Well, this year took a while to get started but now, all of a sudden, it’s all kicking off. I already mentioned the Washington exhibition and Open Up event that I’m going to be involved in. In the last 24 hours, a couple more possibilities have come it.
Firstly, I got an email from fellow Sheffield photographer Andy Brown. He is organising a show “6*6″ - six Sheffield photographers each showing six photos, and with each photographer choosing a different subject matter or genre. Andy will be showing documentary photos, and also involved so far are Chris Saunders (music portraits), Denzil Watson (travel) and Stevlor (nudes). Andy emailed me along with 7 other local photographers to see if any of us were interested in making up the final two places. It remains to be seen whether I’ll make the cut, but this is something I’d really like to be involved in.
Just as I was getting over all this excitement, another email comes in, this time from Maramalade Magazine. A couple of months ago, they announced that they would be putting together an issue entirely composed of submissions via their Myspace page. This made quite a hit with the mainstream media looking for the latest Web2.0 bandwagon, and I sent in a few photos although I imagined they would get lost among a tidal wave of submissions. But no, I have been “selected through to the next stage of the myspace issue” - which is obviously no guarantee of being in the issue, but at least it means I managed to cut it through all the dross and now will at least get a fair crack at it. 45Mb (!) of high-res photos now winging its way to them via email (!)
My biggest problem now is finding a way to finance my burgeoning printing costs (I just had to spend £50 on my latest set of 12×8s) and framing (I don’t even want to contemplate that - I need to frame at least 10, preferably 15-20 photos to get a good base for exhibiting, and I’ve been quoted between £10 and £30 per frame & matte).
Some exciting new photo-news. Firstly, I have been asked to hang some of my pictures at The Washington. This is quite an honour: the pub is the centre of Sheffield’s hyperactive music scene (it used to be owned by Pulp drummer Nick Banks, and ex-Pulp members can often be seen in there, along with various Monkeys of one sort or another) and has just taken down an exhibition of very fine musical portraits by local photo-whizz Chris Saunders. At the moment I’m frantically getting photos printed and framed so that I can install some in there, I hope, early next week.
I’ve also decided to participate in this year’s Open-Up Sheffield. What this means is that I will open my house up for people to come and inspect my photos (again, I need to print lots to stick up on the wall, or at least matte them for browsing). Hopefully I’ll sell a few, or at least get some commissions out of it.
Finally, for some months now I’ve been touting Photobox as the place to get photos printed (admittedly it’s not the best, but it is among the best of the bargain photo-printers: cheap, quick and pretty good (and consistent) quality. As I’ve uploaded so many photos there recently for printing, I thought I’d shift a few of them to a public gallery. So here it is, my own personalised photo-shop, you can buy some of my prints and other photo-based gift products here direct from Photobox.
By the way, if you are thinking of signing up to Photobox, please email me first. I have some special offers which means that you & I will both get some free prints when you join.
I got very sidetracked today, creating a JavaScript routine to validate UK postcodes. I actually made it into a Dojo package, and will be trying to get it accepted into the main Dojo release, but here is an alternative version which doesn’t need Dojo:
isValidUkPostcode = function(/*String*/value, /*Object?*/flags){
// summary: A regular expression to check for valid UK postcodes
//
// value : the string to be tested
// flags : An object.
// flags.strictChecking: check strictly against conventions
// published in
// http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/gdsc/html/frames/PostCode.htm
// i.e. exclude certain letters from certain positions -
// NB These conventions may change in the future if
// operationally required.
// flags.fullCode: check for full-length postcodes, i.e. incode
// and outcode
// flags.outCodeOnly: check for outcode only postcodes,
// e.g. SW1V
// assign default values to missing paramters
flags = (typeof flags == “object”) ? flags : {};
if(typeof flags.strictChecking != “boolean”){ flags.strictChecking = true; }
if(typeof flags.fullCode != “boolean”){ flags.fullCode = true; }
if(typeof flags.outCodeOnly != “boolean”){ flags.outCodeOnly = false; }
var numericPositionRE = “[0-9]”;
var alphaPositionRE = “[A-Z]”;
// Outcode
if(flags.strictChecking) {
var firstPositionRE = “[A-PR-UWYZ]”;
var secondPositionRE = “[A-HK-Y]”;
var thirdPositionRE = “[A-HJKS-UW]”;
var fourthPositionRE = “[ABEHMNPRV-Y]”;
} else {
var firstPositionRE = alphaPositionRE;
var secondPositionRE = alphaPositionRE;
var thirdPositionRE = alphaPositionRE;
var fourthPositionRE = alphaPositionRE;
}
var outCodeRE =
“(” + firstPositionRE + numericPositionRE + “)|(”
+ firstPositionRE + numericPositionRE + numericPositionRE + “)|(”
+ firstPositionRE + secondPositionRE + numericPositionRE + “)|(”
+ firstPositionRE + secondPositionRE + numericPositionRE + numericPositionRE + “)|(”
+ firstPositionRE + numericPositionRE + thirdPositionRE + “)|(”
+ firstPositionRE + secondPositionRE + numericPositionRE + fourthPositionRE + “)”;
// inCode
if(flags.strictChecking) {
var inCodeAlphaRE = “[ABD-HJLNP-UW-Z]”;
} else {
var inCodeAlphaRE = “[A-Z]”;
}
var inCodeRE = “([0-9]” + inCodeAlphaRE + inCodeAlphaRE + “)”;
// exceptions
if (flags.fullCode & flags.outCodeOnly) {
var exceptionsRE = “(GIR 0AA)|(GIR)”;
var postcodeRE = “(” + outCodeRE + ” ” + inCodeRE + “)|(” + outCodeRE + “)|(” + exceptionsRE + “)”;
} else if (flags.outCodeOnly) {
var exceptionsRE = “GIR”;
var postcodeRE = “(” + outCodeRE + “)|(” + exceptionsRE + “)”;
} else {
var exceptionsRE = “GIR 0AA”;
var postcodeRE = “(” + outCodeRE + ” ” + inCodeRE + “)|(” + exceptionsRE + “)”;
}
var re = new RegExp(”^” + postcodeRE + “$”, “i”);
return re.test(value); // Boolean
}
Last night I (once again) checked out Geo-tagging on Flickr. Last time I looked, Yahoo! Maps for Europe were so sparse that it was hard to know with any certainty that I’d placed a pin in Sheffield. This time around, they’ve made huge improvements, so that I can now virtually distinguish between a photograph taken at my house, and one taken next door. So I decided the time was right to start tagging.
Organizr made the job fairly straightforward, and in under an hour I had most of my 200+ photos tagged (most of the untagged onese were taken in peoples’ homes where I didn’t think location was appropriate or desirable). At the present count, I have 97 photos in Sheffield, 93 in London (most of them taken at Frieze Art Fair), 10 in Liverpool, one in Luxembourg and one in Switzerland. Check out my Flickr Map (zoom in to spread out the dots into more manageable groups).
As part of my preparation for Richard III next month, I have been immersing myself in the source material. Including several viewings of the movie versions by both Lawrence Olivier and Ian McKellen. The McKellen version, set in an imaginary 1930s England of civil wars and facism (close to the England that may have transpired had Edward VIII not abdicated on his marriage to Mrs Simpson), is stunningly beautiful in its choice of eccentric locations (as well as in the costumes and props used). Every scene brings on a new and mouth-watering piece of architecture. I have just been reading more about the locations used on Ian McKellen’s website, where I saw this:
Earls Court Exhibition Center is frequently used for rock concerts and opera but no one has ever shown interest in the bowels of the building. The barren, concrete lower levels provided the behind-the-scenes area of the arena where Richard held a Nuremberg style rally. Soviet and Italian inspired murals proclaiming a new order of prosperity, productivity and full employment decorated the walls of the green room.
When I was 17, and was acting as photographer for a new Richmond College newspaper alongside reporter Andrew Gilligan, Andrew and I visited Earls Court station. He told me about the elaborate network of tunnels that existed underneath the station, and together we sneaked inside them while the railway staff weren’t looking. The tunnels really are quite incredible, an underground city. We wondered around them lost for some 30 minutes, dodging into alcoves whenever we heard footsteps approaching, before finally ducking through an unmarked door and finding ourselves in the exhibition space, right in the middle of the Earls’ Court Boat Show (making a significant saving of some £20 on entrance fees). Truly an experience to remember.
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