woot! you, me and everyone we know…

This is the banner that is currently running on Overtone and which features as the headline on the press release as well. It was made by the fabulous designers of Taluut Design in  the Netherlands.

And *finally* sent out invitations and created a facebook events page which you can find here: http://tinyurl.com/2v8plb3
I want the whole world to come so please feel free to invite as many people as you like … seriously all mothers, fathers, boyfriends and girlfriends… the milkman and the butcher, your grandma and her dog *and* the cute boy next door… invite them!

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Ou est le Swimming Pool

Busy and awesome days. My family from the NL just got down here last Saturday and I am trying to mix spending time with them and working a “full day in half a day”. So far so good except that I haven’t blogged or tweeted all that much. Otherwise, all’s pretty darn good.

 

I have a shoot this morning with a fashion designer,  an online campagne is running on Overtone, press releases are being sent out as I type this, negotiations are being held with Orms who will do the printing and framing, talks and drinks are being had with the Grand Daddy people who are doing a fab job on organizing the party side of it all, a video is being shot and edited, copyright clearances are being made for the music in the video. The project is the first thing I work on in the morning and the last thing at night. I’d say that yes, absolutely, I am becoming slightly monomaniacal about it all but it’s cool too.

 

In between all this I am showing my family around town or places like Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden, Noordhoek, Bo-Kaap, Woodstock or Cape point and we’re eating food and drinking whiskey & wine like there’s no tomorrow.

Oh and I moved from Noordhoek to Capri to Fresnaye in a week. I am quite the “schlepper” by now:-)

 

In other news, yay, I see Giant Sand has a new album out. I haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet just like so many other records at the moment… The title for this blog post comes from a UK band called “Ou est le swimming pool” … I haven’t listened all that much to them yet but the title seemed apt… Yet now I really just want to listen to Harlem… Gay Human Bones! Friendly Ghost! I live in a graveyard, I want to go out but it’s too hot…. lalalalalala”. It’s been out for a while now, on Matador Records… and well, damn, you gotta love Matador home of Belle & Sebastian, Interpol, Bettie Serveert, Cat Power (Cat Power!!), Pavement, Yo la Tengo, Dum Dum Girls, Sonic Youth, Solex, Bettie Serveert… :-))))) Yeah! That yeah should be said like the mc (G.E. Smith or Kris Kristofferson, can’t remember) said it when introducing Johnny Cash at Bob Fest (Bob Dylan’s 30th anniversary celebrations with Booker T and the MG’s as the house band, how awesome is that?!) explaining that when Bob Dylan first met Johnny Cash he just walked up and around him like he was a big tree and said Yeah!

That’s the “yeah” i mean:-)

 

C’mon Billy

I have two more weeks to finish. I have more time but I am trying to finish everything before my family comes out for a visit. That is, the parts that I have control over. Finish all the edits, write the press release, make sure the banner has been sent to Overtone, send out all invitations, send files to Orms, set up interviews with the press etc etc.

I am a bit in two minds as to what to do with the invitations. On the one I think it is good to send them out 3 weeks in advance but on the other I think a lot of people, especially those that don’t know me but who are interested in photography or in any of the artists taking part, may just decide a week or so in advance. I know that’s what I do. You check the current events calendars and see if you have time. Or you’re simply in the mood for free drinks, socializing and some art. Unless somebody tells that there will be an Anton Corbijn exhibition or Robert Capa one or something like that cause then I’ll book and make sure I’m there. Sigh, if only. It’s so odd to me that the World Press Photo doesn’t travel to Cape Town. Why not actually? That would almost be a dream job. Set it up over here and do my own work at the same time…

 

I saw Tim Burton’s ‘Big Fish’ again last night. Love, love, love that movie. Albert Finney and Jessica Lange. Wow. Love the colors, the imagination behind it, and who wouldn’t want an Edward Bloom day once a year where everything is just fabulous and magical? And I totally want someone who’ll climb into the bath with me when I’m old and sick. 

 

It’s funny eh how some images influence you or stay with you for a long time. I think the photo below of Bob Dylan by Barry Feinstein is such an image. It’s such a fantastic image, so well composed, such awesome black&white tones and sums up feelings of isolation, adoration, estrangement, intrusion, boredom, ouside world vs inner world, trying to just do your thing… Or like the first image above, by Edward Hopper ‘Excursions in Philosophy’.  He has such an awesome sense of composition and light, often using light as a way of showing revelation and casting long, symbolic shadows and depicting scenes of extreme loneliness, regret and maybe even estrangement within the American rural and urban landscape.

There are so many inspiring portrait and music photographers out there but being a Dutchie and growing up in the 80’s and 90’s, I grew up with images taken by Anton Corbijn, Niels van Iperen and Charles Peterson. When Anton Corbijn still had his one page in music magazine OOR a gazillion years ago, I would buy the magazine just for that. I would always be a little jealous while looking at his work. I’m jealous in any case of people who are being paid to travel, who get to see the world and meet people for a living. I know you can say the same thing f.e. about flight attendants but it’s not quite the same:-)

 

I have a photo shoot with a young ADFA graduate trying to make it as a director this afternoon. Should be interesting:-) Will talk about it later.

Listening to Agnes Obel ‘Philharmonic’, The Sore Losers self titled album and still Mark Ronson and the Business Intl’s ‘Record Collection’ and bang bang bang is still my favorite:-)

left: PJ Harvey by Anton Corbijn.

And yes, the title is a P.J. Harvey song:-)

If you want to make it

“If you want to make it you have to learn. Go to shops, look at the marketing and advertising in magazines, look at photography and type fonts, at the lay-out, if you have a question, learn to Google it. There is so much information out there, use it. ”

(Tristan Waterkeyn)