The Barbican

I'm afaid to say that there isn't really any purpose to this post other than to show off some new photos I took at The Barbican. Right then, job done!

Fame at last (sort of...)

I've had one of my shots picked out on a recent blog post at Analoguemasters regarding square portraits. It's a photo I took of my granny a few months back when I was up visiting her. I wasn't that pleased with the photo at the time, but it's really grown on me since.  Many thanks to Adam Scott for its inclusion on his site.

The Guardian Camera Club

It must have been all of about two minutes since I last wrote about cameras, so I'm thinking that another post is well overdue. I thought I'd write a little bit about the Guardian Camera Club. On the face of it, the Camera Club is simply another competition to upload a few photos and win a camera in return, in this case a Nikon digital SLR. The Guardian draws in a few more readers and Nikon get some advertising, so far, so average.

In reality however, to everyone's credit they've created something a lot more interesting. Each month they set an assignment (e.g. rivers, cycling, black-and-white avaiable light portraits) and the best photo wins the Nikon. They kick it all off with a tutorial video where a Guardian photographer will give their advice on how to best tackle the assignment together with some handy tips. All entries have to have been taken within the assignment's time period so you're required and encouraged to actually get out there and shoot something rather than simply trawling through your old favourites.

Perhaps more interestingly, they also review people's assignment and portfolio submissions. This is a great idea, and it's interesting to see their views based on their experience of commissioning professional photography. Flickr is great – and the Camera Club uses a Flickr group as well for submissions and discussions – but it can be hard to receive constructive criticism. Much though I love getting praise from strangers (and I really do!), even I occasionally crave a slightly more critical perspective. Of course I say all this, but when/if they review my portfolio submission I reserve the right to change my mind!

It's not without some faults, the mechanics of using Flickr as well as their own Camera Club microsite don't mesh quite as well as they could. In the early days, there also seemed to be a slight misunderstanding of how people use Flickr groups, not helped by come confusing and overcomplicated rules. In fairness though, they've taken on board a lot of criticism and they've been quite open about it being a work in progress. They still get quite a lot of Flickr Flak, but it's definitely improving.

All in all, I've been thoroughly impressed* at the efforts they've made to elevate a simple competition into an engaging, interactive resource. It's genuinely good fun – you'll take some photos and who knows, you may even win a camera...



*Until they give my portfolio a rubbishing, then I shall of course quit the group and flounce off like a spoilt toddler.

Russell Davies: Playful

On the rare occasions when I have a bit of downtime and I'm not trawling Flickr, I often have a quick glance at Russell Davies's blog. I don't always fully understand what he's talking about, but it's always interesting.

I think what intrigues me the most is that he seems to have such an unfettered and childlike, wide-ranging curiosity about things. Like a mad professor he draws together seemingly disparate ideas and then fashions them into some kind of slightly half-baked theory. Great fun, and a good excuse to tax your brain slightly during a dull day at work.

This is a post/transcript of a great talk he did recently for Playful: A day of cross-disciplinary frolicking whatever that may be...

Vivian Maier

The other day on Flickr (where else!), I came across a link to this fascinating blog.

A gentleman in Chicago named John Maloof bought a bulk load of old medium format negatives at a furniture auction which had been taken by a lady named Vivian Maier. After developing a couple, he soon realised he'd found a great archive of street photography from the 1950s-70s. He's been steadily working his way through the 30,000-40,000 negatives and is currently adding selections to the blog. I think I read somewhere that he was looking into creating a book as well at some point.

They cynic in me thinks that the story almost sounds too good/too sad to be true, a bit too Hollywood. But the photos seem genuine enough to my untrained eye! Well worth a look...

The Gentle Amateur

Damn his eyes! Not only has this man picked probably one of the best Flickr usernames ever, but he then has the temerity to take great photos to boot. Finally, in an act of breathtaking chutzpah, he writes a great blog as well.

You can really go off some people...

Sander Meisner

My name is Tom, and I'm a Flickrholic. I revel in the casual praise of strangers and spend far too much time looking at photos. On the plus side, as well as massaging my ego, it does also help to inspire and educate me.

One of the photographers I've come across is a Dutch guy called Sander Meisner. He takes the most amazing shots, most of which seem to have been taken at night. I'm massively jealous, but have also been spurred on to try some night shots myself (not as easy as he makes it look!).

There's a wonderful sense of calm and stillness in his technically brilliant work. Although he shoots these empty urban locations, devoid of human life, they don't seem desolate at all. Instead they seem (to me at least) quite warm and almost friendly, lit up by the traces of streetlighting.

There's a great little article on him here at Analogue Masters, well worth a look.

Belated Blogging

To all the thousands (if not millions) of dedicated followers of this blog, I can only offer my wholehearted apologies for being so tardy with my updates. Over the last month or so I've looked at my own blog from time to time and thought that it hasn't been updated in a while. Bizarrely, it's taken until tonight for it to click that actually I'm the one who should be updating it. I'd like to have some glamorous excuse for being absent since my last post on 18 August, but I'm struggling to remember what I've being doing for the last six weeks.

I'm sure that the secret of good blogging is – as with so many other things in life – to do it little and often. I've never been blessed with a great deal of common sense, so I'm going to do the complete opposite and try and write one stupidly long post to cover the last month and a half of my life. I've gone through my receipts, numerous Flickr uploads and the scribbled notes on my wall calendar and I think I can now put the last few weeks into some semblance of order.

I think it might be easiest to start with some kind of sub-Feltronesque facts and figures (but without any effort made to make pretty graphs):

Holidays taken = 1 (North Cornwall since you ask)

Cameras taken on holiday = 6 (Cosmic Symbol/Konica Auto S1.6/Agfa Optima-Parat/Konica Pop/Ricoh Caplio R6/Nikon Coolpix 5200)

Favourite Holiday Pic (So far, still waiting to get one film processed):



Or maybe this one:



Number of times I've kicked myself for not betting on Speech Debelle to win the Mercury after banging on about how good her album was = 7

Books read = 3 (Moby Dick (not finished)/A Clockwork Orange/Possession)

Films recorded, now languishing on my BT Vision box not yet watched = 5 (Raising Arizona/Pulp Fiction/Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead/London to Brighton/Munich)

Films recorded and watched = 2 (Point Break + District 13)

Cameras bought on eBay = 3 (Konica Auto S1.6/Konica Auto S2/Bronica ETR-Si)

Photographs taken = 62 (Not including 120 photos being processed at the moment/stuck in the post)

Museums and Galleries visited = 2 (V&A and National Portrait Gallery)

Number of visits to the East End = 2

Number of shirts purchased in the East End = 1

Number of stag dos attended = 1

Number of life-threatening hangovers = 1

Number of photos taken of Lizzie = 9

Best photo of Lizzie:



Best photo of Lizzie looking bored of being photographed:



Number of violins rented from the music shop in Putney = 1

Albums bought = 7 (The Very Best "Warm Heart of Africa"/Jamie T "Kings & Queens"/Mos Def "The Ecstatic"/Tru Thoughts "10th Anniverary"/Tru Thoughts "Shapes 09:01"/Quantic and the Combo Barbaro "Tradition in Transition"/Various Artists "Impossible Ark – A Compilation"

Competitions entered = 18

Competitions entered to try and win a new Olympus Pen = 2

That ought to bring things a little bit more up to date, with any luck I'll have more sense than to leave it so long between posts next time.

Analogue Masters

I came across a great blog the other day whilst browsing around in some Flickr forums. It's called Analogue Masters and in its own words it's a "...showcase corner on the web for all things analogue." Given my love of vinyl, old cameras, cardigans and Victorian novels it could almost have been written entirely with an old duffer like me in mind. There is also a corresponding Flickr group of the same name full of great shots (despite all the ones I've dumped in there!).

Further fotomentalism

I was lucky enough to be given some rolls of redscale film from my girlfriend for my birthday. Put simply, it's normal 35mmm film but you shoot through the wrong side of the film. For some clever scientific reason to do with the chemicals in the film's emulsion it gives your photos a strong red or yellow cast depending to some extent on whether they're over or underexposed. I don't really understand it, but what I do know is that it makes a great effect. It's a very forgiving film as even the most boring scenes become dramatic and apocalyptic with burning red skies!



Clouds seem to benefit especially well, or you can use it in a more graphic way like with these blinds below:



It's all good fun, I'm going to try a lot more portraits with the next redscale roll just to see how they come out. I probably ought to try the film in a couple of different cameras as well. There's some great examples on Flickr from a lady in Bristol which better demonstrate it's possibilities: Trapac's Redscale set.

I also took my TLR out for some night-time photography which was pretty successful considering I don't have a flash. Foolishly I decided I couldn't be bothered to carry my tripod which did limit my options a bit as it meant I had to be able to rest the camera on a railing or the ground. It's all a learning curve though I guess, I'm keen to try some more low-light work though as I really like the slighty spooky atmosphere it creates. As usual all the shots are up on my Flickr pages...