Bristol

I've now been living in Bristol for almost 2 years and I fall in love with the City a little more each day. It's vibrant, quirky, fun and generally just a great place to live. Every weekend there's something new to do and one of the highlights of the year is Bristol Harbour Festival, a weekend of music, performances and art, based around the harbourside. The weekend happens in July, and this year we were lucky with gorgeous weather, which gave me the opportunity to take some photos of Bristol, the crowds and the atmosphere. As the weather gets colder, darker and wetter I thought I would share this belated post now, to bring some fun and sunshine in to the short winter days! I hope you like them!

Tonight I'm Loving...

The band Warpaint's album 'The Fool' is such a beautiful and original album. I am especially loving the songs 'Warpaint' and 'Elephants'. After seeing them on 'Later with Jools Holland' couldn't wait to take the album home and it definitely didn't disappoint. It is great to see another band with raw talent make it through all the terrible music *coughCher Lloydcough*. So go out buy the album... I wish them all the luck and hope their quirky sounds makes it through the sea of shit!

'The Lazy Song'

I love Bruno Mars' 'The Lazy Song' on his debut album and couldn't get enough of it... that was untill I saw the video and swapped my iTunes version for the youtube official video! It is brilliant and so funny!

Well don't take my word for it, have a look yourself!

Adele

A different type of post to my usual ones but I just had to mention Adele's new album 21. There are very few albums out there where I love nearly every song but Adele's comes close. I have put all bar one song onto my iPod, one of very few albums that this has happened to! I wasn't a big Adele fan to begin with but after hearing her single 'Rolling in the Deep' and reading such great reviews I decided to give it a chance and man am I glad I did. So to everyone out there, go out and buy it, you won't regret it! Best album since Gorillaz's 'Plastic Beach' (plus it's a very beautiful album cover.)

The Rolling Stones - Like A Rolling Stone (Music Video)

I went to a talk by Andy Earl, a photographer who has worked with many hugely successful musicians. He showed us his music video for the Rolling Stones "Like A Rolling Stone" which is one of my favourite songs and videos. Learning how he made such an impressive video was incredibe, he used 12,000 still images shot using 2 Nikon 35mm cameras and a hand-held flash, a technique he perfected from art college, to create it. The video was directed by Michel Gondry and although you may not believe, contains no moving image whatsoever. By using the two cameras balanced on each shoulder and combining the images he managed to create this amazing moving image effect. I love the Stones version of Bob Dylan's original song and I think the video is breathtakingly good. Andy Earle is one of my favourite photographers in the field that I am most interested in and shows how experimenting and perfecting your own techniques can lead to such outstanding work. Thanks Andy Earl for inspiring me to do band photography!