Staff continued

This bank holiday weekend whilst back at Pontypridd I went along to a bbq at my good friend Lee's house. Luckily he has a Staff as his dog and amongst the choas of kids playing and 10 inch flames coming from the chicken, I fired off some shots. Looking back at the images I'm not happy with how busy the backgrounds look, the shadows from the fence - also trying to get both subjects to look in my direction was more difficult than originally anticipated.
As this blog is mainly for showing current work, I'm not too fussed about showing images that I'm not entirely happy with. Feel free to contact me and comment on what else you do/don't like about any of the images in my posts.

Missing signs

So I've eventually managed to find the time to edit and convert the RAW files I lost last week. This edit is made from images taken around Thurrock where I noticed a number of signs had been vandalised.
With scrap metal prices increasing, road signs seem an easy target due to their roadside access enabling a quick getaway. Earlier this year Surrey County Council stated that they will replace stolen aluminium road signs with plastic road signs in an attempt to deter theives.

Staff only

Firstly, it's a very sad note to start on but I would just like to show my respect to the photographers out there on the front line. My thoughts go out to the family and friends of Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros who were killed yesterday, also to Guy Martin and Michael Christopher Brown that were also injured.




Since my last update and after my memory card incident I haven't been up to much but I have some new work and the first image from a new project. I was out on Monday around Tilbury power station for my energy project and driving back out from Tilbury Fort I came across two Staffordshire Bull Terriers (only one of the dogs turned out to be a pure breed). I've always wanted to do a set of portraits around Staff dogs and their owners and here seemed the perfect place to start.

Thank you Canon

I've been out and about with a medium format film camera for the past 2 weeks so I was really excited to update this blog with some digital work I've shot over the past few days. However, due to some technical difficulties (Jessops piece of shit memory card reader) I've erased all of the Jpg files from my memory card. Over a weeks worth of work gone in a second. Luckily however, the boffins at Canon added 2 slots to the 1D mkII n and all my RAW files are safe and sound. Sadly no new stuff tonight, or for about another week in fact, due to my laptop running a 'student' version of PS CS2 and no other memory card reader at hand until I get home. I'm a bit gutted that my original plan of uploading new work will not happen but I'm kissing and caressing my camera for keeping all of my RAW files. I promise more work will come flowing when I get back to uni and the C41 dev room!

Apple iPad 2 release

By pure chance I walked passed the queue for the iPad 2 release on Friday. I quickly headed home to grab a camera and document the opening - this all helps me bulk out my energy project which will pick up pace come Easter.

Bus stop part 4

I wasn't aiming to publish more bus stop images so soon but I incorrectly guessed the direction of the sun for my major project work; this led me to take the scenic route home not to make the journey a complete waste of time. Luckily I managed to get a few different designs in a short amount of time. Below are the bus stops taken in the Neath area today, which I will be visiting more often judging by my finds this afternoon, including the brick one that turned out to be more interesting on the inside...

Bus stops part 3

Just a couple of new bus stops to add to the collection. I'm aiming to get a few hundred bus stops before producing a smaller edit to show as a project - it would be great to hear what images are working and why (please excuse my awful colour correction).

Images from the week

Here are more images from my energy project that were shot this week on 120 film. Firstly I have to apologise for any colour problems, my colour technician (the wife) is away this week and this is my best guess at getting the colours right - now you can witness my colour blindness in all its glory. They're just low res scans too, so I also apologise for the quality; but like most things on this blog, I aim to get the work on here quickly and if you want to see the final prints you'll have to wait for my website to be up and running - probably still another few weeks away. The first photograph is the film image I decided on from my night outside Amazon.

I'm shooting some black and white 35mm film (nothing serious) this weekend and hopefully I'll have a scanned image uploaded by next week.

New work

My dissertation is finally over! It's great to have a camera back in my hand and being able to produce new work without any other major deadlines. To start things off I have an image taken about an hour ago from outside Amazon in Swansea. It was taken on my DSLR as a mock shot before I set up with a Mamiya 7. I've shot about 4 rolls of 120 for my major project since my dissertation hand in, however I've not made the time to turn them into digital files yet so hopefully I can get scanning tomorrow, but in the meantime I hope there's enough detail in the Jpeg to give you an idea of the subject, which ties in with my 3rd year energy project.
Although shooting on film will slow me down (with regards to uploading work to here), I hope I can keep myself busy with my new 28mm 1.8 lens I bought this week for my Canon 1D mkII N. As well as the bus stops project I'd like to continue with, I have another project I've been wanting to do for a while now, more on that when I've arranged my first shoot (Hopefully Sunday).
In the meantime.....

See you next month...

Nothing new for almost a month is bad, real bad, and the situation is unlikely to improve until after my dissertation deadline (first week of March). In the meantime here is an image taken from my current project - I will leave you on the promise that, come the second week of March, I will have at least one new entry a week on here.

Bus stops continued.

I guess I was too ambitious trying to get 7 blog entries in 7 days - although saying that, I probably would've hit my target if I didn't switch to a medium format rangefinder (for my major project) after the 12th.
I suppose I could've posted something but, right now I'm concentrating on keeping this blog purely around the work I produce - I'm sure in the near future I'll start adding a few links and reviews on here.
To follow on from my last entry, here is some work taken today around the Townhill area of Swansea.

Bus stop project

So as I mentioned at the start of this year I've started a new project around bus stops.
As I walk or drive around lately I've become increasingly aware of how a bus stop can say a lot about the surrounding environment.
I aiming to build quite a large body of work over the next few months that will help support my claim above.
The majority of the work will be taken around South Wales. Ideally I'm hoping for a good mix of locations, cities, council estates, rural towns, industrial estates, new suburbs and anything else I can fit in when I come across a good location.
Here are the first two that I'm happy enough to post on here but may not make the final edit - although the last image is located at the main bus station in Pontypridd and the bus stop had only been built a few days before, so it'll be interesting to see if there are any signs of use in a couple of months.