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

Flickr Photo Stats

I picked one of my photos at random, one that is reasonably popular, and had a look at the recent stats. I should do it more often!

I learned, from the last 2 days' referrals, that it is being used as a homepage image for searchslate.com and A6.com search engines, screenshot below.



It is also featured on this list of rainbow textured photos on a design blog.

I should check my photo stats more often!

In Demand (2)

NowPublic.com wanted to use these photos for their article, Expired Medications Leech Ground Water.

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This time for Should Detox Clinics Have to be Smoke Free, along with this aforementioned smoking one.

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for Study Shows Smokers Try to Quit But Can't

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Get Lost Magazine, an indie travel publication in Australia, also wanted to use Smoking A Roll-Up for a feature on tobacco smoking being banned in public places in the Netherlands when cannabis smoking will still be allowed!

In Demand (1 - more tomorrow)

This photo of my hand holding a cigarette was used by Bill A. in this image of his own, and I also recognise my fags in this one!

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Dr Goulu used this photo for a post in French about algorithms, who'd have thought it?!

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NowPublic.com requested the use of these two cow photos in Wind of Change on Farms as Cows Help to Save the Earth.

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NowPublic.com also wanted the photo above for their article, Asthma Inhalers May Up Heart Death Risk.

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NowPublic.com also wanted these church photos for their article Church Attendance Boosts Students GPAs.

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

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 :)

More of My Work Used Elsewhere

This photograph is on display in the Shared Urban Spaces exhibition at the White Stag Building in Portland, Oregon along with an audio file I made to go alongside it.

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Sole Intentions requested use of these two photographs to be part of a mosaic in his photo exhibition in Auckland, New Zealand, a photographic study on the art of Shoes from Powerlines.

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This photo was used in this blog article about a BBC digital commons licence.

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NowPublic.com requested use of various of my photos for their articles, these are now listed below.



for their article, Sleep Texting: lol or wtf?

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for Gay Marriage Ban Overturned in Calif.

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for UK Inflation Woe Set to Worsen

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for 'Desire' could be dangerous