Fag break..

This is one of my favourite photographs from the March installment of Twelve for '13. A moment within a moment! It's Christmas, at a swanky dinner - I actually remember it was at Buile Hill Park, in Salford - and this waitress has just finished setting her places. It's time for a fag! Imagine that! Never mind smoking indoors - that's the first moment captured - but lighting up right there and then 'at work' as it were! You can even see from her expression that she knows she's pushing it a bit! And the second moment? Well, she looks like she's just about to get a right royal rollicking from the lady zooming in from the right! Her supervisor, maybe? "Put that out, Gladys!.." you can imagine her shouting! "How very dare you!"

Ah, the eighties! And wow, the Olympus XA! What a camera that was! It did a really good job of capturing those instants, in low light .. on film. The shots I took with it make up my book Don't Miss This, and this image sums up the ethos of that book perfectly. In every picture there's something else happening, something you mustn't miss! I highly recommend you don't miss out on a copy!

Unmissable..

I was over in Leeds last night for the launch of two new exhibitions, and had my copy of one of the photographers' books signed whilst I was there. All the talk of books yesterday got me really excited again about mine, and I put a new page online to try to promote them. If you've not heard of them - really? - they're called Don't Miss This and Don't Miss That! THIS is a collection of shots taken in the early 1980s with an Olympus XA, a camera I fell in love with as soon as I saw it advertised in Amateur Photographer, and THAT is very much related to my recent exhibition 'Salford - Down the line' in that it's a set of images taken before I became a professional photographer, so some of the photographs go back to about 1975. THIS has a foreword by Gallery owner and curator Laura Noble, and was actually taken up by the Photographers Gallery and sold in their bookshop in London. I guess I'll never make a fortune from either book, but they've been a real labour of love and it would be great if more people added them to their collections.

It's all passing me by..

How weird last night to have no football to watch although, to be honest, I'm kinda glad I've no longer got an interest in Euro 2012. Apart from anything, it was costing me a fortune. It's those bloody ads on ITV, isn't it? I just can't help myself! I've already put down-payments on an Audi, a Qashquai and two Citroens, lost four thousand quid on online betting and picked me out two of those tasty little brown Macdonalds player escort kids to adopt over the coming winter! I just wish, wish, wish I could get excited about the Olympiczzz now or hey, even the tennis, but I can't and I feel such a failure! I mean, think of all the people that are turning out just to watch the Olypiczzz torch. They can even get excited about a lit stick being jogged past 'em? It's beyond me!

I've had an offer from a magazine to review my book 'Don't Miss This' .. a copy's going off in the post to them today so stay tooned! Today's photograph is another one of my Olympus XA shots. Remembrance Day parade, circa 1985.

Happy Tuesday, folks!

It's X10 time....

My new camera's arrived! I spent £400, waited almost a week for delivery and then shot .. flowers, a glove, and a photo for my 'Seen..' Flickr project!  D'ya think I'm stuck in my ways?? Seriously, it's so exciting to finally get my hands on this little beauty - the Fuji X10! It has a silent shutter and a 'normal' viewfinder, so it's going to be fantastic for all those sneaky Wedding shots! It takes me back to the first time I saw the original magazine ads for the Olympus XA in about 1981. I just had to have one, and I've felt the same about this camera ever since it came out. And who knows where my work with it will lead? My Olympus photographs got me on TV, got me to the finals of national photographic competitions .. and got me a self-published book called Don't Miss This, that went on to be stocked at The Photographers' Gallery. Bring it on, X10!..

Timeless...

There's not enough time in the world for the millions of things I've got to do, yet I still keep getting deliciously distracted by my Olympus XA project. I seem to be magically drawn to my scanner and my box of old negatives, and newly discovered 'old' photographs keep appearing from the archive. It's fantastic! What a wonderful little camera that was! I've already published 'Don't Miss This' as a collection of the work, but as I keep finding new images I can feel another volume coming on.. Watch this space, as they say!
Now, what was I doing? I seem to have run out of time...

One hell of a hangover..

They say the best camera in the world is the one you have with you, and for a good ten years from the eighties I always carried an Olympus XA camera with me wherever I went - including the loo! So, here's a shot for all you 'Office Party' boozers who might be feeling a little down and out this morning, because the makers of my little camera are feeling a little under the weather today too, as they sway from the hangover of an alleged $1.5bn deception! I really hope they survive, even if they're bought by Fuji (Another favourite brand of mine) and I for one will raise a glass when the whole sordid affair is over and done with...

PS: The shot was one of the images that didn't make it into my collection of Olympus XA photographs. It's a book called 'Don't Miss This' and, hey, it would make an ideal Christmas present for the photographer in your life!
Cheers!
Hic!

Do you fancy a..?

Such a lot of bad news going around, so I thought I'd give you a laugh! This is an old Olympus XA shot from my 'Don't Miss This' period, shot on Church Street in my home town of Eccles. I haven't been down there in ages, though I remember that the last time I visited, a very helpful 'local' came up to me and suggested I "don't wave a camera around round here!"....

Anyway, busy making a new Jorgensen Wedding today. I absolutely love them! They're so classic in their design - plain and simple, prints under black mattes, job done! The Wedding in question was at Manchester Town Hall in May and, ironically, Saturday's bride, Wendy, has been looking at those photographs online since they went up. By my reckoning that means I'll be making her album next May, and that'll be another year gone!

Oh, one more thing! I've re-re-jigged my Wedding Photography video for YouTube, and it's finally viewable on those new-fangled Smartphones whatjummies.... Have a look, if you fancy it!

All human life...

So, the News of the World shuts up shop today! Never thought I'd be able to say that, and, despite the circumstances, it's awful to think that a whole heap of journalists and photographers are going to be out on their ears! Apart from that .. good riddance! Anyway, it gives me a chance to put up one of my favourite photographs, in which you can just glimpse, at top left, the newspaper's catch-phrase 'All human life is there' .
The picture is from my book 'Don't Miss This'...and I sure won't miss the News of the Screws!

Look at that...

Cock-a-hoop today, because I've received a compliment from one of my 'hero' photographers! I've liked the work of American photographer Bill Dane since I 'discovered' him in the early eighties, and over the past few days we've been exchanging emails in which he's said some very kind things about my documentary photography! Ironically, a lot of it is the book 'Don't Miss This' that I blogged about yesterday. so I'm hoping it'll lead to something happening with the work in the future.

Busy, busy at the mo....lots of Jorgensen albums to make, and some nice PR work coming in, too!
I've also had a dig back into my Florescence work, and have decided to add one or two more shots to the collection! More to come on that...

Here comes the commercial break...

Right! Down to the nitty-gritty!
Today, folks, I am offering you - yes, you! - the chance to own one of the last original copies of my first ever self-published book 'Don't Miss This'. First published in 2008, it is a hard-back collection of 83 of the black and white shots I took in the 80's using my old Olympus XA 35mm camera, and is full of humour, quirky observation and, after over 25 years, plain old nostalgia!
It features a foreword by Laura Noble, of the Diemar/Noble gallery in London (who says it's dead, dead good, so there!) and was stocked at The Photographers' Gallery until its closure for refurbishment.
Anyway, folks, there are only TEN copies of this book left, and one can be all yours for a mere twenty squids plus postage. Why wouldn't ya?

Jesus!

No sign of June bursting out all over yet, but my Blog Stats sure as hell are!   I had 994 readers last month, which is really quite amazing, and I don't even care if 991 of 'em are my Mum!
Just to think that people that I don't know have made an active effort to read what I write is quite, quite flattering! I mean, we're talking everywhere from Iraq to China via Turkey, Russia and The Netherlands.
Seriously, thank you for the interest, everybody!

One of those 'Stuck in front of the computer' days today, as I sort through Wedding photographs and start to prepare new albums. One of 'my brides' from two years ago has finally delivered her picture choices, and it's amazing to look back even just two short years to notice changes in my ways of working.
For a start, I get the shots in focus these days! Only joking!

Talking about trips back in time, here's one of my Olympus XA shots from my book Don't Miss This!
Where did all those years go? Jesus!