28 Jun 07 To Market and Stuff
Unfortunately I haven’t taken time to write here lately, mostly because I’ve been busy with many photography-related things.
As I believe I mentioned before, I am a member of the London Independent Photography organisation. Apart from participating in a few workshops with the group I also design and maintain the organisation’s website and am part of the committee. The website work comes in spurts but is quite involved and fun to do.
To satisfy my entrepreneurial spirit I have so far turned out to sell prints at market three times - twice at Spitalfields and once at Greenwich. It takes some practice and hard work to perfect presentation at a market stall, since they are rented either as very bare-boned, unsightly tables or weather-beaten standup display panels. Thankfully I have been working with a partner and two minds solve these challenges better than one! Our two Fridays at Spitalfields were very slow for trade but allowed us to work out most of the display glitches that we needed to.
Our Greenwich Market experience was phenomenally fun, busy and fruitful and the satisfaction of selling a print makes up for all troubles that come with being a market vendor! We will be back at Greenwich on the next two Sundays and prepared better than ever to make sales…. currently the second bedroom at home resembles an assembly line / inventory warehouse ;)
My market partner and I also have a small exhibition hanging on a lovely brick wall in a cafe in Clerkenwell at the moment. It’s an especially nice spot considering the busy clientele of graphic designers and media people working in the area. We hung the pieces Sunday and by Monday morning my partner had already made a sale, so it was a fine start indeed.
Other random stuff going on: The LIP annual group exhibition is approaching fast and I will need to work out my submissions for that shortly; I am revamping my own website to function more as a portfolio, including some fashion portrait images; I have been assisting another photographer to edit his book about London’s West End which has 80ish photographs.
Now I just need to get out and take more pictures…
6 Nov 06 right then
I’ve just finished a bath that I think has soaked off the month of October!
:D Feeling good.
I promised to show the photos that were selected for the exhibition. Here they are:
To keep up with my latest street documentary photos visit my photo home page.
22 Sep 06 Love in Trafalgar Square
19 Sep 06 Photo Exhibition!
Some exciting news… Two prints of mine have been selected for the London Independent Photography annual exhibition! It’s the first time I’ll have framed work on public display, so it’s quite a thrill, really. I look forward to meeting the other photographers and seeing their images in the show. The details:
London Independent Photography’s 18th Annual Photographic Exhibition
Sunday 15 October - Saturday 28 October 2006
Cottons Atrium at Hay’s Galleria, Southwark (map)
Free admissionRichard Sadler FRPS and Sara Macintosh MA, both of whom have a keen professional eye for exciting, intriguing and engaging work, have selected entries for this 18th annual exhibition, which showcases the best independent photography in London.
21 May 06 Barcelona
Last week I returned from a quick four-day trip to Barcelona to meet up with my Vancouver (now Prince George) friend Jen Hawke and her mom. They spent nearly three weeks on their travels, spending most time in Barcelona and Paris. Both were kind enough to share with me their lovely, comfy room at Hostal Palacios in the city center.
Unfortunately before I arrived, Jen had her purse stolen while eating at a restaurant. Barcelona is apparently notorious for this kind of theft and of course tourists make perfect targets, no matter how careful you are (and she was). By the time I arrived her spirit was up though, and she got on marvelously with enjoying the trip.
At the outset, aside from the language, Barcelona didn’t seem so different from Paris. I did my best to speak the bits of Spanish I practiced on the flight over and I’m keen to get on with learning it for my next visit to Spain!
The afternoon I arrived Jen and I sat on a patio on the Rambla (a busy tourist street) and sipped the most enormous Sangrias you could imagine - 2 litres of watered-down fruit punch with an inch of sugar settled at the bottom of the glass. We did feel a little tipsy afterward, but that was likely just a king-sized sugar high! The street we were on is lined with market stalls selling unusual wares: rabbits, ferrets, mice, birds, turkeys… caged critters up for grabs to anyone with euros in hand. Strange indeed.
By far the top highlight in Barcelona that we encountered is touring the architectural design works of Antoni Gaudi. All in one day we visited Casa Batllo, Parc Guell, and Sagrada Familia, which is still under construction after more than 120 years! It was a fascinating, fantastic experience to wander through the world of such an incredibly unique artist, and entirely on its own worth the trip to Barcelona.
The gothic quarter is made up of a maze of narrow streets now gaping with trendy shops. We wandered often through that area, we dined on some delicious Catalonian home-style cooking and tapas and did some shopping (which for me was entirely window). I continued my ‘foreign city haircut effort’ and let the hipster stylist at La Pelu have his way, resulting in a tamer version of what Jen and I termed the “Barcelona Mullet”. It’s working out quite well :)
One morning we wall ventured by train to Figueres to visit the Salvador Dali museum, which presented the opportunity to soak in some ‘country’ landscape and experience a smaller town. We were glad to make the trip, but I think many paintings I wished to see are actually located in Florida of all places.
Since returning I had to photograph a theme project for my Street Photography workshop at Tate Modern, which finished yesterday. The theme I chose was “Lunch” and you can view the photos in this slideshow (on flickr). The consensus of others in the workshop was that I’ve got plenty of nerve taking close shots of strangers in public. Some days that’s true…
GET FED: 