Warmpicture Team

Paul Simonon of The Clash – Redefining Music, Design, and Art

 Design, Guest Articles  1 Response »
Nov 072012
 

Early Years

Paul Simonon, best known as bass guitarist with punk band the Clash, was born in Croydon 15th December 1955 and grew up in Brixton, South London. He attended schools where his contemporaries were mainly African American and so developed a love of soul and Caribbean music. He also had a passion for art and showed talent as a painter winning a scholarship to the Byam Shaw School of Art.

Moving into Music

Paul Simonon

Paul Simonon of The Clash. Photo by Rama

Whilst still at art school Simonon became interested in music and decided to audition as a singer for local band London SS. He failed to get the position but struck up a friendship with the band’s guitarist Mick Jones who taught Simonon to play the guitar.

Paul was not a natural musician and initially struggled to learn the instrument prompting Jones to teach him bass guitar instead. The pair then recruited guitarist and singer Joe Strummer and formed the Clash, a name conjured up by Simonon after reading an article in a newspaper. Paul dropped out of Art school in his second year to pursue his music career.

The Clash

Unable to properly play Bass at the inception of the Clash, Simonon was mainly responsible for the artistic aspects of the bands efforts, the clothing, staging and promotional material.

The band’s image was an important part of their appeal and Simonon was to become punk’s pin-up boy. The group quickly developed a following on the growing punk scene with their distinctive sound underpinned by Simonon’s reggae influenced bass lines.

They were signed by Epic in 1977 finding immediate success with their first two albums, “The Clash” and “Give ‘Em Enough Rope”. The third album “London Calling” established the outfit as one of the world’s premier punk bands and the cover, featuring Simonon smashing his guitar, is one of the punk era’s most enduring images.

Rock The Casbah

The band released three further albums, “Sandanista!” “Combat Rock” and “Cut the Crap”, the latter after the departure of Mick Jones whose relationship with the other band members fell apart. Simonon played bass on the majority of the Clash’s tracks but notably not on “Rock the Casbah” one of the group’s most successful recordings. He was known for playing white Fender Precision basses and used his artistic talent to decorate these, but was once given a Black Rickenbacher by Patti Smith, which he also decorated but did not much like.

Demise of the Clash

The Clash parted company in 1986. Simonon went on to form the short lived Havana 3am before joining Damon Albarn’s project The Good, The Bad and The Queen. He collaborated with Albarn and Mick Jones on the Gorillaz album “Plastic Beach” and was the bass player on the live tour to promote the album.

Return to Art

Paul Simonon has now returned to his first love, Art and painting for a living. He admits to not having made a fortune with The Clash, “People think if you’ve got a number one single you’re loaded. But I have to make a living. This is not some sort of feet-up, chuck paint around thing”. He has designed album covers and has had several gallery exhibitions, with one of his works being bought by Lily Allen for £23,500.

Much of his work portrays his home city, London, and is painted outside from rooftops. He also produced a series of pieces inspired by bull fighting following a trip to Madrid. It is doubtful that he will return to music and has said “To be honest I’ve got to the stage now where I just want to paint – I’ve done my time with the music”.

Activist

In 2011 Paul joined a Greenpeace mission aboard the MV Esperanza. The mission was in protest at Cairn Oil’s drilling in the Arctic. He joined the ship’s crew undercover as an assistant cook and joined other activists in illegally boarding one of Cairn’s rigs. He was arrested and spent two weeks in prison. Only after this was his true identity revealed to the rest of the crew who declared him to be hard working and an excellent cook !

About the Author

Peterborough Music offer a great range of bass guitars  if you want to ‘rock the casbah!’

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The Perfect Colors For Your Website

 Design, Guest Articles  No Responses »
Oct 082012
 

Success or failure of your website depends on a few factors. It is clear that the primary role belongs to the building of a website and its content. But what can be even more important – the colors used in the design of your site.
Designing a site is more about wise selection of colors, because they are the first thing that users respond to. Color has a strong psychological impact, subconsciously affects our choice, and in the case of the proper choice may cause the desire to return to the resource and use a suggested service or a product.

The importance of a competent selection of color scheme for a website escapes the attention of a vast number of designers. Color scheme is one of the main components of a website and it is simply obliged to reflect the features of your brand. Colors may keep your visitors on the website as well as make them leave. There are a lot of websites with excellent design and perfectly chosen content, but even an average user immediately feels that something is wrong when he sees a site with the wrong color scheme.

That’s why a designer should always be very attentive to the color scheme. The first impression which your web site will create depends on it. If you feel that the color scheme is not entirely successful, you need to reconsider it as soon as possible. If you do not like it, so your visitors will not like it too. Different colors have different effects on our emotional and physical conditions. They can cause both positive and negative emotions.

It’s obvious that the final decision to buy a product or a service is made under the influence of the properly chosen color as well as of other site features. So every website development company should put its eyes to the implementation of design with understanding that color is a powerful marketing tool. A designer who can manage colors and understands how color affects the emotions and feelings of a person, is able to develop a truly successful website design, which will make the right impression on the user even in his first visit.

To help you correctly navigate in the world of colors, we want to recall the values and properties of the primary colors:

Red is the most eye-catching and attention attracting color. It is active, energetic and aggressive, associated with fire, passion, life and activity. It can be frustrating as well as exciting; it can give strength, but may cause concern. Everyone sees a different red. It is better to use the red color with cool shades (blue, green, etc.) in the website design.

Red color urges people to make a quick decision. So if you need quick results, it’s good to use red. This color will be great for male site.

design color example

Orange color helps to get rid of unpleasant emotions, helps in communication, and gives buoyancy. Orange has some properties of red and yellow as it is located between these two colors.

This color is usually used on websites for young people and teenagers. Orange also fueling the appetite of the person, so it is perfect for cooking resources or website that promotes a restaurant. Slout people do not like this color, so better don’t use it for portal about diets, weight-loss etc.

Yellow is the color of the sun, fun, ease and freedom. It improves mood, helps to generate new ideas. The site with the yellow color creates an ease and lightness in the visitor’s mood.

Yellow motivates to communicate, meet new people and journey. It is best to use on portals about dating. Married and pregnant women like this color so it will be great choice for female website.

Dark blue – is a calm and wise color. It creates the feeling of security and stability. It helps to focus and realize the ideas. Do not tire your eyes. In the site’s design it is recommended to combine the blue color with other colors and more neutral shades.

The blue color of any shade is perfect for informational, educational, financial and legal sites. Dark shades of it can be used in the sports and political projects.

Blue – is the color of sincerity and peace. It gives creativity and helps you to get used to the changes.

Light shades of blue will be the great choice for sites about health or leisure (as this color symbolizes the sky, air, water and cleanliness).

Green – is the color of nature. It embodies harmony, goodness and naturalness. It has a relaxing effect.

Green color is often associated with money and power. So, it is used on corporate sites and sites related to the financial sector.

Gray – is a neutral color. It causes no strong emotional reactions. It is respectable, cold and formal. Usually gray is used for information portals and social networks.

Black – is associated with some mystery and conservatism. It commands respect and gives you a feeling of dignity and authority.

If you decide to use in site design this rigorous, conservative color, it will emphasize the seriousness of this resource, which is recommended for the so-called business sites.

 

A few tips on color mixing:

The main requirement for a pair of colors for text and background is enough contrast between colors for comfortable, fatigue-free reading.

Usually colored web-pages can be divided into two groups: those with a dark text on a light background and a light text on the dark background. The latter is much more popular than the first (if we ignore the traditional black and white pages that have a significant majority).

An example of a typical solution is dark text on light background.


The second type of colors refers to the light text on a dark background. In this case, it will be advantageous to choose a bright and rich tone of the text, which, of course, requires a dark background. An example:

And a site that compiles both approaches at once:


Colors in web design is an extensive, multifaceted and even paradoxical theme. Any talented web designer has a distinctive, recognizable “color style”. It is shown up not in a commitment to certain tones, but in the relation to colors, individual manner of contrast and harmonization of similar colors. That is why it is very important to be ensured that website development company that is working on your site is highly professional and has a number of skilled designers.

Any website development company should take into account all the nuances to provide the visitors of their websites with the most magnificent, stunning and memorable design. Properly chosen color scheme will create a favorable atmosphere, encourage visitors to certain actions, or will create the necessary feeling and impression.

About the Author

Zfort Group is an exclusive software outsourcing company based in Ukraine, Eastern Europe. Zfort Group delivers premium IT outsourcing services for clients from all over the worlds since 2000. All kinds of web development, consulting and B2B solutions were implemented in numerous successfully developed projects. Zfort Group is an excellent IT outsourcing service provider for the businesses of any kind and size.

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Evolution of a Stock Photographer

 Photography, Stock Photography  No Responses »
Sep 052012
 

Warmpicture photographer Steve Cukrov is a successful stock photographer whose career spans 3 decades. Today Steve outlines his evolution as a stock photographer, from learning what to shoot, to developing his skills in Photoshop.

“You say you want an evolution….”

I started this stock photography journey long before digital (1980’s). It never really took off for me. I couldn’t crack the big houses and between the two small regional agencies I was with, they only ever managed to sell one image. This one, a favorite on mine, was taken while helping to photo ID Gray Whales for a research project in Baja California.

Baja Sur Photograph

Sunset, Laguna Guerrero Negro, Baja Sur (scan of a 35mm Kodachrome 64 transparency)

 

All of my beginning submissions to MS agencies in late 2005 were scans of trannies from those early days. Armed with only a Microtek Flatbed Scanner I began scanning my 35mm, 2 ¼ and 4×5 images. Much to my surprise many were accepted at the top sites and began selling right away.

 

This is how one of those first really questionable scans has evolved and continues to be a best seller. Scanned from a 4×5 Kodak Ektachrome transparency. Notice the lovely greenish cast.

 

colorful bottles

Without any PhotoShop skills to speak of, not a clue about keywording, and no digital camera, I set out on this endeavor with optimism and a steep learning curve.

A few months later, as I began to figure out Photoshop and calibrated my monitor, I deleted that image and uploaded this new cleaned-up version.

colorful bottles

Sales began to take off.

The next incarnation came with the advent and over use of the PS plug-in called ‘Flood’.  This version did OK but version #2 remained the bigger seller.

The most notable change in sales came when I had a good hard look at the keywords I had chosen for the image after I saw it in use for an article on ‘Molecular Gastronomy’. That article provided me with some additional suggestions. But an even bigger boost in sales came when I made two additional changes.

The next version took even more PhotoShop Skills than I possessed a few years earlier.

It seems rather simple now, but at the time I had not done anything like this. Taking that original scan I kept the basic composition but took out the blue bottles top that was lying next to it. I then copied the top of the orange bottle and placed it on top of the blue bottle. I then created the reflection by duplicating the layer, flipping it and lowering the opacity.

perfume bottles

This final version, as-well-as Versions #2 & #3, are all still online but this last version, online for the shortest amount of time, outsells all of them combined.

Another revitalization came when I found it in use for an Aroma Therapy site. Again I updated the keywords and sales have been even stronger.

The evolution of this image chronicles my own evolution from a film photographer to a digital artist. With a few tweaks and some revisions to keywords, I have managed to keep this image fresh and a consistent best seller.

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6 Tips for Taking Great Baby Photos

 Photography  No Responses »
Aug 282012
 

Whether it’s for Facebook or the family album, everyone loves to capture and share photos of their babies. Some folk pay out to have their babies snapped by professionals in a studio, but with a little effort, a half decent camera – and nowadays most mobile phones have one built in – and the right conditions, almost anyone is capable of taking perfectly good baby photographs.

Here are six tips that will help you get those brilliant baby shots that will have your offspring squirming with embarrassment when you show them to their prospective partners later on in life.

1. Get the light right

Taking flash photography of your baby is a sure way to get them bawling (or wake them up if, by some miracle, they’re asleep. You’ll get far better results by making the most of natural daylight. Avoid direct sunlight unless you want photos of your baby squinting, and position your baby in light that is entering through a window. This will minimise the possibility of ‘red-eye’ and also give your baby a soft, natural appearance in photos.

2. Choose the optimum moment

Babies rarely tend to smile without some kind of external motivation, but choosing a time at which your baby is likely to be contented i.e. post-feed, post-snooze and post-nappy change gives you the best chance of them looking happy in photos – or at least not bawling their eyes out. Holding a favourite cuddly toy or something else that makes them smile out of the range of the camera gives your baby something to focus on and might even prompt that precious grin.

3. Photograph them against a blank background

Naturally you want your baby to be the star of the show and the focus of your pictures, so spread a plain blanket or rug on a well-lit patch of floor to provide a neutral background. If your baby if fair-haired (or doesn’t yet have hair!) a darker background will provide the best results.

4. Get up close and personal..

… but not close enough to upset your baby. Firstly, crouch or kneel so that you’re at their eye-level, then get as close as you can before finally zooming in with your camera to frame the shot.

5. Snap, snap and snap again

Once your baby is content, settled and conducive to taking decent photos, snap as many consecutive photos of them as quickly as you can. Stopping to check each photo before taking the next may result in you missing that unexpected smile or other priceless facial expression. Photography sessions with babies are inevitably short, so it’s an idea to cram in as many photographs as you can at a time; you can weed out the unwanted pictures later.

6. Don’t be afraid to get creative with your baby shots

If you’ve got the opportunity to experiment why not try taking photos of your baby from a variety of different angles? How about extreme close-ups of tiny hands, fingers, or toes? Black and white pictures can be just as impressive as colour shots. You can also see how different light conditions such as early morning or sunset, or the use of different backgrounds add different dimensions and moods to your baby photos.

This article was written by Baby Nest.  Baby Shop London – Baby Nest is a well known baby retailer in the wider London area.

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How to Edit Your Facebook Photos to Look Beautiful

 Guest Articles  No Responses »
Aug 242012
 

The idea of Facebook is to connect with people and to stay in touch with old friends and family. It’s a nice idea, but ultimately it’s probably not the way most of us predominantly use it. Rather what most of us use Facebook for is to spy on people we know/used to know and to compare our lives, and to create a kind of shop window into our own lives that makes us look active, interesting and attractive. Ultimately it’s an exercise in narcissism really, isn’t it?

Facebook Friends

And with that in mind it makes sense that many of us would want to find ways to edit our pictures to make ourselves look more attractive, or to make the scenes we’re in seem more exciting and colorful.

If you find yourself in just such a position then don’t feel bad about it, read on and we will look at how you can make your pictures look like glossy magazine covers…

Instagram

Thankfully there is one tool available for those who want their pictures to look more professional that doesn’t require any special knowledge and is completely free. Enter: Instagram which is a piece of photo editing software that will enable you to quickly add a photo filer and change the brightness/contrast to create a more glossy looking image or a more retro-stylized one (whichever you prefer).

At the same time you can also use Instagram to add a nice haze around the edge and a frame and though the options are really rather limited it’s surprising how much more you can add to your pictures very quickly this way.

Photo Editing Software

However what Instagram won’t do for you is to turn you into Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie. For that you’ll need to do some genuine photo retouching using something like PhotoShop. Note however that if you can’t afford PhotoShop or get hold of a cheap/free version somehow, then you can use other software such as Gimp to achieve a similar effect.

There are many features that you can use in these programs to edit your images and improve your looks or improve the scenery. Changing the color variations for instance can allow you to pick out reds or greens, while the color replacement tool can also be useful for changing the hue of an image to make it more vibrant/romantic/artistic. Again you have options to change the contrast and brightness as well as to alter the shadows and highlights.

If you want to use this to change your physical appearance however, then you will probably be looking to remove blemishes. One way to accomplish this is by simply applying a blur filter, or alternatively you can also try using the smudge tool and the cloning tool to even out the skin tone. Decreasing mid-tone contrast meanwhile can also give you that porcelain look.

One other way to improve your looks is to increase the size of desirable features and to reduce the others – i.e. bigger eyes, lips and breasts and small nose, waist and feet. To accomplish this go into liquify and then use the tool to increase and decrease the size of selections to gradually change your looks.

Note however that all these things are best used in moderation. Making some slight tweaks will make you glow, whereas going overboard will make you look inhuman. The former is preferable as you can imagine.

About the Author

Mark Simpson is a professional blogger who is keen on writing about photography. The website provides details about wedding photographers and sheds some light on the subject of wedding photography in Melbourne.

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