Crowborough Creative Focus
I am delighted to be running a new photography group in Crowborough as part of the Crowborough Creative Network (CCN). The group, Crowborough Creative Focus will meet on the first Monday of every month at 7.30pm and starts on Monday 3rd October 2011 at The Old Fire Station cafe in Crowborough High Street.
It is open to all CCN followers along with any photography enthusiasts from the local community who would like to share their interest with others while at the same time gaining more knowledge about photography, especially the creative elements. It will be an informal group with plenty time for discussion and the exchange of ideas.
An entry charge of £1 towards costs is requested for each meeting. Because we would like an idea of numbers, we ask that anyone interested in attending contact me on hello@andrewnewson.co.uk
Newcastle Jesmond Hotel
I had the pleasure of popping up to Newcastle the other week for a little photo job. I’m a Newcastle United fan so the area is somewhat familiar, although I have never actually lived there.
The train journey isn’t too much of a nightmare from where I live either, I can get a direct train to London that takes about an hour, then hop across to St Pancras and get the train straight to Newcastle. I think the whole journey took about 6 hours.
I arrived at the hotel and was met by a lovely lady who was the manageress of the hotel and I later met the owner who was equally lovely. However they weren’t quite ready for me, the hotel was going through a major refurbishment and the finishing touches were not quite there yet. Something I have learned from doing jobs like this is that very often you have to think on your feet and work around issues like this. Over the afternoon I managed to get quite a few shots and the following morning everyone worked really hard with those last minute finishing touches and I finished the job.
Superb staff and a lovely hotel, I think I will be visiting next time for pleasure.
I managed to finish off by taking a walk from near South Sheilds back to Newcastle to do some personal work. I didn’t quite bargain for how far it was (especially when I took the wrong route!), by the time I reached Newcastle my feet had blisters and I was shattered. I’ll share some of those photos soon.
What Cannot Be Seen at De La Warr Pavilion
I recently took part in What Cannot Be Seen, the fabulous matchbox pinhole camera project by Lucy Phillips.
Lucy posts the photographer a camera made from a matchbox with a single piece of photographic paper in it. One shot, one photograph!
The idea is to photograph what cannot be seen.
I decided to photograph my wife who was pregnant with our second child.
I was pretty pleased with the image and it turns out Lucy was too, which thrilled me. Lucy chose my image as one of the prints to be displayed large in the exhibition. The exhibition took place at The De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea.
You can view this great time-lapse video of the exhibition by photographer Sin Bozkurt.
Cool Work
Recently a had a job to photograph some refrigeration units – big ones that are mainly used in shops and restaurants.
I had been properly briefed and hired a studio to do the work in. I knew the units were big and I knew they were brushed aluminium, which was always going to be tricky to light.
I arrive at the studio at 7.30am to the fridges being delivered. To my horror they were not the brushed aluminium versions that I thought were coming, but polished aluminium!! Think of a cube with mirrors on every side and you’re nearly there!
Needless to say it was a tricky job to light and perhaps even more tricky to eliminate all the reflections. Lots of covering light stands with white packaging and taping white paper to walls and corners of the studio. Still it’s quite fun trying to solve problems like that. Rob at Lux Studios in Maidstone was very helpful and helped my figure out some solutions.
I shot the images whilst tethered to a Mac and this was so good, I’m not sure I could have done the job without this method really, at least not as well. It was so good to be able to see the images instantly and large, so I could stand with the client and make sure they were happy with each image as we went and meant I could delete any duds too, which saves a lot of time later.
I always knew that the images would need re-touching, but I didn’t think it would take me two days! Virtually every reflective panel had to be cut out and airbrushed to make any reflections smooth. I also cut out every fridge so I could make sure the background was pure white and so the client could use them in their brochure designs easily.