Instagram and my best nine of 2017

All my images are posted to Instagram and around this time of year there is an 2017bestnine hashtag that starts to appear.

 So I thought I'd take a look and see what the likes on Instagram picked as my best nine.

 Below is the result.

Instagram best nine 

This is quite different to what I consider to be my best nine of 2017

Click through to larger images

A small project I did over the Summer.

36 views of the Shard
 

British life photography awards - highly commended

The British Life Photography Awards were announced last week and although I didn't win in any of the categories, I did have a photograph placed as highly commended.

This means the image will be part of the exhibition at the Royal Albert Hall for a month starting in January and will be in the accompanying 2017 winners book.

This is the second time I have had a photograph commended by the BLPA.

Love is...never having to put down your phone

Swap Crazy

Since my last post, it seems as print swapping is becoming a bit of a crazy.

Along with the Magnum one, which has now closed; there are two others that have appeared online.

The first is Photography on a postcard which will give the winners a change to be displayed along side artists like, Martin Parr, Dougie Wallace, Homer Sykes and many more well known artists.

Entry is free, and up to images can be entered, and with a shortlist of 200 being exhibited in October. Although not actual a print swap, the public will have a change to buy a ticket which will guarantee a photograph.

The second is part of Hoxton Mini Press' Street London Symposium, The Symposium is a three event over the 18-20 August and part of this is a Print Swap. This one allows up to 5 images to be entered and again a shortlist of 200 will be chosen.

Full details of both events can be found on their websites.

 Joel Meyerowitz exhibition at Beetles+Huxley

Fairs, prints and zines

Ed Templeton @71a London

For the majority of this year. I have felt pretty uninspired when taking pictures. Nothing felt new or interesting, I even started a project to try to make me to go out and shoot images, this has help but is now on hold for a few months but some other inspiring things have come along which I hope will help me to feel good about photography again.

The first of these was the Deadbeat Club's exhibition at 71a London.  The thing I liked was the down and dirty aspect of it, no fancy frames just images either pinned to a wall or hung with bulldog clips. It was all so grungy, so far removed from the usual stuff we would see at Beetles and Huxley or the Photographers gallery. Their whole ethos seems to be go and enjoy the taking of images but also support each other when the time comes.

This is alien to me, as I find photography quite a solitary pastime, I have shot with others but can find this counterproductive as we can spend more time talking than shooting and outside support is only from likes on social media. I am usually happy at looking at my own images and deciding what is good or bad (some may say the're all bad) but sometimes it would be nice to have a second option from people that shoot is the same genre, and have an understand of what you are trying to convey.

Offprint London

The second was Offprint London, an independent and self-publisher book fair held in the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. Along with some high end book by the likes of Daido Moriyama, there were loads of small self published works covering art, writing and especially photography.  There were some pretty random stuff along with run of the mills photo essays, which again got me thinking that there would be no reason for me, not to have a try at producing a small run photozine.

I feel as though images should be more than just 1s and 0s on a computer screen and the best way forward with this is either as prints or zines.

A collection of zines

Prints

My final piece of inspiration comes from a post on the Magnum website about swapping prints with other photographers. Now I know the article is talking about well-known high end photographers and we normal's don't have a chance to swap with them.

But surely within our own social media group this is a possibility, I have read that like click don't really mean that much but surely a like means you like that particular and if offered the change of a print of it, wouldn't you take it?

Print swaps may already be going on and I have join the party later than all the rest.

Art of the brick

Art of the brick are DC Comic book Superheroes and Villains sculptures make from Lego.

There are over 120 artworks, with some standing 2ft high, others larger than life, all made from over 2 million Lego bricks.

 The exhibition is housed in a tent at the back of the Southbank in London.