Favourite Albums of 2013

Forgive me for this anorak type behaviour, but I see it as my solemn duty to compile a list of my favourite albums from the last twelve months to assist those who may have missed out.

So, in no particular order....

1) Immunity by Jon Hopkins

2) Tell Where I Lie by Fossil Collective

3) Light Up Gold by Parquet Courts

4) Inform - Educate - Entertain by Public Service Broadcasting

5) Holy Fire by Foals

6) The Shadow of Heaven by MONEY

7) Arc by Everything Everything

8) Amok by Atoms for Peace

9) AM by Arctic Monkeys

10) Overgrown by James Blake


... also, Glass Animals have no album out yet, but their three EP's are jolly good.

If you want, you can see what I liked this time last year...

Humble Bee Films

This week has seen the launch of the redesigned Humble Bee Films website. They may be in Argentina filming parrots this week, but that hasn't stopped us doing the final tweaks and launching.

Their website has had a facelift, but the main objective was to showcase some video clips from their programmes. Included are four clips of David Attenborough's Natural Curiosities series, plus individual clips from BBC's Natural World.

Younger users prefer Twitter.... and some tweaks to the Facebook news feed

An interesting bit of market data on age groups using various social media platforms in the US has been published by Mashable and Statista. This is based on desktop usage in October 2013 (and so it does not include mobile usage).

In summary - younger users prefer Twitter, but once you get to 44, more use Facebook.

You can see the chart produced by Statista here.

Mashable also published an article about changes Facebook are making to the algorithms that generate content in news feeds. It seems that news and story links will be given more prominence, especially if friends comment on them; so encouraging further conversation.

Mashable reports that Facebook's strategy is to challenge Twitter as the place to go for news consumption.

Saul Leiter

Saul Leiter, photographer, passed away last week.

Recognition of his talent and influence came late in his life. However, he was someone who seemed not to care either way. He said in the recent documentary film about him, 'No Great Hurry': "What makes anyone think that I'm any good?"

I cannot remember how I discovered Saul Leiter, but find him I did. I was immediately struck by his atmospheric, painterly images. I discovered that he had a book called Early Colour but that it was out of print. Fortunately, the publishers, Steidl, released a second edition. The book is now on its third edition and has sold out.

Early Colour is possibly my favourite photo book. I can return to his photographs time and time again. Photos contain a story or a question about the subjects. The compositions may be framed by canopies; contain misted or reflected views through windows; or evocative blocks of colour. They may show just a hand, a foot, a shoe, or an umbrella while the rest of the subject is out of the frame. Many are abstract, but are of course grounded in reality. It's fun to work out how he achieves such a composition. 

I have no doubt that he will be recognised as one of the great photographers of the twentieth century. I am pleased that I knew of his work while he was still alive and that I had the opportunity to help back (in a small way), a film about him. It is called 'In No Great Hurry, 13 Lessons in Life With Saul Leiter' and it is being shown at the Bath Film Festival tomorrow evening.

Here is a link to some of his photos and here is his obituary in The Guardian. 

I hope you get as much out of these photographs as I do.