Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Hosking Industries Turns Two!


01 Feb

Wow! And we thought the first 12 months of operations went fast. Here we are on February 1, 2012 celebrating the second birthday of Hosking Industries.

2011 proved to be a stellar year for the business. We photographed over 70 custom vehicles for magazines all over the country and overseas, picked up several new titles for our client list and met scores of great people out there in the scene at the many shows we attended. We also wrote more feature stories than we care to count. If that weren’t enough, we found enough time to design and print our first photo book containing shots of our 39 most favourite feature cars from our first 18 months or so. You can find a link to that on the right-hand margin of the screen.

In non-automotive business, we found time to get out into the trenches and shoot a few international bands for sites like theAUreview.com and did our first couple of jobs for Australian Hysteria magazine. While we turned down our first offer to go review the coming 2012 Soundwave Festival in Sydney, Hysteria asked us again, so it looks like we’ll be rubbing shoulders with many of the world’s greatest heavy music artists at the end of February. Immediately following, you can expect us to be at a handful of sideshows as well. Looking forward to those!

We’d like to take the opportunity to thank everyone we’ve worked with over the last 12 months for making it such a success, including all the car and bike owners, the guys at Express, Steve at MM&F, Isaac at Australian Classic Car, Joey at Hysteria, Larry at theAUreview, Stuart at LMM and of course Tess, Kate and everyone else.

Here’s to another excellent 12 months!

Cheers,
Ben Hosking

100,000 Visits & A Very Merry Xmas from Hosking Industries!


20 Dec

HoskingIndustries.com.au reached a milestone this morning, with 100,000 unique visits, right before what is sure to be a very Merry Xmas! 2011 has been a phenomenal year for us; connecting with a number of new magazine titles such as Modified Mustangs & Fords in the USA and Australian Classic Car. We photographed 70 custom cars and motorcycles, shot a number of great international gigs for web and print and self-published our first (albeit for our own enjoyment) photo book.

We’re very much looking forward to what the new year will bring and hope 2012 brings you all good luck and prosperity as well. A huge thanks to everyone that’s taken the time to seek us out on-line, or who has found us through a search engine and enjoyed their stay. See you in 2012.

We Made a Book! Automotive Photography: The Story So Far…


20 Nov

Hey everyone, just a quick note to show you a preview of our first photo book, self-published through Blurb.com. We really only created and printed a few copies to satisfy ourselves and have a record of the first 12 months of feature car work on our bookshelves; but thought that perhaps, by some stroke of miracle some folks at home might like to own a copy as well. So, we’ve made the book available for purchase via the Blurb website.

Given the fact we ticked all the premium options to make the book look and feel its best, it isn’t a cheap tome, weighing in at almost AUS$200 posted to your door, the 160-page book will probably only interest the owners of the 39 cars featured. But having a sneak peak won’t cost you anything!

Here’s the preview, giving you a look at around 30 pages of the book. We have shot almost 100 cars and bikes in the 12 months since Hosking Industries began doing this line of work, but selected 39 of our favourites. We hope you enjoy the preview and if you’re interested in purchasing this hard cover, bound book, there’s a button for that on the preview, too!

Coming Soon: 1990s Music Revival


12 Aug

The 1990s: what an amazing time for music and Hosking Industries was there. Well, Ben Hosking was, anyway (is it weird talking about one’s self in the third person?). I’ve talked briefly about my old ‘zine 27twelve on this blog before, way back when I still found myself with some spare time. I reviewed about 10 CDs in that little ‘zine each month, as well as running interviews and live reviews of the acts at the time.

I also wrote for Newcastle, Australia music press outlet ‘concretepress‘. It was in the more traditional tabloid newspaper format and fed music and arts news to the Hunter region. Both publications pre-dated the internet age and due to my computer at the time not having the storage space to house my hundreds of reviews and other documents, today I find myself with only A4 paper print outs of them.

I got to thinking the other day that it could be cool to type up each of these reviews and post them on this blog as a way of remembering this special time in my life and in the life of the music business. A time before the industry crashed and so many new genres were being created as opposed to simply rehashing old ones.

So, over the coming weeks and months I’ll be endeavouring to type up as many of the old reviews as  I can, including gig reviews; creating a new ’1990s’ section of the blog so you can find them all easily. I’d love to hear your thoughts not only about the idea, but also hear your memories of the 1990s (if you were old enough to enjoy them).

Stay tuned!

60,000 Visits! Thanks for Coming


05 Aug

60,000 Visits!Feels like just yesterday that we counted up 50,000 unique visitors to our humble little site. Thankfully the daily web traffic has been steadily climbing and the distance between milestones like this are coming around sooner and sooner. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to come and visit out website since last time heralded similar news. Your patronage is always appreciated and we hope you’re getting something out of each visit.

We’ve been uploading a lot of our recently published photo shoots lately, which has created a lot of extra traffic to the site and to our Flickr page (visit it HERE).  You can bet we’ll have plenty more of this coming up over the next months and years. So keep coming back!

Cheers,
Hosking Industries

One for the Tumblr Fans…


01 Aug

Hosking Industries Tumblr

As our blog speeds toward the 60,000 visitor mark we thought we’d set up a simple Tumblr page for any of our wonderful visitors who frequent that blogging platform. We’ve been posting images of each of our published feature cars with links to the FREE desktop wallpaper images we’ve been committing to Flickr.

While we couldn’t profess to offer anything new on the Tumblr page, it’s just another point of contact that is on offer for any Tumblr users out there in cyber space. Check it out here: HOSKING INDUSTRIES ON TUMBLR.

50,000 Visits and Counting


21 Jun

Just a quick one to thank everyone who has passed through our virtual, on-line doors since we went live with HoskingIndustries.com.au. We hit 50,000 unique visitors last night, which we feel is something to celebrate. Not sure what that equates to in page hits, views and the such. We reckon the number of visitors is a better representation.

We’ve probably been a little quiet around here lately. The work levels in the office have been phenomenal which has prevented us from posting anything but the bare minimum – which happily means Wicked Wednesdays FREE textures and samples from our feature car shoots, usually! – plus Ben is currently undertaking a course in teaching. Hopefully before the year is out we’ll have started posting juicy news tidbits and mind-pour rants like we did in the beginning.

Anyway, thanks again for stopping by and have a beer for us!

Hosking Industries Team

Oops, We Did it Again!


16 Jun

Yeah yeah, we know. We’ve missed two Wicked Wednesdays FREE texture posts in a row. Sorry about that!

Last week we were out of the office traveling north to shoot a stack of cars for some of Australia’s top car magazines and this week, well… we were processing them! We did intend to post up a set of textures last night, but alaz, time just got away from us.

However, we promise to have a set of six fresh new textures online for you next Wednesday, absolutely FREE and all for you! So be sure to stop by again next week and see what we’ve got for you.

Cheers,
Team HI.

40,000 Visitors. Thanks for Coming!


03 May

We reached 40,000 hits the other day, so I thought I should post something to mark the occasion. By 40,000, we mean visitors, unique hits. Not page views.

A huge thanks to everyone that’s visited our site because you were actively seeking us out, and even if Google helped you find us. Either way, it’s nice to have a decent flow of traffic despite not having enough time in the day to post more regular content.

I’m pretty sure I said I’d try and post more regularly when we last celebrated a traffic milestone, but the workload has simply prevented us from actioning any new web development; even though I REALLY want to make some changes around here and post more often.

So, thanks again and hopefully it won’t be long until we celebrate 50,000.

30,000 Hits!


05 Mar

30,000 HitsI’m happy to announce that the blog hit 30,000 hits last night. Might not sound like much when compared with major sites, but it makes us smile!Our weekly free high-resolution texture images certainly bring us a lot of traffic, however we’re happy to report that other, more regular features on the site like CD reviews and the like bring us plenty of attention as well.

A huge thanks to everyone who’s taken the time to visit us so far, found us via Google searches or word of mouth… We don’t mind how you find us, so long as you do. Be sure to tell all your friends and bring on 40,000!

Cheers,
Ben Hosking