budget lenses

 other than shooting film there's few cheaper ways of emptying your bank account quickly than money spent on lenses. i use the first lens in this vid a lot. so much so that i'd say it's almost moved me away from my expensive (and time consuming) film habit and back to digital. the images are so random that, with the camera set on full manual i get free range to experiment with actually camera technique and it really puts me in mind of my first ever camera, a zenit with a broken light meter that i used fully on eye, i really can't be bother ed with all the camera shenanigans, whether its complex developing with film, or horrible editing sessions with digital - i just like mucking about taking pictures. cheap lenses are a great way to do this, to free yourself up and actually enjoy what you're doing

* i'm in no way critcising those who like their photoshop/lightbox or for whom hours in a dark room is a day well spent. i love, esp the darkroom stuff, having a blether about all that but i don't really understand it and its not for me

building a copy stand

if you're shooting film, whatever method you're doing, you're going to find your costs going up real fast. while i've got a very, very basic dark room set up i don't do any scanning, not least because it appears that the likes of epson haven't done any work on software compatibility since windows 10. so here's this. too much computering for me but looks feasible 

christofer hogman

 i'm not a fan of ai generarted art, but then again i'm not a fan of a lot of things. but, that's as far as it goes. whether it's art on not seems irrelevant to me - i've enough to be doing without wasting time about all that! christofer hogman (swedish keyboard not enabled!) has some pretty decent opinions on this - as well as sounding like what i imgone i sound like when i'm speaking english to swedish people! lol 

mammal hands

 mellow sunday 

vera danilina

 i watch something like this and realise just how terrible i am at playing guitar! hahaha but even the act of being not very good allows me to appreciate vera danilina's sublime playing in a manner i would've have been able to had i never picked up a guitar in the first place. listening to this while drawing last night. lovely 

my heart's in the highlands

 

klara bylund

adressing, again, the shortage of dance on here. i came across klara bylund purely by chance - i can't embed a video as she only does shorts. but what she does is entirely different from any other dance video that's come up on my feed. straight off, she doesn't look like any of the other dancers i usually see - this looks like someone in their kitchen. and indeed, when you see her other videos, her kitchen is her studio. i love that restriction and i love her use of space. i know nothing about her, other than she's living in/from norrkoping and, to my eyes, this is a fairly unremarkable swedish kitchen! she looks bendy and effortless enough to me to suggest at least some dance or movement training. certainly if i tried this it would look very different!

i found it joyous and a wonderful way to brighten the day.  dance in your kitchen!  (and avoid the comments section!) 

edith pageaud

 unlike rachmaninoff i do like his prelude in c sharp minor but that doesn't mean i can do it anything  like justice! but here's edith pageaud, who's transcribed it, changed her tuning, and played it like a boss. amazing! 

dan hastie and terin ector

 again, i wasn't up to much, but i was loving this. don't know if the yt playlist thing will work but just search for them plus crows height and it'll appear 

the offline

 more sicktime sounds. nice! 

minyo crusaders

 in that niche netherworld of japanese traditional latin crossover here's this. which i'm just loving! 

i'm not going to lie, one track isn't enough. here they are out and about 

matthew halsall

 i'd love to tell you i was getting all arty this week and this was my soundtrack. but, while it was true a little, i was mostly not well and drifting on the couch. this was like a bath 

metamorfosi

 if one of your guys turns up rocking a theorbo - i'm listening! 

roberto cassani

 i'm off to see roberto cassani tonight. we haven't seen each other for about ten years and i haven't seen him perform for about the same time so very much looking forward to it. check him out at bandcamp. note - as far as i can make out roberto's made the leap from where we used to work and is a full time musician, which isn't easy. purchases matter!

james against the machine

 great skills. i couldn't do this in a month of sundays 

veggie bowl

 this yeung man bowl is like diving into memory for me. i can't say my memries of working in the kitchen are fond but they are good, and i've made endeless veggie/vegan bowls just like this and i've never liked an avocado since! lol where i live you'd be more likely to see a unicorn than a purple carrot but such things were freely available when i was a londonist and i do have very fond memories of shopping and cooking for my ex mother in low. as for carrot ribbons, i was all about making wee roses and knots with them. happy days 

henry purcell

 beautiful 

natalia lafourcade

 a ukulele clearly but this is what's constituting spanish practice this week. what a voice! and a killer band... 

marta pereira da costa

 portuguese guitar? nope, never even seen one. so here's marta pereira da costa to show us how it's done. lovely. but those tuners!? 

reggare style oldies

 old school 

start photography

 modern cameras are great. that said, you can pick up a 10+ year dslr cheap as chips and get started. so what's stopping you? likely the offputting manual download and then trying to figure that out. worthwhile then to have an overview which this handy, and long, video is. fear not, there's content notes! and there's a setup one after. watch this instead of netflix and tomrrow, get yourself out (this doesn't count for northern europe at the moment as the light is flatter than a pancake and about a smuch use as a candle in a gale! 

*i don't necessarily agree with all these tips but you get to pick and choose

*my current digital setup is an old canon body and a holga lens. you don't have to do anything with the holga lens but you will have to fiddle about with the manual settings. it's a good way to learn a camera, have a bit of a laugh and you can pick up the bits for very little money. despite what almost every video on yt will tell you - it's not about the gear but your eye. work on that rather than emptying your bank account! lol

bass lines

after yesterday - what i have been doing (tho, as always, not as often as i should) is playing with my bass. a lot of guitar/ukulele/bass players seem to have problems around notes and shapes on the fretboard so this, to me, seems clear and useful, and should be applicable across instruments

easy ukulele

for no good reason i haven't played any ukulele for ages. but i heard this guy the other day and got one down from the hanger. a super easy progression but also handy if you're wanting to think a bit about chord construction. and sounds lovely.  

fun with filters

one thing i've noticed about photography vids online is that (aside from being very male, very white) there just doesn't seem to be a lot of larking about going on. really, nobody cares, so you may as well have a laugh. came across these the other day and this sort of thing seems an ideal way to fritter away an afternoon! 

*i'm not denying there's a time for seriousness but let's face it, a lot of the time you're just grinding and getting the job done. if you can't remember the last time you just let go and had a giggle, now's the time to start

more old people

 it's unwise for me to have opinions but this guy knows what's what lol

old people

back in the day i remember being fascinated by old people. people who had lived in and been involved in ww2 were commonplace and, altho the average was lower than it is now, i remember having conversations with guys who had volunteered for the first world war. and then everything inbetween : shipyards, mines, tenements, steamies, the works. that said, bertrand russell's 'my grandad knew napoleon' story would've taken the win! lol 

stalker

 the whole film! while the festive season's great for rubbish movies it's worth remembering that, not so long ago, there was such a thing called film and it's just not so easy to see anymore. not for everyone for sure, but just watching the opening sequence of this was like a breath of fresh air! 

*try and get a tarkovsky box set these days (subtitled not dubbed). more and more i see these types of films either not available, priced way beyond what you'd expect on the disappearing format of dvd, or just absent on streaming. what a shame. when i was young (and even our video shop stocked such things!) and we watched everything, we didn't realise how lucky we were!

framing your head

i've taken to using a holga lens on an old body of late and i'm finding it a very different form of practice than my pinhole camera, so much so i had to reset myself a little bit (and definitely not take two different types of camera out on the same outing!) and think about what i was doing. this is a lovely wee vid about just that and, to me, would seem useful for most creative activity  

the christmas story

and, because we're nto that far out from christmas, here's some more oe. i ndon't speak it now and my accent is different, but this guy makes it work. if you've not heard this before and it's up your street, have a google for some spoken extracts of me from the wycliffe bible. worth it!  

the battle of maldon

now this is what lego is for! it's a shame it's not in oe but, as they say, they wanted it to be more accessible. i'm not sure accessibility equates to interest which is a great shame. nevertheless, good effort! 

el estepario

i got a drum pad recently and, much like my balance board, i'd massively recommend it, even if only to challenge your brain and amke your body do something it's not used to - plus you'll get a whole new appreciation of drumming! at the pinnacle of technique madness is el estepario, who puts his crazy skills down to hours and hours and hours of practice (which, tbh, works - my intial playing around and being frustrated has been replaced, in large part, by metronome sessions working on basic patterns, consistency, time keeping and speed. which is working and enjoyable!), here's rick beato's take on him 

easy project

 new year, new reolutions? get your creativity on! this one is super easy but, as with everything super easy, tricky in its own way. no excuses!