Work with Derby Arboretum

Working with paper plane Creatives, I have recently taken some photos for a website they are working on for a community project based in Normanton, Derby. All info on the project can be found here until the website goes live.

They supplied me with some of their new marketing material as well as full access around the site on a normal day. I knew roughly where my images were going to be used on the site so I kept that in the back of my mind when shooting. 

These are a few screenshots from the site in its current incomplete state. 

With these two images I knew the logo for the site was going to be on the left of the header so I kept my subjects slightly to the right which I think helps and makes them more consistent. I think the shallow depth of field helps attract all the attention onto the logo on the balloon. 

As this centre id run by deaf people for the deaf community I thought it would be important to show this somehow. The childen came in from the park and started a conversation with the woman behind the till about the price of sweets. I thought this was the perfect chance to show this and took a series of shots throughout the conversation. I felt this was the strongest as you can see exactly what she's saying and the children are engaged with her. 

Instagram

Following on from my use of an iPhone for video. I have also been using it for many quick snap shots. I use an app called Instagram which is a social photography app, after you take a photo there are many preset filters to give it a different and interesting look. The photos can then be liked/commented on in the usual way by the people who "follow" you. 

Its very quick and easy and for this reason I've found myself using it quite a bit and getting some rather good results. Here are some of my favourite images from the past month or two. You will notice that all the images are square in format and have had different filters applied. I have never taken great care in which filters I have used, I simply decide which looks best at first glance. The phone saves the original images so I can always fall back on that at a later date if I need to.

 Bracknell train station.

Mode BMX store, Derby 

McDonalds light fixture

 Vice magazine, Oakford social club, Reading

Sophie.

 Desperados, The Blessington Carriage, Derby

Piano Busker, Reading

Goalpost project

Recently I have started a project simply on footballs fields in public parks. It was the way in which the goals sat inside each other which caught my eye one day, and after shooting a few test shots it became obvious that it was a very strong angle. When I started viewing them all together I realised that because most of the goals themselves are roughly the same it was the landscape and horizon around them that were what was making it interesting. 

I went round and got at least one shot from all the local parks round here with the general set up, although I did not take a tripod I made sure that i kept the camera at a roughly consistent height to keep the horizon line in check. Unfortunately I do not have a copy of my contact sheet to hand to scan in, but when viewed like that you can see just how neat the horizon looks across 36 frames. 

Also as they are film prints, and I do not own a negative scanner, and my actual print scanner is out for repair, the best I can do to get them on here is to photograph each photo with a digital camera. This obviously means they are not very good quality and have marks and some bits of dust on them. Though, I decided this was better than nothing! The actual prints were printed on Illford Fiberbased paper so they have really strong deep blacks and a nice matte finish. 

Here are a selection of the top 5.

Something different

I recently purchased a new iPhone 4s which shoots both 8megapixel stills and 1080p quality video. For once rather than focus on the stills I decided to test out the video on the phone. I just wanted a quick and easy idea so I found a song made by a friend of mine and decided to make an video that could accompany it. I wasn't think of it as a "music video" but more a balanced than that, as in, both the audio and video were equally important. 

I simply filmed much of my day while travelling to and from work which I currently do every week. It was all shot handheld with no extra lighting of equipment. Though it is by no means perfect I am happy with the result and it has sparked an interest in moving photography as well as conventional stills. 

The video can be viewed here. There are some issues with sound (A constant popping sounds, due to the sound levels when it was exported I believe) but the overall message is still clear.