New Albeniz portrait

I have 4 of my prints accepted in the International Miniprint exhibition in Cadaques (Spain) this summer. I'll tell you about it soon in another post.

Albeniz was born near there in Camprodon so I decided to do a portrait of him. I have also done a page about him on my new website. To see it click on the above title.

I thought he composed for the guitar as you hear so much of his music on ClassicFM played on the guitar by John Williams and others. However he was a very talented concert pianist and composed for the piano. Many of his pieces have been transcribed very successfully for the guitar.

Just listen, watch amd marvel at the master Segovia playing his "Linares"

52composers.com - My new website

I am building a new website for the series of classical music composer portraits I'm working on.
So far I have been putting all my art into my www.PaulHelm.com site which just isn't getting much traffic and therefore no sales.

I have been building on-line stores at imagekind, art.com, lulu, cafepress, zazzle and various other sites with varying success. These sites are fantastic at providing a Print on Demand service but it is up to you to drive traffic to them in order to get sales. You cannot just build a store and sit back hoping for the dollars to roll in.

Having had some success with the composer portraits I have decided to build a site dedicated just to my composers. This way, if I can generate the interest I will be able to drive traffic to my stores.

I have called it 52composers.com as 52 is an easily remembered number and my plan is to produce one a week for a year. I have done over 40 portraits so far so I will have plenty of work putting them onto the new site.

Having spent a long time evaluating various site building options I have settled on using SBI for my exciting new project. I will keep you informed on progress in this blog.

Take a look at progress so far at www.52composers.com

The Cans Festival

Yesterday we went to the Cans Festival - a 3 day festival and exhibition of street stencil art near Waterloo station, London. Brilliant! Some great images by UK and international stencil artists including the great Banksy.
The sculptures and installations will be taken down tomorrow but the wall art should remain until the authorities decide on some other use for this derelict tunnel/road.
I took a load of photos which you can see here:

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/PaulHelm/CansFestival2008

2008 CLASSICAL MUSIC CALENDAR

Yesterday I published my Great Composers 2008 Calendar on Zazzle. It looks great. I was flattered to get an email last night telling me that it was selected as one of 'Today's Best on Zazzle'.
I was also astonished to find that within 24 hours it was ranked on the first page of a Google search for Classical Music Calendar. That is truly impressive SEO by Zazzle.
I am getting the hang of Zazzle and I will be putting more work on there soon.

Jacques Henri LARTIGUE

On Thursday night BBC4 transmitted a documentary by Nick Danziger called "The Boy Who Never Grew Up". It was about Jacques Henri Lartigue (1894 - 1986) one of the greatest photographers of the 20th century. While I was already familiar with many of his photographs, I was completely unaware that many of his best known ones were taken at the age 10 or 12 years old. He started at the age of 6 with his father's camera.

He was not really known until 1963, at the age of 69, when the Museum of Modern Art put on a retrospective exhibition of his work
In 1979 he donated his meticulously archived collection of his life's photographic work to the French State. It is called the Donation Jacques Henri Lartigue
A fascinating life, I must read his biography.

New Wagner Portrait

Here is the portrait of Wagner I have been working on. It is a 2 plate photoetching from my pencil drawing. The coloured surround is a collagraph printed at the same time on Somerset paper. Prints and merchandise are available as follows:
Fine prints (framed or unframed) from Imagekind
Poster from artist-rising.
Giftware from Cafepress

Kids with Cameras

This morning on BBC Radio 4's 'Midweek' programme there was an interesting feature about the educational benefits of photography to deprived children.

"Sue Carpenter is a journalist and photographer. She recently led a photographic project in Nepal for the charity Asha-Nepal, in which girls from desperately poor backgrounds were taught to use a camera to remarkable effect. The photographs can be seen in My World, My View available from Asha-Nepal. You can also view them on the BBC News website. "
You can 'Listen again' to the interview on the BBC website for the next 6 days at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/midweek.shtml

This is very similar to the project in Calcutta: subject of the 2005 Oscar winning documentary "Born into Brothels" by Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski.
a moving and inspiring film which I highly recommend if you are interested in children and in photography.
Following the success of the Calcutta experiment Zana set up 'Kids with Cameras' which runs workshops in Haiti, Cairo and Jerusalem and the original Calcutta workshop.

Having first seen 'Born into Brothels' on BBC TV I tried to get the DVD but it was only published in a Region 1 format not compatible for UK/Europe. Now I am happy to say that since August it is also available in Region 2 format so I have it at last.