From the desk of Mr. Monk

I bought band for the iPhone. I’m glad I didn’t pay £6 for it. It’s naf.

I’ve bought a few bad apps which has made me come up with a theory. If of has a bad logo or more importantly, terrible typography; it will be a crap app.

I was up at 0800 and I got in at 0130. Long day. I did the wedding photography job I’ve talked about before and then gigged on the night.

The drive home however, I dreaded. I was so tired and my feet were on fire, yet it was the best drive of my life.

I always tend to enjoy driving home from a gig. I don’t know what it is. Maybe the isolation after the hustle and bustle or just the freedom that it feels like you have for that short period of time. Tonight was great because it was foggy. I’ve never driven in such bad fog but it kept me on edge (and awake). 70mph through fog is simply beautiful.

The fog makes light pollution appealing. Everything has a gorgeous glow that radiates from it’s centre. I was following the bass player home and watching is car with the clouds of fog flying at me was like something out of a movie. This is what gets my photographic juices flowing and I’m going to start taking some frames at crazy hours. It’s worth it. It reminded me like something out of a sci-fi/fantasy film. There was something slightly magical about it.

Lately I’ve used Gaussian blurs and outer glows in pieces, but I’d forgotten how amazing the real thing was.

Fog is underrated.

Today I have been “Nathan Monk: Wedding Photographer”.

It was for a friend, and it’s made up my mind; I’m not a fan.

It’s lovely being appreciated for your creative ability, but in a way it’s why I’m not too keen. It’s all very structured. In actual fact, it’s not creative. The stress is unbelievable and dealing with people is a nightmare. This said, the family were really nice and my judgement written in this piece excludes the wedding I did today.

What really made my mind up was the portrait photographer that came in the night. He had some bloody snazzy kit. I’ll admit, I was jealous. BUT. He wound me up. Not because he was bad at what he did but because of what he did. He took tongue-in-cheek photos which were edited within about 30 seconds. CHA-CHING. The guys making about £2k a night. 3 hours work. Piece of piss.

Like I say there’s nothing wrong with it, but it was so cheesy. Cheap nasty studio photography. No flare, no wow, no anything. Bland generic middle class crap.

This sort of thing, what with the accessibility of high end cameras for lower prices means that it is bringing the industry standard down. When a really good photographer comes along why would they want to do wedding stuff? People don’t notice the attention to detail or the subtle nuances, they want the same as everyone else.

I’m much more a fan of studio work for commercial application. Weddings are weddings. There is nothing that you can do to separate you from the bunch.

Nope, I still love tumblr. Posterous means well but lacks crucial features. No embed for my website, puts email signatures on the end of posts and puts horrible posted by posterous text into my blog.

LEARN THIS WEB STARTUPS* - The best web services are the ones that you dont notice. 

Comments are nice though

—————————————————
Nathan Monk

07722931808

hello@nathanmonk.com

www.nathanmonk.com

Posted by email from nathansmonk’s posterous | Comment »

Just discovering a new service to maybe even take over my tumblr account.

Check out www.posterous.com

—————————————————
Nathan Monk
07722931808 
hello@nathanmonk.com
www.nathanmonk.com

Posted by email from nathansmonk’s posterous | Comment »

I offer the chance to get your very own portfolio website up and running. The service includes a half-day tutorial on a content-management-system that will allow you to update and create content on your website, and a basic run through of CSS and editing tools that will allow you to re-style the look of your site in endless ways.

You don’t have to worry about installing the CMS or creating the mysql database as I will do it for you before the tutorial.

This is in no way intended to be a complete run-down of how to create a website, but it will get your presence online within the day and allow you to develop web-skills at your own pace.

The website that we create will be in the style of www.nathanmonk.com and/or www.doesntcostapenny.com

• Half Day tutorial of phpwcms and basic CSS
• Introduction to CSSedit
  
  

• Domain
• Web hosting
• CSSedit Liscence (Not necessary but useful) 

Please obtain a domain and web hosting prior to the tutorial from www.eukhost.com

I suggest the Linux Copper plan. Take a look here. It retails at £22.99 (p/a) and a dot com domain will cost £6 for a one year registration.
 

The cost of this session is £50.
 

If you wish to enquire about the service pr book a session please do not hesitate to contact me.

hello@nathanmonk.com

The service is offered on an as-is basis.

There are no refunds.

The service is available to students at Birmingham Institution of Art & Design and identification may be required.

If more time is required (you have specific needs that are not detailed above or you wish to change the layout of the website extensively) you will be charged a fee of £10 per hour thereafter.

How do you work? I find myself with my mac or iPhone most of the day and because of this I always have a connection to the cloud. My workflow pretty much reflects this, with the exception of my moleskine notebooks; sometimes there is no substitute for pencil (or a biro) and paper. When I say workflow, I guess I mean general organisation and staying up-to-date rather than my graphic design stuff because you could just say “CS3” for that.

My digital workflow has been refined by growing up with computers. Now I think I have a very reliable solution. Google is a big factor in my ‘flow. Google Apps for your Domain is brilliant because of its centralised storage. Some worry about its privacy, but Google just seems so cuddly. Bless my naivety eh! Here we go then;

• Gmail - Solid, great storage and accessible from anywhere plus trusty imap (psst, google, we want push!)
• Google Calendar - With the introduction of CalDAV, I can sync with iCal, which means Ive got native access from my iPhone too. Perfect.
• Google Docs - Its all about the collaboration, and perfect platform for distribution.
• Picasa Web Albums - Online photo storage, great for picking and choosing photos as a team.
• Dropbox - Online file sync, bye bye memory stick.
• Twitter - Pushing out those ‘news’ updates (Mainly for Smile, I just use it to collect tid-bits).
• Tumblr - Reflect on my work and thoughts.
• Google Reader - Need to be up with the news.

These products seem to integrate into a pretty straightforward solution that works in teams as well as an individual. This list comprises of services that I use all the time, not just fly by stuff like Google Talk. There’s the usual stuff like mail for actually getting the emails and address book etc but you know all that.

It might look like I’m pumping out loads of nonsense at the moment but if I don’t get this out, I could be blocking my creativity? Maybe? Probably not. Still, it’s all reflection.