ART: Brandalism: Reclaiming the UK Visual Landscape

(Artist - Bill Posters (UK) // Site specific install, Primary School, Manchester. Image via Brandalism.org.uk.)

“Any advertisement in public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It belongs to you. It’s yours to take, rearrange and re-use. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.” 

- Paraphrase by Banksy of graphic designer/writer Sean Tejaratchi in Crap Hound no. 6, July 1999. 

This well-known quote neatly sums up the philosophy behind The Brandalism Project, a group of UK artists who have launched what they are calling, “the world’s first international, collaborative subvertising project.”

“We are tired of being shouted at by adverts on every street corner,” Brandalism state on their website, “so we decided to get together with some friends from around the world and start to take them back, one billboard at a time.” 

In the run up to the London Olympics, 25 Brandalism artists assailed over 30 billboards and other advertisements in Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Bristol, and London and used them as canvases to create original art. Some Brandalists modify the text or visual elements of a billboard in order to turn its commercial message on its ear, as in “Health Warning” (Levenshulme, Manchester) by artist Shift//Delete; others simply paper over the advertisements or install their work on blank billboards.

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PHOTOGRAPHY: Nurnberg's Old-School Guide to Lighting Portraits

If you’re looking for a book on portrait lighting there are plenty to chose from. But before you load up your Amazon shopping cart with recent releases you may want to consider an oldie-but-goodie: Walter Nurnberg’s Lighting for Portraiture.

First published in 1948, Lighting for Portraiture won’t show you how to master the latest studio gear or perform miracles with your speedlights, but it will give you a solid understanding of basic portrait lighting concepts along with a slew of recipes that are as applicable today as they were back when spot, flood or bare bulb, were the photographer’s only options.

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DESIGN: Inspiration for the Logo-less

(C) 2010 Thomas V Hartmann (Click to view full-size)

I’m wandering off of my patch a bit, I know, but logo design has been on my mind lately. Hardly a day goes by, it seems, when I don’t find myself coveting the clever abstraction on someone’s business card or filled with envy over the cool symbol or mascot they use as their Twitter avatar.

When I made my debut in the Twitterverse, I struggled over what I could use to replace that newbie’s egg. I didn’t have a logo (my business cards were the templated variety from MOO, and I wasn’t crazy about using a photo of myself as my avatar (alas, like many other photographers I am camera-shy). I could have cooked up a simple type treatment of my initials, but I didn’t want people to mistake me for the element Thorium, and another photographer, Tomas Van Houtryve of VII (@TomasVH), was already using a simple, dignified “TVH”.

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PHOTOGRAPHY: In These Tough Economic Times, Invest in...Alien Bees?

I’ve found that people who know anything at all about Paul C. Buff’s Alien Bees strobes either love them or hate them.

Proponents laud their affordability and reliability, Buff’s repair policy, and overall customer service. AB haters, on the other hand, deride everything from the admittedly goofy colors they come in (although you can always buy basic black…), to their “cheap” look and feel (they’re made of Lexan—which is actually bullet-proof glass material—rather than metal), to the quality of the light they produce. At least one naysayer I’ve read on the web goes so far as to call Paul C. Buff himself a con man.

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