Time for another Sunday evening blog post after a long hard week recovering from a trip to London last weekend. The flight out there was pretty hectic, sharp pains behind the eyeballs were not the most comfortable welcome back to the motherland but hey, life goes on. London is a fun place, managed to get a few tattoos whilst there too. I would definitely like to live there one day. Maybe some more international adventures first, though.
Nick
I finally put some rolls through the Leica that i bought recently. No light leaks and functions perfectly which i'm pleased about. I'm not missing Skateboard Photography yet, swinging the Leica around your neck and just leaving the house is so nice. No batteries to charge, no memory cards to constantly unload and no going into the bag for 5 minutes before you can actually take a photo. Here's some shots from the first roll of Portra, more B&W to come in the next couple of weeks once i've found a place to buy negative holders for my scanner.
Shooting people on the streets can be very amusing, the subjects always seem to turn around as if i had accidentally captured them in the frame (which i encourage if it avoids getting shouted at).
Well, It's now been a good couple of weeks since i last posted after claiming I was going to be a blogging god. The plan was to do this post with new photos but unfortunately it's impossible to find a laboratory in Barcelona that'll develop and scan a black & white film for under 20 euros. This means i'll be buying some chemicals and developing at home again very soon, which I'm excited about.
So it's almost the end of winter. Friends are claiming just weeks to go until the sunshine, beers on the beach after work & no long nights in bed attempting to keep warm/sane. This sounds a bit dramatic, obviously a winter in Spain still isn't as cold as most experience but after the extortionate heat of the summer months, it hits you pretty hard.
I was looking through some photos from the summer to keep me going when i thought how much fun it was and that i should post some photos. Some of the highlights included shindigs such as Picnik Electronika. A mountainside, outdoor party which happens every Sunday in the summer. Everyone 'lets loose' and it's alot of fun.
Picnik Electronik
The Author Excited for Picnik Electronik
Ned
Sprinklers, an essential to any Spanish party
'Lets have a nice photo [Ned and I]'
Moving on. Another fun event was our Scottish friends visiting. Naturally the Scots are up for anything and 'a quiet beer on the beach' turned into getting braids and head shaves. I was honoured to carry out the shaving part after my african counterpart undertook the braiding (Thankyou Yolanda, see you soon).
Warren
Ryan
Tommy
Warren & Tommy
Ryan, Tommy & Warren
My good friend Conrad visited for a couple of days in July and we had muy divertido.
There isn't many things in this world more fun that pushing through Passeig de Gracia tunnel late at night on a skateboard.
This posts parting message is one of the most inspirational photographers that lived, Robert Capa. As one of the founders of the world renowned Magnum Photos, this man pioneered not only war-time photography but photo-journalism as we know it. & He did it all with this face;
True turn up king.
Until the next time my friends, hopefully with self-developed photos and more sunshine.
As one of my favourite rappers, Charles Hamilton, has said multiple times, I am back.
I've not posted on this blog since 2012, the plan was to make it a place to put my work and any thoughts i may have. Since then (as you can see) not much has been posted. I moved from my family home in the countryside to Bristol (UK) where i spent a year and a half and i'm now living in Barcelona.
I feel like this is the most wholesome form of social media, even though not as popular, my favourite place to find information and read about people i respect's work/ramblings.
I've deleted most of my media platforms in the hope to find a better, 'real world' existence. I thought i'd feel out of the loop but i don't. I feel like i wish everyone else would do the same and get back into touch with conversation, work, collaboration and real life relationships. 98% of my friends have smart phones and 98% of my friends have snapchat/twitter/facebook/instagram/tinder amongst other lesser known applications running simultaneously giving them a constant update on what their 'online' friend just had for breakfast.
This is starting to sound like a rant and extremely pretentious. It's not and i'm not trying to come across that way. I love sharing what i had for breakfast if it's something worth sharing.
My friend, Conrad, emailed me about 3 months ago stating he had deleted Facebook and to communicate through emails as we are living in different countries. My initial reaction was 'what, why, how are you going to talk to your friends?'. One big contradiction, right? so with this, i deleted some platforms. I felt better, i didn't wake up to things on my phone that didn't matter to me and i didn't spend any time pointlessly scrolling through my associates life's with my finger tips.
I've realised i've stopped enjoying photography as much as i used to and i need to get back in touch with the whole reason i've spent thousands of pounds and hours on it. So with this I'm going to go on specific photography excursions and try to tell actual stories with it. When you first get a camera, you're intrigued into what the settings do, how to get the highest quality photo possible and eventually to get published in a high-street magazine. Well i've achieved that and it's become dry.
There was a time when i'd take a film camera out on a night out and shoot some of my best photos,
[click for big]
These days, i take my camera out maybe once a month to shoot a specific photo.
I've still got commitments to shooting skateboarding photos which makes the transition tricky, do i really want to not shoot skateboarding or am i just being bitter from a cold Barcelona winter?
Anyway, i've gone on long enough, i thought it'd be cool to include an inspirational/legendary figure/thing at the end of each post. So here's the first:
This is Larry Walters -
Larry was an American truck driver who made his own flying machine. It was a lawn chair with multiple helium balloons attached. Larry was successful in achieving flight and sored at 15,000 feet. He carried with him a beer, a CB radio, a camera and a pellet gun to shoot out the balloons, allowing him to safely land. Larry managed to shoot out some of the balloons when he accidentally dropped his pellet gun over the side of his aircraft. Larry eventually landed on some electrical lines, he caused a power cut covering the whole of Long Beach but managed to climb safely to the ground. 15 years and a Timex advert later, Larry's long time girlfriend broke up with him. Larry took himself to the woods and shot himself, aged 44. Hold Tight Larry.
