Tuesday 29 November 2016

Brads'Choice Pics 2 - The Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging



My mother-in-law, Ivy will often expresses a strange turn of phrase and occasionally and quite delightfully mangles the English language.  A few months back she turned the word, mesmerised into mezarized, which I kind of like. Anyway I find I am indeed "mezarized" by reflections and how they interplay with the real world, over the years I have taken many reflection images, in fact I surely have enough for a book.

The image above is one of my faves from around three years ago, it was taken during a holiday stroll in the Rodeo Drive area of LA.

The technicalities,.... I used my old iPhone 4S and ProCamera for capture, the file was pre-edited in Snapseed then post edited in Photoshop, which is my standard workflow for iPhonoegraphy that is going to be printed. The final image was flipped left to right, this achieved two things, the reflected clock appears the right way around but more importantly it improved the look of the image, I'm not adverse to a bit of flipping when it works.

This print was entered in a large bi-annual regional art comp and whilst it didn’t win it was voted the second "Peoples Choice" which was nice to hear. The 24 by 30 inch print now hangs in my wife's' office.

It's a bit of a statement piece for me, I guess I'm a trend and fashion contrarian, I see most of it as superficial and contrived, part of the all consuming, self serving commerce machine, with little true or lasting value.

Anyhow the name of the image, which just fits for me, is derived from a track off the now ancient "Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" set, by Genesis. Lamb was released in 1974 and I shouted myself a copy for my 15th birthday, it was the last album that Gabriel worked on with Genesis before his departure to pursue solo projects.


Should you have some spare time, check the Double Album out, at the time of release it was quite controversial polarising opinions left right and centre, but now after many years I think it stands up as an amazing work of musical exploration and provides some pointers to the directions that Peter Gabriel would take in the ensuing years. Oh and do take your time cause you really do need to listen to it several times to get the nuance and impact.






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