Competitions

I like to enter photographic competitions from time to time - I haven't won any yet, but that doesn't stop me trying. I think it's good to have a go, put your work out there in front of other people in the industry. It often provides a chance to try things out and who knows, one day I might win. It is due, in part, to an earlier competition with the magazine below that I took a leap of faith, quit the day job and started to be a photographer full time. So they can even change your life!


I recently entered into the Black and White Photographer of the Year 2011 competition run through Black and White Photography Magazine and was notified that I had been shortlisted and put through to the next round. I didn't manage to win (this time), but they very kindly put a selection of shortlisted entries into their December 2011 issue and each of the selected images has been given a whole page to itself!  I just can't get over how cool that is.

I wanted to try something different with my photograms. I created new images by joining several together. They are abstract in nature due to the random gathering of found objects, but I wanted to keep the aesthetic quality and suggest that these items could have existed together and worked together. There are all sorts of ingredients in these: dead insects found on windowsills, a plastic bracelet lying in a gutter, an old bottle discovered in the verge on a dog walk, broken rulers...

I've been watcing the films and stop motion animation of The Brothers Quay (pronounced Kway) recently and their work simply blows you away, it is incredibly poetic and visually amazing. (I recommend Street of Crocodiles and Institute Benjamenta as starting points).They appear to live and work in a world where everything that can be overlooked and ignored becomes important and is given life: dust, grime, seeds, screws, the broken and discarded...

 

 

Summer Holidays

A time to relax, spend time with the family and re-charge those batteries.

I've been reading a lot lately, taking a chance to explore new ideas and possibilities that might work their way into my images. I'm a firm believer in coincidences and I am certain that everything happens for a specific purpose, even though it may take a few goes to work out their meanings: the people we meet, the events in our lives, even our choice of books to read.

For those that are interested the books are as follows...

M. Scott Peck. 'The Road Less Travelled'
M. Scott Peck. 'People of the Lie'
Paulo Coelho. 'The Alchemist'
Paulo Coelho. 'Brida'
James Redfield. 'The Celestine Prophecy'
Prof. Richard Wiseman. 'Did You Spot the Gorilla?'
Dr Wayne Dyer. '10 Secrets For Success and Inner Peace'
Richard Carlson. 'Don't Sweat the Small Stuff'
Aldous Huxley. 'Brave New World'

The image above is the first I've completed since reading the above. It took two days to complete and involves the following ingredients... clouds, old watch face, old parchment, a novel found in the gutter, trees, the wings of a barn owl (death by natural causes), and a texture running through two pieces of plastic glued together that I found in the bookshop where I last worked.