Norwich against the cuts

On 4 December I joined my first ever protest march. This was a public sector workers protest against the Government cuts, beginning and ending in Chapelfield Gardens in Norwich. On a bitterly cold day several hundred people from Norwich and elsewhere in the east of England gathered for a short march in Norwich city centre after which several speakers addressed the rally, including trade union and local politicians. Former Norwich MP Ian Gibson was there, and leader of the Norwich Greens, Adrian Ramsey.

I took some photographs before, during and after the march, but the main aim was to take part. Here are a few pictures to give the flavour of the day.

An appreciation of Miss Tic

I'm a fan of Miss Tic, the prolific street artist who I first became aware of during a trip to Paris a couple of years ago. Most of these pictures were taken in and around the Rue de la Butte Aux Cailles, 13th Arrondissement - I discovered this by accident, having decided to visit this part of Paris by a guide book recommendation for the quirky and bohemian character of the area.


New blog entry on Miss Tic:
http://a-french-education.blogspot.com/2010/11/feminine-misstic-by-pblecron.html
Mis Tic’s website
http://www.missticinparis.com/
Also on Flickr
www.flickr.com/groups/misstic/

Miss Tic features in a range of postcards too:

A day in London

Last weekend I had a cheap day out in London courtesy of Advance rail tickets totalling around £15. In fact it was an afternoon and evening (13:00 from Norwich, 22:30 back from Liverpool Street). The idea was to visit as many photography galleries as I could fit into the afternoon, and then go to a blues dance in the evening at a venue a minute from the station.

My plan was to begin with galleries in the Hoxton and Shoreditch area, immediately north of Liverpool Street station, then moving on to a gallery north of St Pancras and finally the National Portrait Gallery at Trafalgar Square. What I suspected, of course, was that I would find enough to interest me in Hoxton, and that turned out to be true. Coincidentally an east London photography festival (Photomonth) is running throughout November (http://www.photomonth.org/), and this ensured I wouldn't run out of things to see. On top of that, the area has a great deal of really interesting street art, which took up a fair amount of my time.

By chance I came across a great exhibition in Redchurch Street at the Maverik Showroom of Pete Williams' photographs of musicians. Just to mention two: a beautiful shot of singer Dee Dee Bridgwater and her daughter at a tribute gig for Billie Holliday; a great shot of Courtney Pine in 1988, and I wrote down most of the caption - there were some great captions - at 'A moody dive in Stoke Newington, winter, Courtney is late, impossible traffic chaos and I'm jammed into the corner of the tiny stage, camera ready and the Mondesir Brothers are playing to an increasingly hostile crowd. Eventually Courtney arrives, car breakdown, he's noticeably bothered at making people wait. He jumps onto the stage, he doesn't even take his coat off but rips the soprano out of its battered case and suddenly beautiful music fills the club, calming the crowd and softening the edge'.

Then across the road to the Idea Generation Gallery in Chance Street for the major exhibition of Mick Rock's photographs of musicians - the Stones, David Bowie, Freddie Mercury and many others. I also went to the Book Club in Leonard Street for Andy Willsher's black and white collection (musicians again), Tintype, Rivington Place, Calvert 22 and Flowers East - all on foot from Liverpool Street station very close by.....

Then in the evening to the upstairs room in The Railway Tavern in Liverpool Street for a couple of hours of blues dancing run (Down Home Blues) by Blues Revolution. A great way to end the day, then across the road for the last but one train back to Norwich.

Street photography now

I'm really enjoying taking part in the Street Photography Now project. It's been running for five weeks and the idea is that each weeks a leading contemporary street photographer will email an instruction (i.e. a brief) to participants, who then have a week to take a photograph in response to the instruction and upload it to the FlickR group. The project will run for 52 weeks and people can join at any time and submit pictures (one per instruction) for as many of the weeks as the wish. I was too late in joining to submit for the first two weeeks, bu have pictures in for weeks three, four and five. It isn't a competition, but at the end of the project the photographer judged to have made the most outstanding contribution across the entire project will receive £1,000 worth of Thanes and Hudson books and have their work displayed on a digital 'Wall for all'.
http://streetphotographynowproject.wordpress.com/

So here are my first three entries. Working in the centre of Norwich, my emerging pattern is to head into the city centre at lunchtime and see what I can find that meets the brief, using my Sony Ericsson camera phone. The instructions are emailed out on Fridays and submissions must be in by the following Thursday.....and so far I've managed to find some suitable material, two of the three being taken in Norwich market.

Instruction #3 was to take shots in a supermarket, a public lavatory, or on public transport (this is Norwich market)

Instruection #4 was to take a shot of something displaying human ingenuity, from a normally unseen viewpoint, with no people included (this is the Novi Sad friendship bridge in Norwich - twinned with Novi Sad)

Instruction #5 was to get lost in a thicket of signs and structures (Norwich market once again)

I'm going to be making a major effort to enter as many of the remaining weeks as I can, and it wiil be interesting to see the direction in which this work takes me.

Dhanakosa

Dhanakosa is a retreat centre in the Loch Lomond and the Troccachs national park, afew miles to the north of Callander. We went there for a week of photography and meditation earlier in October. I did enjoy the regular meditation, the vegetarian food and the peace and quiet of the situation of the retreat centre on Loch Voil. Of course there were plenty of opportunities to get out and about and take pictures - not just landscapes but little details around the centre, mushrooms, trees, waterfalls and even candid portraits. But it's some of my landscape photographs I've decided to include here.






On the last whole day of the retreat we were all up before dawn for the hour's drive to Rannoch Moor to catch the sunrise. Nothing too spectacular as it happened, but still a great morning out, with three stops in all including one with a wonderful view towards Glencoe.

Blown about in Cromer

Last Sunday we made a quick stop in Cromer after visiting a couple of properties - in Potter Heigham and Aldborough - as part of the Green Buildings open days organised by Norfolk CPRE. The strength of the wind blowing from the sea (from the north) was probably the greatest I've ever experienced in Norfolk. People were practically blown off their feet and many clung desperately to handrails. We had our cameras and I took a whole series on the Sport setting, which worked really well....I was expecting most of them to be ruined by camera shake. But not only that, the colour was practically monotone and though I converted one toblack and white it would have worked equally well if I hadn't. See what you think. Afterwards, I regretted not trying to capture some images of people struggling against the wind, but it was quite hard to stay upright!

Cambridge

I was in Cambridge a week ago spending most of Sunday wandering around the city centre with a camera and a mission - to take some black and white pictures in a style reminiscent of the great Henri Cartier-Bresson - for the small photography group I belong to. As I'm really keen on streeet photography and fairly blatant when it comes to using my camera in these situations, I approached this project with a certain degree of relish. In the end I picked five or six to convert from colour to black and white. (In Photoshop Elements 2, I used Image>Remove Colour and then adjusted the brightness and/or contrast as I thought fit). Here are some of the pictures, though not necessarily the ones I thought most reflected the aim of the day's shooting.

Depth of field

This week's project for a small photography group I'm involved with is depth of field. Here are some of the shots I took at the weekend outside the Norwich City Hall (a magnificent Scandinavian style building, bu that's another story).

Leicester city centre

I had a pleasant trip to Leicester last week with my daughter. She had never been to Leicester and I hadn't been to the city centre since my student days, so it seemed like an excellent choice for a day out. My only mental images of the centre were the clock tower and the market, but I had seen pictures of the new John Lewis building ands was really keen to see the building and try to take some interesting pictures (though in the end I only had my Ixus compact with me). We took the park ande ride into the centre - and this dropped us off very close to the Highgrove Centre - which is linked to John Lewis by a first floor bridge. The John Lewis is a glossy, shimmering and intriguing piece of architecture - always changing with the shifting light. There are some very keen security staff around the outside - one approached me and explained it was all right to photograph the building, but not the shop frontages underneath....hmm.....I agreed in order to avoid any trouble.

Anyway, here are a few images. There's a marvellous covered fruit and vegetable market and this is linked to a series of indoor markets, and some intrigiung shop frontages as well. Some things about Leicester centre have changed, but it's still recognisable. And we had a very pleasant lunch at Carluccio's too.

I am curious (yellow)

This quirky film title from the 1960s seemed an appropriate way to introduce this subject - just a bit of fun in North Walsham one evening along the lines of capturing images on the theme of colour. After spotting a bright yellow bin near to headstones in the churchyard I decided that would set the theme, seeing as the town centre seemed to have acquired something of a yearning for the colour yellow.

Experimental wedding photography

I've often thought it would be really great to become a wedding photographer, but the market is saturated and it's hard to see a way of breaking in. I think one way is to find a niche market and exploit it, and I've been trying to read around ideas on this in particular and wedding photography in geneal by reading Photo Pro Magazine - they seem to have regular features on this subject that look to be pretty useful. No doubt I have a good deal to think about but I'm trying to work towards this over the next couple of years.

I've been playing arouind with some pretty drastic crops of some pictures I took a few weeks ago at a wedding in Suffolk, and so here just for fun are four images. It gives me some ideas and things to work on - sometimes a crop works and sometimes it just doesn't.

RedBall leaves Norwich

Kurt Perschke's RedBall left Norwich on a high note with an appearance in the Erpingham Gate at Norwich Cathedral on 22 May. Gone but not forgotten. It was only a red ball, really. Or was there somehing more? Amateur photographers had a field day - so watch this space for more. Rumour has it there's to be an exhibition based on red ball photographs in October. Remember, you heard it here first....

Rosary Cemetery

We visited Rosary Cemetery in Norwich last Sunday. The first non-denominational cemetery in England, it was opened in 1821 and occupies a steep and thickly wooded site looking south toward the city centre. It's one of Norwich's undiscovered gems and laid out in a formal arrangement on the site of a former market garden. There are many symbols and monuments and many fine specimen trees along with a wide range of birds and butterflies. There's much interest to be had in wandering through the avenues seeking out unfrequented corners and their stones and monuments. We're going to join as Friends and come along to more of the guided talks they hold from time to time - and maybe even volunteer for some conservation work.