Photo24

I'm writing this on Monday 2nd July roughly 2 days after photo24, I'm still feeling the effects of being up for nearly 24 hours. I guess I did around 18 or the 24. My scanner is working away in the background, scanner the negatives from the roll of cinestill 800 I shot, over the 24 hours. 

 

I had some technical issues with my digital camera, which I'll go into, so I ended up relying more on my film camera and shot through the cinestill a lot quicker than I imagined.

I also used a roll of lomo 400 colour film, which I had to push 2 stop to 1600 as I was be now shooting in very low light.

The lomo film will probably have to be sent away because I don't think snappy snaps or Jessops can do pushed film, so I'll have to look into finding somewhere to send that away too.

The cinestill images look to be pretty good, I shot about half the roll on the steampunk people in banksy tunnel along with some of the graffiti down there and later in the evening photographing people spinning fire down on the Thames close to the Oxo tower. The lomo film has the tail end of the fire spinners but it maybe a couple of weeks before I see the results of the particular film.

Stempunk, Cinestill 800

Fire spinner Oxo Tower beach

The issue I had with my digital camera was that the batteries for it are not that powerful and so I usually carry 4 with me.  Which when all fully charge I probably get a couple of days shooting with, but for some reason 2 of the batteries didn't seem to charge, which I didn't find out until I was a few hours into photo24 so this only left me with 2 batteries which I more or less burnt through by 11 o clock in the evening.

Luckily enough I live close enough to London that I was able to get the last train home and manager to get the batteries charged over the next few hours. And I was able to to get back on into London for about 6 the next morning.

The heat was a major problem as it just seemed to be hot all the time, even in the late evening, I was glad I had decide to only take one digital camera and one film camera and the minimum amount of equipment I needed. There did seem to  be a lot of people carrying big heavy packs and a lot of equipment which did seem to weigh them down.

During the 24 hours there was an hourly challenge, each hour there was a theme set and the images were to be uploaded to the photo24 Facebook page, I did enter a few images in some of the categories as there was the chance to win £1500 worth of Fujifilm equipment. Unfortunately none of my images made the shortlist.  There are 2 more competitions with are best street scene and best london scene, I can enter up to 6 images in both but as yet I haven't decided if I have anything worth entering yet but again both of these have a chance of winning £1500 of Fujifilm equipment.

Legs

The event ended at a hotel on the Southbank with the announcement of the 24 hours challenge winner and all the people who finished got a t-shirt. 

The whole experience of photo24 was quite good, I got to meet some new people to shot along with and although I never stay with anyone in particular it was good bumping into other photographers and having a chat while out and about. I will definitely think about doing it again next year, if selected and now know how things work I'll probably do things a little differently.

So that's the end of my photo24 for this year, I know I said I would try to record some pieces while out but there was so much going on that I just didn't have time.

Keeping up to date

I really try to keep this blog up to date but life gets in the way.

Since the last post; I have managed to get a place on Photo24, so the end of June will see me tramping the streets of London.

Pop that spot

I made a trip to Dublin but didn't shoot a great deal, mainly because it was a family holiday and the weather wasn't that great.

I also had another try at 'Workshops', this time over on Google+.  There are a great many photographers on G+ and some have banded together to form what is called the The G+ mentorship program for photographers. The mentorship I was on was called finding your vision: street photography.

The way it works is that a community is set up and each week for a period of eight weeks, you are given assignments by the teacher who has experience of that particular genre. For each week you then post a selection of images and then receive feedback.

As we all know most people don't like to be critical of others images, so  feedback can be a bit skewed. I don't want to bash this like the other 'workshop' I did, as I did get something out of this one, and it was free and the people running it give up they time freely.

I just think I'm not cutout for doing workshops, I'm not even sure that street photographers need workshops, did Cartier-Besson, Winogrand, Erwitt, Friedlander, Leiter, Meyerowitz, Arbus, Levitt the list is endless, ever go on street photography workshops.

NOT a double exposure, reflections in a window

Also for a bit of fun I have joined in was a film challenge, its a double exposure challenge, there are about 14 people involved.  The idea is that you are paired up with another photographer and you both shoot on the same roll of film.  I have already shot my 36 exposures and have send the roll to my partner, I'm just waiting on him to shoot his and then get the roll developed.

Always on the lookout

I'm always on the lookout for new things to try or to get involved with photographically.

Last year; I saw an event called Photo24 but when I saw it, the date for registration had already passed. Yes; I could probably do it own my own but it's always better to do it with like minded people.

Photo24 has just announced the dates for this year, 29/30 June, with registration opening on the 12 March. The event is usually over subscribed and there is a ballot for entry.

While it is a 24 hour event, you don't have to do the whole 24 hours but being London there should be plenty of things to do in the wee hours especially riding the night tube.

Hopefully I can secure a place in the ballot.

On the lookout

Leegate. Welcome to Britain's worst shopping district

In 2010 Leegate was dubbed the worst shopping precinct in the U.K.

 In the intervening eight years, not much has changed.

 In 2016 the site was given a green light for re-development, with ASDA on board to build a supermarket and 229 new homes, a community centre, pub and a gym.

 Last Summer it was announced that the development agreement with ASDA had expired and ASDA, and they had taken the opportunity to withdraw from the scheme.

The owners of Leegate, St. Modwen did come up with alternative plans but it now seems that all plans have been put on hold until March 2019 as, the representative of St. Modwen has said that 'anything could happen'  and we all know what is happening in March 2019.

It looks like Leegate can hold on to it unwanted title for a bit longer.


This is my project shot over a few weekends in Leegate.

Olympus mju zoom

Olympus mju zoom 105

My collection of film cameras has grow again, this time with an Olympus mju zoom 105.  This one was 'found' in the back of a cupboard indoors.

The camera came out in 1995, which is probably when we bought it, and it did get a lot of use until we bought our first digital camera.

Its DX coded from 50-3200 which means I can easily shoot with a nice fast film and shutter speeds range from up to 1/500.

When I found it, it already had a roll of film in it and the counter showed 2 plus I could see that it was 24  exp 200 iso but apart from that I knew nothing else about the film.

I took the camera out yesterday to look toi finish up the roll and see about getting it developed, although the counter showed 2 is was totally wrong as I only managed 5 or 6 shots before it started to rewind.

To my surprise when opening the camera I found the the film inside was a roll of Colorama. As far as I remember, this was given as a free roll every time you had a film developed at the chemist.

So I have no idea how long that film has been in the camera and apart from the 5-6 shots I took yesterday, what else is on the roll.  Only time will tell if the film is any good or not.

As for the camera itself, all looks to be working fine and give my another oprion for shooting film.

Talking of film; I also picked up 3 rolls of Lomography 400 colour negative film for the next One Film outing in March.

400