Where My Stuff Is.

It's been way too long since I last posted here, so I thought I'd do a post about some of the places I have found my images being utilised lately.

• My photo in the New Mexico Independent.
  
  
• My photo of blueberries on Foodbev.com.
  
  
• My photo of USB ports used by ABC Radio Australia.
  
  
• My photo of a balloon against a summer sky on the Thankful For blog.
  
  
• My photo of playing cards on a post about Confirmation Bias on Moment of Science, Indiana Public Media.
  
  
• My photo of a festival scene used on the Digital Rights Manifesto.
  
  
• My photo of hopscotch on Waxing Unlyrical.
  
  
• My 'Dear Diary' photo on humangoods.net
  
  
• My photo of green bubble wrap on diddit's list of Inventions of the 1950s.
  
  
• My 'funky abstract background' photo used on the social designer website.
  
  
• My photo of filling in a crossword puzzle on New Hampshire Public Radio.
  
  
• An edited version of my wordsearch photo appears on sbg digital publications as the header.
  
  
• My funky abstract background (again!) used as an example photo of How to learn image cropping, from www.kirpi.it
  
  
• My photo of a blister pack of tablets used on Dave's Whiteboard blog

Disabled Women's Photography Exhibition

From Etcetera, we get this news about a women's photography exhibition.

WOMEN BUILDING BRIDGES is an International Womens Day 2010 Art
Exhibition and Programme opening in The Womens Centre, Beibinn House,
5 Guildhall Street, Derry on Monday 8th March.

Exhibitions, to be hosted by a number of venues around Derry city, will run from Monday 8th March to Saturday 27th March, and includes part of the cross-border project LIMINALITY: Different Views / Viewing Difference.

This project, between Women Making Waves in Co. Fermanagh and Women Independently LIving in Leitrim, has explored issues of gender,
self-image and disability through community arts activities with disabled and nondisabled women from the disadvantaged border area in the North-West of Ireland.

The result is a collection of photographic self-portraits showing smiling, stylish, independent women unashamed of age or impairments. It challenges stereotypical images from the mainstream media, the women themselves choosing how they are to be represented.

Some of the work from LIMINALITY will be on show in the Tower Museum from the launch at 12:30pm on Wednesday 10th March until Saturday 27th March.

To contact the venue, call Margaret Edwards/Bernadette Walsh. T:02871 372411

For information on the Women's Day celebrations around Derry, visit
www.thewomenscentre.co.uk.

For more info about Women Independently Living in Leitrim, contact
Secretary Isolde Carmody: c/o LAPWD, Station
Road, Mohill, Co. Leitrim,
Ireland

Phone: +353-71-9621936, Text:
+353-86-8810445 E-mail: isoldecarmody@gmail.com.

(cross-posted at The F Word)

Photographing Out Aloud: Sheffield's Gay Choir.

Recently, I photographed Out Aloud, which is Sheffield's LGBT Choir.



It was a really interesting project, the key to which was meticulous organisation. I attended a week before I was taking the photos, so that I could get an idea of the room, the lighting, and do test shots, all of which I took a note of, with different lenses, focal lengths, and flashes.



This meant that I could attend on the week with confidence that I was as prepared as I could be. I had made notes of the shots I wanted too, which helped me reassure myself that I wasn't leaving at the end of the night, missing a crucial shot.





It's always worth remembering that, when the choir requests a 'silly photo' at the end, getting everyone to jump at the same time is trickier than it looks. Each photo represented various stages in what was essentially a mexican wave. I don't know why tenors and basses are so much quicker off the mark than the sopranos and altos, but it was consistently true.



All the photos can be viewed here in their flickr set, and if choir members or others want to buy individual prints, they can do so here.

A CD of the photos is going to the choir committee, for them to use them.

Bloggy Giveaway Winner

I am so pleased to announce that Lilith Silvermane is the winner of my bloggy giveaway.

I was so overwhelmed that 70 people entered, it made me happy :)

If I don't hear from Lilith within 7 days I may have to re-draw the winner, but hopefully she'll get back to me, and I'll post here about which photo she chooses.

This is the email I have sent to Lilith the winner:

Hi Lilith,

Thanks so much for entering my competition for the Bloggy Giveaways, at philippaphotography.blogspot.com.

You've won a 10" x 8" print of any of my photographs on my blog. In the comments, you mentioned you liked the Alternative Valentine's Card photo. Is this the one you'd like a print of?

Please let me know as soon as you can, which image you would like a print of, and your postal address.

I really hope this has made your day!

love Pippa x

====
hippieness.co.uk

Bloggy Giveaway

I am taking part in my first ever bloggy giveaway carnival!

One lucky reader of this blog will win an 8x10" photographic print, and you can choose which print you want from this blog - any one photograph of my own (i.e. not someone else's image I have used here**) will be professionally printed and sent to you, wherever in the world you are, if you win.

All you have to do, to be in with a chance of winning, is to leave a comment on this post, saying you'd like to be entered. Feel free to have a look round this blog to see my photography - you will see there is a wide variety of photographic and digital art here, so you should be able to find things you like if you win!

You can see my older posts via the links under 'Blog Archive' further down this page.



I will randomly choose a winner after the 1st February, and let you know. Please make sure there is a way for me to contact you from your comment.

**The vast majority of the photos on this blog are mine, if they are someone else's that will be obvious as they will have been credited.

Sewing II

Sewing

Autumn Colours.

As today was the first fine day in what seems like months, I took advantage to go and get some autumn colours photographed.



NaBloPoMo

The Edale Cat Strikes again

The original Edale cat has been converted to black and white, and, as above, a
black and white cutout photograph maintaining the animal's vivid green eyes.



NaBloPoMo

Exhibition at the Mall Galleries

For some reason I never posted again about this photography blog entry, in which I announced that I had been shortlisted as a finalist in the Currys Our Lives Digital Photography Competition 2008.

My shortlisted photograph was to be exhibited in The Mall Galleries near Trafalgar Square in London, and I was invited to a presentation evening there.

It was so so exciting! The photograph which had been shortlisted and was on display was Graffiti Artist At Work With Tools:



The other photographs were fantastic, there were some really inspiring and stunning works, and I felt proud to be a part of that. The competition had received 10,000 entries, so to be part of the 100 or so which had been chosen felt incredible.

And seeing my work on those walls, with people looking at and enjoying it, was something I can't describe. The whole thing - free champagne, celeb guest, talking to the other photographers, being in London even, was a great experience.

Going down there for the weekend also meant many London photo opportunities! We were unashamedly touristy, so many of them were taken from an open-top bus, but it was all good fun and I'm keen to go back down to take some floor-level pics too!

Since the exhibition, I have been acutely aware of mentions of The Mall Galleries. Firstly that they are almost always referred to as "the prestigious Mall Galleries". Secondly, I was watching Dragons' Den one night and a sculptor, Guy Portelli, who extracted £80,000 from them, had bid for the money in order to fund an exhibition at the prestigious Mall Galleries!

So, here's to art, photography, and prestige ;-)

NaBloPoMo

World Mental Health Day

October 10th is World Mental Health Day and this year I was the photographer for the events in Sheffield city centre on that day.



As a mental health service user myself it felt like a good cause to volunteer my skills for, and I figured it would be helpful experience for me, and worthwhile.



It was actually a great day - lots of informative stalls, a surprising amount of public interest (surprising given the nature of the stigma attached to mental health issues), good weather, and some fantastic performances from a local school's drama group, and musicians. And there was fantastic creativity from some of the stalls, and tasty healthy ideas for food and drinks too.



Being there as the photographer for Sheffield Care Trust added extra elements to how I took the photographs, and what photographs I took. I was surprised by how much pressure I felt, as the photos weren't just for me, and as well as taking the photos I wanted, I had to bear in mind the photos that the Trust would want as well.



It wasn't just added stress, though. On a more positive note, taking photos for the Trust gave me more confidence to approach people to photograph them and their stalls, and a way to photograph the school children acting and singing, without being seen as suspicious, as is unfortunately increasingly the case for photographers in public.



The thing that surprised me most was the huge amount of digital darkroom work which was required on the photographs. As I was taking the photographs for other people as well as myself, I felt more obliged to make sure each image was as good as it could be. But even more than that, the weather conditions on the day meant that the vast majority of the photos needed work.



It was a bright, sunny day, which is always a bonus, but it caused some difficulties. The sky was bright enough to require stopping down to avoid (or, more likely, reduce) overexposure in the sky. This caused a further problem, mainly that a lot of the photos I took were of the information stalls and the people staffing them. Having the camera somewhat stopped down to avoid too many blown out skies, meant that the people, posters, information and everything else underneath canvas on the stalls were very frequently underexposed.



It felt a bit like I couldn't win. If I'd upped the aperture size or the shutter speed, to perfectly expose for the stalls and tent, the skies and anything white or reflective would have been totally blown out. If I'd reduced them, the stalls and the people under them would have been even more shadowy and dull. I guess filters could have been useful but I don't have any graduated ones and, given the requirements of the day they would probably not have been so practical.



So, instead, it was post-shutter that I needed to fix the exposure issues. Several weeks and 417 photos later I can attest that my Photoshop skills are certainly well practised! For each image I picked from a toolbox of curves, levels, dodging and burning, hue / saturation, brightness / contrast, and many of the other techniques that programme has to offer.



I grew to learn which of the tools was best for each problem, and how different methods can approach problems in different ways. It was really good experience for me, and I also did some good black and white conversions, and occasionally, to break the monotony, went a bit further with the image manipulation than was typical for this particular project!





I am really glad I took on this assignment. Taking photographs to document such days is, in my opinion, vital, and it is obviously a subject close to my heart. I learned a lot about taking pictures for someone other than yourself, and I learned to never underestimate how much work will need to be done long after the camera is put away.



You can see all my World Mental Health Day photos here, and my next, and final, stage of this particular job is to email all interested parties with a link to the photos of them from the day. I will then be glad to close that particular folder, for now at least!




NaBloPoMo

Fudge Fudged

This is my second most popular photo on flickr. A local band advertising a gig got scuppered by the rain, leaving a fantastic image behind for me to photograph as I waited at the bus stop the poster was stuck to.

Locked and Chained

Free Tibet

Excitement!

I very excitingly got an email yesterday to tell me that I am a finalist in the Currys Our Lives Digital Photography Competition 2008.

I don't actually know which photo it is, but you can see the ones I entered from these screenshots.





The email I received about it tells me that the photograph will be displayed in London’s prestigious Mall Galleries between 8th and 16th of August.

Needless to say, I am made up :)

Park Benches

Weather Vane Compass

Different take on this bandstand.

Blue Bandstand

Girls Can Be Geeks, Too

ESPRE

Lately I've been photographing an awesome local graffiti artist. He works on legal sites and does some incredible pieces.



You can see my flickr set of him and his work here.