Since our return to the UK in April 2012, after 14 months relaxing on beaches, hiking up mountains and sleeping on over-night trains, we have finally managed to sort through ‘some’ of our photography archive. Between work commitments and fitting back into the UK way of life we are working hard to sort through the thousands of images to be able to do things with our favorite photographs. Like offer some for sale!

Thanks for looking. Helen and Dave.

This personal project was devised as a challenge to see if I could create a Gregorian calendar with the corresponding dates on Mars for the year 2014. Based on the Darian Calendar devised by Thomas Gangale in 1985.

Ideally it would have been finished in 2013 ready for 2014, however due to our new baby boy Frank arriving on Christmas day, we had our hands full getting ready for his arrival.

Screen printed 700mm x 500mm (27.55″ x 19.68″) printed on GF Smith Colourplan Ice White 270gsm using water based inks that are environmentally friendly and soil association accredited. Printed by One69A located in Islington Mill, Manchester.

£25 £15 + postage (Frame not included). Purchase one from our shop…

We keep saying this everytime we write but we wish we could be posting more frequently on our beloved Notworkrelated blog. The truth is we’ve both been so busy in our workrelated lives! This shouldn’t be an excuse! The reason we started this blog was for us to have a platform through which we could discuss and showcase what we get up to away from work. I guess with all the traveling out of our system (well for the time being at least) we have had to crack on and get back into our lives as photographer and designer.

So for a little update here’s what we’ve been up to…

Helen photographed Andre Bonomi, new Aston Martin shareholder for an Italian editorial feature at head office in June.

Helen has already visited Dubai, Spain, France and Germany this year with top client Aston Martin. She’s been photographing lifestyle and documentary imagery on launches, at motorsport events and various VIP visits to head office. It’s been a busy year for Aston with it being their Centenary year and so there has been lots to photograph! Not to mention their big celebrations in London this coming weekend. It’s free to the public on Sunday to witness Aston Martin’s biggest line up of iconic Aston Martin cars in history. Lets hope the sun stays good for us!  You can find out more here.

Bruno Senna leads the GT Pro class in car no.99 at this years Le Mans 24 hour race. Needless to say the gridwalk was a fantastic experience!

Unfortunately David doesn’t get to play quite so much with the Aston’s but he does often find himself joining Helen as a photographer too which is nice as this means we get to work with each other! And we have just both returned from the Goodwood Festival of Speed where we were shooting for Tag Heuer as a joint venture so he does get some of the perks!

David in the meantime has started a job! Nooooo! We cried! But there are a few responsibilities on our shoulders including a new house which we should be moving into soon. We’re moving to a lovely village on the cusp of the Peak District and within reach of the glorious city of Mancheser which is going to be our new back yard! Well actually the Peak District is more our back yard but it’s good to have Manchester only a 20 minute train journey away.

He is now working at Havas Lynx, a global agency leading the way when it comes to marketing and design. He’s in the design team putting ideas into reality. It’s a great platform career wise, plus it means we get to meet more people from Manchester!

So in between relocating and finding ourselves new contacts for work and play we took a little trip to Wales recently and opted for the less popular but perhaps more spectacular hike to the top of the Glyders in Snowdonia. We were greeted by glorious weather right before this ongoing heat wave began luckily for us as it rains often in Llanberis. We took the £1 bus up to Pen-Y-Pass where the path begins opposite the Pass car park alongside the hostel. We rarely passed anyone heading up this side of the mountain a refreshing change to tackling the masses of hikers who take on Snowdon every day.

Our ascent took about 2.5 hour or so with a few breaks to take in the views and to enjoy Mrs Roscoe’s homemade fruit cake! Its easy to loose the path because it isn’t well trodden however there are pink markers on the rocks every so often so if you do miss it navigating back onto it is easy enough. Approaching Glyder Fawr at 999m is fun, it’s a little like scrambling over giant rocks in Planet of the Apes. The landscape is amazing up here, the rock formations huge making us feel like midgets! We met more hikers as we ventured across to Glyder Fach (994m) and found the cantilever stone perched on top of more rocks. Some fun to be had there!

We looked out across to Tryffan and Devil’s Kitchen, perhaps routes that are taken more frequently although only in good conditions. As it was still and sunny this was the perfect day to hike around these peaks. We’re always reminded of the dangers when we see rescue helicopters flying around!

We took the path down to the Pen-Y-Gwryd Hotel where we enjoyed drinks in their historic and Everest themed bar. The only downside was the hour long wait for the bus back to Llanberis, but at £1 each its a bargain really!! Although this isn’t the Himalayas there is so much exploring to be done in this part of Wales either by foot or bike. We’ve enjoyed many hikes directly from Helen’s parents cottage in Llanberis and also bike rides around the Snowdon routes. It’s a part of the country that should be on everyone’s visit-list at some stage in their lives and especially for those who love the outdoors.

(Leica M9, Summicron-M 50mm f2.0, 18mm f4, 90mm Tele-Elmarit f2.8 processed in Lightroom 3)

This weekend (3rd March – 6th March 2013) Focus on Imaging 2013 is taking place at the Birmingham NEC. The yearly exhibition and showcase for the camera and photography industry is Europe’s biggest annual imaging show with over 200 exhibitors and product launches.

This year Canson Infinity will be using some of our notworkrelated travel and Paralympic photography on their exhibition stand and on Monday 4th March we will be joining them to meet, chat to and offer advice to the visitors to the Canson Infinity stand. We love the paper stocks they supply and we use two of their papers, Baryta Photographique and Arches Aquarelle Rag, for our photographic prints which we sell in our shop. They are both beautiful stocks.

Huge thanks to Canson for inviting us to join them as well as theprintspace.co.uk for helping us print and produce these limited edition promotional postcards (1 of 54 per design) which we will be handing out at Focus on Monday. Thanks also to S.Wilford Printers for helping with the cutting and trimming.

Pop over and say ‘Hi’ if you are attending this year. Helen and Dave.

On the 4th December (which was also Helen’s 33rd birthday!) we both ventured out into the North-West of England and more specifically into Liverpool. Helen was born and raised not too far away in Widnes and so we decided to have a few days ‘Oop’ North.

The reason we were in Liverpool was to meet up with Laura from The Double Negative  in conjunction with our online shop and Notworkrelated adventures! Laura invited us over to their new office over at Static on Roscoe Lane, it couldn’t have been more appropriate!

Static is home to an artists collective combining the talents of tile-makers, hair-dressers, web developers, sound and installation artists and new tenants; The Double Negative. In the past Static was more known for it’s live music but thanks to a license issue they only have one off gigs now but do host social media events throughout the year and seem to attract a lovely bunch of creatives.

The Double Negative are made up of Laura and Mike and along with 40 other contributors they write about all the good things going on in the North-West of England. Really they’re there to keep us informed about what is going on in the arts, music, film and design world. We heard them on 6Music a few months ago with the lovely Lauren Laverne and decided to approach them about our Notworkrelated projects. They said yes and invited us in for an interview!

We soon realised there is a lot going on in Helen’s old backyard of Liverpool and especially from a creative point of view. We were interested to hear about all the DIY artists and venues that are around the city, pop up gallery spaces, gig venues and nice little collectives. Spaces we’re sure we’ll be passing through when we are in the North-West setting ourselves up.

A few places we’d like to check out for our very own field trip sometime soon will be:

- The new Open Eye Gallery, recently reopened down on the Albert Dock in a building called Mann Island (well its newly opened to us but it has just celebrated it’s first birthday!). The Open Eye has always been a gallery to bookmark as it’s the only dedicated photography gallery in the North-West of England and has been long established within the creative industry.

- Camp and Furness – this place sounds exciting doesn’t it? Its an alternative event space home to pop-up shops, bar and eatery, a photographic studio and a boutique hotel where you can book to stay in a caravan! From art installations to camera and comedy vintage markets and street food. This is high on our list of priorities to visit when we are next in Liverpool!

- Baltic Creative (The Baltic Triangle) also located down at Liverpool’s Albert Dock, it’s a creative campus. Once a warehouse district handling the dock trade it is now a growing environment for creative and digital businesses. With places to eat, music to listen to and art to explore.

It was a real pleasure to meet up with The Double Negative and we felt really inspired afterwards. We also ate some very scrummy food at Leaf on Bold Street, we can definitely recommend this place, you may have to wait for a table but the atmosphere and food is very inviting, plus their selection of teas are equally enticing.

Here’s how our interview went…

They’ve managed to context our travel experiences and photography really well and have written some lovely words about our Shop too! In case you missed anything all through January (Not long to go now!) we’re offering 25% off everything until the end of the month, it would be lovely for you to visit and have a browse.

We both hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and a cracking start to the New Year, we have kicked off January with more work and exciting opportunities – David is freelancing at design agencies and Helen is scheduled to be jetting off around Europe and the Middle East for client projects in the coming months.

Our online shop is still offering 25% off all limited edition prints until the end of January. Check out our images at the Notworkrelated Shop.

We have also collectively been asked to be judges in an online competition in conjunction with The Printspace which we are very excited about. More to come on that once we start the judging process. How exciting.

This morning we had a lovely delivery from Glasgow Press which contained our new look business cards. New colour, new classic typeface (Gill Sans), letterpressed, white ink and GF Smith paper stock all combine to create these little beauties. Looking forward to handing some of these out. Thanks to Glasgow Press for the great service. *UPDATE – here is a nice article about the new business card packaging from Glasgow Press…*

• Colorplan Ice White 270gsm / Colorplan Turquoise 270gsm = Duplex of 540gsm.
• Side 1. White Foil, Turquoise Colorplan 270gsm.
• Side 2. Pantone to match the Turquoise Colorplan, letterpressed text on Colorplan Ice White 270gsm.

We wanted to do something a little different this Christmas. This is our first Christmas in the UK with our families for 2 years and this we are excited about! We wanted to share something with you this Christmas that we hope each day will make you smile, be intrigued or take you to that time and place! We’ve designed an Advent Calendar but it’s a little different from the norm…No chocolate behind each door, just a little slice of escapism from the chills, sharp shopping elbows and endless Christmas songs. Starting from the 1st of December and leading up to Christmas Day we will be unveiling a new print every day as part of our Advent Calendar. The images selected for the advent are little snippets from our Notworkrelated travels.

To get in the spirit of it all we are offering 25% discount off all prints throughout the month of December! Just to get you in the spirit we’re offering a special discount this festive season…25% off all prints featured in our shop until the 31st December 2012 this includes those featured in the advent as well as Collection #1! We’re also donating 5% of all profits to charity. Currently we are donating towards building a school in Ghana, Africa. This project is being led by good friend Neville Maggs who has done an amazing job so far! the children are in and classes are being taught but still there is so much to be done and all of his fund-raising is done through initiatives of his own. Sign up to our email newsletter to receive the advent calendar direct to your inbox. Don’t forget that 5% of each and every sale goes to charity.

Check out the calendar and find out more details here.

Following on from the previous post on the Mexico 1968 Summer Olympics Radio Times feature here are some more images from that era. The ’72 Olympics are considered ground breaking in their approach to design,  typography and merchandise.

Extracts from munich72.org:

The design work was led by Otl Aicher who sought to project the lightness of the Bavarian landscape and the character of southern Germany. Aicher’s team developed a range of material which is probably best remembered for the innovative and exemplary series of posters; and a range of pictorial symbols which subsequently has been adopted and extended worldwide with considerable commercial success, thanks to Aicher’s close collaboration with the German lighting manufacturer ERCO.

The colour palette was one of the most significant aspects of the identity. It was based upon the heraldic colours of Bavaria, light blue and white (as used by BMW and the Hofbräuhaus brewery). Aicher chose these, together with the light green of the Bavarian alpine landscape, as the principal elements to provide a light palette (which required bespoke ink formulations). The lightness of colour was reflected in the adoption of a light typeface (Univers 55). The colours in the German national flag were expressly excluded.

This is an Illustrated London News Special Publication produced in conjunction with Young World Productions Ltd on behalf of the British Olympic Association. Many thanks for Jan Roscoe for allowing us to photograph this memorabilia. She competed in Munich ’72 and Montreal ’76 as a 400m runner for Great Britain.

More images can be seen on our Flickr.

After our time in London and a visit to the Design Museum (see blog post here) we were very much inspired by the visual language used in the Olympic games of this era. Mexico 1968 and Munich 1972 are two highly regarded Summer Olympic Games that were talked about at the Design Munich ’72 talk with guest speaker Ian McLaren.

Fortunately Helen’s Mother, Jan, participated in two Olympic games and has a collection of memorabilia for the 60′s and 70′s. She competed in Munich ’72 and Montreal ’76 as a 400m runner for Great Britain. Highlights of the Mexico games include: The Black Power salute, East and West Germany competed as separate teams and the Fosbury flop technique won Gold for the first time.

We managed to get our hands on a copy of the Mexico ’68 Olympics Radio Times dated October 10th 1968. With people at the London 2012 Olympics questioning certain corporate sponsors at least certain sectors of adverting are no longer attributed to sport.

More images can be seen on our Flickr.

Hello, we’re hoping that you’re enjoying the last of the summer, we seem to be having some very cool starts to the day, reminds us of being in other parts of the world exploring the West Coast of America this time last year. Oh to be reminiscing. But the truth is we’re both quite happy in our lives back in the UK. We’ve had an amazing summer with the Olympics taking center stage and we’ve been busy freelancing in both of our professions whilst also managing to take the time to work on some of our own stuff too. Notworkrelated has launched it’s first shop and we have collection number 1 ready and waiting for your eager viewing.

So onto something Notworkrelated. Last week we took ourselves off to London and Brighton for a few days and along with Dave’s mum Barbara we ventured to the Paralympic Closing Ceremony having picked up some tickets a little while back. And WOW was this an event to be a part of. It was absolutely amazing with a soundtrack from Coldplay that just seemed to work so well with the performance throughout the night. It was a surreal experience and we kept having to pinch ourselves to check that we were really there! Well not quite but it was definitely an event to savor. Coldplay were fantastic and we were able to applaud the fantastic achievements of all the Paralympians along with the ever-so praised volunteers who really did make a significant contribution to the smooth running of the Olympics as a whole. Well done to you all and yes we felt very proud to be ‘Made in Britain’.

We were in London for the TeamGB parade taking place on Monday the 10th also and so thought it would be rude not to go and support our athletes and medalists who represented us at both the Olympics and the Paralympics. After a long wait we stood along with thousands of others on The Strand awaiting the team who were being driven on 30 or so big trucks. After an hour and a half and a few moans and groans later the athletes made their first appearance with Mo Farah and Jess Ennis on the first two floats followed by the rest of the athletics team. Helen even had a brief exchange with one of her friends from the Junior GB team who recognised her in the crowd, she was buzzing from this for the rest of the day! But along with this moment it was great to cheer on and congratulate Olympic and Paralympic legends such as Sir Chris Hoy, Ben Ainslee and Ellie Simmonds. It was another special moment that we wouldn’t be forgetting anytime soon.

Onwards we went to The National Portrait Gallery where Road to 2012 was being showcased featuring works by 8 photographers whose insightful portraiture celebrates exceptional British sportspeople, and some of the crucial figures working behind the scenes. With photographers such as Anderson & Low on show this was something that we both wanted to go and view and having had our Olympic experience it felt very relevant too. We also purchased the book Road To 2012 a National Portrait Gallery publication which holds great significance to the likes of Helen who has a strong interest in Sports portraiture. The exhibition is on until the 23rd September 2012.

Through the power of Twitter Dave had been conversing with a follower and managed to arrange for us to go to a design talk at the British Design Museum located on Shad Thames. The talk was again Olympic themed but perhaps on a more interesting level of design focusing on Design Munich ’72 with guest speaker Ian McLaren who was part of the design team for Munich. It was a really interesting discussion centering around McLaren’s involvement in Design Munich along with the importance of lead designer Otl Aicher whose work has become highly influential upon design as it is today.

The project was huge and without the technology as we are surrounded by today, the deadlines were strict and the planning very thorough. The use of colour and horizontal lines is consistent throughout and there was an advancement of pictograms for Munich which have been used and developed in so many contexts since. The conversation then went onto discuss London 2012 design which managed to stir some interesting views in the audience including one designer who has worked on the current branding and who was quite defensive of her role on the project. The ‘Branding Police’ were in the room!

It definitely gave us a lot to talk about on the way home and when we got to Helen’s parents we found an ‘Illustrated London News Special Publication’ showcasing some of the design work attached to Munich ’72. Jan Roscoe competed in Munich 72 and Montreal 76 as a 400m runner for Great Britain.

The next morning we drove to Brighton which took an hour and a half from London by car. We’d decided to use Airbnb for our Brighton accommodation which has been our first UK experience. Our hosts were here to welcome us, but we weren’t expecting a young baby nor were we expecting the house to be only partly complete! Perhaps this is part of the risk of going through Airbnb, although we did have the top floor to ourselves including a nice roof terrace area where we ate our breakfast in the morning sun each day. They were friendly enough but we figured we have probably experience the best Airbnb has to offer with our hosts in LA, Seattle and Melbourne coming up trumps. Anyway the benefits were we stayed in a good location on the northern side of central Brighton close to Queens Park and not too far from a good cluster of restaurants and it did have a nice homely feeling about our accommodation which always helps.

We had been scheduled to do a photography talk in Brighton which has now been postponed until the end of November and so we decided to go all the same and enjoy the seaside city for a few days. We enjoyed the food scene the most, Brighton is home to many a good restaurant, bar and cafe and we couldn’t help but indulge in this scene with The Black Dove, and Food For Friends coming up trumps. We enjoyed local cider and lovely vegetarian food at these places and we also loved our little sitting in an authentically Mexican place; La Chozo in the North Laines side of town. It was good to explore the Lanes and feel the vibe Brighton has to offer along with having fun with our own photography at Brighton Pier.

It was quite busy but we did hear that perhaps it’s best to visit off season so we are already looking forward for a short return visit in November and perhaps we’ll be doing some of our Christmas shopping there too. Oh no we already said it…Christmas shopping! Eek! Too soon!

Anyway back to the grind, in case you missed it we launched a collaborative wedding photography site this week too; HelenPlusDavid. Yep things have been busy for us on the Itsworkrelated side but we hope to do more of this again soon. Enjoy!