.

My first sessions were at A.C.E. The Alternative Curriculum Education centre, this is a place where pupils who have been excluded, or partially excluded from secondary schools in Peterborough, go to finish their education.

The original idea was to develop all the elements to put on a final performance, however with the group at ACE it was clear that this was not the direction that they wanted to go, so after the first session we decided to flip it to making a Music Video, which left us 4 hours to produce a music video with them. Their experience of education and adults was such that it was a struggle to get the students to engage or be enthusiastic, but the idea of a video that could go up on YouTube seemed to be something that grabbed their attention, so music video it was. 

They were a little bit shocked when we explained how much a music video would cost to produce, at least the glossy chart ones, and how much time and the number of people that would be involved in the production. With our four hours of production time it was going to be interesting to say the least! However, we would be using the NuVJ to generate imagery, and we had already shot quite a number of videos previously when my brother did a grafitti session with them, using fat chalk pens to tag perspex and film this. So we had some pretty cool footage to work with.

The video is all but finished, and is now in what is known as Post-Production, i.e. me, finishing the audio layer, and compressing and saving ready to publish. Otherwise they managed to get something finished, just about, in the timeframe.

I have only worked at two of the schools in this project so far, so lots more sessions still to do which is very exciting!

Watch out for the final video and updates on more adventures with Beat This CiC!