yeah I know I said I’d share some of my previous work next but i lied. I thought I’d share a few samples of artists I like and pick apart why I find them inspirational. I’ll do it post by post for simplicity.
by Hugh O'Malley, Beauty Photographer and Videographer based in ShanghaiThat’s what I’m calling my project.
I used to be really interested in light painting. I still am but I haven’t pursued it in a long time. I actually hate that term light painting and if you search that term you get a lot of aesthetically unpleasant images that are nothing like what I want to create. I haven’t come up with a better term yet so I’m just calling my project ‘ephemera’.
Recently I’m researching to start shooting again. I’ve been trying to figure out tools – torches, fiber optics, colors and some sort of system to put it all together. I’m not really a boy scout when it comes to assembling or making things so it will have to be a really simple system.
I’ll post some of my experiments in my next post.
by Hugh O'Malley, Beauty Photographer and Videographer based in Shanghaithis tip saved me a lot of time in photoshop. if you find yourself repeatedly having to go to the menu in photoshop to bring up a dialog and you want to tweak the settings on the dialog every time you open it, then this is a lifesaver.
click the record a new action icon on the actions palette and name your action whatever you want.
then when the dialog launches give your action a useful name. i want my action to launch the gaussian blur dialog every time i use it.
then from the actions palette menu, click ‘insert menu item’
this dialog will appear
then from the menu select the dialog you want to appear each time you play the action. for me it’s the gaussian blur dialog.
click ok on the dialog to save your action
now every time i play the action it brings up the gaussian blur dialog without me having to click through the menus.
hope that saves you some time. let me know if it helped you!
by Hugh O'Malley, Beauty Photographer and Videographer based in ShanghaiAhhhh you gotta love Kraftwerk. I was watching a documentary about Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre called “The Defiant Ones” about their experience coming up in the music industry to becoming eventual billionaires with Beats by Dr. Dre. Some of Dr Dre’s old crew were talking about the early days in the studio and I forget exactly who it was that said that at the dawn of rap and hip hop Kraftwerk were a massive influence on them! I was flabbergasted!
So i relistened to some old kraftwerk and was blown away by ‘The Model’. Sure it’s a product of its era but it still holds up well today. A wonderful mish mash of Teutonic sensibility with a wholehearted embrace of a technology that was totally raw at the time. When you marry this potent mix to the group’s functional grasp of the language you get a really heady mixture. It shouldn’t be good but it just works!
After downloading their greatest hits though and trudging through most of it, i’m not so sure about the rest of their oeuvre. Some of it has aged like milk.
by Hugh O'Malley, Beauty Photographer and Videographer based in ShanghaiA police car and a screaming siren
A pneumatic drill and ripped up concrete
A baby wailing and stray dog howling
The screech of brakes and lamp light blinking
That’s entertainment, that’s entertainment
A smash of glass and the rumble of boots
An electric train and a ripped up phone booth
Paint splattered walls and the cry of a tomcat
Lights going out and a kick in the balls
I tell ya that’s entertainment, that’s entertainment
Watched The Gentlemen movie directed by Guy Ritchie. Enjoyable yarn. Heard this over the end credits and was struck by Paul Weller’s poetry. Classic song.
by Hugh O'Malley, Beauty Photographer and Videographer based in Shanghaiwent to disney with the wife and kids a few days after christmas. naively thought that it not being a national holiday in China that it would be quiet. how wrong was that?
Just cause it’s not a holiday in China doesn’t mean it’s not a holiday everywhere else. Apparently Japan and Korea have big holidays for christmas and every other person behind us in the queues were Japanese or Korean.
Don’t get me wrong we had a good time but queueing for an hour for a ride is no-one’s idea of fun.
also note to self: get there early to get your fast passes!!! if you arrive after 10am the daily quota for fast passes is likely to be used up and you miss out on skipping those lovely queues.
by Hugh O'Malley, Beauty Photographer and Videographer based in ShanghaiI can’t recommend Brandon Li’s Channel enough. I’m starting to shoot more and more video and he’s been a source of inspiration not only for camera technique but also for editing and everything from how to pace your videos, the most intuitive use of transitions, how to shoot people and analyses of what kinds of music to use in your videos. Check out his film seoul_wave which was the first piece of his work that i watched. super talented and always enjoyable.
If you’re an emerging filmmaker or even vaguely interested in creative videos it’ll be worth your time.
by Hugh O'Malley, Beauty Photographer and Videographer based in Shanghaiit’s a bit of a cliché but sometimes there are books that really resonate with you, where you are in life, reflect exactly how you’re feeling – your current malaise. i picked this book up knowing absolutely nothing about it i honestly just liked the cover and took it home, sneak reading it when the brats were comatose. it chronicles the travails of a worn out new yorker and her attempts to sleep away a life of cares which she has born and yet must bear. well not a life exactly but one year. she uses various cocktails of pharmaceutical grade sleepers to wipe out the bullshit.
the tone is fairly emotionless, matter of fact, even though the underlying subject matter is anything but. self loathing, dead parents, ennui, disgust for contemporary so – called life…
she works in an art gallery and skewers nicely the emptiness of it all. also murders contemporary materialism. a breath of fucking fresh air… go and read it if you can. ok there’s a lot of dead parents and funerals and drugs in it but don’t be dismayed by the subject matter. it’s really a breezy read…
by Hugh O'Malley, Beauty Photographer and Videographer based in Shanghai
I’m not exactly a huge comic nerd but I read this interview with Olivia Jaimes the artist behind ‘Nancy’ and was immediately smitten. She describes how the character is basically a spoiled little shit but unapologetically so. How endearing…
More here.
by Hugh O'Malley, Beauty Photographer and Videographer based in ShanghaiJust watched this fascinating documentary about Marlon Brando that used extensively audio recordings of him. Really enlightening watch and it catalogued in detail his personal dramas, his struggles, his thought processes as an artist and you can keenly feel how much of a philosopher he was. Really an amazing individual.
Most fascinating for me were his struggles with film as a medium of conveying deep personal truths and how he felt massively disillusioned with the form dismissing it as mostly trivial. I personally disagree with him and think that the ability to entertain can be quite profound. life can beat you down, it can be depressing, it can be a shitstorm even as we struggle through the crap to do something even a little bit satisfying and the mundanity of trying to earn a living and all the other shit. and to make something that enlightens (even in a relatively simple way), that inspires or even just makes one person smile or feel better, is not a trivial thing. to make something even slightly beautiful, maybe even a little poetic that connects with other people and makes them forget themselves is transcendent…by Hugh O'Malley, Beauty Photographer and Videographer based in Shanghai