Monday 24 September 2007

Ever feel like a robot? If I was one I'd love to be as cute as this one - it belongs to my son, but I'm constantly commandeering it to photograph because I love it so much. My only hang up is that it's eyes aren't very expressive, so I cut I some new ones from sticky paper for this shot. It's yet another photo that I plan to make part of a set - I seem to start lots of these sets and finish very few of them, perhaps I'll make it with this idea.
On the work front, I have been asked to run two 1 day pinhole workshops for A level photography students. I did one of them last year and it was great fun. We turned a room into a camera obscura and then made pinhole cameras and developed the results in a tiny art stock cupboard. Hope fully this year will be as productive and enlightening for students whose main experience of photography has been digital. I certainly learned lots from it.

Friday 14 September 2007

Working late and unpostable film


Work has been absolutely manic of late - resulting in 13 hour days and lots of angst. I haven't done half enough photography and I'm missing it madly. I recently acquired a Sputnik stereo camera (I'm blaming Cam) and I've put a couple of films through it but nothing worth posting yet. The first film I shot was all double exposures because I didn't wind the film on 2 shots every take. The second film I experimented with using a close-up lens and it put the offset between the 2 negs too far out to use. So, I'm working on a third film, which will hopefully render some postable images.
On the upside, I have had my first paid for photograph published this week in Junior Baby and Pregnancy magazine. You can see it on my Tearsheets blog . I used my trusty Rolleicord and a closeup lens to take it, as the Art Editor likes the vintage camera vibe. It's a dream for me to be paid to take photos with my Rollei, so that's what I'm working towards.

Thursday 6 September 2007

New Horizons

I recently borrowed Mark's Horizon and had great fun trying it out and thinking panoramically.
I love working with new cameras and finding out their quirks and perks.
This is an early version of the Horizon with no aperture settings and 2 shutter speeds (slow and not quite so slow). This meant that most of my film was overexposed despite using a 100asa film in UK weather. I did get a couple of shots I liked though, this one of the Tour de France being one of them. To get the motion of the cyclists passing left to right I had to hold the camera upside down so that it panned along with the bikes - which meant I got even funnier looks than usual.

Monday 3 September 2007

Etsy

I'm very excited because I've been working on some jewellery that I now have for sale at Etsy. It uses my sweet photographs on shrink plastic - I used to use an earlier version of it when I was younger - which makes a durable, hard plastic that you can use for pendants and earrings. I had real difficulty putting a couple of them up for sale because I've grown so attached to them. Especially this one
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=6930980

Anyway, check them out and let me know what you think.