Philippa's Photography, Incurable Hippie

16 December 2007

Jane Bown (Audio)

Interview with Jane Bown

Jane Bown has been a photographer for over 50 years, spanning from the end of the Second World War onwards.

She is known for photographing many famous faces, and has a refreshingly simple approach to her art. She works in black and white, without special lighting and prefers to not know anything about her subjects. She became known for take portraits within ten minutes and sounds understated and appears the same, approaching most shoots with no other equipment than the camera. She has captured some really iconic images of really iconic people.

She was interviewed on Woman's Hour a few weeks ago, and I have uploaded the interview here as an .mp3 for you to listen to or download.

She's really interesting to listen to, and you can see more about her, and her work:

Jane Bown Gallery (Observer)

Jane Bown (Wikipedia)

Jane Bown (National Portrait Gallery)

14 December 2007

World-Wide Moment

This looks an interesting project, though the time zones thing could be confusing.

Anyhow, could be fun.

I thought that this might be of interest for some of you. More details and photos from past World Wide Moments can be found at www.worldwidemoment.com. I hope some of you will participate! Here's the gist of it:

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In 18 days I would like to host a new World Wide Moment.

The code will be:

00:00_01.01.08-YTZ

That's midnight_January 1st, 2008-Your Time Zone.

Simply put: World Wide Moment is a large-scale photo experiment where everyone takes a photograph at the same moment.

So if you believe in this project and have suggestions for how to spread this idea to people in other countries, or to new people in the U.S. who have not participated in WWM-IV, please let us know!

Thanks!
-Brett Brownell aka Benji
Host/Creator WorldWideMoment
worldwidemoment@gmail.com
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12 December 2007

Local Newspaper Publication

The TJ Hughes 'Hug' photo I posted about here has been published in the Sheffield Star.

I missed it myself, but have been told by others who saw it. I'm rather pleased!

07 December 2007

Supertram in Motion

DSC_4924, originally uploaded by incurable_hippie.

Taken in the early evening on Wednesday in Sheffield city centre, in the rain.

03 December 2007

Ninety Smokers by Dan Donovan

Dan Donovan undertook an interesting project. To create a photographic documentary of smoking in the run-up to the smoking ban. He photographed smokers, smoking in places where it would soon become illegal.

I undertook this project with the aim of taking a series of portraits of smokers in locations that will be affected by the smoking ban; to archive the final moments of their freedom to smoke publicly. This collection of work isn’t about either promoting or vilifying the act of smoking; it’s intended to capture an honest representation of smoking culture in Britain pre-July 2007. The act of smoking has been increasingly demonised over the last number of years and these portraits take in individuals from all over England, from every walk of life, who were prepared to make a visual statement of their objection to being represented in this negative way. The people here are law-abiding citizens who would be committing a criminal offence if they posed for a photograph in the same location today.

Interesting extra:

On my travels I met up with two people who work in the field of mental health, Kate Parry in Oxfordshire and Steve Thompson in Derbyshire. Steve says Nicotine has been shown to reduce the side-effects of psychoactive medication – more than 90 per cent of people with schizophrenia smoke, and nicotine is being used by self-medicating sufferers. Steve has been challenging attempts to try and outlaw smoking for patients.

You can see his collection of ninety smokers, and read the story behind it on his website.

07 November 2007

TJ Hughes sends you a hug

TJ Hughes sends you a hug, originally uploaded by incurable_hippie.

with their faulty lighting, in Sheffield city centre tonight.

06 November 2007

My Favourite Favourite

grace, originally uploaded by _rebekka.

Looking through my contacts' photos on flickr this evening, by far my favourite is this by Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir.

Amazing perspective, colours, composition and atmosphere.

22 October 2007

NPR - Think Pink

America's National Public Radio blog has used one of my photos :-)

They used it in an interesting entry about the commercialisation of breast cancer research 'products' which is a concern I have shared. I'm wary of the 'spend, spend, spend' and branding issues when we often don't know how much money from any given 'pink' product goes to cancer research, and there are usually better ways to help. Not to mention many of the 'pink' beauty etc. products which contain untold numbers of chemicals, some of which have possible links to causing cancer!

So, very glad they chose my photo in the first place, extra glad that it's accompanying an interesting article!

What is NPR? NPR (National Public Radio) is an internationally acclaimed producer and distributor of noncommercial news, talk, and entertainment programming. A privately supported, not-for-profit membership organization, NPR serves a growing audience of 26 million Americans each week in partnership with more than 860 independently operated, noncommercial public radio stations. Each NPR Member Station serves local listeners with a distinctive combination of national and local programming. With original online content and audio streaming, NPR.org offers hourly newscasts, special features and ten years of archived audio and information.

30 September 2007

Dreams. Edited in Photoshop CS3

Dreams, originally uploaded by incurable_hippie.

Original image:

Select the statue using the magnetic lasso tool
Select > Modify > Feather > 5
Image > Adjustments > Black and White
Adjust the colours until the angel is how you want it.
Select > Inverse
Filter > Blur > Radial Blur
Adjust the settings until the background is how you want it to be.
Image > Adjustments > Hue & Saturation.
Adjust the 'hue' until the background is how you want it.
Select > Deselect
Filter > Render > Lens Flare
Move the lens flare to behind the statue's head.
Filter > Render > Lighting Effects > Light Type > Omni
Adjust all settings until it looks right. I moved the light to the statue's hands and adjusted the over / under exposure settings.

27 September 2007

Free Burma

Free Burma, originally uploaded by incurable_hippie.

Burma

There are amazing people in Burma risking their lives to take, and spread, word, photographs and film of what is really happening there at the moment.

Two of these people are gmhembree and NaingKo on flickr.

Looking at these photos, direct from the people witnessing these events is powerful, and brings to mind the huge risks being taken for truth and democracy.

26 September 2007

Surveying the Scene

06 September 2007

Cats

Some work I've done in the digital darkroom today.

04 September 2007

Look What Happened Last Night.

Amazing!

Not at all edited (yet!).

13 August 2007

T189 Submissions B.

I have recently completed the Open University's T189 Digital Photography course.

As part of the final assignment, we had to submit 10 images. The ones I submitted are below (6 - 10)

Manor Lodge under a Moody Sky

Angled Red Brick Building and Clock on a Sunny Day

Capturing the Parenting of a New Chick

Brightly Coloured Market in a Park

The Bride Was a Vision in Scarlet

T189 Submissions A.

I have recently completed the Open University's T189 Digital Photography course.

As part of the final assignment, we had to submit 10 images. The ones I submitted are below (1 - 5)

Birds of Paradise in the Winter Gardens

Flower Standing Out from the Crowd

The Golden Glow of Tulips

Julia's Arrangement of Flowers

Two Gravestones and Their Overgrown Companion

27 July 2007

Photography Links: social change and political change, photography blogs.

Social / Political change through Photography:

Photography contest promotes healthy image of aboriginal peoples

Lesbian Photography - Blatant Image

Tee Corinne, Photographer

Discussion on Representation of the Female Form in Photography

Photography blogs:

FEM Photo Blog

mjau

26 July 2007

Silly Photo Stuff - Celebrity Lookalikes!

http://www.myheritage.com

24 July 2007

BBC Britain in Pictures

The BBC had a recent series on BBC4, called Britain in Pictures, where photographers were encouraged to send in their photos of Britain's buildings. For recent weeks, a 'red button' channel on the BBC's digital network has been showing some of the pictures, in rotation, that members of the public have submitted.

I was rather overjoyed to find that (at least) 3 of my photos were shown on TV.

These were:

Manor Lodge, Sheffield