Hello me ..

I met Martin O'Neill yesterday! What a nice guy! Tall, young, thick-set, bearded .. with a paint-brush! Turns out I'm not the only Martin O'Neill in the village - to coin a phrase! - and when I learnt that there was another one knocking about I thought it might make quite a good 'wheeze' for the local paper. And so it was that Martin O'Neill the painter and decorator met up with yours truly for a photo-shoot with the Warrington Guardian and here we are, hamming it up for the camera.
I'm on the left, by the way!!..

Chatting with the snapper from the 'paper, it was a shock when he told me that, after yet another round of redundancies, he and one other photographer are the only snappers left to cover the whole of the titles' distribution area. When I worked for the Warrington Guardian series there were nine of us! Nine! If things get any worse for photographers my new-found pal might not be the only decorator in the village!...    

This modelling life ..

I had another model shoot at the studio last week - this time for a young lady who wanted a new set of Head-Shots - but today it's my turn to be in front of the camera as a snapper from the Warrington Guardian is coming down to take my photograph... with Martin O'Neill! Yep, I'm being photographed with me! Catch up with the blog tomorrow - I'll explain everything ..

Martin O'Neill ..

Well I suppose I had to come clean sometime ..

You see, the photography's not going so well these days, so I've had to set up as .. a painter and decorator! Naaaah! 'Course not! I'm a photographer 'til the end but hey, how funny is this? There's a young lad in the village who does work as a painter and decorator and I spotted his cards next to mine in the shopping mall card rack yesterday! Maybe we should team up. He makes the rooms look good and I shoot 'em! We'd only need that footy bloke to join us and we'd have the set!..

Foopball ..

So, off I go to the Republic of Ireland! With Roy Keane! Ok, not the me Martin O'Neill, the football manager Martin O'Neill and it's ironic I'll .. I mean he'll .. be working with Roy Keane, as I go back long enough to have actually photographed Keane's signing for Man U when I was a press photographer! The MEN got an exclusive, so it was just me and him at, I think, The Cliff, in Salford. Cripes, that was 20 years ago! I remember shaking his hand and wishing him good luck! I think it worked for him .. ho ho!

Anyway, I can't show you that photograph, as it went the way of all negatives at the Manchester Evening News, and will never be seen again! And, seeing as I'm not the mostly footbally photographer in the world, I have very little to offer in the way of other footy photos, so you'll have to make do with this picture of Alex Stepney, shot when he signed for .. Altrincham! .. towards the end of his career. I just missed him giving me the 'V's as I'd just shouted at him during the game! Sorry, Alex!..

Oh, Foopball? If you've ever read Molesworth then any fule kno that's how he phonetically spells the word. Try it! It works ..

Ha! Stop Press: http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/2000-ebay-bidding-starts-roy-6281073

#pressphotography, #prphotography, #ManchesterUnited  

Decisions, decisions...

Do you know, I just might pack up this photography lark and go and be the Manager at Sunderland! Just can't make up my mind!..

Oh, plop!...

Things are looking up, and quite often down, too, in the latest additions to my FlickrPix sets!

I, being the consummate professional photographer, always carry a compact camera wherever I go, and am forever seeing photographs to take when I'm on my travels. Trouble is, I never do anything with them, so my new set of shots, called Seen... aims to put that right. I've put up the first of what will undoubtedly be many shots of random, amusing observations .. nothing heavy, meaningful or, hey, likely to make me any money, but fun to look at, all the same. One of my favourites is a sign in a pub, promoting a gig there. Midnight Johnny, here next Monday, it says.. at 8pm!

I'm a Protographer!...

There seems to be a real fashion for desaturated images at the moment! Ironic when you think people are spending a fortune on cameras that are designed to capture so much colour and intensity! However, when in Rome...


A pal of mine is having a new website designed at the moment, and he asked me to check out the front page. I noticed the web designer has spelt photographer as Protographer. I don't know if that's a word but I'm having it!...     Martin O'Neill, Protographer!

Me, me, me...

More self-indulgence, and today we go for 'A day in the life of a working photographer'! These are recent shots of me, taken just twelve hours apart, Firstly, I was covering an awards dinner with 720 guests one evening, but fortunately still found a spare table on which to stand to get a picture of the room, and then, next morning, I went all high-viz and steel toe-caps to shoot the installation of that rather large 'thing' you can see behind me. I'll blog some photographs of what I was shooting tomorrow!

The exciting news today is that my Florescence shots have been taken up by an online Photography Gallery, and are being displayed as 'Picture of the day' over the next few days.
Feel free to buy a print! Don't let me stop you!
Check 'em out here!

Finally for today, a text from Saturday's Wedding couple. "Thanks for all your hard work, Martin. You went down a storm!"

Mmmm, feedback! Let's talk about ME!