Behind the scenes

Daredevil Danny riding shotgun. © Magnus Andersson

Just a little heads up that on this Friday there will be another free screening of our documentary The Best Seat In The World and you're invited! Its at Look Mum No Hands at 7pm, but before you go, check out our daredevil Danny (above) as he mounts a motorcycle reverse in order to film some track action.

If you happen to live somewhere else than London and still want to watch it, perhaps you know of a cool venue that might want to host it? If so, do get in touch in the comments.

Full house

Standing room only (+serious face) at our second screening.

Here's some pix from last Saturday when we did the second screening of our documentary The Best Seat In The World at Look Mum No Hands.

Danny does his bike imitation while setting up.

We knew that we we were preaching to the converted when we accepted a viewing at the bicycle Mecca of London. We thought that a few people might turn up, but we didn't expect a full house. The extended applause at the end made it all worth it!

Full house.

If you were there, thank you for taking time out of your weekend to check our work, and if you missed it, there will be more screenings soon.

In other good news, Herne Hill Velodrome received a whooping £400k to safeguard its future!

 Thank you to Look Mum No Hands for the screening!

 We are nearly at 6000 views for the trailer and we appreciate the sharing! As always, stay tuned on twitter and the blog. Merci beau coup.

Welcome to the cheap seats

The bike-powered première screening of The Best Seat In The World at Herne Hill Velodrome, Sunday 11 Sep, 2011.

Last month I invited you to the sneak-première of a documentary that I have been involved in with some friends. That première day here in London started out a little bit wetter than we had hoped, which was especially bad since it was an outdoor screening....but the weather gods stayed on our side! If you stayed at home, you missed a belter!

And I'm not just saying this because it was a film that I was involved in. The rain was solid for most of the day but by sunset there were clear blue skies over London, including a nice big moon on the rise.

This was a bike powered screening held inside the very subject of our documentary - the Herne Hill Velodrome - and I would guesstimate that we had around 40-60 brave souls in attendance. Judging by their reactions it was a success, but if you missed it, why don't you judge for yourself this weekend?

Yes, there will be another free screening at Look Mum No Hands! here in London this Saturday (8th Oct 2011) at 7pm. Address: 49 Old Street, London EC1V 9HX.

Here's the trailer, hope to see you there!


The Best Seat In The World TRAILER from The Best Seat In The World on Vimeo.
A documentary about Herne Hill Velodrome. The track has known some hard times with its main building now closed-down due to deterioration and political feuds that stopped any long term redevelopment. This is the back drop to a series of moving interviews with cycling enthusiasts that range from a 1948 Olympic medallist to eight-year-old track users who all want the track to stay open.


You can also check out our tumblr for updates on future screenings and perhaps some behind-the-scenes footage from The Best Seat In The World.

Directing for reel

iPhone 3GS Tilt & Shift Photography from magnusphotog on Vimeo. © Magnus Andersson

If you don't like the iPhone and/or hate reading about it, you should probably skip this post. Furthermore you'll also be spared the details on what a sad life I live, when an app on a mobile phone can give me so much pleasure.

For the rest of you; above you can watch a slide show of photographs which I took on the iPhone 3GS. Nothing special about that of course, lots of other phones have got much better cameras, but not many of those are as much fun, or as versatile.



With the release of the iPhone 4 I got a bit intrigued about iMovie on the iPhone. Of course I tried installing it, but having an older handset meant that I wasn't allowed. Bummer. So I looked around to see what else was out there to edit video and I found ReelDirector. I now realise that a lot of people have been raving about it already; its been out for quite a while - but as soon as I tried it I fell in love with it.

I readily admit that I don't shoot a lot of video, either professionally or personally, BUT having the ability to create slide shows from still images natively on the iPhone is such a treat. Its been a while since I used Soundslides and that program is just a pain in the arse. The advent of Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere and even iMovie on Mac's made it all so much easier, and now its even easier on your mobile.

ReelDirector outputs to .MOV and you can either email it or save it to your camera roll as a compressed version. The rendering takes an age of course, the processor on the 3GS isn't as powerful as on the iPhone 4, but leave it for a while and soon you'll hear the bell announcing completion.

Music rendering can occasionally throw up a little time shift, notably a second or two of slowing down the pitch, but apart from that it works just fine. The amount of transitions that you can choose from is very versatile and the only big gripe I have about the app is that there is no way of choosing orientation of a new reel, i.e. will the latest output come up as a landscape or portrait video?

Extremely annoying and I do hope that the creators - Nexvio - will issue a fix for this soon. On the plus side, you can use music from your own library (albeit not directly from the iPhone, you have to do it from your own computer over Wi-Fi first, but its easy enough) and you can combine still images with video if you so wish, split clips etc. A lot of people seem to prefer ReelDirector over iMovie as well, and that says a lot.



Above all though, ReelDirector is so much fun to use and for £2.39 its a snip! This little app combined with the previously mentioned ZoomIt and a SD recording camera gives you one of the most compact multi media production kits on the planet. Other planets have even smaller stuff, but sadly they don't ship to Earth yet.

PS. Here's a link to the same slide show uploaded to youtube, but I find that the resolution seems to be a bit lower over there compared to Vimeo, maybe its just my eyes?

A photographers code of conduct

Courtesy of Xtra Normal.

IoW

The Big Dipper (Ursa Major) above The Solent, Totland Beach, IoW @ 60s, f2. © Magnus Andersson


The Solent from Yarmouth, IoW. © Magnus Andersson


The Needles as seen from a boat ride, IoW. © Magnus Andersson


Chair lift ride next to The Needles, IoW. © Magnus Andersson


A kestrel scanning the hills next to our restaurant The Waterfront, Totland beach, IoW. © Magnus Andersson


Beautiful Victorian house on the street we were staying at in Totland, IoW. © Magnus Andersson


Prime example of the micro climate on IoW, where the sun was always shining. Look across The Solent towards Portsmouth and you'll see the rain they had. © Magnus Andersson

All the images jumbled on top of each other, novelty idea for the blog and this is what you get, OK.

Another week goes past in the blink of an eye and the juicy stories I was hoping for failed to materialise. Never mind, I was away for a long weekend at the gorgeous Isle of Wight (IoW) and my girlfriend and me had a wondrous time. The sound of stones on the beach being washed out by the incessant waves I will never forget!

I first ventured to the IoW many years ago and stayed in Shanklin on the east coast, but being born and bred on the west coast of Sweden, I insisted on a location where you could see the sun setting in the sea.

The IoW tourist board warned me that it would be a lot more quiet on the west coast, as if that was something to be afraid off! Bring it on, I said, and soon enough we had booked a place in Totland, about as far west as you can get and a mere two minutes walk from the most amazing of beaches. Warm waters and clean too!

Driving down from London in the early hours of a Friday morning meant that we beat the rush hour and could catch the 7:00 ferry from Portsmouth, 30min before the ferry we where supposed to be on, and once we arrived at Fishguard it was a simple matter of taking the scenic route around the island to our rendezvous.

While on the island we got very lucky with the weather. Across the Solent we could see the heavy rain clouds unloading on Bournemouth and Portsmouth, whereas on IoW it was glorious sunshine in their fabled micro climate, with lots of late-afternoon-swimming on our behalf.

Its well documented that I don't tan well, and this trip was no exception, but I take sunshine before rain any day! My holidays continue and all that is left now is some minor preparation for the trip to Visa in Perpignan (I'm packing light, only the trusty LX3 and an iPhone, no SLR or laptop for me) , where my room mate Mattias has just returned from another island experience in Ireland. Nothing about that on his blog though...

I checked the forecast for Perpignan earlier today, it looks good!!! This time I'll bring the sunblock. I am soooo looking forward to bumping into fellow photographer friends Rii, Charly, Marco and Orhan, not to mention the 30-odd Swedish photographers that I'll be joining forces with for the first time, but no matter what; it is going to be a good trip, yup!

So far though, nothing beats the sound of round pebbles being thrown up and down the beach by continuous waves. Simples, aight?

My new best friend - pt II

My new best friend showing his/her gratitude... © Magnus Andersson

So here's the conclusion!

If you didn't notice already, right at the end of the clip - after I have hand-fed this little bucktoothed bird - she (I'm pretty sure it is a she now, even possibly migrated from northern Ireland) tries to shit on my hand as a thank you. That's how I tend to get repaid at the moment...

As another sign of how good things are going for me at the moment, today it took me three hours to drive home from work. I was bursting for a piss! It's an 8.8 mile (14km) journey from the office to my place, but the G20 protests threw a BIG spanner in the works. Here's hoping for a better future.

My new best friend - pt I

Starling on my rear view mirror earlier today. © Magnus Andersson

Today I made a new and unexpected friend: meet Mr (or possibly Mrs) Starling, on my rear view mirror! Now I don't deny being a bit of a birdwatcher, no siree, but this was quite incredible to have this wonderfully responsive creature so close to me.

Initially I only took a couple of still pictures, just to preserve the moment, but then the bird didn't seem bothered at all, so I switched to video...you wont guess what happened next though.

Part II to follow!

Back in Sweden for a bit

This what it looked like when I landed a few hours ago.

I've lapsed in my posts

Yes, I know, its been a bit slow here since coming back from Derbyshire, but last week I was the only staffer shooting so it was all a bit hectic. I bought a new little P&S though and I have been playing around with time lapse videos such as recording my journeys at work, melting ice, clouds etc. Here's Rob at work trying to fix a messed up 80-200 lens, with little success. [no sound on video]

Are you any good at Photoshop?

No. In fact, you suck at Photoshop! At last, season two has arrived of this insane American comedy show about an unseen PS genius named Donnie Hoyle. Alongside tutorials on various PS techniques we also get a glimpse of his troubled life plus endless killer lines about us lesser Adobe users:

"this is basic to intermediate, but for you its going to be stupid hard, advanced, so I'm gonna try and slow it down..."

Initially there was only ten episodes, but 11, 12 and 13 are now online. Joy.

On youtube here.

"it's about the cumulative damage done by suspicion"

Good film by Rajesh Thind on the issue of being confronted by officers who have very little understanding of the law when it comes to taking pictures and filming in public places.

I mentioned my ordeal in a previous post, and now security expert Bruce Schneier has weighed in with a good article in The Guardian.

The Times also had a piece on the subject from which the beautiful sentence to this post title was lifted.

Here's a download on what our rights are. I just wish they would show it to the officers, because I'm pretty sure we photographers know the score.

70 minutes fo your life

Picture: David Hobby

This is ridiculous. I've just watched a clip on youtube and it was 70 minutes long. Normally I don't get too much joy out of that site, other than the odd 'loving' cat up for adoption, but this is fantastic stuff. Part of the Authors@Google series, where they film guest speakers and put it online, this time featuring a photographic legend; Joe McNally.

Check out Joe's blog here. He's also mentioned on Strobist, with a ridiculous looking flash set up, seen above. See more shots from that shoot on David Hobby's (aka Strobist) flickr page here.

I'm also enjoying my time off this week, sleeping late and watching entire seasons of good TV series such as Prison Break and The Wire. Very productive, I know.

Also planning a couple of trips, one to Brighton for some shopping and to look at the sea, and another to Oxford where they are exhibiting original Ansel Adams handmade prints. If you've ever seen one you will never forget it. He invented the zone system, you know. I used to read those books when I was much younger and it really made me understand photography a whole lot better.

Shockingly, a photographer I know - who shall remain nameless - hadn't heard about the zone system at all. I worry sometimes...

The Commitment II

As mentioned in the previous post, commitment to the job is a given if you want to be a good photojournalist. Olivier Jobard, a French photographer with SIPA went way beyond the call of duty when covering an African refugee's perilous journey from Cameron to Europe. I don't know what he was thinking getting into that boat for the final crossing of the Atlantic. The story itself is simply amazing, so please spare 20 minutes of your life and check it out here. Today I will not complain about a single thing in my life.

Thanks to Lars Dareberg for link tip.

World exclusive

As mentioned in the last post, Elks were in action again last weekend and I was indeed feeling jolly. I took some 300 images on my compact party camera during their show. I had an idea in mind, and it has now been realised. Ladies and gentlemen, I hereby give you a world exclusive - the first video from Elks.

Picture: today I was photographing Zerthun, a model from Deptford who has made it to the UK final of the Miss Universe competition (as run by Donald Trump), and if she wins she will be reppin' for the whole of the UK in the US of A later this year.

More from Union Canal

Riding in Victoria Park with Malin and Neil

Damn, video is fun!

There will be more of this silly fun.

Take off from Kastrup yesterday