A Monkey's Revenge - My Blog

Jan 9, 2011

Sven,Sven,Sven

Foxes play Citizens at Leicester today, or if you prefer, Leicester City FC are at home to Manchester City FC. Leicester's Manager is the one and only Sven Goran Eriksson who I photographed at the club for The Daily Telegraph. Sven is a lovely bloke-very relaxed and just the cool, calculating sort of person needed to take the Foxes on to higher things. I photographed him during his interview with writer Sandy Macaskill in Sven's small office.Unfortunately there wasn't time to choose any other locations for the photos and it was dark outside by this time any way.

This week I've been chatting to Stuart Little of a little photoshop. Stuart is currently developing some actions for a new set along the lines of the 'Hipstamatic' app for i-phone, but usable on a pc or Mac. The 'Hipsta' effect seems to be all the rage at the moment and to my eye it embodies lomo, cross processing and a few other bits and bobs in a nice arty border. I decided to try my own effect on one of the shots from the Sven shoot and quite like the end result seen here. I'm guessing in a little while Hipstamatic may go the way of HDR and look a touch passé, but for now I'm happy to go with the flow. Mine was given the ambrotype treatment then some vignetting, softening and darkening of the edges, a few other bits and bobs which I've probably forgotten by now and finally a nice arty border was added.

The original Hipstamatic was a plastic toy camera invented by the Dorbowski brothers Bruce and Winston in the USA. Back in the winter of 1982 they started building prototypes of the cheap film cameras, but unfortunately before it became a mainstream product, they were killed in a car accident.Their older brother Richard later set up a memorial website and this was spotted by web developers who eventually came up with the Hipstamatic application.I think it's a fitting tribute to two people whose dream was to bring art photography cheaply to everybody.