Off season

Part of a new series which is slowly taking shape.

I live close to the coast of North West England and along the water's edge lie a number of seaside resorts that once fluorished from tourism.
Now with an influx of immigrants - ethnic and social - filling the hotels and the promise of investment these areas are slowly changing shape and purpose.
Even with the so-called staycationers remaining in the locale or travelling here and with pockets of the places creeping back in to vogue with a lick of paint, there remains an almost otherworldly appeal to these places.

Framing the sights in my 6x7 Pentax over these early months before the dogwalkers and street cleaners arrive in their low numbers and with the still-winter sun scraping through, there is something here which, although slightly stained around the edges, compels a person to look closer.

As Annie Lennox once sang.....

here comes the rain again......

Changes and ranges

Quite busy at the minute - I've built another website showcasing galleries for print reproduction, I'll post a link once finalised; started to write some copy to go with the After - life images, something I need to complete and sort out what to do next asap; building a further site / concept / brand for a photo idea I'm also working on......
and also trying to get out as much as possible to photograph a new theme looking at first Blackpool and then poss moving along the coast.
We have a lot of wonderful spots along the waters edge throughout Lancashire that are looking decidedly grimy now from certain angles.....

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.