Busy times. I have managed to launch another website recently and have created poster and flyers  for the upcoming concert of Crow choir. It’s a mini promotional website, I mean it is really “mini” :) I designed it so everything sits on a single page, and all you need is to scroll it down. And I quite like the result :)

Again it’s been very busy thanks to Dan, the most loyal client of mine :) This guy is like a machine, generating ideas and projects, one after another. He just never stops. And when I am not even finished with one of his project, he has already got another, and this keeps me awake at late nights :) This time this is a website for Crow Concerts, kids choir. Very tight  deadlines and a lot of expectations :) I started with re-branding, then brochures, letterheads and stationery  and then the website (oh oh oh, hover the logo, hover the logo! :). Still have a few print jobs on this project to do, but now taking a bit of a break…

It’s been absolutely crazy busy lately. I was working on a website for my now-quite-long-term client in Denmark (the one I had my moment of embarrassment with : ) It was like ‘how to build a website in 7 days’. We are off to our week-long holiday in Egypt in a couple of days, and now I am hurrying up to add some final touches to the Danish version of the website. Meanwhile its English version is up and running and can be found at www.EGMA.tv or in the case studies. I am still thinking of adding some elements and banners to it because… you know… it’s never good enough for you… you know the story :)

To celebrate Veronika’s birthday this year we decided to go to Amsterdam. For us it’s now sort of tradition to go to some places on her special day. Last year we were dying with heat in Paris, so though we really wanted to go to Rome, finally agreed on city break in Amsterdam.

The actual flight from London to the Netherlands’ capital is just about an hour, and the funny thing here is that because of the time difference our return flight itinerary looked like this : the planes take off from Amsterdam’s airport at 1650 and lands in London at 1655. That is really faaaaast! :)

So here we are. Amsterdam is a quite small and relaxed, comparing to London, city. Virtually everyone (well, apart from the army of tourists) speaks English, which made our life simpler, as well as most of the signs were either in English or had translation. The air is also much cleaner, thanks to much less heavy traffic, rare buses, operating trams and bicycles… bicycles… bicycles… :) Well, to be fair people seem to be smoking more then in Britain, and not necessary tobacco, since you can have a joint in almost any coffee-shop or if you want, go to the flower market and buy cannabis seeds to grow it yourself. You can even buy a ‘starter kit’, hehe.

Like many European capitals, it is situated on the river’s banks and has enormous number of canals. So traveling by boat is quite usual. But the most popular way of moving around the town is bicycle. There are thousands of them there. And the thing is it seems like bicyclists have more rights then pedestrians, they are just everywhere. You also need to be extra attentive when crossing the road: you not only watch for cars and trams, but there are also ,surprise surprise, bicycle lanes where if you are not careful enough you will be hit by one of the owners of that quiet and earth friendly transport.

As usual, we did a lot of walking around the city, paying visits to museums and other notorious sights. The Van Gogh Museum and Rembrant’s house Museum were highly enjoyable, the Museum of sex was rather a collection of adult materials than a real museum, the Museum of Amsterdam was so huge (for a city’s museum) that we ended up too tired to see all its exhibitions. Speaking of notorious places, we caught a glimpse of the night life: went to a night club and also had a walk through the Red Light district. A very crowded place, I must say:) If you ask me, we were just window shopping, literally window shopping, since all the “goods” were on display :)

The good thing was that the hotel we were staying in was in the very city center. It was an old family-run hotel, far from luxurious, but it was close to absolutely everything. So if you go to Amsterdam, take my advice – book the room in the center ;) You will save much time and energy.

So Veronika was enjoying city’s architecture, but I was ‘working hard’ in the filed of photography, but to my biggest disappointment I had not taken my tripod with me, which meant no decent night photography and also blurry HDR :( But then I am not sure if I would want to carry an extra weight with me, so it’s always a dilemma for me. Anyway, the best shots are in the gallery.

Pod1, a company I work for, was placed number 61 in this year’s Design Week Top 100. Last year we were at number 100, so it’s quite a leap. Our company was also named the second most bullish agency, (last year it was the most bullish one), but still the most bullish of all the UK digital agencies. Not bad :)

We have also relaunched our own website, on which I did most of the production. It was probably the longest project in company’s history, hehe. I suspect too many people were involved in decision making :) Some bits and pieces are still being changes and added to it, as well some funky stuff should appear on it later, but anyway it is ready for the public.

It’s a shame when you’ve got a good camera, but don’t use it often. Being immersed into typical weekday routine, I rarely got a chance to shoot something interesting. And then there is really no-one in our flat interesting in modeling:) Even Veronika (I’ve got no idea, why). She says she prefers shooting. Well then, nothing else is left but me being a model myself. For a while. Surprisingly , I’m fine with that :)

So we had that sort of short session a few days ago. One shoot came out particularly nice and the other pictures were supposed to go in the bin. But then last night I came out with an idea to do something interesting with those rejected shoots. And it ended up with going to sleep after 3 in he morning, where I had to get up for work in just 4.5 hours. But all hail to the thing called coffee, what help to get me through this day was invaluable. Totally.

So here is the result of that late night. Let me know what you think of it.

Last night the indie rock band Poise Rite, whose drummer is a friend of mine, was playing at the Carlington Academy, Islington, supporting someone’s act. The guys have just signed with a division of EMI and are going to play at Glastonbury this year as well as some other festivals. Their type of music is not particularly my favorite, but still they do a great job and I like it.So I went to see them and basically sneaked close to the stage and into the backstage as a “band’s photographer” :) and in such a way had a double pleasure – as a rock fan and a photography lover. Unfortunately, the stage lightning was dull and I could not spot too many opportunities for a great shot, but still think there are few worth sharing.
And also go the poiserite.com and myspace.com/poiserite to hear and see some of their stuff.

I’m getting more and more technical stuff to do lately, which is a bit disappointing, since it leaves me no time and sucks out most of my imagination to do something creative. So this is probably the only new thing I’ve created recently. It’s is a stage banner for the Disease, a sympho-black-metal band, which front-man is a friend of mine from the times we ourselves were playing hardcore. Old good old times.. Anyway, yeah, this is it, following the design of their latest CD (the logo was designed by the band).