Describing themselves as “Formerly New Zealand’s fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo” - these guys are absolutely hilarious:

It’s Business Time

Most Beautiful Girl in the Room

You can see loads more of these on YouTube or on the Flight of the Conchords Website.

Well I have three more for you. The Carling series of adverts are [unlike the beer] great! First up is the Explorer Advert - set somewhere cold, they discuss not going out, until they discover it’s their mate’s birthday:

The second is Space, where they are denied access on account of the dress policy - trainers are not allowed in space!

Lastly but not leastly the [not sure of this ones name] western advert, where one guy’s mates come to his rescue:

And the man he said… Okay!

Casey fought at this year’s Gracie Invitational at the Excel Arena in London’s Docklands. Was the first Brazilian Jiu Jitsu tournament he has competed in. Myself and the SA went to watch.

Casey won his first two fights, the first by triangle choke and the second fight [pictured here] by points.

His third fight was lost as a result of his opponent stalling [boo!].

The advert has a strange feeling to it, usually busy places are eerily empty, creating a sense of solitude: a deserted classroom, pool room with TV playing in the background, a bedroom with a couple fast asleep, lit up momentarily from outside by the car headlights that pass by outside, an empty tunnel, empty shop fronts.

The theme music is called We Don’t Have to Think Like That Anymore by Cliff Martinez and is from the Solaris soundtrack. The words are from a poem called Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas which in the advert is narrated by Richard Burton.

The whole poem is not featured in the site, the words from the poem that are featured are as follows:

And all the people of the lulled and dumfounded town are sleeping now.

Hush, the babies are sleeping, the farmers, the fishers, the tradesmen and pensioners, cobbler, schoolteacher, postman and publican, the undertaker and the fancy woman, the drunkard, dressmaker, preacher, policeman, the webfoot cocklewoman and the tidy wives. Young girls lie bedded soft or glide in their dreams, with wings and trousseaux, bridesmaided by glow-worms down the aisles of the organ playing wood.

You can hear the dew falling, and the hushed town breathing. Only your eyes are unclosed, to see the black and folded town fast, and slow, asleep.

The advert makes you want to jump in your car in the middle of the night and go for a night drive. Through an empty city. The freedom of the open road, and the silence of the dead of night, with nothing but your thoughts and the sound of the engine for company.

The [Night Driving] website features the entire advert, with added features including full credits and an area to complete your own advert.

I know they are just trying to sell phones, but the message is great, and very effective and is supported by fantastic soundtracks and miniature story lines.

The most recent one features the song “The End [of the Rainbow] by Nancy Sinatra. A great song that I ashamedly had never heard prior to seeing the advert [View Nancy Sinatra - End Lyrics].

The storyline that goes along with it is equally good, featuring a guy working in an office, clockwatching, just dying to get away to see his partner, but everytime he gets to the point where he is with her, he is back in the office.

Their desperation grows and climaxes, with the voice over by Dame Judy Dench speaking as they are finally together “Don’t let work steal all the good bits of the day, make work work around you instead. With mobile broadband and email from Vodafone, and get all those good bits back”.

A great ad, and so true! You miss so much with work. Hats off to them, here is the Ad:

In fact I love these ads so much, I may add the others aswell, keey an eye out for the raining watches one!

I have been working on building up my Flickr account, but haven’t got very far. I am too picky about the photo’s I allow onto my Flickr account, and as my poor photography yields very little I really like, very little have been uploaded.

I desperately want to get back into creating a few more HDR’s, but need a holiday somewhere exotic for inspiration. Any ideas where I can generate the funds and more paid holiday time? Answers to me on the back of a postcard!

My first HDR [high dynamic range] photography attempts, well second and third, the first was truly shocking! [View at 900x600 on Flickr]. For the uninitiated, HDR is made by taking 3 [sometimes 5] bracketed photographs of the same scene using a tripod. One photograph properly exposed, one over exposed and one under exposed.

These are then blended using Photomatix, Photoshop and the like. Mine are pretty average, but there are some examples of absolutely amazing HDR photgraphs from Stuck in Customs and Stevacek on Flickr.

All I need now is my spanking new lens.

My birthday present [one of them anyway] from Sue-Ann was a 90-300mm zoom lens, bought at Gatwick airport on our way to Thailand. On buying it I soon found out it lacked a necessary feature - IS or Image Stability.
The lens handled pretty decently at around 150 - 200mm, but take it above that and it leaves it’s comfort zone. The image shake is similar to that of a white lighting connoisseur who hasn’t had a drink in 2 days.

Long story short, I took the lens back, and have been on the lookout ever since. I was set to buy a 70-300mm with IS from eBay, but fate had it that the bids kept going too high. That’s when I noticed Joey Lawrence’s work. He is a 17 year old guy from Canada, his photography is amazing.

I read up on photography alot. My photo’s suck, but I have high aspirations. I found out the lens Joey Lawrence uses is a prime lens [fixed focal length - no zooming]. I never really saw the point in prime lenses, but research revealed alot of people who couldn’t sing it’s praise enough. Prime’s are cheap for their quality, the apertures on them can open much wider, enabling you to take photographs in darker conditions without flash, the photo’s are supposedly much sharper - looking at some photo’s taken with the lens, I had to have one - mine is on it’s way to me from Hong Kong now :]