Friday night into Saturday morning saw me join the 4am Project walk in central Birmingham where photographers took photos of the city at that rather odd hour. Here’s my slideshow:
We took in New Street Station (where tripods are normally not allowed) for a bit before heading to the slightly discombobulating bustle of the Wholesale Markets. We then finished with breakfast at the cafe there which was aburdly bountiful.
About 32 people came along, according to Matt’s quick headcount, which would have been an impressive number had it happened at a more sensible time of day and is astonishing for 4am. And that was just for the Birmingham walk. By 8am I was seeing photos coming in from Birmingham, Leeds, Sydney, London, Watford, Harrow, Shanghai, S. Africa, Moscow and Singapore and they continued throughout the weekend.
The whole thing was the brainchild of Karen Strunks who did that marvelous thing of keeping it focussed and organised in a way that let as many people as possible get involved and feel part of it. Top stuff Karen. Can’t wait to see what you do next!
On my last day in Austin I had a few hours to kill before the flight so popped down to South Congress where there are shops that sell weird stuff including some rather, dare I say it, awesome junk stores. One of the smaller ones had a few cameras and lenses and I spotted something rather curious – a triangle prism with a 49mm thread. I couldn’t for the life of me remember what the thread on my 50mm prime is (turns out it’s 52mm…) but figured I might be able to use it for something.
Today, while tinkering with cameras to clear the mind, I brought it into the orbit of the TTV contraption. While the thread on the S7000 is a slightly kooky 46.8mm the prism did slide rather snugly on the outside of the barrel. So I popped it on, shoved it into the ‘trap and took this baby:
Yup, that’ll work.
Later that night I was attending the opening of the Stan’s Cafe warehouse. More on that later as it’s very interesting indeed but since I’d TTV’d their Rice Show it made sense to give the new toy a spin there.
For some reason I feel the need to make it clear that these were not montaged in Photoshop or anything. The composition is as it came out of the camera. I just cropped to a square and messed with the colour and contrast.
The explanation for the resurgence of my Through the Viewfinder habit became apparent this weekend. A few months ago Stuart, aka Harri B on Flickr, asked me and a couple of other people he knew from there to photograph his wedding to Michelle. Since Stu was the guy who first introduced TTV to the West Midlands after which I became seriously hooked on the technique it was a given that I’d be dusting off the contraption. Here’s the set which works rather well as a slideshow.
I’m particularly pleased with this one, capturing Stu dancing the dance of wedded joy.
I’ve already had another request to shoot a wedding in this way so may have stumbled upon a niche here. Not that I’ll be worrying my professional wedding photographer chums too much but if you fancy some fucked-up, blown-out, dirty square photos of your special day then do get in touch.
In which I realise I’ve been a bad blogger and start a process of daily blogging about whatever I’ve been up to, principally for the benefit of my mother.
Been ill these last few days with a throat infection, as followers of my Twitter will no doubt be aware. Twitter is great for moaning about such things without worrying that you’re really annoying anyone – Pete’s ill, skim! – but it did bring a couple of angels to my door armed with soup and friendship, so thanks angels.
Woke up this morning with a bit of a stab in the neck area but after a brief doze it had gone by noon which was promising and after a fairly active day it looks like the sickness has passed. Hooray! Now I have to get back to work. Boo! But I like my work so that’s okay.
After a few hours catching up on stuff, mainly Custard Factory blogging since that’s my main bread-winning activity right now, it was off to Digbeth for the launch of The Secret Garden, a fascinating art installation on a pointless patch of land on Floodgate St that has been overgrown for 15 years. Three artists have cleared it and are using shipping containers and existing structures to do art and that. I only had a few minutes to hang there but I liked what I saw and shot some TTV.
Then it was off to the TIC to give a talk with Stef on Web 2.0 for the Creative Networks gang. It was being filmed so should emerge online at some point in the hopefully not to distant future (though I note the Soweto Kinch talk from last month isn’t online yet…) so I won’t try and summarize it here but I felt it went fairly well. It’s nice doing talks with Stef as we’re coming from the same mindset but from completely different directions, if that makes sense, so we keep each other in check, but I’m thinking I’d like to develop a series of these on my own as there’s only so much you can cover in an hour and we never seem to cover enough of it. I’m thinking a weekly course of six seminars going into some depth. Just need to find a venue…
I haven’t been taking my Through the Viewfinder contraption out much of later. In fact since the blogging took off I’ve hardly been taking any photos of note and it’s something I want to correct this year. So a day of Fierce Festival shenanigans seemed the perfect excuse to get out and do some art with my camera. Here’s a few portraits I’m pretty pleased with.
This is the personal blog and main internet hub-thing for Pete Ashton. What you'll find here is a seemingly random collection of stuff I want to talk about and share. If you want to know where I'm coming from you'd do worse that check the about page.
Twitter dump
I have a separate Twitter account, @petepump, which, if you follow, will alert you when I write a new post here or on ASH-10.com. YMMV.
Friendfeed
I'm not an active user of FF (to be honest I'm not sure how using it sustainably is possible) but if you like your social media in crack cocaine form here's all my stuff.
Like most people I spread my stuff around a bit so if this blog goes quiet I'm probably burbling away somewhere else on the Internets. Here are the places you'll most likely find me. (Be aware that how I use these spaces will change over time.)
TTV Photography
I've been taking Through the Viewfinder photos since 2006 and this is where I talk about my practice and sell prints of my work. During 2010 I'm using this as a case study to see whether I can make a living by promoting my work through my blog.
ASH-10
This is my business blog where I give advice related to the social internet and blogging. It's working so far. It also serves to keep my witterings about social media and blogging in one place meaning if you find all that stuff deathly dull you don't have to avoid it here. And if you can't get enough of me imparting my decade-ish of experience it's all in one handy spot. Win!
Twitter
This is where most of my online social life happens. Follow me and you'll know what I'm doing and what I'm thinking. Or at least what I want you know I'm doing and thinking.
Flickr
More than 7,000 photos at the last count, some of them rather good. All my photos go here before being used elsewhere and while I'm not as active socially there as I was I do pop in to the Birmingham group occasionally.
Tumblr
My Tumblr, aka the Smursh, is probably my favourite blog as it's the most pure. A scrapbook of cool stuff I find online from videos to pictures to anything at all.
Facebook
I don't use Facebook that much, but I do check in very occasionally.
Delicious
This is where I dump all the links to interesting pages I find (as opposed to videos and images which go on the Smursh). These are then syndicated to my various blogs, or not if they're not suitable. So following my Delicious isn't really necessary but using it as a tagged archive of stuff would work.
Others
Given the nature of what I do I'm always trying out new services but they tend not to stick. As a rule my activities spiral out from this blog to the above and then into other arenas.
