An unofficial wedding photographer

Jamie and Amy's wedding near Buxton a month ago gave me a great opportunity to put into practice an idea I read in Amateur Photographer recently - basically to enjoy taking interesting

wedding pictures without any of the major responsibility of the official wedding photographer: in other words, to be something of an 'unofficial' wedding photographer looking out for the interesting candid moments and trying to capture the spontaneous and the unusual.,

On the whole I was happy with the results - out of around 220 exposures I saved on the camera ended up with just under 100 that were worth using, admittedly with a fair amount of cropping and brightness correction at times. Partly this was due to having to shoot at unusual angles and partly at having to adjust to the changing light throughout the day.

At the end of it all, though, I think I'd really like to carve out a niche as a wedding photographer, if only I had the nerve.

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.

Exhibition opens in Norwich

This Sunday sees the opening of the Exposure photography exhibition in Norwich.

On Sunday morning Teresa and I will – with some trepidation – be at St Margaret’s Church on St.Bededict’s Street to set about handing our photographs. It’s been quite a learning experience so far, what with choosing the images to display, finding and preparing frames (we both decided to acquire secondhand frames through charity shops and car boot sales, and adapt them for our purposes) and working out how best to fix them to the walls. It will be interesting to see just how our very different photographic styles come across when put side by side (we are sharing exhibition space as Stripes Creative).

Norwich Cathedral

I've just made a couple of visits to Norwich Cathedral to take some photographs for the Guardian Camera Club's August assignment - religious buildings and iconogrpahy. It made me realise just what a marvellous building this is, and that I have never really looked at in detail, and certainly not from a photographer's perspective either. I've taken quite a few shots that I'm happy with - in fact it will be hard to choose just six to post on the web site. I will include a few of them in this post. It was great to be there at different times of day, and see how the changing light offers different possibilities - sometimes a shaft of sunlight would pick out a feature of the architecture, but in a few moments it could be gone. Interesting how the little details appealed to me the most - the hymn books, prayer cushions, notices and so forth - maybe I was looking for something a little different.

Norwich HEART has a competition running till the end of October on the theme of Norwich's medieval churches, so it looks like I will be really busy over the next few weeks getting to grips with the local churches and their various uses - a good follow-on to the Cathedral project.

I came out of the first week of my photography course at the Norwich Arts Centre on the 1st of September and wandered into the nearby St Laurence church, which is usually closed, but currently has a display of fashion and textiles. It's a lovely light and airy church and I decided to take some pictures, some of which may well feature in a September post.

Hemsby meteorological station

I became intrigued a few weeks ago by the disused meteorological station between Hemsby and Ormesby St Margaret in Norfolk. It's certainly in a very sorry state, and I would love to have discovered it a few years ago. Information is hard to come by, but I think it closed around eight years ago. In any event, we took quite a few photographs there and here are some of them.

There is an earlier phoograph of the site, taken from the entrance gate, on Geograph:
http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/521621

Photography blogs

I've recently discovered the Guardian Camera Club, which encourages people to share portfolios and submit images for criticism, and there is a really interesting item about blogs here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/camera-club-blog/2009/jun/22/camera-club-blogpost
The main page for the blog is:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/camera-club-blog

After following most of the links I can recommend in particular having a look at
http://www.foto8.com/
http://www.nocaptionneeded.com/
www.lensculture.com/webloglc/index.html


This blog is really all about my pictures so for this post I'm including a photograph I took on my recent visit to Porto in Portugal - it's the interior of the marvellous Livraria Lello bookshop, Rua das Carmelitas 144, something of a local institution with its neo-gothic exterior and amazing and complex art nouveau wooden staircase and interior. There will be more on Porto to follow - now that I've actually found the time downloadall the pictures I took on my visit. I've several other projects on the go, so watch this space......
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Disused petrol pumps

Quite by chance I discovered an interest in photographing disused petrol punps and petrol stations last year on holiday in Normandy. We'd driven through a small village a few kilometres short of our campsite for the first night, the light was fading, but I just had to stop and take some pictures. Some time since I found some really rusty petrol pumps and garage buildings in Snowdonia, and I've just taken photographs of two really decrepit pumps I on a roadside in rural Suffolk. I've also taken pictures of a pump at River Green in Thorpe St Andrew, Norfolk, as much for the incongruous riverside setting as anything.

Again by chance while perusing some back issues online of the journal London Independent Photography I came across an article (Summer 2006, issue no. 4) about the photographer John H Rhodes, who has produced a series of images of disused pumps in the Scottish Highlands and elsewhere.

I think it must be something about their association with the motor vehicle and the freedom of movement it's inspired over the years that kind of makes them an iconic subject. That and the rust, dereliction and decay which I have often sought out in photographic subjects, for reasons I haven't fully thought through.