The last few weeks have been full on. Starting with the UCS Arts Faculty student shows, a retrospective by Borin Van Loon in the Freudian Sheep, a pop-up exhibition by UCS photography students in Hoxton, collecting framed work from MF Frames, oh, and throw in working in Newcastle for a few days and an AGM […]
Oiling wheels
Last week was a hectic week. A thoroughly dull and wet bank Holiday saw me erecting my blow up Nova darkroom tent and cleaning and loading dark slides for 37 sheets of film – yes one odd sheet. I also serviced my Toyo 45A as I last used it in March and it is surprising […]
Salon des Refusés
For the third year running I received the Dear Jackie/John email from The NPG National Portrait competition. I doubt I shall bother entering again. I realised in the first submission that I was paying my share of the ‘crowd funding’ to pay off the prize winners. I was singularly unimpressed with the selection last year […]
Edgelands – Collaboration – the way forward
Out of adversity comes opportunity. Recently, a gallery I was after securing to include in my ACE application got knocked back. I decided to ask for the help of the arts liaison officer from Suffolk County Council for galleries that were big enough to hang my work. I got a very good reply with several […]
ARPS
This arrived in the post(email) today. In 1971 I used to write out to ARPS and FRPS judges arranging competitions for the Crosby Camera Club. In those days I was (obviously) a callow youth and I set myself a goal of getting at least an ARPS when I was grown up. Well, I have […]
And now it is all over – Degree show and Free Range 2014
The last 16 days have been a whirlwind of activities and events that have left me breathless. I always knew putting on two degree shows would be hard work by it was much harder than imagined, but also quite slick when all the parts moved together. Building and tearing down Ipswich showed some people in […]
Friendships – one door begins to close and others slide open again
Within two weeks my time as an undergraduate comes to an end. Out of a starting class of 48, we are down to 33 and from that 33 we are down to 23 showing at Free Range and from the overall group I expect that I can maybe count 5 as being people with whom […]
Friday was the best and the worst day
Last Friday was the longest day ever as I waited at home for my very large C-Type prints to arrive from Metro following an exacerbating group meeting about our degree shows. I just had to get out of UCS as fast as possible that day which made the rest of the day arduous to say […]
Metro Imaging Free Range 2014 and Kodak Portra 400
Three years ago I had never used a large format camera apart from watching my dad using his father’s half plate camera. I was fascinated by the roller blind shutter screwed onto the front of the lens , mesmerised by the brass and mahogany and even at the tender age of 10, blown away by […]
Manic weeks and magic drum scanning
The past week has been manic. I took 8 5×4 Portra 400 negatives into Metro Imaging a week ago Tuesday for drum scanning having failed to get the right colour reproduction on inkjet media at UCS. Whether this failure was due to me or the multiple layers of technology that these superb quality […]