Thames Town at last -Thursday 24th July 2008
OK, so managed to navigate my way to Thames Town today after having to sort out too much yesterday to have time to get there –on the plus side met up with Rui who is in town and Clare and her mum. It’s like a bit of the course from Dalian all in Shanghai! Quick [...]
The good, the bad and the ugly –arrival in Shanghai (Tuesday 22nd July 2008)
Arrived today in Shanghai and was happy to be finally on the road again and having a break from Dalian and the constant difficulties there… Some blessed miracle meant all my guesses were right before I even checked a guide book and I arrived about 1km away from my hotel after landing at Pudong airport [...]
David Robinson
Not posted anything for a while so thought I would make a quick mention of the work of David Robinson -another photographer I knew when I was living in London. His work on the leisure landscape is interesting especially in light of my own recent work and comes firmly out of the tradition of contemporary [...]
Vantage Points
I’ve been messing about in Lightroom and made a test gallery on the work I did for, “The Yellow Sea and Me” book to see how the lightroom templates look. This is all in the aid of actually having a simple yet effective homepage showcase for my images. Have a look at the following link [...]
The Yellow Sea and Me
This assignment was set on Tuesday 17th June and the Photo MA class at Dalian Medical university were given until the morning of Thursday 19th to shoot 2 double pages and a potential cover for a combined book project in the style of our upcoming major projects. This was my work focusing on the small [...]
Thames Town Research Questions
The Thames town project relates to the following research questions: Photographic Culture: The Burden of history, photography, geo politics and otherness Imagined Geographies: photography, tourism and regeneration Local V Visitor: fairly traded photography, truth and ethics
New Wealth 100 word excerpt
Thames Town: The Middle Class in China Thames town is an English style new satellite town built close to Shanghai as part of the local governments ‘One City –Nine Towns’ plan. This plan was hatched out of the population boom being experienced in Shanghai. In the past 15 years the population has increased by 8 [...]
New Wealth 300 Word Excerpt
Thames Town: The Middle Class in China Thames town is an English style new satellite town built close to Shanghai as part of the local governments ‘One City –Nine Towns’ plan. This plan was hatched out of the population boom being experienced in Shanghai. In the past 15 years the population has increased by 8 [...]
New Wealth 1000 Word Essay
Thames Town: The Middle Class comes to China On the outskirts of the ultra modern city that is Shanghai sits a recently developed satellite town that will appear both familiar and slightly peculiar to any Englishman visiting the area. And this is not because of Shanghai’s mixed architectural influences of France, Britain and China either, [...]
New Wealth Essay 3rd Draft
Thames Town: The Middle Class comes to China On the outskirts of the ultra modern city that is Shanghai sits a recently developed satellite town that will appear both familiar and slightly peculiar to any Englishman visiting the area. And this is not because of Shanghai’s mixed architectural influences of France, Britain and China either, [...]
Slideshow mock up for Middle class project
Have a look at this piece I shot this morning as a mock up for the shooting style I will use for Thames Town. In this case I am balancing nature and the urban sprawl where as in the Thames Town version I will balance the English style buildings with their Chinese environment High Technology [...]
BBC article on Shanghai’s satellite towns
A link i had missed out from the blog to an article by Steven Schifferes for the BBC: Can Shanghai Turn Green and Grow?
Interview with Edward Burtynsky from The Tyee
A very informative interview with Edwrad Burtynsky can be found here on The Tyee website: Framing Global Capitalism A couple of quotes about his influences stand out: “Around 1976-77, I realized that a new visual language was forming. I became aware of the work of Bern and Hilla Becher and the New Topographics group [whose [...]
New Wealth Essay -2nd Draft
Thames Town: The Middle Class comes to China On the outskirts of the ultra modern city that is Shanghai sits a recently developed satellite town that will appear both familiar and slightly peculiar to any Englishman visiting the area. And this is not because of Shanghai’s mixed architectural influences of France, Britain and China either, [...]
BJP interview with Eileen Gittins of Blurb.com
Olivier Laurent of the BJP interviews Eileen Gittins of Blurb.com, an online photo book service that may well be suitable for self publishing book projects. Worth investigating further especially with the launch of their new B3 service aimed at professionals. BJP interview Blurb website
Marketing -Image Libraries
Ok, so I have been looking for a change in marketing my work as stock for a while now as an aside to the main projected income generators of commissions, grants and print sales. After a bit of research I have come up with my preferred list of libraries, some of whom already hold some [...]
David Spero
I was reading Camilla Brown’s (Senior Curator at the Photographers’ Gallery in London) essay in Image Makers Image Takers and came across the Settlements work by David Spero. His website is here: David Spero His work really highlights the goals of the communities that are attempting to live as harmoniously with the environment as possible, [...]
A little bit about my image numbering system
Keeping track of your images is vitally important, especially now with digital systems being so widespread. Coming from a history of shooting film as well as digital, I thought it might be of interest to some who read this to find out exactly how I go about numbering my images because it appears a complex [...]
Film Handling
Because it has been a while since I last shot a large amount of film when travelling I should really outline my handling strategy to minimise the potential of loss or damage to the film. For both captioning management and safety considerations, all films will be numbered as soon as they come out of the [...]
Travel Insurance
As my insurance will be expired by the time I go to Shanghai, I will be using these people to get a new insurance policy: World Nomads Travel Insurance
British Consulate-General in Shanghai
In case of severe legal problems or I loose my passport, this is the contact details of the British Consulate-General in Shanghai: Address: Suite 301, Shanghai Centre. 1376 Nan Jing Xi Lu. Shanghai 200040 Phone: (86) (21) 6279 7650 (General)
6×6, big enough? I think so…
Ok, so after hours (and days, and weeks…) of researching large format I have done the costings and worked out the pros and cons and decided to shot my Thames Town work on 6×6 as well instead of 5×4. Apart from reducing the whole risk of not getting the images right due to my relative [...]
Fake Tilt-Shift
Just cos I was in need of a break from my MA stuff I had a bit of a tinker in Photoshop with one of my recent test images. Sort of relates to our Ethical code research, is this an ethical manipulation? I would suggest that it is ethically fine in my book, however a [...]
Large Format Lens information
A wealth of information on lens operation and fitment can be found on the Largeformatphotography.info site here: Large Format Lenses, 2nd Edition by David C Karp And a good set of reviews by Kerry Thalmann can be found here: Future Classics (may need a proxy to access) and slightly older information from Thalmann and John [...]
