The Demon ..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"It was a hot afternoon, the last day of June, and the sun was a demon .. "

At 13 years old I'm not quite sure I knew what was going on in Bobby Goldsboro's gorgeous 1973 hit 'Summer (The first time)' - at that age the only thing I'd ever been seduced by was the Kodak Instamatic - but I can certainly relate to his comments about today's excessive heatwave. "One ten in the shade .." sings Bobby and, after a quick click on a conversion website, I can tell you it's almost exactly that .. 42.9 degrees centigrade actually .. in our back garden this afternoon. I'll bet the sweat's "trickling down" the front of quite a few gowns today, but surely there can't be many people planning a night of steamy passion in this weather? Maybe there are. Perhaps it's an age thing again .. !

 Ps: Feeling the heat in Manchester. I used to cross this square almost every day when I went to the offices of the Manchester Evening News. It's all been built on now, the sun-worshippers have to look elsewhere. One of my Olympus XA shots from the 1980s.

 

 

 

 

It's an age thing ..

 

 

 

 

 

 

Funny to think Rod Stewart will be playing Glastonbury today. I mean, who the hell wants to see an 80 year old geezer up on stage, reeling out his 'hits' for an audience one quarter his age? And then I have to come clean. Last weekend I skipped over to Manchester to see one of my all-time favourites, good ol' Charlie Harper from punk band UK Subs. At 81 he's even older than Rod but, oh boy, you wouldn't know it. Beer in hand, he belts out songs that first saw the light of day when I was 18, way back in the 1970s. (And if that's what punk and alcohol do for you, then I'm glad I signed up early!) It's just a matter of taste, isn't it? I wouldn't dream of standing in a crowd of 100,000 to watch a screen showing an old fart a quarter of a mile away, but stick me in front of Charlie in a small venue of a couple of hundred punters and I'm in heaven ..

I genuinely dropped upon this photograph this morning, a picture I did of Rod at Manchester City's old Maine Road ground back in the .. 90s? (I'm compiling a set of images for a talk I'm giving next Saturday and there he was, along with a bevy of other 'famous' people in a folder I named 'Slebs'!) I'd forgotten I'd taken it, much as I forget a lot of things these days. It's an age thing ..

Ps: My informal talk 'A life in Press Photography' will take place at GALERIE 16 in Chef-Boutonne at 11 on Saturday. Please come along, if you can remember ..

Blowing my own ..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's been three months since I last wrote a blog, and I can only apologise to those of you who have been waiting patiently for a new post. (Anyone?) I'd like to say this hiatus was because I was paddling up the Amazon or zoning out on a Tibetan hill-top retreat, but the boring fact is I changed computers and couldn't work out how to log onto the site again ..

Having sorted it, I was amazed when I got back online. Instead of having to dust down my page or brush away the digital cobwebs, I find my blog has been doing quite nicely in my absence. Very nicely indeed, I have to say.  In fact, in the past week alone it has had over 9,000 hits (Four thousand of them from Brazil astonishingly, and another thousand from Vietnam .. !!) How delightful! Thank you very much. Obrigado. Cảm ơn ..

Now, the question is, do I fill you in on what's happened since March or just skip lightly along and start again from today? I think I'll just move on .. you won't want to hear about my book sales or my upcoming photography talk or an email that came in just this week thanking me for my "amazing work documenting Eccles". Oh yes, it may have been three months, but I'm as keen as ever to blow my own  ..    

 

 

God bless Kath Smith ..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do any of you remember the indomitable Kath Smith, the wonder-swirl of a fund-raiser for the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital? She raised something like a million and a half quid for equipment used in the treatment of kids there. Not bad for someone who didn't even begin her charity work 'til she was in her late 60s. (She even convinced Cliff Richard to donate a pair of his trousers to raffle!) Poor old Kath died many years ago, but she lives on in a photograph I've just unearthed, in which she's roped in a couple of elephants for a PR stunt ..

God bless you, Kath Smith! 

Spring has sprung ..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 My calendar tells me today is the first day of Spring, even though I've always thought of that as being March 21st. But hey ho, an extra day of the new season is always a good thing, eh?

Today's shot was taken on 6x6cm colour transparency film, from a series of landscape photographs I was working on in the 1980s. Hard to imagine now, isn't it? A mere twelve shots on a roll of film, a trip to the processing lab and a wait for the results to see if you'd 'got it right'. I was a really slow convert to digital photography, but now I can't imagine shooting any other way. Like the arrival of Spring, it really did bring in a whole new way of life .. 

Joy Division ..

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's now forty-six years since I took these pictures of Joy Division, and I post them again in memory of Ian Curtis. Here's a little video I made of my photographs ..

Read on ..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today is 'Je lis' day in France. (I read!) And it has delighted me to see that my blog is still read a lot (3.7k visitors last week), even though I don't put up as many posts as I used to. But why do I blog? I was asked the question over a lovely dinner this weekend. "Because I like writing," I answered, and I felt for the most part that was true. However, just a few years back, my response would have been 'To promote my work' and I realise now that's still true, too. What Princess Anne has to do with it I have no idea, but I thought I'd show you one of the earliest 'Royal' pictures I ever shot - Autumn, 1978.

Anyway ..  (Here comes the commercial break) .. can I interest you in reading one of my books?