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is it a bird, is it a plane, no it’s a steampunk

Visiting a friend for a couple of days back in August, we happened to inadvertently drop into Lincoln in the middle of the city’s steampunk festival.

I’d heard the term “Steampunk” before, but really only had a vague understanding of what it meant. I had no idea that it was such a big movement, and how much effort folk put into being steampunks. And how serious they are about it, and how much fun they obviously have with it.

For those who don’t know, steampunk is a creative style melding Neo-Victorian fashion and technology with science fiction to produce a retro-futuristic aesthetic. Jules Verne could never have imagined how his influence would play out in the 21st century. (Note: this is my interpretation, not a definitive description).

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hitting the streets

Street photography… It’s a genre that’s become very popular. Search “street photography” in youTube and you’ll be spoilt for choice. The good, the bad and the ugly of street photography will be paraded before you to delight and disgust in equal measure, but it’s a genre that I confess to being a little perplexed by. Now, forgive me for lapsing into a middle-aged film-shooter stereotype, but I grew up with film photography. I’ve probably devoured thousands of magazine articles over the years, and have been fascinated by the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Tony Ray-Jones, Elliott Erwitt, Fan Ho, and many others… and I don’t think I ever heard any of them referred to as a “street photographer”. Reportage, yes… Documentary, yes… but street, no… not ever. At least, not until recently, when they may have been retrospectively labelled thus.

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10,000 steps (and then some)…

“What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare”

With apologies for opening a post with a repeated quote, but I think it’s entirely appropriate.

The last year or so, in an attempt to escape the various lockdowns, we’ve taken to walking.
Not just walking, you understand, I mean, we’ve been walking ever since we moved on from the toddling stage, but proper boots-on, follow-a-map type walking.

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playing with panoramas

I’m a big fan of square photos, it’s long been my favourite format, but I’m increasingly finding that there’s something about the panoramic format that appeals to me. 

You may have read my earlier post about my first foray into pinhole photography. It’s no accident that my self-built pinhole camera utilises the panoramic format.

I’ve long fancied getting my hands on a nice Hasselblad x-pan and a couple of lenses, but my wallet just won’t stretch to that, so my little wooden “x-pin” is as close as I’ll get for the foreseeable future. 

Now, I know that digital technology makes creating big panoramas relatively easy by stitching multiple images together, but really, if you’ve read anything on this blog you’ll know that’s just not me.  The mere thought of spending that long at a computer screen puts me in a cold sweat. It’s not a facet of photography that I will ever enjoy, so I’ll leave it to those who do. I will concede though, to a brief dalliance with panoramic cropping. It’s quick and easy, and can sometimes throw up an intriguing composition. Continue reading “playing with panoramas”

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my happy place

Edited and updated historical post from www.steers-gallery.co.uk

Were it not for the fact that 2018 is designated a “fallow year”, this weekend just passed would have been the Glastonbury Festival, so it seems an appropriate point in the year for this post…

Back to June 2010 then, and the 40th anniversary Glastonbury Festival. A conversation with some friends ended with four of us deciding we’d like to experience it, and if it turned out not to be to our liking, well at least we’d know not to do it again. Beginners luck maybe, but tickets seemed easy enough to procure, sadly not a statement I’ve felt able to repeat since! Continue reading “my happy place”

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the tale of the taking of a photograph

First published on www.filmwasters.com forum – 20/07/2016

“’Ere, Tone,” said Emma the hairdresser (friend of Mrs S), interrupting the snippety-snip-snipping of her tonsorial attentions as I sat in her kitchen one sunny Sunday morning in June. “You’re the best person to ask.”
“Surely not,” thought I, “there must be millions more qualified than me, in every conceivable subject.”
“I’ve taken a picture of my fruitbowl.” She continued.
“Steady on, girl,” I spluttered, “children present!”
But it turned out she was actually talking about an actual fruitbowl, not some bizarre euphemism… I breathed a sigh of relief.

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it’s a date…

Edited and updated historical post from www.steers-gallery.co.uk

Some years ago, when I had delusions of being an adequate photographer, I was given the opportunity to shoot a corporate calendar for my employer. You see, I’d made such a fuss about the quality of the previous year’s effort that I think they decided it was the only way to shut me up. Late 2003 it was. My deadline was very tight, but I managed to deliver a dozen nicely exposed 6×6 slides of moderately interesting views, and even got involved with the graphic designer on the layout. In truth, the print quality of the final calendar didn’t do me any favours, but that was well beyond my control, and having sold a number of the images as framed cibachrome prints, I’m happy in the knowledge that my personal quality control was up to standard. It was a fun project, and I wrote an article describing the experience and speculatively sent it off to Amateur Photographer magazine. Joy of joys, it was published, and only slightly edited. Surely I was now set… the big league beckoned… a stellar career in calendar photography, or journalism, or both, was a certainty…

 

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On-demand publishing

Edited and updated historical post from www.steers-gallery.co.uk Originally published 30/12/12

Have you tried “on-demand publishing” yet?

It’s an oft-quoted fact that people no longer print their photos.  We live in an age when anyone and everyone is a photographer, and you can upload the most banal photograph of your breakfast to a potential global audience before you’ve rubbed the sleep from your eyes, but people just don’t print their photos, preferring to view them on a smartphone screen, brushing each image aside, glancing but not looking, seen but not digested, instant gratification, instantly forgotten, swipe, swipe, swipe… It seems the humble photo album, that printed link to our, and our family’s past, is now itself, a thing of the very past it used to celebrate. What a great shame that is.  Continue reading “On-demand publishing”