causing a zine

Personal projects are funny ol’ things. You start with all good intentions, and run through multiple phases of varying activity, and it’s a lottery whether they ever see completion.

Here’s something that I’d had “pinballing” around my head for a little while, that I’m delighted to say has come to fruition.

inside 29
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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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surviving the streets

I never expected this theme to run over three posts, but as I considered my self-posed questions, the stream of consciousness flowed and could so easily have continued to more. But I’m going to close with this post where I find myself wondering if anything I do can be considered “street”.

As someone who finds it exceptionally hard to photograph people, even people I know, street photography, in its widely accepted guise as (mostly) candid observations of people in public situations, is perhaps a challenge too far. So, back to my earlier question: how do you define street photography? Can I remain close to my people-free comfort zone and still be a street photographer? Or must I step outside my comfort zone and take a more people based approach?

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living on the streets

In the last post, I began by pondering, “how do you define street photography?”
Since then, I’ve considered at length but have only been left with more questions.

I considered whether street photography is an evolution of documentary, but I don’t think it is. Not all street is documentary, and not all documentary is street, they converge and diverge like overlapping oscillatory wave patterns. If I were to photograph people at a demonstration marching through the city, I’d like to think I was making documentary photographs, but if I turned my back on the marchers to find images of people sitting in a pavement café watching the goings-on, then perhaps I might be indulging in some street photography.

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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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framing – the bespoke option

A very old friend returned earlier this year from a break in beautiful Dorset with a couple of large photo prints and some very definite ideas on how he wanted to display them.

He explained the kind of look he had in mind, and we scoured the moulding catalogues trying to find something that matched his vision.

Rustic. Distressed. Driftwood. These were the keywords to the search, but nothing we found really made an impression. That’s not to say there isn’t a whole load of perfectly nice mouldings to be found, just that none really hit the sweet spot. Some came close, but none were the “Goldilocks” just right moulding.

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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”

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”