We Need Art | 002

Hey everyone, sorry, it’s a learning process and not as fast as I’d like between posts! A couple of technical hiccups followed by a couple of line-up changes and here we are for round two of We Need Art. Getting stuck in for the small guys right now, enjoy!

001 - Decimal Studios

Support by - Buying the Jack Wrench Signature Drum Sample Pack (Link in Article)

I’ll keep this one as quick as possible, I know a lot of you guys reading this are likely not THIS deep into the world of music, but I couldn’t not put this as my number #1 of people to support this week.

Chris Coulter at the helm of this small but incredible studio hidden away on an island on the Thames, Producer and Mix/Master Engineer extraordinaire, is almost entirely responsible for my entry into the world of mind-blowing sounding music. Whenever I’m listening to a new album, it’s always the standard of records he’s produced I find myself holding everything up to for comparison. “It’s good, but it’s not Chris good”, is a regular occurrence.

Now, as with many small businesses, Decimal is in the horrible spot of being stuck between viability for the various government support grants available and is totally out on a limb. So, if you’re a producer, composer or just enthusiast, he’s just released Jack Wrench’s Drum samples from the I N C R E D I B L E Arcane Roots Melancholia Hymns Album to buy. If you want to get a bit further into how he creates the audio magic he does as well, and perhaps learn how to utilise tools like these samples, he’s just started a youtube channel with some really really interesting tutorials to boot.

If you’re not into this stuff yourself, then please please share it with your friends/family who might well be.

CLICK HERE FOR CHRIS’S STORE & DRUM SAMPLES!

002 - Ester De Roij

Support By - Checking out her Etsy Store (Link in Article)

It’s 4.30am, and I’m lying in a small puddle in a ditch in North Wales next to Ester, with our mutual friend Guthrie, and that’s how we met and became friends. Black grouse are ridiculously hard to find and film, but there we were on a sweet camping & photography trip for the weekend, no questions asked. Friends who will get no sleep and lie in a freezing puddle with you at ridiculous hours in the morning for two photos are friends you keep.

Now, Ester and I (and Guthrie!) all still work in the amazing world of wildlife TV. Ester is an amazing, talented Camerawomen, who has worked on some huge series, but who can’t seem to sit still in between shoots. Every time we get to catch up (frustratingly rarely as we all have the most chaotic diaries, the only real curse of having such a fun job), I find out about a new venture or idea or hers, and am forever reminded to step my game up and try harder. She kicks ass.

Now, as per everyone freelance during this period, Ester has of course lost all her work bookings etc, and is floating in the ether to see what on earth might happen next. So, what better time to draw your attention to the latest awesome thing she’s done, and how you might be able to support her.

I sadly don’t have my ears pierced, and don’t fancy my luck with a needle right now (give it a week though, wait until I’m really bored…), BUT, if you do, and you love wildlife photography, then go check out these sick earrings Ester has made, you can get them alongside her amazing photo prints on her Etsy:

CLICK HERE FOR ESTERS JEWELLERY AND PRINT STORE

003 - Bristol Food Union

Support By - A Bunch of Different ways (Website link in Article)

When I’m away on shoot, it’s a lot of eating as the locals do (often potatoes/rice with not much), or out of packets. Now freeze-dried meals are incredible these days, a long way from the dry biscuits on Antarctic crossing expeditions of legend, but when you get back to civilisation everything is incredible. I cannot get enough of how amazing and independent the food scene in Bristol is, and love to buy all the fresh stuff for my house as locally as possible, as well as eating in little independent cafes and restaurants rather than chains whenever we do venture out.

And so to my great delight, COVID-19 has prompted this new movement - the Bristol Food Union. I can’t explain it much better than them:

“Bristol Food Union is an informal collective of restaurants, food businesses and community organisations that have come together across-sectors to ensure that the city of Bristol stays fed during the Covid-19 crisis.”

They’re doing incredible things supporting both those struggling to find food at this time, at the same time as supporting the incredible independent food scene here in the city.

Please, check out their website here: www.bristolfoodunion.org

Well, that’s it for this week. If you’re bored, I’m still putting up irregular meaningless content on youtube, you can find me @ollyjelley on most platforms and I’m always here to chat if you’re struggling with anything during this lockdown and just need an ear so get in touch.

Hope everyone is doing well, and stay at home!!

Olly

A quick catch up to start!

Well, I've always wanted to have a nice and 'together' multi faceted website, and so a few years of learning & developing later here I sit. Having now given up on the promises of the benefits of learning to build sites from scratch, I'm at last safe in the hands of Square space!

To cut a long story short, this finally means I have this! A blog! Something I've always wanted to integrate in a nice easy way. I came from building my last site from total scratch on an Adobe platform called 'Muse', as at the time it offered so much more flexibility and an open book of options, especially compared to the fairly limited array of templates and tools Squarespace had.

Some of the clickable banners, all made from scratch in photoshop to sit on the 'photos' title page in my old website. Mega faff, but sometimes if you want the creative freedom it's what you gotta do.

When I began back then too, I was super concerned about displaying EVERYTHING I'd shot, all the photos, all the videos, so as not to limit peoples perceptions of what I could shoot and risk losing out on work. However, time (and wise friends, thank you) have taught me and my ADHD attitude that less really is more, and my busy mind is at last finding peace in a kind of digital cleanliness.

Whilst Muse was very flexible and omnipotent it also provided me with more than enough holes to fall down as well, and so I spent much less time being productive and creative, and much more time just trying to make the site display on a variety of screens and to actually hold my content in a cohesive way. Something I barely barely managed...

A crushing lack of 'tool knowledge' (Illustrator & Muse) led to mostly fighting with photoshop to create some rather ugly and unuseable title pages, rather than nice clean malleable assets... those white lines are just rubbed out over the top. Nasty!

So, here's to new and creative beginnings.

I am forever shooting photos & videos that aren't quite 'good enough' or of the right style to fit my main online platforms, or that only work in the context of a blog or as a story sequence, and I'm super happy to have that now.

I'll be using this little quiet corner of the internet of mine for 'behind the scenes' on my filming & photo shoots when I can, tutorials, tales of the adventures I'm lucky enough to head out on (E.G. my upcoming expedition in Sweden which will be covered bit by bit, including some lead up content on here!), and other little things I'm passionate about in the worlds of music, science, environment and suchlike.

A shot from an unpublished story about a sea cliff we climbed on a remote island in Scotland, mid-winter, just because I didn't have a platform to share it well on! Well... it's coming soon!

Having said that, you can expect this to mostly be wildlife, eco, adventure & travel oriented... I'm always well up for this being a conversation, as per my youtube ethos as well,  so chat away in the comments, let me know what you're interested in, my brains are open for the picking. 

Until the next one, whenever that maybe be, thanks for reading!

Olly x

One of my best friends, and mad honorary scotsman (he's a welsh german in reality... I think?) Zeemon, off onto the 'wee hill' that is Ben Nevis, BTS from a wintery shoot a couple of years back. I'm sure he'll be featuring heavily soon...