Emoticon Hamlet

I finally found out what the cube-headed men quoting Shakespeare on the walls are: Emoticon Hamlet, a project by Australian artist Peter Drew.  It turns out he was also behind the mysterious pictures of people on the walls in Ashton Lane a while back...

Dragonblur

I went along to the West End Festival parade the other weekend in the hope of getting some good pictures.  Unfortunately it's got a lot more popular since the last time I went along and the weather was so horrifically good that the entire city seemed to have decamped to Byres Road.  As a result of this (and not being 9 feet tall) the photos  of the parade itself are limited to this octopus

and a dragon.

(It was a nice dragon though).

By the time it had gone (mostly invisibly) past me I was beginning to feel a bit like this

so headed off to the relative calm and balloons of Vinicombe Street.   Morag was also there though and had had the foresight and organisation to find a better spot so was able to take some much more interesting shots.

Brawth, How to Swim, Monica Queen and Thrum

Some photos from last week's Threads gig featuring: 

Brawth

How to Swim

and Monica Queen and Thrum

The rest of the photos are over here.

The Deadline Shakes, Sidney Shaw and Engine7

A few shots from last weekend's Threads gig, featuring:

The Deadline Shakes

Sidney Shaw

and Engine7

more photos over here, where there will also be videos and downloads of what was a really excellent gig to follow.

Cover Stories

Another couple of my photos have made it onto the covers of books (via Arcangel Images).  This time the upside-down Kibble Palace fishes are on the cover of the Dutch translation of Leaving Atocha Station by Ben Lerner, and me and the dressmaker's dummy (with the addition of an Irish dancing frock) are on The Last Days of the National Costume by Anne Kennedy.  It's always really exciting to see my photos getting to be part of books, even if it's a trifle odd to be on the cover of one wearing only a pair of knickers...  

Highland Fling

I got the chance to go along to another social media call at Scottish Ballet  on Saturday.  This time at the Theatre Royal to watch part of a class for the dancers before the matinee performance of "Highland Fling", a Matthew Bourne ballet based on "La Sylphide" which I'd managed to get along to the evening before.  It's a wild, funny, tartan-drenched affair with drugs, tarot cards and sylphs like zombie fairies.  The Glasgow run has finished, but the company are on tour with it round Scotland at the moment, so if it's on near you you should definitely go and see it.

 Rehearsal pianist (and very tartan scenery)

Scenes of levitation

My camera was struggling a wee bit with the lower light levels so I also took a few shots with an unreasonably long shutter speed for the motion-blur-colour effects... 

Fridge Angst

The fridges of the West End are very sensitive...