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.

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.

Norwich medieval churches: the exhibition

The exhibition based on last year's photography competition on the theme of Norwich's medieval churches is well and truly up and running - it's in The Forum in Norwich till the first weekend in March. I was lucky enough to have one of my entries shortlisted for the exhibition - though it failed to win the category prize - and along with Teresa I went along to Monday's exhibition launch evening. Some of the picures will apparently be included in a book on Norwich's churches due to be published in April. I'm including a few shots here that I took on the camera phone.

Norwich sunrise

There was a beautiful sunrise here in Norwich on Wednesday around 8.00, and here are a couple of shots I took on my mobile. These were taken standing in front of the window next to my desk,

looking south towards Poringland

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Black and white portraits

I've participated from time to time in the Guardian Camera Club's monthly photographic assignments. Each month an assignment is published and you can submit up to six pictures through the Flickr group (appropriately tagged). For instance October's theme was rivers, and the current November project (submissions up to 14 December) is black and white portraiture in the style of Jane Bown.

At the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich a week or so ago I took a few shots of Teresa, and I've included a couple of these here. All done in something of a rush, but that's the way it has been the last few weeks.

Norwich medieval churches (part 1)

Norwich has A wealth of medieval churches in its hidtoric core. I've just recently finished my submission for a photographic competition run by Norwich Heritage and Regeneration Trust. This explores themes relating to the past and present churches and their place in today's society. Hence there were eight themes: history and tradition, people and community, inspiration and learning, restoration and conservation, worship and contemplation, art and architecture, enjoyment and fun and innovation and change.

Aftere much wandering around in and out of churches I finally came up with my chosen submission of eight pictures. I really enjoyed looking round churches I hadn't seen much of before, and have come to appreciate them not just in terms of the quality of their interiors, and the range of photographic subjects they offer, but as havens of peace and tranquility in the busy commercial centre of the historic city.

I did get more than I bargained for in one church where I ended up being invited to stay and document an importand church service and presentation of an honary award - quite a big responsibility.

Here are four photographs from my entry, one for each of the first four categories:
History and tradition: St Peter Mancroft, Haymarket, Norwich - a lovely large church in the middle of the city and opposite the Forum, it could easily have provided images for a whole range of entries...as it was, it provided three. Searching for an unusual viewpoint in this much-photographed church, I liked the very low angle and the lighting here, with the eye being led throught to the display of flowers below the organ.

People and community:St James, Whitefriars, Norwich, the Norwich PuppetrTheatre - in the foyer of this wonderful buildong in front of a photographic display tracing the history of the theatre in this converted church. Again, I took a lot of photographs in the auditorium and in the foyer, and hasdn't really considered any taken in this part of the foyer to be serious contenders at first, but in the end I rather liked the quirkiness of this, combined with the link to the people theme in the photograps on the wall.

Inspiration and learning: St Michael Coslany, Oak Street, Norwich, the Inspire Discovery Centre, teaching children about science with a range of interactive and boldly coloured exhibits. A good many interesting images available here, but my preferred option was always going to be one featuring the child and her binoculars. Just a question of which one to choose.

Restoration and conservation: extrenal repairs in progress at St Stephen, Rampart Horse St, Norwich, after a large crack was discovered and the whole structure of the building put in doubt! I struggled a bit to find enough subject matter for this one, which I hadn't expected.

I will include the other four pictures in my next post.

Exposure considered

The Exposure photography exhibition has been and gone. A learning experience for both of us, though I did sell two pictures and Teresa sold one, and we also sold a few postcard size prints for a few pence each. Interestingly both photographs I sold were from my collection of images from the historic covered market in Porto - maybe I should make these the focal point of any future exhibition. I've already planned to return to Porto in May next year and I think I'm going to have to spend a couple of hours at the market next time.

We did learn how to cut mounting board, looked at various different ways of hanging our photographs, and thought about how others had gone about it. Certainly the process has made us think through what we are trying to achieve, and why. We bought and restored second hand frames, sand on the whole this was successful. Here's one of the images from my short list(Livraria Lello bookshop in Porto) that didn't quite make it into the exhibition this time.

Things move on, and I've been rather preoccupied with sorting out a set of wedding photographs and sifting through photographs of Norwich's medieval churches for a competition entry. I will put something on the blog as soon as I can. I've also been providing photographs for some people at a church where I just wandered in......and ended up being co-opted as the official photographer for an award ceremony. Occupational risk of being seen with a decent camera, I suppose.

Photography exhibitions in Norwich

It's been encouraging to find there have been two photography exhibitions on recently in Norwich. First of all the Flickr Norwich UK group organised an exhibition of members' work in a vacant shop unit in a prominent part of Norwich's Castle Mall shopping centre last month - which is still running - and secondly in the Forum there was a one week exhibition of the winning and shortlisted entries in the 'Norwich 12' competition. This was designed to find creative and original views of twelve heritage buildings in the city centre; the winning shots of each building will feature in a series of postcards. I'm always happy to see amateur photographers being encouraged to produce and display their work, and if it generates additional interest in the many fine buildings in the city, all well and good.

I was pleased that my own entry (top picture on the display board) for photographs of Norwich City Hall - a fine listed building designed in the Scandinavian style - made the short list and hence was on display. The launch evening for the exhibition was a great chance to talk with some of the other exhibitors about their photographs and to bounce some ideas around. I hope there will be another Norwich 12 competition this summer!