Out There - International street arts and circus festival

Time to blog about the Out There festival held here in our lovely Great Yarmouth last weekend....

I'm not being sarcastic about the location here. I think GY is great for many reasons, a source of great photographic inspiration, as well as being my current hometown, and also because Seachange Arts are investing their monies in making this town a centre for family entertainment to the local's benefit.

I went to the hub of the festival, St Georges' Park with my partner, slightly interested but expecting to be uninspired. I wasn't feeling at my best and thought I'd retreat back home sooner rather than later. However, we didn't stop shooting for most of the day, only stopping as an appointment with a local model for a photoshoot was beckoning.

The metal like dragons were fantastic with their gracefully suspended heads bobbing up and down to the delight of the people watching.

The street performers seemed to be enjoying themselves nearly as much as the kids who weren't sure what was coming on next.

This was one of my fav street acts. A milk float set up with two sides of percussive milk bottles directed by the dj on the mixers :)

And these were by far the best performers of the festival for me, the French act 'Les 3 points de Suspension' who presented a farcical act about the death of the philsopher Sophocles... It was really a test for political correctness as people here are used to things being toned down to the point of not being funny anymore, but it was great to see the players manage to get the audience to participate. A five star circus show I thought :)

Finally, a traditional Victorian circus act to close our interesting afternoon...

Roll on 'Out There' 2010 :)

twitter feed

Hmmm... not sure yet wheter it is twitter itself playing up or somebody playing around but you'll notice my twitter feed has gone.

Removed it last night as it was full of postings from a rather less bright character.

If you'd like to follow my tweets please add me to your twitter feed

blog with photography input soon :)

coverage from Big Blat

It's taken a good week's work, or shall we say a week's evening's worth... but finally the Big Blat images have been uploaded and are ready for sale in aid of the Leukaemia Research Fund :)

Event photography is always very interesting - and making up images that tell a story is intriguing. I took up the challenge of shooting this mega run across Cambs, Norfolk and Suffolk because I am a Caterham owner myself, but mainly because I wanted the photos to be different, to tell the story not only from a documentary point of view, but from the view of the petrolhead and photographer that I am :)

the first challenge lay in finding the right posts for shooting and both me and my partner took up the task of doing a recce along different areas in the route to get good vantage points. I chose a place called Brockley corner... really pretty along the Thetford forest with the intention of moving around and doing some arty shots on the road. The trouble was the cars left off in clusters and I was faced with groups of 3-8 cars I had to shoot in quick succession.

Some people were nice and smiled and waved, others did'nt realise what I was doing (even though I was wearing the loudest 7 tshirt in the planet) and I have several shots with people grimacing.... My postprocessing skills don't cover making people smile I'm afraid. they probably thought I was a disgruntled member of the public taking evidence to the police because there were just too many of the same type of car on the road :)))

My second stop came at the finish in Aldeburgh. My step ladder came in handy to shoot the cars from a slightly more interesting angle. The caterham is a surprisingly small car and a stack of sevens from my 'shortie' eye level is nothing more than a mix of wheels and rollcages. shooting from a height makes things slightly more pleasing.

I used the 50mm 1.4 wide open for more arty shots, but also on images of the cars arriving as I consider practice with a prime essential development work from my part.

Pictures have now been posted online on my partner's website

Big Blat preview

Just a quick post from yesterdays' coverage of Big Blat and a couple of preview shots to show off for now ;)

My partner, Paul Davis and I, yesterday shot images for the event which will be sold in aid of the Leukaemia Research Fund which is the Lotus 7 Club's chosen charity.

I have a couple of hundred shots yet to go through (to add to many more Paul has shot) and the pics will eventually be uploaded on Paul's website with instructions for Blatchatters interested in these to purchase images via a Justgiving page.

Hope you like these and hope the images will sell for aid to LRF.