here we go again

The endless summer

andrasbartok — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 15:08:52 +0000

Even though summer is pretty much over for another year, I’m going to try to keep the spirit alive by posting a few ‘summery’ images; ones that typify that carefree summertime vibe to me. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have anything against autumn (in fact I usually quite enjoy it) I’m just not too sure I’m ready for it yet.

A while ago my brother showed me an old surf film called ‘The Endless Summer’, where a few surfers travel the globe following the sun. They spent summer up in the northern hemisphere and winter down in the southern hemisphere, and so they essentially lived in an endless summer for a year. It was a cool film and a cool idea, it’d be nice to try something like that one day.

So I’m taking a leaf out of their book; here is my own attempt at keeping the summer alive a little longer. These frames were shot a month or two ago when I was chilling in the park with my mate Adam, enjoying some beer and sunshine:

So… lets try to keep the spirit of summer alive for as long as we can, but when autumn does eventually come, don’t be sad, embrace it. Autumn can be a pretty magical time of year, so cheer up everyone, I can see some real good times ahead.

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On a side note, to speed things up a bit and break the posts down into more digestible chunks, I’ve now limited the amount of posts on each page to 5. This means my earlier posts can now be found either by clicking on the ‘archives’ section on the top right of the blog or the ‘next page’ link at the very bottom of the blog. Hope that makes sense.

peace,

Andras.

shot of the day…

andrasbartok — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 18:23:17 +0000

Hello, I’ve been a bit busy recently so only a short post today, in fact it’s not even so much a ‘shot of the day’ as an update to the hungarian holiday post. There was one rogue roll of 120 film that I forgot to send to the lab for developing with the other rolls from hungary, it only turned up some time later, and due to my laziness and current financial state I’ve only just gotten round to developing it.

Anyway, there were a couple of shots of my grandma that I am pretty happy with, and here is one of them. Unposed, as she was, whilst we were chatting away and I shot off a few frames:

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On a completely different note, I’d like to say a big thanks to Jamie Stoker for giving me a shout-out on his blog, he’s a real cool dude and a great photographer so make sure you check out his stuff: http://jamiestoker.wordpress.com .

Tis all for today I’m afraid, but do not despair (as if you would!) I shall be back soon.

peace,

Andras

And now for a little music…

andrasbartok — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 11:04:02 +0000

A while ago I went down to Bristol to visit some friends of mine who were still living there. I used to live in Bristol for three years and since moving back the big old London, I’ve really missed the place so it was great to be back for a weekend. I stayed at my mate Mostafa’s house who happens to be a musician, and a pretty good one at that. At one point when we were chilling trying to decide what to do with the day, he picked up his guitar and started playing, so I picked up my bronica and started snapping; turned into a bit of an impromptu shoot.

focus is over-rated

a little out of date, but organised

^ that’s where the magic happens

You can check out Mostafa’s music at http://www.myspace.com/skalectricity .

That’s all for now, I’m off to make myself a real strong coffee and get down to some work.

peace out,

Andras

A week in Hungary…

andrasbartok — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 15:50:42 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I went on holiday to Hungary. It was baking hot most days and i sat about chating, chilling, eating and drinking with my grandparents and cousins, having a great time. It was great just to get out of London for a bit and do things differently for a few days. I spent a couple of days in Budapest catching up with my cousins, and then i spent most of my time in the countryside just north of Budapest on an really long island in the Danube where my granparents and a lot of my family have wooden cabins where they spend some of their summer. The cabins are surrounded by loose woodland and it was great to be somewhere so different to the hustle and bustle of the city for a bit.

I didn’t end up taking as many photo’s as I thought I would; I went prepared with 12 rolls of 120 film, 5 rolls of 35mm film and lots of memory for my digital. But most of the time i was happy to just chill and put the camera down.

A lot of the shots I took were just little studies of the space/place i was in, i was trying to capture the impressions that i felt:

at my grandparents flat in Budapest

out in the countryside

grandparents cabin

decided to go for a bike ride one day

I miss being out there already!

recently I’ve been doing quite a bit of scanning of a lot of my fairly recent work so hopefully I should start getting some of that stuff up here soonish. Until then, take care, I’m off

peace,

Andras

Shot of the day… power (title)

andrasbartok — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 16:09:52 +0000

power is a strange thing:

thats all for today folks, sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite.

peace,

Andras

Shot of the day… William Blake (title)

andrasbartok — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:27:04 +0000

Just a quick post today… a single image. It’s a bit of a departure from the previous two posts, this one’s a little more composed and thought-through.

Sometime around the begining of summer I was walking around southbank with a couple of mates when we came across this scene in a park. It was a nice summers day and everyone was just chilling in the park having a good time so this big wheely bin seemed fairly out of place in the scene… it was just screaming out to be photographed. I’m not too sure William Blake would have approved; ‘englands green and pleasant land’… maybe not!

peace,

Andras

Another day, another party… (if only my life was always like that)

andrasbartok — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 16:22:48 +0000

Hello everyone,

Welcome back to my blog, sit down, strap in, make yourself a cup of tea/get a beer (or both), put on some good music and enjoy!

A few weeks ago I went down to a local all day music event in north west London called, wait for it: ‘Metalbrew’ (what a great name). I haven’t really listened to metal since i was a teenager, but I knew one of the people involved with it as well as lots of people there so i thought it’d be a good excuse for a piss-up in a field in the sunshine… and as it turned out it was! Compared to previous years it had a great turn out; young and old, big and little, guys and girls and everything in between. The sun was out, the booze was flowing and everyone was having a great time. At one point when the metal got a little too much we even had an impromptu marathon game of football in a field behind the site… what more could anyone want. All in all I think a great time was had by all:

I was trying to show Marc how to use my bronica but after a few too many beers he had difficulty understanding and kept pointing it at the sky. I really like this shot; it wasn’t set up or posed at all, he was just playing with the camera and then glanced up at me in despair for a moment.

Boys will be boys. At some point in the evening a few people decided to start playing a few drinking games, thankfully i had my camera with me and so I had an excuse to sit it out (I’m terrible at drinking games), but they seemed to enjoy it:

For some reason it involved lots of pointing

surprise!

I don’t know where this came from, but at some point in the night I was handed it… it all started going downhill from there…

erm… well, it wouldn’t be a party if there wasn’t a naked man running around a field in the middle of the night (Chris in his sunday best).

That sight was a bit too much for some.

as good a place as any i guess.

metal fans make me laugh

Well, that’s about it for tonights installment, hopefully I’ll be back there in a years time to do it all again.

Hope you enjoyed it, peace,

Andras.

It’s all downhill from here!

andrasbartok — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 17:02:11 +0000

HELLO, welcome to my world, or more precisely; my stumbling first attempt at writing one of these blog thingy’s.

I’ve got a feeling that this is all a disaster waiting to happen, but oh well… don’t say I didn’t warn you!

So, i thought I’d start with something a little light hearted… it’s summer (though you wouldn’t guess it by the weather) and i feel in a party mood, so i thought i should post a few party pictures to put a smile on all your lovely faces. There will be proper ‘serious‘ photography and comment on it’s way in later posts too, but not quite yet, for the time being we’ll be sticking with fun photographs:

I went to a few friends housewarming party recently, started off in the afternoon with a barbeque and then lasted late into the night, as you can imagine we were all pretty pissed by the time these images were taken:

This is Chris, he used to have a decent head of hair and a big bushy beard and sideburns before the party, but after quite a few beers it was decided that he was due for a haircut! First only the top of his head was shaved so that he looked like a very beardy, wild eyed monk (unfortunately i don’t have any photographic evidence of that stage), but he wasn’t a fan and so it all came off apart from the rather fetching bikers mustache.

Deep into the night, the neighbours started complaining about the noise… they weren’t happy at all. For some reason it was decided that this guy (wearing the torn/tied colourful trunks) should lead negotiations to calm the neighbours down. Considering that by this point he could hardly talk, he performed a miracle. If you look closely you may see that the neighbour (little guy in the middle) is actually laughing along. The guy in the trunks should become a UN peacekeeping diplomat, he’d sort out the worlds problems, after a few drinks ofcourse.

Alright, that’s about it for the moment, I’ve just about staggered my way through this first post, hope you enjoyed it!

peace, Andras.