The Horse Poet - Image by Simon Pollock

Well Mr Pollock and myself decided that as a few of you had made it all the way through the first podcast that we would reward you by doing another one for your listening pleasure! yay! Be warned due to a broken headset at my end the audio quality is not brilliant and I also missed the first 30 seconds containing Simes excellent finger trumpet intro music #DISCO-FAIL

I’m also carefully holding a button together for the full hour to stop the whole show falling over…(I mention it a few times!)

In this weeks episode we cover what I thought of spotify, how not to get robbed, the lumix FT1 debacle, DigitalRev, the olympus tough 3000, what RSS is (for Toby), the joys of google reader, delicious, evernote, the Sultan’s horse poet, firefox personas, cake photography, iPad myths, android tablets and plenty of other things in between…..IT IS PACKED.

oh and how could I forget BABIES WITH LASER EYES.

Hope you all enjoy the listen…comments below…and don’t forget the ‘buy me coffee button’ (which I may pocket and put towards a new microphone! lol)

Download audio file (podcast002.mp3)
Download link here. Subscribe using iTunes!

stop and listen for a while

I’ve been wanting to try podcasting for a looong time. So here is the first attempt. I’m joined for this experiment by the totally awesome Simon Pollock of gtvone.com. We cover a huge range of topics from facebook, social networking, the iPad, SEO for photographers, Music, Gowalla, Openscreen.tv, Bands, The Panasonic DMC-TS2, The Nikon Coolpix s8000, Lecia Lenses blessed by kitten love and a whole host of other topics. We basically rattle on for an hour and a half for your listening pleasure. I hope you find the audio quality passable (considering its via skype and my first attempt). I’d love to have some feedback in the comments on either the topics covered, whether you found it useful/entertaining and more importantly if I should do more? Enjoy!
Download audio file (podcast001.mp3)
Download link here. Subscribe using iTunes!

I made some quick changes here on the blog last night after pinching an idea from Mr Pollock. It’s not a new idea in the world of blogging but one I hadn’t thought about in a while until I saw it on Simons blog over the weekend. The basic idea is that I’ve now provided an easy way for people to give me a little caffiene love.

So If I’ve helped you out with some advice, tweaked your website, done you a favour, written something you’ve enjoyed or found useful, taken a picture that has inspired or interested you, shared something useful on twitter etc well you now have a nice easy (and relatively cheap) method to re-pay that favour and spread good karma. All you have to do is hit the ‘buy me a coffee’ button now on most of my blog pages (down in the sidebar–>) and you will taken through to a nice secure paypal page where you can donate enough money to buy me a great big steamy hot COFFEE! mmm slurpy caffiene goodness. Yay! Obviously there is no obligation on this- I help people out all the time and don’t expect much in return (unless I send you an invoice…lol) and I will continue to do so but if you feel like treating me then now you have the ability at the click of a button.

I think I’ll make it a new years resolution not to take more padlock pictures.  Maybe I could take them but not post them. Maybe I just shouldn’t worry about resolutions, I’m four days late starting already…..oh well…bring on the padlocks!

J. Scmid is M.Parr and Vice Versa

I’m posting this a lot later than hoped as I’ve tried to spend my time off over Christmas having a complete break from all things work and internet related. I’ve been picking things back up though over the last couple of days and by the end of this week will be firing on cylinders again. This post relates to an enquiry I received a few months ago from Martin Parr (well his assistant) to use one of my images in a book project he was undertaking with a fellow photographer (Joachim Schmid). I have always loved Martin Parr’s work so was VERY excited about the fact that Martin and his friend Joachim Schmid had chosen one of my images for their joint project. I then didn’t hear anything further for a few months and after not receiving any replies to my emails I just assumed the whole thing had been shelved….booo….that was until a few days before Christmas when my signed copy arrived. Woohooo! I’m very pleased, I doubt it will ever be a best seller but it’s quite cool to be involved in a project with someone who’s work I really like and it’s always nice to have an image published. If you want to find out more about the idea behind the book then hop along to blurb where you can find out more details about the project, preview the book and if you so desire buy a copy.

If being in the book isn’t cool enough then I’m even happier and honoured to note that the photo on the opposite page to mine is shot by the flickr legend lomokev (aka Kevin Meredith) and author of the amazing hot shots book (which Is one of the few books I’ve read cover to cover). You can read Kevin’s blog post on the book here on his blog.

no 3 of 100

This is Craig, he takes the no.3 spot in my very slow building 100 strangers project. Craig and his Partner happened to wander past a bench we were using for a photo shoot on Sunday morning. It turns out the bench we were using was actually placed in memory of his Grandparents who had passed away a few years before. He was visiting all the way from Australia and wanted to come and visit it. I stepped in to get a picture of them sat on the bench and then cheekily asked If I could get a shot of him for my project. It was a touching story so happy for it to be included in my project.

I’ve also included a picture of the plaque that is on the bench below, If Craig you do end up reading this and want a copy of either picture at print quality just drop me an email and I’ll happily send you some copies.

In Loving Memory

wet and not so wild?

Well SAP is finally live and kicking (in some fashion) at work and as expected with it’s launch my workload has risen ten-fold. The week leading up to go-live was manic and I worked a stupid amount of hours both in the office and from home. Things don’t seem much better yet but I’m now at a point where I’m just doing as much as I can in the working day and resisting the urge to work from home unless it’s a last resort. Everyone needs downtime and I don’t like seeing Robyn and Chloe struggle on without me about so I’m trying to get things back into balance. This issue of balance is something I also need to re-dress as far as my photography  is concerned. I’ve been so busy with everything else my camera has really been neglected over the last few weeks. Tonight I decided I’d try and fix that by recreating a self portrait I took back in January 2008. You can go and see the original here if you want to compare them. They are by no means identical and were shot with very different equipment and in many ways I think I prefer the older shot but it was still fun to shoot and blow the cobwebs off the camera. Anyhoo that’s about it for the moment…..I’m still alive and kicking and hopefully I’ll be around a little bit more as we get closer to Christmas. JINGLE BELLS!!

oooh p.s. Robyn totally ROCKED her School production last night. She landed lead role of Babushka and was an absolute star. #very proud parents#

fireworks over southill

Well I’m glad to report I’m finally feeling like I’ve beaten the horrible flu like symptoms which seem to have been dogging me for the last few weeks. This has really improved my mood and my outlook on everything happening around me. Don’t get me wrong I’m still basically a grumpy sod but being grumpy and being able to breathe at the same time is a much more enjoyable experience.

The dreaded SAP project go-live date is fast approaching at work and it looks like I’m going to be a very very busy individual for the next few weeks and months dealing with the huge piles of support issues around roles & authorisations which will come my way when our 9000 users start logging in next week. In some ways I feel much happier about this as we get closer to the go-live date. Putting off the inevitable support nightmares and stressing about them in advance is in many ways much worse than just getting your head down and enduring them, although I reserve the right to retract that statement over the next few weeks.

It’s also been a busy and exciting week on the photography front. Those who’ve stalked me for a while will know that a couple of months ago myself and my best friend Darren launched our own commercial photography venture (Weymouth Photography). To be honest we started with very humble ambitions and were keen to take things slowly and make sure we could fit this part-time venture around our existing work and family commitments. We assumed this would be easy as in a competitive market we would have to work very hard and put in lots of effort over the first few months to get any work at all. What has actually happened is almost the complete reverse of that! Since the website went live we have had repeated enquiries and requests for our services across the whole range of our chosen areas of expertise without us putting in any extra effort at all. In fact (and quite embarrassingly) at the time of writing this blog post we still haven’t had our business cards printed!! This is obviously all really good news but with with me being very busy on the SAP project at work and Darren moving house we’ve frustratingly actually had to turn work down. This conflict of commitments though is only a short-term problem and once work pressures lapse slightyand Christmas is behind us we’ll be able to put much more effort in and who knows what we’ll be able to achieve then! Last weekend we met our first set of wedding clients for an initial meeting and it just felt great to get the ball moving on what is hopefully the first of many face to face client meetings and without trying to sound corny it was really cool to be doing that with my best mate sat beside me.

I’m also quite smug about the fact that all of this work has come directly from a web site that I designed and built myself. I’ve always been passionate about web design and geeking out over content management systems and usability etc but putting that into action and getting some really good leads in a short space of time from our portfolio and the general vibe & design we’ve put out there for our own venture (rather than building sites for others) is really very satisfying.

On top of all this I’ve also had a quite successful month selling some of my old images on Getty and also had a German magazine approach me to purchase a license to use one of my images in a publication going out in January. It’s all very exciting stuff and has only slightly tarnished by the fact I haven’t heard back from Martin Parr’s people about the image they wanted to use in a book project he has been involved in but I still hold out hope that I’ll hear something on that front soon.

Things are looking up and the future seems bright. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that this good stuff  continues to develop but at the moment I have quite a warm and fuzzy feeling that 2010 is going to be a brilliant year for me and my family for many different reasons. What are you most looking forward to in 2010?

I’ve been ill again this week and completely losing the plot at work as we get closer to the fateful project go-live!  This in combination with juggling family matters and photography work has left me little time to write much down here on the blog (excuses excuses). So to try and make up for it and in substitute of imparting my carefully thought out musings I shall leave you with another cool vimeo flick that caught my eye this week. I love searching the web for inspiration and this one really struck me for a number of reasons. It’s not necessarily my kind of music (although it’s a grower) but the video certainly rocks. I love the use of dark and light and then vibrant colour – especially alongside the animated vintage style drawings and the surreal action elements. Hopefully you get a kick out of it also…

“I Say Fever” – the first video from the Ramona Falls debut album Intuit. Directed by the ridiculously talented Stefan Nadelman, winner of a 2003 Sundance prize for his 22 minute film ‘Terminal Bar’, a prolific animator in the commericial field and the mastermind behind the Menomena Evil Bee video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Ramona Falls is Brent Knopf’s first solo venture, but he has an extensive musical resume as part of trio Menomena (an indie rock band from Portland, OR, that’s snagged plaudits from such tastemakers as Pitchfork Media and the New York Times.)

Directed and Animated by Stefan Nadelman
Produced by Tourist Pictures
touristpictures.com