Recently this video went pretty viral on my Facebook newsfeed. It is a video of my hometown and it is visually stunning. Everyone was sharing it as popped up at the point in the term when we were all starting to miss home a little bit, so I guess it hit the spot for providing a certain homely nostalgia. It definitely made me realise how much I had taken my surroundings for granted. Especially living in London now I see how amazing it is to have the beach on your doorstep and 180 degrees of open blue sky- something which is rare, if not impossible to find here. After watching the video I got into contact with Jamie Hancock the videographer to see if I could ask him a few questions about the video/his process and luckily he agreed.

How do you make your location videos? What time of the day do you shoot them? How long does one video take to produce?

I personally love the morning and evening time for the colours produced and feeling you get in the images. It totally depends on what i’m filming really, but for this video of Southsea this is what I wanted. I often walk my dog early in Southsea and it looks beautiful. For this particular video there was no commercial aspect and was just for my love of Southsea. So I just chose a few days throughout the summer to film some stuff and then put something together when I had some free time. But in total I guess it was filmed over a total of 3-4 days.

How did you get into videography?
I’ve been a professional windsurfer for the last 10 years, competing on the world tour and traveling the world. During that time I bought a camera and started to film some of my trips and learnt everything I could about film and the whole process. I still have loads to learn but the most important thing is that I love it, so the learning part is easy. I take care of an international windsurfing brands video / social media and brand image. I travel to Cape Town and Hawaii to take care of their photoshoots which involves heli shoots and all types of filming / editing work. So i’m doing all sorts of things now compared to the days of filming me and a few mates going windsurfing.

How does developing technology affect your work?
Massively. Not too long ago you used to have a specialist in filming, sound, editing, visual effects, motion graphics and for all those things there was specialist equipment for each, Now you can kind of do all these things yourself with consumer based cameras and computers. For the drone industry it is all pretty incredible. It is quite scary how good the technology has become. My personal drone set up was quite expensive and a bit above normal consumer level. I had to sell my car to invest in it all, but the results are worth it.

What inspires you?
I think anything that makes me want to go do something myself. I see other peoples work and just think ‘wow, I would love to do something like that’, which is probably where the Southsea video comes from. I also like to set out to inspire people with my work equally, whether it encourages people to want to film there own stuff and in this case, to encourage people to get out and appreciate where we live.

What is the advice you would give  you've been given about creativity?
If you struggle for creativity then take inspiration from other peoples work out there. For me it’s all a combination of different things. I listen to music and imagine it working to some footage, I then think about how to film that footage and an idea is created, all from a song. I have tonnes of ideas and never right them down. I’ve probably forgotten 90% of ideas I have. So I guess a vague bit of advice would be to write those little creative moments down somewhere for later!

What is your favourite piece of photographic kit and why?
It is difficult to put one above the other because each has its uses. You don’t need a drone to create amazing film, but you can’t capture those unique images without a drone too. So I love all my gear to be honest for the collective type of video I can produce. Plus, without my computer I wouldn’t be able to do anything, and without the hard drives I couldn’t store anything. It may sound a bit boring, but it is just equipment - the final product is what it is all about..

Thats it. I hope you enjoyed this quick interview with Jamie Hancock about his work. I would definitely recommend checking out his website for more videos especially if you're feeling a little landlocked like I am at the moment.

On Wednesday I met Marina Abramović. She was doing a book signing at the Tate Modern from 12-2 and I had my Japanese class from 11-1 so I wasn't sure that I'd make it. When I got to the Tate Modern I almost left because I didn't think id get my copy signed but I was very lucky and was one of the last 5 people to get their book signed!

She was obviously really great although I only got to see her for like a minute, as you can see in the photo I was smiling like a manic fangirl the whole time. She told me to "read the book. just read it" and seemed pretty relieved that I was one of the last ones. The book is amazing its so well written and is one of those books you can't put down. I'm only in the first few chapters but its great to begin to understand the artist behind the work and then further contextualise the work. I can't wait to get to the chapters where she delves into her relationship with Ulay because I love the work that she produced with him.

You guys probably know Sean Ryan better as the Instagram account @badlydrawnmodels. Yesterday he was doing portraits at the apple store on regents street. I've been living in London for the last 6 weeks but in that time I've been adjusting to living away from home for the first time and balancing my time so I haven't been making the most of living here. My resolution for this term is to really appreciate and engage in living in central London. 

So I wandered into the Apple Store and got one of the last slots for a portrait and was very excited to meet Sean Ryan as I've followed his Instagram for a while and wanted to see which features he would emphasise (I particularly love my eyebrows in this). When I sat down he preemptively apologised for his drawing and then begun. It was a very weird experience to have my portrait drawn. I've never done it before and the closest thing I can compare it to is having a haircut. You know that something is happening but you can't quite get the full picture until the end. 

I ended up having a really great chat with Sean Ryan and how he got into his very odd profession and it was surprising. He told me he did a business degree and after that he applied to add agencies to no avail. Then one day he found a sticker book of footballers and started to draw them and post it online. He then told me he rather strategically moved onto models due to their large following and boom "fashion's favourite illustrator" was born. Although he still seemed to be in a state of disbelief over his success and the fact that he get stop do what he loves full-time. this disbelief is shared by his parents who don't quite understand what he does but he mentioned that drawing at Apple has made his dad realise how successful an illustrator he is. I tend to get very anxious about my life plans and how things are going to pan out but it was reassuring to see that things tend to fall into place in their own random way and you end up doing something you probably couldn't have imagined at 18.

Overall I had a lot of fun meeting and chatting to Sean Ryan and I absolutely LOVE my portrait.