Bigger prints

After moving over to a roll fed printer - Epson 7800 - the size lends itself to images just a little bit different such as a wall canvas at approx 550mm x 2.1m in width...

Panoramics

With this new Epson printer, its opened up some big print possibilities but with this comes the headache of the best or most cost effective way of display.
Do I take the prints to be backmounted to acrylic, facemounted to Dibond or Foamex or do I look in to quality prints behind glass in frames?

Although my personal preference for a gallery print is framed either behind glass or not, the only way at the moment to do everything in house is to stretch either fabric or canvas over wooden frames.
I've just finished an 18" x 40" of the first one below and have printed the Langdale image at just under 20" x 2m which looks incredible. I've got to stretch it this weekend ( I picked up a Stanley electric stapler which makes it a chunk easier ) and should have it ready for the gallery next week.
Once I've finished I'll post photographs of them on the wall for scale.

Parrworld

Had the chance to go and see Martin Parr's Parrworld exhibition over at the Baltic.

First off, what a fantastic gallery - great location, facilites and incredibly helpful staff who want to chat about the stuff on show instead of just casting a nonchalant bead across any visitors.

As a curator, Martin Parr's selections of others' photographs are without question - considering these are his personal prints I am green with envy: Friedlander, Eggleston, Chris Kilip, Graham Smith and plenty of his Magnum colleagues. The photobooks as well are superbly picked and laid out giving the desired response of wanting to flick through and covet. The collected artifacts of miners strikes, Obama ephemera and US/Iraq/Afghanistan material are all interesting to look at but what exactly am I looking at here.....
I know as Parrworld we are invited to see the person (the genes of a chronic collector) but perhaps after seeing Damien Hirst's Pharmacy which is also showing here I wanted something with more substance then a Saddam wristwatch as nice as that may be.

I didn't think the images shown within the new Luxury theme Martin Parr has been working on were the strongest I had seen - plenty of the images are typical Parr: juxtapositions of class against class or in this case class against class aspiration and most show the signature effect of artificial light/ringflash (you can also spot it in sunglasses reflections so it can all be ticked off as suitable Parr-isms). My problem is that the selection shhown here feel almost Parr-lite.
If one of the highlights is that Newcastle glamour girls drink cans of Fosters instead of champagne at the races then ok, but I think we could have all taken a punt on that. Maybe its that we see it all now and that perhaps human nature in this sense is stagnating under X Factor and the likes of Heat magazine but I came away impressed the least from this new selection of photographs.

I must conclude though, that regardless of the quality of these new photographs - and any Parr is good Parr for most, myself included - and in a setting like the Baltic, t'was a most enjoyable day out by far.
Shame as I walked in to Newcastle to visit Side Gallery it was closed, but that's my excuse to go back....

A number of changes

After printing most of my images to sell on a Canon Pro 9500 A3+ printer, its finally been at the repair shop too many times and my patience with it has grown way too thin. As good as the printer is it has developed some kind of feed error and prints the first swathe slightly off and then bands repeatedly throughout the print. Canon showed no interest ( except quoting me approx £180 + VAT for someone to come out to look ) and I had to find alternative means to get it up and running.

With the ink costing a fair chunk of money - £9 for a thimbleful and its also 10 colour - I decided to sell on some equipment that I wasnt using and take the plunge in to something more usable. The 135mm F2 lens for the 5D has gone ( I shed a quiet tear.... ) but I'm now running an Epson 7800.

Being roll fed - 24" - and the inks costing around 4 times as much as the Canon for 20x the amount, its opening up a whole new arena of larger scale prints. As I printed most images at full A3 for max impact, a 24" x 40" has a wow factor the smaller models just can't match.

I also shot my first wedding a few weeks back - I'll post pictures in another post.

Liverpool Piazza Market

Involved in this tomorrow - should be interesting.
Only problem is the weather forecast - whether or not it pours down or just continually drizzles... I'm going to nip over to Argos later to see about a gazebo - dont know whether it'll stand on the paving but its either that or sou'wester and soggy pictures.

Penwortham Gala, Preston

Screaming kids, funfair rides, smell of greasy burgers. Inadvertently released overpriced helium balloons head skywards - cue more screaming.

Ruffs Dog Show - Preston

The world of competitive dog ownership comes to Ashton Park in Preston.
Pooches and partners of all varieties and sizes queue in the sporadic drizzle in front of judges - four eyes yearning for rosettes ( at least I like to think the dogs know whats going on ).
Waggiest tail and shiniest nose clinched, crowds disperse to the tombola raffle and inevitable dog training stalls.

Made in Britain

Not necessarily a statement on the country as a whole, more just elements available to point a lens at.

New images in PAD Gallery Preston

It was about time I changed over old images and refreshed with new at the PAD in Preston. A couple sold from the last submission and hopefully more of these will be taken.

Now we know that swine flu isnt really going to obliterate the population or those kind bankers aren't going to take back all our homes, there is really no excuse not to pick one up and adorn that empty wall space between the pictures of a woman scratching her arse at tennis or dogs playing pool.....

A lot of the photos I've been taking are getting more thematic or series led - I seem to be spending a lot of time at the beach or barren moor - and also playing with off camera flash is a new nightly ritual so picking single images can sometimes be a little difficult.

Week off the treadmill

3 days in the lakes, 1 day at the beach, and 1 at the Museum of Science and Industry.....
It can't be school half term can it?

In this 'economic downturn' or whatever the name is for it this week, I can do what I enjoy best and pull on my boots and go for a walk.

More MPP

A chance to escape to Cumbria, a forest being felled illuminated by the afternoon spring sun, and a box of HP5 5x4 in the bag.
Bliss.

After-life 2 - Severn Bridge

And then came Severn Bridge.
Not chronologically - first was Danes Dyke and then Immingham - but I'll write more about the series later.I'll just post as I go through.
Severn Bridge is famous enough as a feat of engineering, and in the UK at least it's famous as well as a suicide spot similar in notoriety to Beachy Head.
Richey Edwards' car was left nearby in the motorway services along with the many number of others who choose it as their place to go. The bridge imposes itself across the water and over the skyline and although I didn't go here for photos of just a bridge, it's hard not to gawp and click.
More info if wanted.

After-life

I'm collating all the images of the pseudo-suicide spots I shot now for prints and to put up on my website. I've got a piece to write to accompany it and also to lay out in order for a short run book.

With all the places I visited, I could see in each why it was picked - some obvious because of background connections or popular history - but inherent in all was the despair of both selection and practice.
None were random places of moment or at least they didn't feel that way and as much as many suicides can travel far to fulfil self-believed necessity, these could well have been decided upon months, if not years or decades, before.

I've called the series After-life for the reason that the act of faking suicide is not to full-stop life totally - it is to put a painful parenthesis around the former and then place everything in the plan of what comes next.

Below are the first I've been working on and are from Beachy Head, East Sussex.
Info for the interested.

All change on the camera front

Must be the cold lifeless / lightless weather that forces the photographer into changing equipment when there's little else to do.
All the Pentax digital kit has gone - replaced with a Canon 5D. The arrival of the 5D Mark II has finally shifted the cost of full frame down to my kind of level......

The Mamiya RB67 has also gone, superceded in a different way by an old 1950s MPP 5x4 press camera. Some issues resolved on this and negatives now coming out of it something like the images seen going in.
A day in the presence of the UK Large Format Photography Group and Lancashire Monochrome helped with some of the theory. Thanks to all and if you visit their forums , advice is freely given.

Some of the images below are from that day, others from others but all out of the MPP.

Graffiti

As you walk around and see the city, the amount of spraypaint scribbles and art seems to be growing. Perhaps new artists are seeing what can be done off the back of the Banksys of this world and adding tags to see in turn what they can do.
I think some of it looks fantastic and deserves places like upper space in Manchester - as I write this however, I've googled to find their site and due to the landlords requesting a 50% hike on the rent, the place is gone. Too bad and I hope from some of the stuff I've seen the collective produce, they find a home worthy of the talent on show soon enough.