A r t . D e s i g n . M u s i c Featuring Hannah Khymych Sandra Dieckmann Arae Steadman Gbajumo Junior Dexter Orszagh Alex Fisk Mac Scott Jamie Kendrick Freddie Nockolds Rob Halhead-Baker
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MY PANDA SHALL FLY
ISSUE 1
WatchMePivot Magazine Watch Me Pivot is a new multidisciplinary platform founded by graphic designer David Hinga, for young creatives to showcase their work through our online blog and our quarterly magazine. We showcase work from every area of the creative industry, from graphic design, illustration, product design to conceptual fine art, sculpture, painting, photography, film, sound and music. We hope to provide our viewers with more than just great work but to showcase the unseen talents hiding in their bedrooms and classrooms. Hopefully by doing so we can inspire more great work and connect a wide selection of work with a greater audience of art lovers and artists. Besides primarily working as an in-house publishing platform to showcase emerging talents, WatchMePivot works secondly as a creative studio that caters to small and established clients. Check out our Creative Studio page on our site for more info about the services we provide. www.watchmepivot.com Submitting Work If you would like to submit work to the Watch Me Pivot blog all you have to do is send us an email with a few small jpeg images of your work, a short description of your style, what you do and lastly a link to your site/blog/flickr. Send emails to: submit@watchmepivot.com
The Team
Contributors
Magazine Designer/Writer/Editor: David Hinga www.davidhinga.com/
Steadman Gbajumo Junior, Dexter Orszagh Alex Fisk, Mac Scott, Jamie Kendrick, Freddie Nockolds, Rob Halhead-Baker, Hannah Khymych, My Panda shall fly, Arae, Sandra Dieckmann
Cover Illustration by Jamie Kendrick www.jamiekendrick.com/ Film Reviews by Tohko Kanzaki www.tohkokanzaki.blogspot.com/
Contact
Info / General enquiries : info@watchmepivot.com Submitting work : submit@watchmepivot.com Creative studio: creativestudio@watchmepivot.com Follow us Twitter: @WatchMePivot Facebook: www.facebook.com/watchmepivot Mixcloud: www.mixcloud.com/WatchMePivot/
2012 Š All Rights Reserved WatchMePivot Magazine 3 WatchMePivot
CONTENTS
FRESH FACES 6 - 19
Fresh Faces is where we showcase new and emerging talented creatives, ranging from all areas of art and design . In this issue:
Steadman Gbajumo Junior Mac Scott Dexter Orszagh Alex Fisk Rob Halhead-Baker Freddie Nockolds
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REVIEWS 22 Taxi - 23 Driver Eyes Wide Shut
In this issue’s review section we’ve decided to review two classic films, that if you haven’t already, you need to see after reading these reviews.
FEATURED ARTISTS 26 - 32 The Featured artists section is a collection of interviews from up and coming talents, each bringing something new to the table in each of the industries. This issue features: London based Dj and producer, My Panda Shall Fly. New York Fashion Photographer Hannah Khymych. New York Producer Arae. East London based illustrator Sandra Dieckmann.
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Steadman Gbajumo Junior
Here’s only a small selection of photographs by 19 year old photographer and Greenwich university film student Steadman Gbajumo Junior. For a long time now I’ve been constantly surprised and inspired by Steadman’s work. His developed a very refined photo-journalistic style, capturing moments and scenes of friends, events, places and the people he meets during his day. He’s by far one of the most talented and interesting photographers I know for his age. www.flickr.com/photos/32813121@N08/
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|Fresh Faces
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Feature
MY PANDA
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SHALL FLY
|Interview
So where did the name Which one do you prefer? ‘My Panda Shall Fly’ come from? That’s a tough one, I love DJ’ing and did it quite heavAt the time, all three of ily about three years back us went to a library, and I with the explosion of Dubremember us picking a book step but now I’m focusing at random, blindly choosmostly on my production ing a word and juggling and live material. them around to come up with what we are known by I still love them both and today. couldn’t choose between the two! Describe your sound? So tell us a little bit about I think if you imagine a tall your new EP ‘Let’s Vibrate dolphin wearing a red toga Together”... making Ethiopian food under the ocean, that’d be a This is going to be my next good description. release coming out on the Five Easy Pieces label which I wrote and co-produced So what came first djing along with a new Internet or music production? buddy Benjamin Jackson. We befriended each other a I can’t actually remember. couple of months back and During high school, the started to swap ideas over sound of UK Garage was the web until we got some everywhere, we’d record basic ideas down. We then the very best of pirate radio spent time getting deeper onto cassette and start play- into the music and mixes ing it on our walkmans, and until we’d have worked on soon enough started buying the material for long enough vinyl and saving up for for us to realise we were turntables. I never actually both happy with them. owned a pair of decks for a long time, I always used to We’ve also got three go practice on my friends’ amazing remixes from the setups. likes of Cloud Boat, patten & Chairman Kato on the I think soon after I got into release. playing around with early versions of FL Studio (verGot any other new matesion 2 if I remember corrial in the works? rectly) whenever I could. More often than not avoid- Yeah I’ve just finished a new ing GCSE school work in concept record with my favour of “making beats”. engineer Asier Leatxe of six tracks like nothing I’ve ever Skip forward a number made before; a surreal mixof years and I release my ture of worldly percussion, debut EP on an imprint of ambient fusion and exotic Wichita Recordings run by voices. Dam Mantle. It took about five months to
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write, record and mix-down. Its been a mad journey but it was totally worth it. I’m currently shopping around for a good home for it. I can’t wait to see what people think of it. What inspires your music? A lot of things I wouldn’t dare to mention here.. Are there any other artists that you think are really killing it at the moment? The people who’ve remixed my next record all have a very exciting 2012 ahead of them as do the artists that also remixed my first EP I released in April last year. I love them all. What’s on the horizon for you? A lot more music and music-related projects. I’m going to be releasing a lo-fi MPSF project with music that was originally conceived around 2007/2008 when we were a threepiece very soon - as well as another collaborative project that I made with an old pal who makes music under the alias “Adventure Elephant”. I’m going to be trying out a lot of different things this year. I’m very excited about it all. www.soundcloud.com/mpsf www.facebook.com/mypandashallfly
HANNAH
KHYMYCH What camera(s) are you using at the moment? Anyone who’s followed Currently I am working with you in the last few years Canon 5DMKII. since the hannah havoc days on deviantart to Lenses? where you are now can I like to use Canon L series easily see you are a very fixed lenses. driven person, what drives your passion to beFlash units? come a successful fashion Don’t like using flesh units. photographer? When I started my account Retouching setup? on DA it was more for my Macbook Pro with an Eizo “personal” and self portrait screen and a walcom tablet. work. I was just experimentKnowing your equipment ing before I had the chance is half the battle for a good to work with real models. retouching process. Also A lot of it helped me with collaborating your monitor is retouching because I pretty super important. much started learning the retouching process on self Now the good stuff. portraits. Always nice to see a before/after of yourself, Can you remember the just kidding. I decided that I first time you picked up a should stop taking pictures camera and captured your of myself and focus on my first photograph? career as a photographer. It was so long ago. I was I think a lot of people got back in high school when upset with me for not using I bought my first SLR. But my DA account anymore. when I was a little kid back Ive been working very hard in Ukraine I had a polaroid outside of the internet life to camera which I used to take get to where I am right now. pictures of nature/animals. You know what drives me? But it wasn’t until I was 16 Waking up in a the morning that I wanted to really get and knowing I don’t have into fashion photography to do a 9-5 job at an office. and experience with it. Also I chose this path so
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there is no other choice for me. A photographer I work for once told me that “You can’t make a plan B, you just have to make it. You have no other choice”. That makes me work really hard for my work. What’s the most important thing you’ve learnt since starting out as a fashion photographer? I have learned so many things. One I will point out. Be professional , always.
How does it differ from working in New York? And would you ever like to work anywhere else? So far it’s only been NYC. I am currently in the re-making of my portfolio and once that is done I would like to go out to London/Paris. I love travelling and if my job offers that, why not?
When did you make the conscious decision to pursue a career as a fashion photographer? It was something ever since i started taking pictures I wanted to do. Definitely not until I was 16 when I started testing with models that I was 150% sure. How has the internet served as a tool for you to Why fashion photograestablish yourself within phy? Are there any other the photography world? forms of photography What would you say are that you’re in to? the best means of comI am a big fan of fashion. A munication and networklot of people don’t undering platforms available stand it. It’s a form of art for online for photographers? designers,makeup,hair,styl To be honest with you I ist,photographers,directors used to have all the social ,etc can use to express the networking Facebook/twitcreative side of it. Mainly ter/tumblr. It helps people editorial part of fashion is from all over the world to when the full team can cre- view your work but when it ate inspiring photographs. comes down to the busiI’m very much interested in ness side of it , it really is portraits and nudes as well. about meeting the clients. Something I am definitely Social networking won’t experimenting with now help you book a job, at least more. from my experience. What’s the most interestDo you get many chances ing shoot you’ve ever to work in other US states worked on? Who was it or in other countries? with? Where and when?
|Interview
Recently I shot Zippy from Elite models for an editorial. It was a nude/fashion story featuring SS 2012. Very different from my work and it was a lot of fun. Working with really great people and talent.
about it like that. I work just like anyone else in this industry does.
Are there any photographers who you look up to? Or any who have had a positive influence on the way you work? What has been the bigOne of my favourites is gest inspiration for you so Helmut Newton. Recently I far? have been inspired a lot by Many things inspire me. his nude work. Definitely There are many photograhas made me want to exphers/models/stylist and periment more with angles/ books/music that help me light. Also keeping the post come up with concepts for production to a minimum. my shoots. Keeping it clean but still real and beautiful. Fashion photography is by no means an easy If you could work with industry to get into, how anyone on a shoot, who did you get to where you would it be with, photogare today? And do you rapher and/or model? have any advice for up I would love to work with and coming photograso many people. I have top phers who might want to 6 models I would love to follow in your footsteps? shoot : Karlie Kloss, CharYou really need to work lotte Free, Eniko Mihahard to get somewhere lik, Natasha Poly, Bambi anywhere. The fashion Northwood Blyth, andDaria industry is very tough. I Werbowy. started out retouching as an intern as well as interning at What you do get up to a studio for a while where I when you’re not worklearned many things about ing on a shoot or in the the equipment/post produc- studio? tion. After I was fortunate Mainly spending time enough to work for some just hanging out with my really great photographers boyfriend/friends. Reading as a retoucher. Learning books or going to the beach a lot during the process. I (when its warm out). I love would tell someone that to travel as well. they need to work really hard. Be very professional Finally where do you and be confident in your hopefully see yourself in work. Mainly don’t be lazy the next few years? and work and test and learn I still see myself living in as much as you can. NYC , hopefully traveling more for work. Living in a What’s it like being such studio apartment where I a young person in such a could work in and live. Let’s big industry? just see where the next I don’t ever really think couple of years take me.
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