Maja at the Royal Society of Portrait Artists

Maja spent the day in London today at the Royal Society doing 'painting stuff'. The day included a competitive 3 hour 'paint off' where all the assembled artists worked on a portrait of one of 3 different models. Maja won 3rd place and is understandably very very happy! I just wish I had been there but some of us have to do proper work.

IB Studios Bournemouth

Life has been pretty busy with the academic year starting again and all that brings. Maja has 2 exhibitions before Christmas with everything to do for that and one of those is a joint exhibition with me so I'm pretty flat out as well.

With all this going on it's a wonder that there's any time to still be doing photo shoots, but none the less I've managed 2 different group shoots at the fabulous IB studios in Bournemouth. The first shoot was a group shoot through TFP Models a nice little resource for photographers, the second was an in-house shoot run by the studio. It's not the biggest studio or the best equipment wise, but they have a fantastic range of props and a very friendly and helpful owner. I would recommend them to anyone in the Bournemouth area who needs a studio for shooting.

I'll put the results up on http://www.flickr.com/photos/ben_hill/ as I get the chance.

Jenni - Seductress

Jenni is a great model, she was supposed to do a shoot with me, but somehow got kidnapped by the wife, Maja into posing for her. Finally I have had a chance to do one quick shoot with her. A bit of a strange shoot "fetish gran", no don't ask! We were wondering what we could do with an interesting old dress, a wig and some impossible shoes, the resulting character is "fetish gran", copyright us two! http://www.flickr.com/photos/ben_hill/ for the results as ever.

Update on Ben Hill links

Life gets spread around on the Internet, here are some of the updated places you are likely to find me.

Facebook
FlickR
Net-Model
Pure Storm
TFP Models
MySpace
LinkedIn

Update on Maja Dzartovska-Hill links

Maja has a lot of stuff on the web, most of it fairly boring stuff. Finding her can be a little confusing as she has no had 3 different surnames! Dzartovska, Dzartovska-Hill and Hill. This is just a list of some of the more relevant stuff:

Maja's Web Site
Maja's Blog
Maja's Teaching (distance learning)
Maja at the National Gallery
Maja's Wikipedia entry

Totton College

This year sees me teaching at Totton College (again) on the adult education side. I always love the people, I always hate the unsocial hours! This year it's on a Monday night, which is a bit of a pain as that then overlaps withthe Southampton Camera Club and this year I am only covering the AS level not the GCSE as well, which is a pity. Next year they get to have an exhibition in Hanger Farm again so I'm really looking forward to that, I wish them all luck.

Summer Group Exhibitions

I've had a busy summer in 2008, Maja has had a major solo exhibition in Skopje at the cities cultural centre, one of the biggest spaces in the city. It's quite scary to see pictures that elsewhere fill a whole wall disappear into that vast space. After that she just had endless interviews, TV, radio, magazines etc, all very exciting as it always is.

Then we were both off to an art residency, once again we were lucky enough to get a joint place while my mother-in-law 'volunteered' to baby sit for the 10 days.

10 days in sunny (very sunny) Ohrid at the Ramazzoti Art Colony, a truly breathtaking location next to a huge UNESCO protected lake surrounded by limestone mountains. Where of course I was desperately trying to avoid taking all the normal range of tourist shots and achieve something a little more original. Of course I did take lots of sunsets and views over the lake, but I like to think I found a little out of the ordinary stuff as well.

The whole trip ended up with a lot of good luck. We held the normal group exhibition to display the work we had done, but then found out that the very same Cultural Centre in Skopje had had a very last minute cancellation and would be prepared to hold a joint exhibition of the residencies work! So back there again for Maja (different paintings this time) and my first time exhibiting in that space!