The Phaidon Friends and Family Sale

Sale season is here and what better to spend your money on than Phaidon books?

Phaidon have announced their summer Friends and Family Sale and according to my spies within it's going to be one of their biggest so if I were you I'd sign up now here so that you'll be notified as soon as it starts.

I've put together a little list of books that I'm hoping will be on the list *fingers crossed* so have a look and see what takes your fancy..

Top photography to procrastinate with

Recent photography links to distract yourself with the day after the bank holiday

If the idea of not doing any work just yet on the first day back after the bank holiday sounds like a good idea here's my pick of the top recent reads to distract yourself with...

Photography degree shows 2013 are go

My pick of the degree shows to see around the country before Free Range in London this June

All over the country this year’s photography graduates are preparing their final degree shows at this very moment. Over the next few weeks, wherever you are in the country you can get the chance to see the future of photography as universities such as Brighton, Falmouth, Bournemouth and Farnham hold their local shows.

If you’re able to get in to London this June of course you can see them all in one place at Free Range on Brick Lane but if you’re thinking of taking a photography degree or you live locally it’s a good idea to check out the shows at the universities themselves.

Here’s the shows you should be looking out for locally and where to find more info and I’ll be adding to this as a when I get more dates so keep checking back:

Boston: a watershed moment for western reportage

Has war and terror reportage in the west finally caught up with the non-west?

Photograph by John Tlumacki

There have been journalists on the streets of war zones cameras at the ready waiting to take photographs of the dead and injured for nearly a hundred years and since the war in Vietnam and Nick Ut’s photograph of the girl running away from a napalm attack we have been used to seeing magazines like LIFE and TIME or broadsheet newspaper editorials on how wars in the Middle East, Africa and beyond are progressing, all with the aid of carefully selected photographs showing relatives crying over a dead loved one or civilians covered in blood running through smoke filled streets. But until now these photographs have never been taken in the west, let alone plastered on the front pages of newspapers.

Why? Because photojournalists have never before been on the streets as the event is happening. The west lives in a place in which it can feel safe that a journalistic story worth photographing is not going to happen at any moment. So the war reporters are elsewhere.

This is now changing.

David Schwen’s Instagram feed is a thing of wonder

This designer has fully embraced the Internet as a point for both publicity and inspiration, and WOW the outcome is good

It’s fair to say that the internet is flooded with people trying to grab your attention, do something new and different in the effort to grab your attention. Many do but it’s not often that someone’s work can make you continually go WOW. This happened when I came across designer and art director David Schwen.

What to wear to an auction

Smart or casual, or smart casual? The post where I mix art and clothes - it is nearly fashion week after all

So auction season has arrived - Sotheby's in London saw a record sales for February last night - and it's right around the same time that I'm stuck in 'no sleep and all work+play mode' also known as London Fashion Week so when I saw this video from the Wall Street Journal with Kelsey Hubbard from Christie's I thought what better way to overlap these two worlds than with someone telling you what to wear to an art auction.

Martin Parr goes skiing

The Magnum photographer has left the rainy days of England behind and headed for the mountains

Kleine Scheidegg, Switzerland, 1994

We’ve only just this last week got a sprinkling of snow after months and months of rain and even now it's starting to melt but elsewhere it’s been business as usual with northern Europe getting it’s yearly blanket of snow and appropriately wintery weather. Photographer Martin Parr has shunned the rainy days of his much loved Britain over the last few decades and headed to naturally snowier climbs in Switzerland, and not-so-naturally in Dubai and Japan.