Image of the month

I've decided to limit my entries on this blog to one picture a month, with some degree of explanation. For the first one, I have relatively little to say. I'm working on editing and organising all the photographs I took at a wedding at the end of August.

Rebecca and Neil's wedding, 27 August 2011.
My daughter's wedding - and I'm trying to take some shots as and when I can. Here is a shot of the menu for the meal at the afternoon reception - we're at the Old Grammar School, Saint Nicolas Place, King's Norton in Birmingham, Nothing special about the image I suppose except that it gives some of the easily overlooked details. I've chosen a picture with no people included quite deliberately. It was taken with a Canon Ixus 40.

Lord Mayor's celebrations in Norwich

Last weekend featured the annual Lord Mayor's celebrations here in Norwich. This seems to have grown over the last few years from a Saturday evening procession and fireworks to a four day programme including art, entertainment, music, street performers, a road race, theatre, a funfair, the Norwich Lanes summer festival and much more besides. It's quite a programme and is another highlight on the Norwich calendar to go with May's artistic festival. Here are a few of the many photographs I took over the weekend.

June in Valencia

Valencia in June is a wonderful place to be, even if I couldn't quite arrange my holiday to coincide with the European Grand Prix last weekend.....

Five days in Valencia, in a comfortable one bed apartment between the Carmen and the Turia Gardens, half an hour's walk to the other side of the city centre, warm (26-30 deg) and sunny each day - not at all bad.

The highlight came on the first day, Sunday 19th, as without realising I found myself there at just the right time to join in with a massive gathering and march through the city by what must have been tens of thousands. See www.acampadavalencia.net/red-social - a collection of groups against the system, capitalism, the government, and whatever else, and many ordinary people joining in the march on this warm summer evening. So here are a few pictures.

Festival time in Norwich

May is festival time in Norwich. We've had the Norfolk and Norwich Festival from 7 to 22 of May and the Norwich Fringe Festivsl from 13 to 28 of May. The first three pictures are of the Whalley Range Allstars, ten performers and ten life size puppets (each resembling their handlers) dashing round the streets and stopping now and then to dance sing through a routine
or allow the puppets to interact with the public, from one situation to another, with amusing and unpredictable results.

There is a picture of one of the dancers from the Foundation for Indian Performing Arts, who perfomr perform in the streets on stilts, the Aranya and Kishkinda Kandas based on episodes of the Ramayana, one of the great epics of India.

The final two pictures are from the fringe festival, of the Norwich Ukelele Orchestra, at the Big Busk 2011 in the streets of Norwich.

York campus by night

Earler this month I was at York University for a couple of days attending a conference. As a relief from photographing the event itself I spent an hour wandering around the campus on the final evening, indulging my interest in taking pictures of buildings at night. Here is a small selection. Some of my conference photographs are found here on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/groups/laria/

FORMAT Photography Festival

I've been to the launch weekend of this year's FORMAT International Photography Festival in Derby -and it's still running till 3 April. The theme was 'exposures from the public realm', so squarely the field of street photography, and many famous names were there...some of whose names I'm beginning to recognise. I went to Thursday's launch, the Friday conference (at the arts centre Quad) and evening launch event at the University of Derby, two talks and a Blurb book-making workshop on the Saturday. With my ongoing participation in the Street Photography Now project, it was interesting in itself - and surprising to see how few people there were aware of this year long project, now nearing it's halfway point.

So here are a few fairly randomly chosen images from the weekend....


A shot of a screen displaying some of the images uploaded to the 'mob-format' - anyone could upload a photograph, some of which would be printed and displayed - see below

A few of the mob-format submissions on the wall of mob format HQ in Sadler Gate.

First conference presentation - the Street Photography Now Project, with Sophie Howarth and Sara T'Rula.

Derby in the rain - during one of my walkabouts....

Exhibition in the Cathedral Quarter, near to Quad.

On the way back to the station - part of Westfield Centre in the background.

More Norwich street photography

Here are some more shots I've taken in Norwich recently in order to submit entries to the weekly instruction for the Street Photography Now project - a year-long exercise in street

photography now into its 21st week.

.

Norwich bus station

Outside Chapelfields, Norwich

Opposite Next, Norwich

In Gentleman's Walk, Norwich ('Slow down, the next picture may be very quiet and close')

Opposite Debenhams, Norwich

Lowestoft photo shoot, February 5th

I had a multi-purpose bus trip to Lowestoft via Great Yarmouth. In terms of thphotography content, there were two aims - find and photograph the Lowestoft lighthouse, and take pictures in response to this week's instruction from the Street Photography Now project (instruction 19: 'Expose the banalities of the new urban landscape' from George Georghiou). I would search for his work and have a serious look, especially the two series shot in Serbia. He has exxplained that he hadn't meant this to be an exercise in urban landscape photography, but rather it was one to explore the interaction and dissociation between people and planned public space - how they can move throuth airports, shopping centres, presumably public transport as well, and dissociate themselves from contact with others.

The lighthouse shoot is for my entry in the annual Trinity House lighthouse photography competition. Each time I've tried taking pictures for this project I've not been blessed with the most interesting light, and today was no exception. Now it's a question of picking my entries and submitting before the end of the month. Still quite a way to go with both of these!

.

Norwich in the rain

I've been taking advantage of Monday's rain - the first since getting the Street Photography Now instruction 16 last Friday: 'Wait for the rain, it makes shooting on the street easier and more interesting' (Martin Parr). Now I've certainly been wondering whether only an Englishman could set a photography project such as this, and seriously doubted whether we would have rain this week, in daylight at least. But the showers initially forecast for Sunday night were then forecast for Monday, so a quick trip into Norwich city centre in my lunch break wasdefinitely in order. And it's amazing how many places you can find to take shelter and look for interesting street scenes when you really need to.

My initial scepticism subsided. In the rain, out come the umbrellas, people rush around and take less notice, the reflections can be great: in many ways it's a more interesting experience than taking pictures in the dry. A good choice, Martin Parr.

Street life

I've been enjoying the weekly assignments in the Street Photography Now Project, but it's something of a poisoned chalice. I'm well and truly hooked, here at the end of week 14 out of 52. My street photography week tends to go something like this:

Friday: check emails at work until the new week's instruction is posted. See whether I have time for a quick trip into the middle of Norwich in my lunch hour.

Saturday and Sunday: prime time for getting some shots suitable for the instruction. Luckily Norwich city centre is probably going to give me the scope for responding to pretty much any sort of project anyone is going to throw at us. There's one pedestrian street in particular that's usually home to all manner of buskers, mime artists and people of all sizes and descriptions. It's been the source of many of my submissions so far.

Monday: start to panic if I need to go out shooting again.

Tuesday: probably get a photograph uploaded into the pool by now and relax a little. Look at other entries and maybe post comments

Wednesday: wonder whether my picture is really good enough, am I shooting too many similar pictures each week, what are other people submitting...has my picture been approved..look at other people's work...

Thursday: check how many views I have had, read any comments and reply. Look forward to a new instruction the next day. Think about weekends away when I'll have the chance to submit something that wasn't taken in Norwich.

To crop or not to crop? I'm wondering whether I should crop more often. This week's entry of mine in response to the instruction 'Show us the aftermath' by Maciej Dakowicz' featured some vomit inside a bus shelter - see below. I would have loved to have been in the city centre after the New Year's Eve celebrations for some real late night in Cardiff style photography (see the photographer's Flickr stream or maciejdakowicz.com) but it wasn't practical. But some people felt the shot ought to have been cropped, so here is the original and my cropped version. Maybe they were right, I'm not sure.

Of course, it might also have worked better in black and white - I haven't tried that, either.