new flickr - like it, lump it or neither

Flickr has updated its TOS and changed its layout to a dreadful infinite scrolling collage of all recent photographs - no room to breath - a diabolical mish-mash of images thrown together on a black background. It seems like they've done it just because the technology's available. A similar option is available with Blogger but crucially there's also the option not to use it and that's where flickr falls over. They've just imposed this bland banal blanket over everyone's photo stream - like it or lump it. I'm not really up for either.
I've been posting to Flickr since 2004 and have had all manner of intriguing photographic involvements with fellow photographers that has formed much of my current engagement with photography - 365 projects, guess where projects, critique one post one projects and so on, in fact here's the list of flickr groups I'm a member of:

I mostly post to them sporadically but there's still a quiet joy in being one of the 38 photographers who have posted one image to the Bollocks to James Elkins group whose only criteria is "‘Do you consider yourself, in any fashion, to be attempting works of photographic art?’ If so, post an example here and join us in saying, collectively, ‘Bollocks to James Elkins!’. A finger back to Elkin's snooty condemnation of the artlessness of flickr photographers.












Back in the early days there was a sense that flickr, the organisation, might actually listen to you and that we were somehow 'part of it'. Whereas now it's just the howling demands of corporatisation gorging on what once felt like all sorts of community.

I posted my last Flickr picture, a petulant doomed cry against the advancing wall of wealth creation, to the group 'New Flickr Layout Sucks' http://www.flickr.com/groups/new-flickr-layout-sucks/pool/with/8775254871/. I'm not sure what happens next and where to put my photographs online, but this blog post by photographer Andrew Newson http://andrewnewson.co.uk/blog/is-this-really-it/http://andrewnewson.co.uk/blog/is-this-really-it/ looks at some ways forward. 

The Estate

The word 'estate' suffers bad press. In the urban environment there's a whole bunch of assumptions that folks who don't live on estates carry around. Folks who do live on estates carry a few too - but there's nothing like living in a place to get a clearer view. In the country the word 'estate' brings another set of notions - beauty, nature, harmony and National Trust Gift Shops.
Both uses carry the sense of estate as relating to an area, a territory in which 'this is how things are'. When I'm cycling home and I get to the river I always feel a sense of relief as I pedal into South London. And I get the same feeling when I arrive on The Estate.

As If From Behind A Tree

After picking up a secondhand walkabout zoom lens in town I stop off in the park behind Vauxhall Cross to try it out, snapping trees while standing on top of a hillock. As I cycle away two plain clothes coppers stop me and want to know why I'm taking photographs of trees. They think that taking photographs of trees is suspicious behaviour and want to see my photographs. I show them my photographs of trees. They take my details and leave me with a stop/search record stating their reason for suspicion being "Seen taking photographs in Spring Gardens as if from behind a tree".
Re-assuring to know the Metropolitan Police Service is keeping tabs on the artistic development of my photographic practice.

A Twisted Type of Silver

Got to show my work as part of a group show at 5th Base Gallery off Brick Lane.
It's hard to be objective about it but I think I would have enjoyed seeing it as a punter, but as it was I got to combine two earlier prints alongside a short film. The other work in the show was all quite intriguing and thoughtful. The text from the show is below.
Big thanks to Jack and Owen who worked super hard putting it all together.

Martin Dixon – Love is Space & Time (i,ii,iii)

Jack Hirons – 3kg of Hay

Jack Hirons – On the Window

Ewa Malgoratza Lachowicz – Collection of Portraits

Owen Lewis – She Never Lost The Things She'd Forgotten

Helena Oliveira – Part of What a Picture is

Frida Petersson – There's a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in

Poppy Roy – The Album Title Was Left Blank

A Twisted Type of Silver

A Twisted Type of Silver, a photo by mdx on Flickr.

A week of mildly melancholic photographs

First up "The anxiety of waiting outside the ICA as the Freedom of Photography talk is just about to begin".

 























There was clearly someone of importance about to get on the Metropolitan Line train at Baker Street.

Somedays you wait on news and know that once you hear it – either way – life will be different.


























The surface of the photograph - one way or another, that's where I seem to be heading for.

Four iPhone Photographs

Driving back to London on the M4 – I'm not sure the eye ever actually sees speed blur like this but maybe it's just hard to tell - you would need to close and then rapidly open and close your eyes again to snatch the split second. I still like the composition of barrier - foreground and background with trees – like the A303 series.

On the Metropolitan line coming back from college using the Hipstamatics' new tintype preset on the iPhone. It doesn't really work that well but I like the sihouette of me taking it – transformed into a billboard advert.

The kids were jumping around on it before – but now the rain had come and it was left alone to its incongrous blueness.

Tintype app on the iPhone Hipstamatic app.

It's a bit like that optical illusion if you cover the left half of the face you get a new face looking right.

Tintype - does it matter how we get there?

A new day and a new effect for the iPhone's Hipstamatic app. This one, the Tintype Snappak, mimics the look of the early Tintype photographic process. http://gear.hipstamatic.com/snappaks/pak_tintype

A photography blog post at the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/photography-blog/2013/mar/01/hipstamatic-smartphone-photo-antonio-olmos sees photojournalist Antonio Olmos using it to explore the city of Derry – a topic he has covered in a more traditional style in the past. He's ambivalent about its use within photojournalism, the instant nostalgic feel coupled with the foregrounding of an aesthetic over the content. But he concludes by stating "in the end, the only thing that matters is the final photograph; how one reached it is not so important" – and that, seems to be the crux of it, whether or not you believe that to be true.

Meanwhile here's a couple of my iphonehipstamatictontypes from a stroll up to the Co-op on Sunday afternoon.

Farewell Subways @ Bricklayers Arms Roundabout

The four subways (north, south, east and west) under the Bricklayers Arms roundabout on the Old Kent Road are due to be closed and filled in from 25th Feb 2013. 

I first got news of this when I saw a set of photographs on flickr by London SE1 http://www.flickr.com/photos/se1website/sets/72157632778040017/with/8478728699/

I live just up the road from the roundabout but have only taken the odd photograph there - but with the urgency of only a week to go I set out to document the tunnels, stairwells, ramps  and the roundabout itself, driven by the poignancy that very soon it would no longer be possible to ever walk through them, and before long they would no longer exist - filled full of concrete.

During my time there over the past week I saw very few people passing through the subways and the park itself was mostly empty save for an occasional gathering of Polish drinkers. The tunnels can be lonely, eerie spaces but I've come to enjoy them, the concrete architecture of the ramps and stairwells and their siting within the roundabout. 

This afternoon a few of us pitched up at the roundabout to mark the closure of the subways - here are Deirdre's photos http://www.flickr.com/photos/mcgale/sets/72157632849435206/with/8503812483/ 

So now that the tunnels are set to close I have to begin to figure out what to do with the stack of photographs and video I've amassed...

And finally here's a film clip from the 70's, flying along from Tower Bridge, down Great Dover Street and at about 1:25 there's the roundabout and the concrete structure of the stairwells and ramps http://www.britishpathe.com/video/air-views-se-london

life amongst the everyday

analogue two

I haven't taken any medium format since the A303 road trip this time last year. I really enjoyed the pace of having the camera on the tripod, taking light readings and slowly considering the framing. And waiting. The colour printing was more of a struggle but it got there in the end.
So now there's no excuse - the camera's ready and the film's not even out of date.

analogue one

I borrowed a Kodak slide projector from college and filled it full of 50 year old slides. There's something particular about watching a slide show; on the one hand there are the memories of being forced to sit through interminable shows of family holidays, but then also the dark room immersion that the projected image offers - compared to a computer screen's glare, the whirr of the fan,  the clunk of the carousel - it's an experience not unlike cinema.

The Brenizer Method

I spent a good part of the weekend working on my CV for college - something I haven't done for over a decade.  Anyhow, more excitingly here's my first attempt at using the Brenizer Method. DD kindly posed in the rain as I took about 20  shots at a wide aperture and then combined them in Photoshop to give a really shallow depth of field that would only be achievable otherwise using medium format. It's been popularised by New York wedding photographer Ryan Breizer and here's details of how to do it.
http://blog.buiphotos.com/2009/07/the-brenizer-method-explained-with-directions/

taking photographs

there is always

another

photograph

to take

and then

another one

after that

Farewell flickr friends – I'm taking a break

It's been creeping up on me for a while – tiredness, a sense of malaise around posting my photographs on flickr. Why do I continue to do it? The familiar cycle of taking photographs, editing, uploading and waiting to see what happens – will anyone 'favourite' them or leave a comment? Shall I spend some time favouriting and commenting back on photographs from my 'flickr friends' or flickr strangers whose images intrigue me? There's a lot that keeps me doing it: the joy of taking pictures nearly every day, making decisions about them and watching them change over time, the grit of practice, of mining away at ideas and having something to do with the images, the inspiration from other photographers work. But the flip side is what's become a borderline addiction, endlessly checking who's commented or favourited on what – and then doing the same back. As an activity it's starting to feel like a distraction – from what I'm not yet sure, but I hope to start to find out. So for the moment it's farewell flickr friends – I'm taking a break –

Drifting

It's been a while since I've written anything – been busy putting together a short film: Appearance, for last term's Screen module at college. I've enjoyed putting it together but it seems that (inevitably?) it's pulled my focus away from photography.

For the last few years I've started the new year with a daily practice of taking a photograph on a specific theme. This year I didn't and I feel somewhat cast adrift.But maybe that's not such a bad thing – a period of drifting......


  

Crossing Borders - A Festival of Plates

These 21 handmade plates are the result on an on-going partnership between UNWRA (United Nations Relief and Work Agency) schools in Gaza and Chelsea Community Hospital School in London.

Here's the full story http://www.scoop.it/t/plate-project

Carry On

So many strands and directions going on with the photography at the moment that it's impossible to keep up with writing about it here. (And why even?) But still – here's a lump of meat that I came across the other day lying on the ground. Being a vegetarian I'm ignorant as to what it is - a chop? pork? lamb? but nevertheless there it was, lying on the ground. I posted the photo on Flickr and called it Street Meat - not the most charming title but evocative enough.

The one thing that does seem to be happening is that different projects and areas of enquiry, whether practical or theoretical, seem to be influencing each other and sometimes in surprising ways.

What to do but carry on!

On the usefulness of blocks

Blocks come in many shapes and sizes and I wish these were the ones annoying me at the moment –  then I could just look the other way. But maybe it's only a question of scale – a block for one might be a stepping stone for another – and they're also quite handy for building up the pressure – and for stopping things from rolling downhill – oh and for building things – OK bring on the blocks.

Analogue – 01

Got a bunch of old films = some colour and some bw. Shot the first film (Agfa XRG 200 ) on a Konica Auto S2. http://mattsclassiccameras.com/konica_autos2.html
I got it developed at snappy snaps to see wether getting the prints, as in days of old, was part of the equation – but it wasn't (tho maybe I should have picked gloss over the not quite matt).  But looking at them scanned there definitely is a particular quality - here looking sharp and contrasty. The blue / green maybe from it being 5six years out of date.