The Musical Ink Book

My friend Jon, the photographer with the book project entitled Musical Ink (http://musical-ink.com/musical_ink.html), which features musicians and their tattoos, had some stickers made up with the MI logo on them. He suggested that people put the stickers in various places and send in photos of what they've done, to be posted in a gallery on the Facebook page for the book.

I thought of places where I might put the stickers he gave me - on the wall in a bathroom stall? on the bumper of a car? on a telephone pole? - but all my ideas seemed rather ordinary and not too imaginative. Then I decided I would make an altered composition book for Jon and that got my muse going!

Here are some photos of the finished book:

I decorated the front and back covers with black and white designs, to mirror the B&W focus of Musical Ink.

For the front inside cover, I used a photo of Jon from his personal website (http://www.jonblacker.com/Home.html) and superimposed text from the MI website describing the book project over top of that image. I was quite pleased with how that experiment turned out!The inside back cover was decorated with scrapbook paper I found at Michaels, which I trimmed to feature just the guitar with angel wings, to which I then added the centre part of the Musical Ink logo, cut out from one of the stickers.

I also found some really cool rock and roll stamps at Michaels and used them to mark various pages. As well as the stamps you see here, there were also musical notes, pictures of guitars and drums, sayings like "Rock Star" and "Rock 'n Roll" - all added in black ink, natch.

I then wrapped the finished book in silver paper with stars on it and added a cut up sticker as decoration on the wrapping paper.

All in all, I was quite excited about the finished result (I always think you've made something good if there's a little part of you that wants to keep the piece you're intending to give away,and I did think twice about giving this one away) and I think Jon was too. At least, he said he did!

Cameras, Tattoos and Baseball

I've been thinking I'd like to get a digital SLR camera since I took the photography workshop with Kyle Cassidy last September: http://cynfulcreationscanada.blogspot.com/2009/09/what-weekend.html.

So I was getting some advice today on what type of camera to buy from a photographer friend of mine, Jon Blacker (http://www.jonblacker.com/Home.html). Kyle recommends the Lumix GF1 but that one is a little out of my price range at the moment. Jon favours the Nikon brand.

Jon has a very cool book project on the go at the moment, featuring musicians with tattoos. You can read more about that here: http://www.musical-ink.com/musical_ink.html. I don't have any tattoos myself, I've just never found an image I'd like to have permanently added to my body. I like the idea of it though, tattoos are such a fascinating art form and let's face it, they're quite sexy too. In moderation, that is - i.e. as long as you're not covering every available inch of your skin with ink. And as long as it's not Tweety Bird or "Wino Forever", that's just silly.

Jon also takes photos now and again for Major League Baseball, which put me in mind of the Toronto Blue Jays and the fact that the regular season is about to start. The home opener is Monday, April 12th against the Chicago White Sox - let's play ball!

With all that in mind, here's a photo I took on Roncesvalles Avenue last weekend. It makes me want to go looking for a guy named Ron Geoffrey. If he was a ball player (he'd probably play 3rd base) or a musician (definitely a guitar player), I wonder what kind of tattoo he would have?