Talented Friends

Ed Boxall – Dance Beneath A Diamond Sky (Music Video)

Ed Boxall an artist/musician and dear old friend, recently asked if I’d be interested in making a video for a track on his upcoming “Wild Ones” album release.
Back in the (distant) day, Ed and I had a band called “Sunshine Head” and I have always loved his songwriting and art work, so it was a swift and simple ‘yes’.
The track he chose was titled “Dance Beneath A Diamond Sky”, the Bob Dylan reference immediately endeared me to it.

Ed was happy for me to have free rein to do whatever I wanted and after listening to the track a few times an idea presented itself.

I took some existing footage I had shot on a beautiful old Russian Helios 40 85mm lens in a nearby wood and a whole stack of illustrations Ed had sent me.

I had been planning on experimenting more with AI image generators after my initial experiments a year ago as much had evolved in the space. This seemed like the perfect project on which to play.

I fed both the footage and the drawings into the Deforum extension for Stable Diffusion, using prompts generated from Clip Interrogator. This produced some interesting shifting animations of the static footage and dreamlike hallucinations of Ed’s original drawings. I also generated some additional elements to layer into the video using variations on the song’s title as prompts.
Everything was blended together in After Effects and a grade applied to complete the look.

I wanted to make something that didn’t look like it had been generated by AI, something that was using it more as a tool to play with my original footage and Ed’s original drawings. Not only was it more satisfying to use these tools to create based on work done by our own hands but (for me at least) it dismissed a lot of the ethical hand wringing that rightfully accompanies a lot of things being produced by it.

We hope you like it.

Listen to the full album “Wild Ones”

See and order the “Wild Ones” book and Ed’s other work on his website www.edboxall.co.uk

Steve Gullick – “Gullogram” book promo video

My good friend Steve Gullick (the frankly legendary music photographer) just put out his 2nd book of phone photographs entitled “gullogram” so I decided to make a little video to help promote it.

You can buy the book HERE (but watch the video first:)

If you’ve read a music magazine or bought an album by pretty much any band using guitars properly in the last 30 years chances are you’ve seen Steves work.
(THOSE Nirvana photographs?……. Mr. Gullick).
Over on his Instagram, a different kind of work is prevalent though, more of a “visual diary” as he describes it. This is where the photos in “gullogram” come from.

The video was originally conceived as an Instagram piece, but as soon as I put a mic on him I realised something longer was going to be necessary, plus how many people watch videos with sound on Instagram?
Frankly, we could have talked for an hour on the subject of just this, let alone Steves other work and that conversation may (or may not) be forthcoming in the future.
As it is you get 3 ish minutes of Mr. Gullicks dulcet tones on the book and phone photography.

Shot with my current lens obsession the Helios 40 85mm F1.5 on a Sony A7III.

Edited in Davinci Resolve 16 Beta.

Music:
Hugh Doolan “Persephone’s Guitar”
https://soundcloud.com/hughdoolan/persephones-guitar
Used under a Creative Commons CC by 3.0 license
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

All photographs © Steve Gullick 2019
http://www.gullickphoto.com
https://www.instagram.com/stevegullick/
“gullogram” available from – https://gullickprint.com/products/gullogram


“Tuning into Radio Muju” – A Documentary

I’ve known Mr Muju for almost 20 years and Miss Muju for maybe 1/2 that. They are and continue to be not only some of my best friends but a constant source of inspiration.

Mr Muju, one of the most talented artists I know, is responsible for me first seriously picking up a camera and must be credited with introducing me to Buddhism long before he was the catalyst that made me go to India thereby changing the course of my life forever.
I feel genuinely lucky to be his friend.

Miss Muju is also an incredibly talented artist whose plush and resin work has delighted and amazed fans & fellow artists from around the world. She drives a VW Camper and is quite simply lovely.

Together they form Mujuworld…..Paintings, drawings, plush and bio-resin designer toys from a unique shared creative vision.

They are easily the nicest, most relaxed people I know.

I did a photograph of them for my “Talented Friends” series several years (2009 to be exact, when they visited me in Tokyo) ago but I’ve always wanted to make a short documentary about them and their amazing work. Unfortunately, they are legendarily camera shy and put off doing an interview for years. By a process of wearing them down, moaning and emotional blackmail I finally managed to get them to sit down and talk on camera late last year.

The result, along with a lot of accumulated archive footage both mine and theirs and many examples of their work is the 20ish minute documentary “Tuning Into Radio Muju”.

So sit down with a cup of tea and take a trip with us to Muju Mountain!

Their incredible work can be seen at www.mujuworld.com

The film contains music used under a creative commons license, as always many thanks to the artists who made their work available:-

7-Version – Untitled People Riddim by Lions’ Flow Productions
soundcloud.com/lionsflow-asso/7-version-untitled-people-riddim-lions-flow-productions
USED UNDER CC BY-SA 3.0

DuBoLoGy – Xylo Riddim + Dub (Yellow Dub) by DuBoLoGy
soundcloud.com/dubology-2/dubology-xylo-riddim-dub
USED UNDER CC BY 3.0

MatDTSound & Cloud meets Woody Vibes – Amnesical Dub – Part II by MatDTSound
soundcloud.com/matdtsound/matdtsound1-cloud-meets-woody
USED UNDER CC BY 3.0

Dub Kontrol Skank by negritage!
soundcloud.com/negritage/dub-kontrol-skank
USED UNDER CC BY 3.0

More Than 2 Sides by Jeris
ccmixter.org/files/VJ_Memes/33241
USED UNDER CC BY 2.5

 

Directed/Shot and Edited by Uchujin/Adrian Storey ©2018

Uchujin visits Mujuworld at ToyCon 2017

#Mujuworld at #toyconuk2017 @mr_muju and @miss_muju with an amazing display of incredible work!

A post shared by Uchujin (@uchujinfilms) on

Last weekend I went down to hang out with my dear old friends Mr & Miss Muju from Mujuworld at ToyCon 2017 at the York Hall in Bethnal Green.
The Mujuworld booth was amazing and it was so great to see them getting the recognition they deserve from the toy community for their truly fantastic work.

Also got to shoot a bit for the upcoming short documentary I’m making on them.

Apart from Mujuworld, there was so much great work on show but my personal favorite was Ghetto Plastic with their beautiful “Inuit Goddess”

Uchujin On Tour – Mujuworld in Cornwall Edition

Last week we finally managed to make it down to Cornwall to see my dear old friend and amazing artist Mr Muju and his equally awesome partner Miss Muju in their beautiful little country cottage.
A blissful week of epic Cornish scenery, lovely veggie food, reggae tunes, travelling in style in Miss Muju’s VW camper van and even a day of body boarding!
I couldn’t just have a holiday though, where would the fun be in that?
So with my new CAME TV Optimus gimbal (a great excuse to put it through it’s paces) and trusty Sony A7SII I filmed loads of stuff for my documentary in progress on Team Muju and put together this little film of our week.

Found a great tune to use under a creative commons licence for the soundtrack by DuBoLoGy  – “Xylo Riddim + Dub (Yellow Dub)”

www.soundcloud.com/dubology-2

Many thanks for making that available :)

The Optimus performed super well despite my lack of practice using it, even on top of seriously wind blown Cornish headlands.
I love it :)

Please go and check out the work of the awesome Team Muju at www.mujuworld.co.uk

See a load of photos I shot too over on my Instagram account

Fragments of Tokyo Exhibition – Jon Ellis, Thomas Orand, Toshiya Watanabe and 古賀大郎(Dairou Koga) 2010.02.08-02.14

In honor of my dear friend Jon Ellis (he of “it’ll all end in tears” fame) and his 3 accomplices, Thomas Orand, Toshiya Watanabe and Dairou Kogas’ exhibition at Place M in Shinjuku, Tokyo, running until Feburary 14th 2010,  I am posting 3 of my recent favorite pictures of the man who makes Andrew Eldrich look not goth enough.

Behold, Mr Jon Ellis……….

Jon Ellis
Jon Ellis
Jon Ellis

Oh and go to the exhibition, its really very very good ;-)

Capt. Muju

TeamMuju-©Adrian Storey 2009
It’s been a long month.
The Beats exhibition, house guests, domestic travel, increasing temperatures and the usual slew of rude people on the trains.
Not much time for photography or keeping up with my rss feeds and even less time for blog writing.

I did find time, however, to shoot a portrait of a dear friend and his lovely girlfriend who stayed with us for a week or so though.

Meet ‘Muju’.
It must be 15 years that we’ve been friends now and it still feels as inspiring and fresh as it did when we first met.
An extremely talented artist and photographer, a dub fiend and an oasis of calm in a crazy world, Muju is responsible for me first picking up a camera for anything other than holiday snaps and must be credited with introducing me to Buddhism long before he was the catalyst that first made me go to India thereby changing the course of my life forever.
I feel genuinely lucky to be his friend and even though we now live on opposite sides of the world, his thinking and world view are still so much a part of me that the debt I owe him for all he has shown me and all we have shared is unrepayable.

But enough eulogising.

The portrait of Mr and Mrs Muju was shot in a local park with three nikon speedlights, a couple of umbrellas and a little red LED flashlight.
The idea was to get all the elements in one shot.
The easiest way of course would have been to shoot Mr and Mrs Muju, the glowing Muju doll (handmade by Mrs Muju and part of a huge family of Muju dolls) and the light painting as seperate shots and composite them in photoshop afterwards, but where’s the fun in that?

What you see is essentially what came out of the camera (obviously cleaned up a little – stray hairs, slight contrast adjustments etc.)

Muju can be found all over the interwebs, but of particular interest are :-

Muju’s Flickr
Muju world

Drop buy and order a Muju doll or a muju T-shirt or even a print of one of his amazing drawings.

Oh and if Mr or Mrs Muju are reading this:-
It was GREAT to see you both, lets not leave it so long next time.
Big huge Jah love to you both :-)