Owen Phillips

I’ve got hold of an old Polaroid 450 Land Camera – the kind with the peel-apart film – it’s really wonderful to see what it can do – especially since compatible film is still made by Fuji – at a not too extortionate price!

Interesting things happen if you keep hold of the throwaway part of the peel-apart film… It’s a bit sticky, and you have to transport it in a careful manner – but once you get it home you can tape it down onto a piece of glass and use ordinary household bleach to carefully remove all the black emulsion on the back of it… what results is basically a large format negative that can be scanned like any other.

The result of the bleaching and scrubbing leaves the edges dirty and mangled, and adds scratches, texture, and a generally rough effect that – to me anyway – looks rather wonderful.

I’m treating this like vintage digital camera! You get the small Polaroid print straight away and can use it as a preview to see how your shot will come out – then you take the negative home and work it up into something special.

Fun times! This selection were captured on holiday in Normandy this summer. More to come soon!

Share this:

Here’s a large collection of pictures from holidaying in France, and just bumbling  around locally. These are taken on an array of old cameras I’ve been collecting… The venerable SX-70, an old Lubitel 166b (cheapest of the cheap Russian made TLR), a Holga 120 TLR (even cheaper chinese toy-camera), and a nice old Yashica Mat 124.

Polaroid SX-70

Yashica Mat 124

Lubitel 166b

The Mighty Holga

Share this:

Some more images from my second pack of PX100 Silver Shade. A Mixed bag. Things are working much better indoors where the light is a lot more controllable, it seems. I’m going to continue posting all the results, good or bad. It’s a process of experimentation.

I’ve also just taken delivery of some PX600, which is faster (600 ASA as opposed to 100 ASA), and should provide some different results. The packs need customising to work with the SX-70, which is designed for the 100 speed film. Some scalpel-whittling to make them fit, and the addition of an ND filter to the top of the film pack to ensure correct exposure.

I’ve also got some of the Impossible Project’s TZ Artistic Paul Giambarba Edition colour film. Results of that to follow once I’ve finished this pack of PX100.

Share this:

The Sonic Happening poster

The brief for this one was “Something like the 1960s, San Francisco, Psychedelia scene”. That’s a bit of luck – it’s the kind of thing I like to do. So, this was the result. Actually designed and artworked while sitting in the local pub, and fueled by that great mind-altering substance – ale.

NEW! Poster prints of this design are available from my online print shop!
Click here to buy…

Share this:

I’ve just received possibly one of the most exciting birthday gifts ever. Adele has hit the jackpot and spoiled me rotten with a beautiful 1974 Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera, complete with leather case, original box and instruction book, and original-boxed accessories including tripod mount and close-up lens.

The way the camera opens up, and then closes neatly back into an oversized zippo-esque oblong of brown leather and brushed chrome, together with the satisfying clunk of the reflex mirror and the reasurring mechanical whir of the motors as it ejects the resultant print make it a joy to use and an object of fascination. They certainly don’t make things quite like this anymore.

Unfortunately, the supply of available film is a little limited. Since Polaroid went to the wall a few years ago, supplies of film became scarce. It was only when a group of artists and ex-Polaroid employees stepped in to save the world’s only Polaroid instant film manufacturing plant from the receivers’ hammers that a future of any kind was preserved for the medium. The Impossible Project, as it became known, aims to reproduce the old film and allow the format to continue on.

These shots are taken using The Impossible Project’s PX100 Silver Shade film. It’s an unpredictable old Hector, highly sensitive to light, even for a few minutes after exposure, and with evolving colours and saturation, depending on temperature and storage conditions of the print… It’s nice to experiment with, but unfortunately at £2.50 a shot it’s going to cost me…

Each pack holds 8 shots. Here’s the first. More results to follow.

Share this:

World cup at the Wardrobe

I hate the world cup. Or, more accurately, I hate the rubbish that goes with it, and what it brings out in people.

However, The Wardrobe in Leeds asked me to do them a poster for the England matches they’ll be showing. Being a nice sort of place, they wanted something a bit classier than the usual football-fayre. Cue the monochrome and Helvetica.

Share this:

Hexa - Open mic

This month’s open mic was looming and I’d simply been too busy to do a poster. Thought I’d be honest, and let everybody know!

It’s really good to have HEXA back, and I didn’t want them to be un-billed. I think they liked the poster as it turned out… They stole a few away with them anyway, which is always a good sign!

Share this:

The next 3 months...

We were in need of another poster to bill the next few months of bands, and so James and I had a collaborative session over a couple of ales to come up with this. It’s good to get someone else’s input and bounce a few ideas around. The ‘Communist Propaganda Poster’ theme was chosen, and then embellished upon with progressively more bizarre ideas… Welly boots, dead birds and bananas. All good fun.

NEW! Poster prints of this design are available from my online print shop!
Click here to buy…

Share this:

Open Mic Poster - Christmas Special

This one took a while. The guitar illustration mainly, which was inspired by the artwork at the Hand Drawn Creative. He’s done a series of guitars, and has a great vintage style. Thought I’d tribute my Fender Jag for Christmas…

NEW! Poster prints of this design are available from my online print shop!
Click here to buy…

Share this:

A few more shots taken recently, the landscape varying in the space of a few days between icy cold, grey and dreary, and beautiful crisp and clear sunshine.

Share this:

Having done a bit of reading up, and perusing through people’s flickr libraries, I’ve gone and got myself a grad ND filter, in an attempt to achieve the more realistic balance of exposure obtainable vie HDR, but for a single shot and without the intensive post-processing.

The weather here at the moment is spectacular – snow getting up to my armpits in places, and it’s hard going wandering around, but the landscapes are stunning. And I love breaking the pristine snow and being the first person to venture to a particular place.

Most of the following shots make use of the grad ND filter. It’s like putting sunglasses on the camera, and I love the shots where it creates massive contrast between the dark steely-blue sky, and the white of the hills.

Share this:

This year’s winter Lakes trip has been fruitful! The conditions were beautiful, and despite taking the compact camera for up in the hills, I decided it was a waste not to lug the SLR up there. I’m glad I did. The results, I think,  speak for themselves.

The weather was clear and cold while we were up there, but there was still a lot of snow on the tops. In some of the shots you can just see the top strand of a wire fence peeping above the snow, giving an indication as to the three feet or so of depth we were walking on top of.

Share this:

Not wanting to be put off by the lack of light at this time of year, I’ve been using evening dog-walks as an opportunity for light painting, suitably equipped with camera, tripod, torch and two flashguns with coloured filters.

The cemetery seems a little contrived for this sort of thing, but it was there, and added a different subject matter to woodland trees.

All these shots are taken by leaving the camera on a tripod, taking a long exposure, whilst running about lighting up things with the flashguns and waving a torch in the air. The dog seems to think it’s tremendous fun, and has nearly brought the whole thing crashing down on more than one occasion as he runs back to the camera after me…

Share this:

I’ve finally succumbed and bought myself a DSLR. Canon 450D, with the 18-55mm kit lens. The infuriating thing is that at this time of year it’s too dark in the evenings to play with it, and I’m at work all day, so can’t experiment then. Some of the following are shot on my morning dog walks, others are the result of weekend-wanderings. I’ll be mostly confined to weekend experimentation until Spring and the longer days.

Again, HDRs seem to be the order of the day. Being able to shoot in RAW mode allows me to create HDRs, to  a certain extent, from a single exposure. The shots here are a mixture of those taken from one RAW shot, and three bracketed exposures as before.

Share this:

Cow Town poster

This month’s band are Cow Town. For some reason in my had that translated into a Saul Bass-esque redition of cow-parts. Here it is….

NEW! Poster prints of this design are available from my online print shop!
Click here to buy…

Share this:

The Jam Room - This way

We want to make the Open Mic a bit more free and easy – allow people to relax and not have to stand up in the limelight if they don’t want to. Anything to encourage the music. With this in mind, it seemed like a sensible idea to host a Jam Room in the back room at the same time, where people can just sit and play together.

Obviously, we were in need of some serious signage. I had to get busy.

There are three posters in this series, I’ve only included one here because they’re all pretty much the same. One just says “Jam Room”, while the other two variants are a right-pointer, marked “this way”, and a left-pointer, marked “that way”.

Share this:

Briggs and Oliver Antiques - initial design

As a result of the Open Mic posters, they guys at Briggs and Oliver invited me to have a crack at designing them an Art Nouveau style flyer. To the left and below are an initial concept, in a couple of colour variations.

Briggs and Oliver Antiques - initial design - alternative colourway

Share this:

Open Mic Poster - May -October

With a bit of a departure from posters for individual bands – mainly due to not being able to find the time to produce them – I decided to go for a single poster to fill a few months of bookings. Here’s the result.

NEW! Poster prints of this design are available from my online print shop!
Click here to buy…

Share this:

Open Mic No. 4 - Old Man Pie

Old Man Pie are are asking for a comedic poster design…

NEW! Poster prints of this design are available from my online print shop!
Click here to buy…

Share this:

Open Mic No. 3 - Breaking The Illusion

Band Number 3 is Breaking The Illusion, and here’s the next poster in the series…

NEW! Poster prints of this design are available from my online print shop!
Click here to buy…

Share this: