Roundhay Bandstand Photographs

Just nipped to Roundhay Park in Leeds and took some really quick pictures inside one of the lovely bandstands in there.

I remembered photo collages by David Hockney and thought I'd have a go. It's very rough I took less than 5 minutes to take all eight images with by small digital compact. I then chucked them together in Photoshop. Not the greatest shots but a lot of fun.

To take a closer look double click on the picture.

The Internet as a social history or people sticking old pictures on FaceBook

The Internet now makes saving peoples personal history easier than ever. That's a pretty obvious statement to people who's been using the web for a long time, but for some it's nothing short of a miracle.

Recently my sister died, very suddenly and unexpected. She'd just joined FaceBook and hadn't added must stuff but what she did add is still there and it's nice to look back and see her writing and pictures, I can hear her reading them as I read them. When she died I created a group for people to leave their memories of her and also as a way to let people who she knew but had lost touch with what had happened. The response was amazing with over 100 people joining and many leaving memories of her as well as their own pictures with her in.

My parents aren't on the Internet and probably never will be so they'll never get to see the group. I printed out everything which had been posted and gave it to them and her husband. They were overwhelmed with the response and amazed that this could have happened. The great thing is that that group, which is still active is a social history of my sister in a way that could never have happened before the Internet and FaceBook in particular.

I was just browsing FaceBook again a few minutes ago and found a group all about memories and pictures of Sheffield, my home city. Normally the images here, well over 500, would have been in dusty boxes in a back room or in a museum collection. But know they're there for people to look through, comment and add your own to whenever you want.

If I needed to find out about my past I needed to talk to the older generation who would take their stories and images with them when they died. My children will have an amazing record of nearly everything I ever did and everything everyone else ever did too. I still find that truly amazing.

Back to analogue photography

If you've read my blog before you'll know that I love my Lomo Cameras. The cool thing about them is that they are analogue i.e. they aren't digital cameras they use good old fashioned 35mm film. This means that I have to get them processed in the old way with chemicals and everything.

This way of processing photographs has been around for nearly 100 years. But very quickly its become a niche service. Companies who until recently only charged a few pounds for processing and capturing on CD suddenly doubled their prices.

I used to take my films to ASDA nice and cheap and decent quality processing too but then the price shot up from £2.50 per film to £4.00 shocked and skint I decided to look else where.

So I tried Max Speilman, they seemed to know what they were doing, they've been around for years. Unfortunately they don't have a clue, my film was badly processed, so much so that you can see their finger prints allover the scans. Then the prints where scanned badly so that the images ended up on the wrong prints. Never, ever using them again.

Then I tried Snappy Snaps, cool name (they even sell Lomo Cameras). The processing is great but the price is a bit steep too. £5.99 per film! When I went to collect my pictures today instead of £11.98 they tried to charge me over £17 as they said that the person who'd taken my order had forgotten to charge me for the CD's. £17 for 48 pictures is just crazy so I complained and they dropped the CD charge.

What I'm getting at is that I understand that film processing is dying out due to digital cameras but there is a massive surge towards people still wanting analogue photography. The number of people who are members of Lomography measures several million on it's own. This means that there's still a massive demand for film processing.

I just need to find somewhere that will do my processing for a decent cost at a decent standard. If you know anywhere please let me know. And if they're any good I'll tell all my friends and they use it too. This good service will make a lot of money because the niche who need it are on the look-out for it.

Very excited got a picture on the BBC

I found this a few days ago and was excited and maybe a bit embarrased.

A few months ago I sent in one of my photographs to the BBC, they asked for images of curves and as I'd taken some a while back I thought I'd have a pop. Well blow mw down if they didn't use it!

The shot was taken in my back garden with the help of my friend. Basically it's a piece of wood which had been in the fire. My friend waved it and I took the shot. There wasn't any digital messing about with it this is exactly what the camera took.

One the BBC site the picture is the third one in.

Looking for little glimmers

Just found this amazing picture on the Guardian website by Sarah Moon. The chances of getting this picture are ridiculously small but that the beauty of photography. To catch the moment perfectly because it can't ever be repeated.