Trawling

I have a stock agency

No time to do anything with it.

I have a website

And no time to do anything with it.

A sumptuous meal served on a broken plate

More about slideshows

Found this little website where you can make up to 10 slideshows for free complete with sound and a few basic effects. This example, using the 12 edited photographs taken on my mobile phone during the independence celebrations in Kosovo in February, was produced automatically just to see how it works. Not only do I need to work on writing project proposals and actually get out there and do more work, I also need to crack the slideshow thing. Even if I don't end up using slideshows in my professional work I believe it's useful to show that you can do it. And anyway, I won't know if slideshows are for me or not unless I make a few.

Larger versions of these photographs with basic information about each on the main page can be found here.

Lightstalkers

Is here.

Border idea whilst out walking

I walked along the coast to the supermarket to do a bit of shopping this evening with the idea of getting the bus back. The bus wasn’t due for another 39 minutes so I decided to walk back via a tantalising footpath that cut its way through a cornfield and over a big hill in the general direction I wanted to go in. The footpath took me through a stud farm complete with hundreds of gorgeous horses, all them being looked after by a lady who told me I might be able to get to where I wanted to through the big field in the distance. It turned out couldn’t. However, it was a nice walk, with a nice view of the sea. To get back to civilisation I needed to walk around the edge of a large, freshly cut cornfield, past a row of charming little 1960s bungalows complete with charming little English gardens. I like this border, it conjures up all sorts of ideas. I like the fact that there are lots of overlapping borders here, not just the obvious ones of town and country, but ones of manicured gardens and modern farming practices and what little there is left of nature in the southeast of England. I also like the social borders of the English middle classes and the strange, classless world of the modern worker-farmer. The photographs I took do no justice whatsoever to the border in question as the light was all wrong, and if I ever did approach the idea with the intention of turning it into a project I’d have to fill it with people (by, I imagine, knocking on all the front doors of the bungalows and the local farm in question). Too good, to waste, I’ll turn the idea into a proposal. I need the practice anyway.

Ignore this post

Alamy

Yesterday I finally set up an Alamy account and uploaded four test pictures as required. They say it can take up to 25 days to get a reply on this. Whilst I'm waiting I wonder if anybody out there's had any experiences with Alamy they could share. There's something intriguing about shooting stock photography, and I must say I do like the idea of generating a little income from it, especially as my travels take me to a few off-the-beaten-track places. I do need to work on my online presentation in general. Watch this space!

Is this multimedia?

Tito’s leg revisited

Cult figures and great leaders suffer the same fates and indignities as the rest of us. Queen Elizabeth II wears spectacles. Does this make her less credible as a head of state or does it make it easier for the rest of us to identify with her? I was in Slovenia earlier this year where I found something out that I thought was both extraordinary and mundane at the same time. Josip Broz Tito, the leader of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from the end of WWII until his death, had his leg amputated in a Ljubljana hospital four months before he died on May 4, 1980. His state funeral in Belgrade was the largest state funeral ever, attended by no less than four kings and countless presidents from all over the world. There’s something I find intriguing about these two things. Amputations are messy affairs, and something that (God forbid) can happen to anybody. State funerals are the complete opposite. How can I approach this photographically?

Dear Me

Dear Me,

Six months down the line and I feel both elated and depressed about my contribution to the course. Elated because I can see genuine progress with my photography, and depressed because the progress is, I feel anyway, too slow.

Too slow because of professional commitments that do nothing but distract me from immersing myself in photography (ie. I still need my day job). One of my main goals for the next few months is to reinvent my day job, and start getting serious work taking photographs. This may mean moving back to Lithuania, a country five times cheaper than the one I currently live in.

I took this course because I wanted to work professionally in non-fiction-based photography, ideally but not necessary (nor exclusively for that matter) as a photographer. I was helped along the way by the professional encouragement of picture editors I was working with at the time in travel publishing as well as a few other people that matter. I knew my pictures were good enough to take them one step further, but it’s always good to have support, especially professional support.

When I started this course I didn’t fully understand how one photograph can contain so much information. This is something I’ve learnt and am using already.

When I stared this course I didn’t fully understand how it was possible to support one’s ‘serious’ photography with working in a more commercial area of photography. This is something I’ve learnt and am starting to put into practice.

When I started this course I didn’t fully understand how important multimedia was in contemporary photojournalism and documentary photography. This is something I’ve learnt and am trying to come to terms with.

When I started this course I didn’t fully understand what kind of photographs I was good at taking and what kind of photographs I wasn’t so good at taking. This is something I’ve learnt and am trying to apply to my progress.

There are lots of other things that I don’t have time to mention at the moment.

In a strange way I rather like the fact that I’m producing work on this course under such pressure, with barely any time at all to work on projects. It feels almost like a real working environment.

My two picture assessments were so hugely different I wonder if anybody understood what I was doing. Both were serious. The Douglas pictures, horribly unfinished, have the potential to be turned into something powerful and packed with meaning for anyone from a national newspaper to a charity. If I have a serious problem on the course, it’s how to take the next step with projects like this. Homer has been a brick with his help on the Douglas project, but now it’s up to me to move it forwards. Homer even liked the Eastbourne Pier photographs. This is the man who not so long ago told me to never take photographs with a mobile phone. About the mobile phone work, I’ve trademarked the word Nokumentary™ and am seriously looking into developing documentary photography projects with a mobile phone manufacturer (not necessarily Nokia). I did have a brief email session with Anne Williams (Programme Director for Photography, LCC) about hooking up with Nokia, but Anne hasn’t replied to any of my emails for a while. Time to send her another I think.

At the start of this course I was eager to learn, share experiences, work on projects, debate a bit and generally wallow in education for a couple of years. I was also as already mentioned eager to work in the professional. A third of the way along do I think I’m achieving everything I set out to do?

I wonder.

Assuming that my first term assessed work made the grade then I believe next term will really show whether I can do it or not. My travel publishing clients are all aware of my photography, most are enthusiastic about it, and some are actively finding commissions for me. I’m started to build a body of work I can show people too. I’ve also set up an Alamy account. All of these are signs that I’m serious.

Waffle. No time to seriously think about this. I may come back and edit. Comments very welcome indeed.

Oh, and composition is everything.

Post-production

Does anybody have an opinion on post-production/digital darkrooms?

Notes before Dear Me (1)

It’s gone a bit mad again. Work has reached fever pitch, and will continue to do so for a further two weeks until the Albania manuscript is finally out of my hands. This evening I was putting the photography for it together, which has been enlightening, not to mention nostalgic. Also, between bites of sandwiches and the occasional stroll in my sister’s garden to keep my knees alive, I’ve been throwing bits and pieces into a Word file that’s going to become my navel-gazing, strengths and weakness blog entry. I’ve been plotting a course through my photography over the last four years or so (since I bought my first digital camera), coming across as I did so the most interesting odds and ends that all helped push me onto the course. Last year for example, not long after I bought my first mophone, I entered a photographic competition organised by the BBC World Service and judged by the photojournalist-turned-portrait photographer, Greg Williams. I entered I seem to remember because it was free to do so (my favourite price), although I did feel I had an interesting photograph that fitted the brief (must be taken on a mophone, must contain the colour blue, must have a pair of eyes in it and must say something about the place you live). Anyway, I won, or rather I was one of four first place winners. The photograph (above) was then given to the occasionally controversial playwright Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti who subsequently used it as the basis of a play she then wrote, and that was broadcast in December last year on the World Service. Anyway, it’s the only photographic recognition I have, and I’ve just realised I’m rather proud of the fact. Watch this space.

Essay

Schofield essay - Upload a Document to Scribd

Read this document on Scribd: Schofield essay

Nokumentary™

Now this is interesting

Now this is interesting. No time to look into it at the moment. The photograph at the top is a Bert Hardy, taken during WWII and discovered by myself on the BBC News website last night. I really liked it and downloaded it. Today I got some books from the LCC library, including Bert Hardy’s autobiography, My Life. On p.19 of my copy is the photograph underneath. Hardy as I’m discovering was a serial fraud. More soon.

Monkey puzzle

Has anybody had any experience with jigsaw puzzles? These online ones are fun, and show me a little about what I want to do with them, but you can't really beat the real thing, can you?

A slight refinement to the back of the postcard

Granddad, Eastbourne, coincidences etc

As mentioned elsewhere, my Auntie Wendy has become the unofficial Schofield family archivist. Yesterday my dad and myself drove 150 miles (240km) to the house in the countryside near Cambridge where she lives with her husband to collect some photographs, scrapbooks and other family-related bits and pieces so I can scan a few things and start looking into a serious historical-type project. My dad’s dad, Harry Methuen Schofield, was the footballer/pop star of his day, being a test and stunt pilot in the 1920s after a short but distinguished career as a pilot during WWI. I go much more than I bargained for, including originals of his Christening certificate from January 24, 1900 to the receipt for his cremation from the Metropolitan Borough of Wandsworth, dated January 10, 1956. Among the things I was expecting to see as I ploughed though the scrapbooks in the car on the way back I came across some extraordinary gems such as two cigarette cards in perfect condition and featuring none other than our Harry to a small album of black and white photographs of a holiday my grandma and granddad took in what must be around 1920 in Eastbourne of all places, including several shots of the pier (my grandma walking on it, my grandma rowing past it, my granddad sitting in a deckchair with the pier in the background etc). My dad was entirely unaware of the existence of both the photographs and the holiday, and was amazed to see photographs of his dad having fun (more of that as the project takes off). What an extraordinary coincidence, Eastbourne and Eastbourne Pier. And what on earth is this chap doing flying through the Eastbourne sky in this extraordinary and bizarre photograph? (a photograph almost certainly taken by my granddad, who, as it turns out, graduated with a total of 82% marks as a photographer (Photographic Flying) with the RAF on June 24, 1924. No time to waffle into my blog any more today. Much more to follow. This is fun.

Coming together nicely

Chugging merrily along

In between teaching my dad how to use a computer, hiring new staff in Macedonia and writing content for a book about Albania, the Eastbourne Pier project chugs merrily into its final stage. Homer will help see it through to the finishing post, but before then I still need to do one or two more things. There's still a few refinements needed to the overall postcard design, and the text needs tightening and editing more, but the general look and feel is more or less there now. I also envisage one last trip to get a picture I’m sure I haven’t got, although I’ve got no idea what that picture is yet. I also think I'll do the final layout in InDesign and present the work as a pdf. Oh, and I finally made contact with the local architects, who did a recent survey of the pier and who sent me this morning a wonderful history of the pier, full of exactly the sort of fabulous facts and figures I wanted.

Walking