In the old days benches were designed with only one usage in mind; to sit on it. Over the last decade or so they have also been designed to keep people away. My favourite bench is the German beer garden benches like the one Lynn and Claire are sitting on. Lynn is a weaver and Claire is her intern.

Libby is a lovely lady living close to me. I met her today to look at some old photographs of the area I am doing a project on. It was inspiring to meet a great grandmother who talked about photoshop and which camera was the best out of Canon G10 and G12. 

 

 

 

 

The days of computer geeks as rock stars are numbered. For the last decade or so they have been riding on a wave bigger they could even have dreamed of. I predict the new rock star over the next decade or so will be people with old fashioned craft skills. Now people want to slow down, learn, appreciate skills and enjoy quality. Brian Walker (in the photo) is the local signwriter on my street and he was just finishing of Lucky News when I walked past today. 

Pink seems to be a colour that people have a strong opinion of. My wife was once told off by a woman in the street for dressing our son in pink, in certain places some men seem awkward when they talk to me if I wear a pink jumper and today a guy came in and said my portraits are great but he could not understand why I had chosen a pink backdrop. It was not good he said. Black or grey is much better I was told. I think I will stick to pink even more now, so I can have some more stories to tell in the future. This is T.D.O. Flaherty. He parked his electric wheelchair outside my pop-up studio and came in for a portrait today.

Yetty was one of many local Clapton people I photographed on the fifth day of my pop-up studio today in Hackney. Only three more days to go. 

4th of the pop-up free portrait studio. Shane came in with his friends for a portrait. 

Max- and Jude posing at the pop-up studio today. The pop-up studio is a week long experiment where I am offering local people around Chatstworth Road in Hackney free portraits and a free print to take home. 

I am doing a pop-up portrait project this week as part of documenting my exciting neighourhood Clapton in London. Everyone coming to the studio in the empty shop on 33 Chatsworth Road gets their portrait taken for free and get to leave with a free copy. I am really greatful to all the generous supporters who made this possible! 

I might have mentioned this before but I have no better story today. My Austrian family has never heard of Sound of Music(set in Austria), which in the rest of the western world is one of the most famous musicals ever. When I first started dating my wife she proudly admitted it was her favourite musical; and I was thinking then I must be blinded by love since I didn't care. Today in Slovenia near the village of Mozjanca I was struck by the view of the fog covering Ljubljana below. Then walking over a top towards me I saw something that looked like a happy von Trapp family. Franci (the father) runs a bakery/restaurant nearby and was escaping the fog with his wife Meta and daughters Iva and Eva, and to catch some sunshine up in the hills.