Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams

Dunes, Oceano

Ansel Adams was an American Photographer born in San Francisco, California in 1902. He died in 1984 aged 82. He is best known for his black and white photographs of the American West and primarily Yosemite National Park. In 1927 Adams created his first portfolio in a different style than what had been seen before. Ansel Adams is considered a huge influence to photographers around the world. Exhibitions are still put on to show his work even though he is dead to continue inspiring young photographers. He took many photos over his career but today I am going to talk about one taken in 1963 called Dunes, Oceano.

This photograph is one of his most famous for many different reasons. The shot brings the picture out of the image, the way the photo is taken it actually feels like a 3D image. I feel the shot shows a good vs. evil, right vs. wrong feeling. The photo also feels incredibly isolated.

There is a clearly noticeable contrast in the image, changing from light and easy going on the left to dark and hard on the right. There is a wide variety of shades in the image though the top right side of the image is more solid black.

The texture looks as if it’s soft at the top yet rough at the bottom and there is a contrast there from top to bottom. The roughness looks as thought you could touch and feel the image and its roughness. The sky looks very soft along with the left side of the sand. It looks untouched as if no one has ever been there before and has just been discovered.

There is a wide variety of shaped in this photograph though I can see a lot of triangles. It’s as if the image is made up and put together with lots of triangles, thus creating many different shapes. The shapes are a very important part of the photograph as it is one of the very first things you notice when looking at the image.

Tommy Wilson

Post-Punk

The ethics of punk were continued in the late 70s and 80s through the form of post punk. Holding the same roots as the original punk movement post-punk brought in a new experimental and complex sound.

Public Image Ltd. rose from the ashes of punk band Sex Pistols, with singer John Lydon bringing the band together after Sex Pistols split. Public Image Ltd. are considered the innovators of the post punk movement and the first Post Punk band. Creating eight studio albums they received critical acclaim but never rose to the legendary status of the Sex Pistols. The band went on an indefinite hiatus in 1992 with John Lydon refusing to admit that the band had "split". Jeanette Lee from the band has went on to co-create Rough Trade Records with Geoff Travis and John Lydon from the band has went on to contradict his original ideas appearing on shows like "I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here" and an advert for Country Life Butter. For some people this has ruined his original status as a "Fuck You Front man".

Joy Division are one of the most well known Post-Punk bands. Originally trying to create the typical punk music they eventually found there own sound in a slower with a bassy ethereal sound. They became better known after the band ended, when singer Ian Curtis hanged himself in 1980. “Love Will Tear Us Apart” became their most popular song after the death of Ian Curtis. The remaining members of Joy Division went on to form New Order, who are a New Wave, Post-Punk band.

The Cure are a post punk band with a goth like image. They have released 13 studio albums over the course of there career and in 2009 received the God Like Genius Award at the NME awards for their contribution to Music. In a few of their albums they managed to make their music light and cheery whilst putting forward a dark and meaningful message. The bands second album “Seventeen Seconds” has a much darker sound than most of their other albums. This time in their career has been described as their “goth phase”.

The post-punk revival came in the early 2000’s, with bands like The Strokes, The Libertines and Franz Ferdinand shooting to mainstream success. These bands made music with obvious post-punk influences, using Mod like fashion copied from the original post-punk and new romantic bands. There are many bands trying to mimic the success of bands like this but none to as great success.

Tommy Wilson

The Beginning of Punk

The first established punk rock group was The Ramones. Started in 1974 in New York City The Ramones recorded a very low budget first album and received little attention outside their home city. Their first gig outside of New York only had an audience of 10. It wasn’t till they played their first show in the UK at The Roundhouse in London on the 4th on July 1976, that they started to receive critical acclaim. The following night they played a second gig at The Roundhouse and met members of The Clash and Sex Pistols.

This meeting inspired these bands to take a new direction in the form of anti-establishment. The Clash were an instant success from the release of their debut album “The Clash”. The UK punk scene was now alive. The Sex Pistols then released what is claimed to be one of the most influential albums of all time “Never mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols” on 28th of October 1977. It went to number one in the UK and 106 in the USA, and became their only official album released.

Punk rock music continued after this with The Jam but they made it sound a lot more pop and were more image conscious than the previous mentioned bands. Singer Paul Weller’s lyrics were in contrast to the lyrics of The Clash and Sex Pistols. Where The Pistols called for destruction and The Clash called for revolutionary change, The Jam sang about the idealistic England from a socialist’s point of view.

Another influential Punk band of the 70s was The Buzzcocks. They received mainstream success with their most famous song “Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve)”, which remains one of the most covered punk songs of all time.

Siouxsie & the Banshees were a band who merged punk and gothic rock. They were fronted by a woman, which was very different for a punk band at the time. They were very experimental and alternative to anything heard before. Siouxsie Sioux and Steven Severin met at a Roxy Music concert in September 1975 and decided to get a band together.

These six bands changed the face of music forever and influenced musicians everywhere.

Tommy Wilson

You Swine!!

Swine flu is going to kill half the population... but we have not to worry, this is the view of Tim Ross and Mark Prigg from the Evening Standard. I've been ill all week in bed not keeping up with the news and i wake up this morning to a global epidemic threatning to kill me. It is like this has came from no where.

Transmitted from pigs, swine flu is normally only spread when people who come in direct contact with pigs, but the new outbreak amoungst humans is differant it's caused by a new swine flu virus that has spread from person to person and it's happening among people who haven't had any contact with pigs.

To date there has been 25,805 reported cases of swine flu (08/06/09) resulting in 158 deaths. The most reported cases have came from America, with 12,701. This has acounted for 42 of the deaths. The most reported deaths from the virus have came from where the virus originated, Mexico. With 106 deaths and 5,717 cases reported Mexico's terrible health care system is clearly not helping treat people well enough from the virus. Where other countrys are beggining to cope, Mexico can not. The United Kingdon has 664 reported cases as of yet but still no deaths.

At this time it is hard to see wether swine flu is gunna get worse quickly or die out soon. Maybe what is going to happen has been predicted but i refuse to listen to or read news related to the story as it seems to be the same story repeated over and over, i just want to be told soon wether im going to get swine flu or not... would make things a lot easier. After the initial worry of getting the virus, the U.K has seemed to been able to cope with the idea of swine flu.

Tommy Wilson

Christmas Vs That time of year with the chocolate eggs

Real presents are better than chocolate eggs; therefore Christmas is better than Easter. That is the true reasons behind these seasonal holidays these days. To most people they have no religious reason at all.

Easter is a pointless celebration put forward by the companies that saw Christmas as a success. Of course Easter has its values to a religious person but the fact is most of the people who eat the eggs have no idea why or don’t even care. Christmas is another time of year that my head tells me is pointless and just commercial yet I can’t help but feel excited and happy at that time of year. It’s not for the reason that you get presents or to do with religion, it’s just the feeling you get around Christmas, maybe the fact that there is actually decent telly on at that time of year.

Christmas overall is more acceptable time of year, though that is still greatly taken advantage of by the global companies. They should move the religious Christmas and the commercial Christmas to different times of years. That would save the hassle of religious people trying to force there ideas on the non-believers and save the non believers having to defend there reason to loves the holidays.

Tommy Wilson

Michael Jackson Returns

Michael Jackson is set to return to the UK to play a handful of dates at the O2 arena in London but with the amount of tickets sold and the price they were at you cant help but think this is all for the money to counter his bankruptcy.

He has been said to have been "crying with joy" when the tickets for all the dates sold out. Was this at the joy of so many people wanting to see him or the joy that he finally has some money to pay of his debts?

The tickets sold out for the gigs in just less than 2 hours, so this proves that he is still one of the biggest acts around. The fact of the matter is everybody knows the name Michael Jackson, recently due to the allegations made against him and his outrageous antics but could everyone really name a Michael Jackson song with the possible exception of "Thriller"?

There is no doubt that he will not be as good as he was in his golden days, his voice will lack the depth it once had. So will this not leave over a million ticket holders disappointed? Some people have paid large sums of money for these tickets and although some people are just going so they can say they have seen Michael Jackson live, some people will be die hard fans and are going to see a good show.

He will also be rusty as it has been years since his appeared on stage. The fact he has not played in years or released any new work in over a decade could possibly be forgiven as a lot of things have been going on in his life. There is no doubt that these shows will be spectacular events, with most likely great support acts, lights, dancers etc but the fact Michael is past it should have and at least countered the outrageous prices. These shows will be memorable events, but only time will tell if it’s for good or bad reasons.

Tommy Wilson

Sheep...

In this country the celebrities and the innovators are completely different. The people driving this country forward are condemned to the shadows and limelight seekers find a way to get to the front of the papers.

The glossy woman’s magazines are full or the same skimpy woman replicated over and over again with the same repeated news story. Amy Winehouse gets on the front page but is not credited for her fantastic voice and brilliant song writing, it’s due to her "live fast die young" lifestyle.

The majority of youth follow with this, most wearing the same clothes listening to the same music and liking the same activities trying to become the generic person you see on the front of these papers and magazines.

The level of music being produced in the current day has also dropped dramatically. Its getting to the point where the majority of the music in the charts are from "here now gone the next day" artists with songs that have no great lyrical content or depth. It's now cooler to get caught by the police than to learn how to play guitar or write a song.

These ways don’t look set to change anytime soon either, they are in fact getting worse. With a lot the music that does in fact have the potential to be legendary being shunned off to the "different people".

So how did this happen? It seems like it was an all off a sudden change from what it was like in the late 90’s, well as far as I can see. So we need to promote the opportunity for teenagers to be different than one another and maybe we can achieve the youth culture of what we once had.

Tommy Wilson