A Visit To My Exhibition To Take Some Photographs

When ever I have my artwork in an exhibition I try to take as many photographs as I can of people interacting with the work, the image, the printing on glass, the concept of taking something that on the surface looks so horrible and turning it into a beautiful piece of art that would look attractive on any wall. A living room, office, lounge, in fact because of the nature of the images and presentation on glass: well any room even a bathroom.

My favourite photo is this one from last years Birmingham ArtFest as you can see I like to get creative rather than just have a boring picture of someone standing in front of a picture..

I’ve been waiting for a good sunny day to go and photograph my exhibition at the Solihull Arts Complex. Reading that you would imagine it was an outside event, well it’s as good as because the gallery opens out to the square through very large French windows and of course with a low winter sun it illuminates the artwork just right.

You can imagine my disappointment when I arrived at the gallery to find tables and chairs set out for some kind of event, this meant that I couldn’t as intended do a panorama photograph were I stitch about 20 photos together to achieve one large image

Because of the half term school holiday Kathryn Pettitt was delivering an art session for school children as a holiday extension to the Saturday morning events for 7 to 14 year olds. So I managed to utilize this different opportunity to take photos of the work using the parents and children as my models. The show is on until 7th March and I have no doubt I will have another sunny day and chance to capture the panorama.

If your around the West Midlands area have a look at the exhibition.

Exhibition Title:	You Will Look at Them in the Same Way Again
Venue:	Solihull Gallery
Address:	Solihull Arts Complex
	Library Square
	Touchwood
	Homer Road
	Solihull

Dates: 19th January - 7th March

There is an Artist Talk event on Thursday 26th February at 6pm

Technorati Tags: views from above the earth,fine art,art,exhibition,solihull Arts Complex,solihull

Finished photographs from the two recent burnt out car finds

Image from the car on Friday 13th

I promised I would work on an image from the car I photographed on Friday the 13th and here it is I didn’t have to do much Photoshop editing here because most of the work was done when I took the photograph, I had poured water over the wing and this mixed with the sunlight produced the image I wanted.

Image from the second car “Probably the Best car I Have Ever Photographed. Ever”

I was very excited when I first saw this car and throughout the time I was working photographing it, but somehow when I processed the photos on my computer I wasn’t as enthusiastic with them. Somehow the colours don’t seem right to me they are very vibrant but perhaps there are too many strong deep colours in a small area. Sometimes a car that looks good will not produce any final images that fit with my clearly defined art practice and visa versa. Now I’m not saying this isn’t a good image but does it look like a landscape to you?

Technorati Tags: Photographs,Fine art photography,art,Fine Art

Probably the best car I have ever photographed. Ever!

A second car was burnt out today in the same park that I found the car on Friday see the previous post, it often happens like this and then there will be nothing for months because those responsible have been sent to prison or juvenile detention centres. This car was dumped on the other side of the park as if they had used the back entrance, however on Friday they had broken a heavy duty gate lock to enter the park so of course they knew it would be easy to get in through there, and once in side they had some fun across the grass

This was one of the best cars that I had ever seen in terms of markings although the proof of the pudding is how they look when I get them home on the pc and start looking for that distinctive landscape quality. Each side of the car was covered in so many colours it was so good I didn’t know where to start. Again the sunlight was great, very strong and in just the right position relevant to the car. I moved around the car changing the angle in all directions.

The front and back of the car was quite poor and the normally good areas such as the roof and wings were no good at all, the roof had no markings just a kind of pink dusty texture which doesn’t translate very well into the finished image.

I couldn’t find out anything about the origin of the car, I know it was a Nissan because there was a small badge on the ground but because it was so far from the paths across the park nobody came close by and so there was no conversations with anybody. Apart that is from a group of youngsters who were shouting abuse from a distance, I never know if its best to engage with them or ignore them. Two police officers appeared after they saw me pouring water over the car (must of thought I was mad) but they won’t tell you anything even if they know.

Technorati Tags: Nissan,Cars,art fine,art,photography

A Real Friday the 13th for the owner of this car

When I first started blogging last year I had some notes jotted down in case I had writer’s bloke, one of those stories to fall back on was “Shortage of Burnt Out Cars” because at the time this was a concern to me – my livelihood was at stake. But looking back over the blog it seems that they are in regular supply and I am just refining my means of sourcing them. This involves developing a 6 sense to anticipate where they will be and having the right people in the right places looking out for them.

Yesterday I got the wake up call from John the park cleaner about a burnt out car dumped at Fox Hollies Park in Acocks Green, Birmingham. This was the same location that I went to photograph another car a few weeks back but when I arrived it had been towed away. So off I went half asleep as soon as I could to investigate.

I don’t think this car, a Fiat I believe will be moving so quickly because it was sunk in a bog, there’s a small fishing lake on a higher level not far away and with the melting snow it was overflowing down to the small river, the car was in the way. I had to go home and get my Wellington boots.

You can see how I suffered for may art, the smell wasn’t too bad it was just hard trying to move around the car and concentrate on the shot when your feet are sinking, Also I didn’t want to fall over (nearly did) or drop any of my equipment I made sure there wasn’t even a nearly there, I remembered the date Friday the 13^th, now I would consider myself not superstitious but it really made me focus my attention

Sally will generally go searching nose down and then comes back to me and wants to be quite close, but I wouldn’t let her come near. Because she is now deaf I don’t like it when she goes off on her own because she wouldn’t hear me when I call out for her but how do you tell an animal you want them close but not too close in the end she was quite happy paddling in this part of the water, which is nice and clean.

Although the markings on the car look quite colourful it wasn’t a particularly good specimen, I was so disappointed because the sun light and weather conditions were perfect, the position of the car relevant to the sunlight was perfect and it was so small and low the access around the car was brilliant. I didn’t have to climb to get on the roof it was just the right height for me to work standing by the side of the car but there wasn’t one single shot worth taking.

With these perfect conditions I spent more time than normal examining details to try and get some pictures. Then looking through the lens I noticed the marks on the wings were quite good in fact with a small amount of water splashed on them they were very good and in the end I took over 400 pictures from different angles of these areas.

 

An area of the car that I don’t normal bother shooting is the wheel arches from the inside of the of the boot, because they are generally in shadow and also have too much rust and a metallic look about them (which I aim to take away from my final edits). But these are quite good. We shall see, it’s a busy weekend taxing grandchildren to various activities oh yes Valentines too but I will try and do some quick edits of the pictures from this car for tomorrows post on “You Will Never Look at Them in the Same Way Again”.

Technorati Tags: Fiat,cars,artwork,art,fine art,unusual art,wall art,modern art,contempory artwork,fine art photography

Experiments with Old Car Parts in the Garden

I’m in the middle of a major change to my website, and when I’m doing anything like that I like to concentrate on one thing at a time, but its not that easy, life and the family get in the way, then there’s the work involved promoting the exhibition and my commitment to the 365 project on my Flickr site. That is every day in 2009 I have to take a photograph and upload it to Flickr. I find I’m not out and about as much as normal and so the photo opportunities are restricted.

In my garden I have several panels I have collected from the burnt out cars I photographed last year, I generally carry on photographing them for months after the car was torched, sometimes I will experiment with treatments to metal surfaces using anything from varying strengths of acid to a selection of liquids from light oil, water, and small solutions of acrylic paint (just enough to leave a stain on the surface).

For my Flickr 365 photo today (Number 43-365 no less) I took some photographs of a pile of bonnets with little success because I haven’t worked on them recently (it’s a bit cold outside) but this was a nice result.

I think I will post some more of my work on the blog similar to this image that is nice to look at without being great and also others that are great but could not be added to my portfolio because they don’t fit with my artist statement.

My photography aims to capture the disturbance to surfaces created by acts of joy riding and arson by zooming into scorched, disfigured vehicle parts that are occupied in the lifecycle of corrosion, the natural process that tries to reclaim human made objects to an elemental state more in line with the energy of the molecules the objects are made of.

Torching accelerates this journey of returning to the earth and I look to capture, investigate and at times distort results of the advancement of its lifecycle. Using results of the explosion; scorched metal, molten glass, fabrics, and plastics, the rust and the gallons of water from the firemen’s hose I strive to turn a negative blot on the landscape using technology, photography and oil paint to transform the textual image into a positive beautiful landscape.

Weather Disrupts the Whole of the UK and My Exhibition

Technorati Tags: snow,art exhibition,fine Art,art,weather

With global warming and climate change we don’t get real seasons now certainly not as pronounced as when I was young, I remember doing my paper round with the snow so deep that it even fell into the top of my wellies. I have a project on my Flickr site “The Last Snow Ever To fall in Yardley Wood” (Yardley Wood is a 2 square mile area of Birmingham were I live). So every time it snows enough to cover a layer on the ground I take a photograph so that if it is the last snow ever I have recorded it.

We recently had a lot more snow than normal in fact the worst for 18 years and while the whole country was disrupted (including as you can see the weekly rubbish collection didn’t happen) I rather smugly said that the snow doesn’t really affect me as I can work from home, but then I realised nobody is able to get to my exhibition.

Exhibition Title: You Will Never Look at Them in the Same Way Again

Venue: Solihull Gallery

Address: Solihull Arts Complex, Library Square, Touchwood, Homer Road, Solihull, West Midlands

Dates: 19th January - 7th March

Theres an Artist Talk event on Thursday 26^th February at 6pm

Unexpected Ghosts In The Photograph

I’m currently involved in the 365 project on my Flickr website, I’m committed to taking a photograph of anything and posting it on Flickr everyday of 2009. The main reason for this pressure is to make sure I’m constantly taking photographs keeping up to speed with using my SLR and at the same time I might find another subject to base my art practise on after all I can’t work with burnt out cars forever can I?

This morning I found myself walking my dog Sally around Cannon Hill Park I took a few photographs and then driving home I took some more, at that stage all of them could be a promising contender for Flickr Photo No 38/365 but when I got home and loaded them on the PC none of them looked that good, a tree in the wrong place or the light had suddenly changed as I took the shot. No real problem at this stage because I still had 13 hours of 7^th February left and I had planned a very full day so I was confident.

I started playing around with the images in Photoshop, this picture I cropped tight into the bandstand (so this copy is about a third size of the original) but I still wasn’t happy with the tone definition, they would be poor because I was about 300 yards away from the bandstand, but while I was trying to enhance the values I noticed a white shadow in the corner and the figure on the bench.

So off I went down to Canon Hill Park to photograph the snowman.

click on a photo to see a larger version

With the lunchtime sunshine and a few people in the picture I had a great time. Here’s the shot that’s on my Flickr site for today.

38/365 “Waiting for the Band”

Saturday Morning Art Session for 7 to 14 Year Olds in Solihull, West Midlands

Each Saturday morning local children meet for a mix of Art, Craft, Design and Sculpture sessions and these take place in the gallery space. The age group is 7 to 14, it starts at 10:30 and 12:30 and runs during school term time with some activities during holidays too.

As my work was on the walls in front of them they used my photography as a basis for some paintings. So there’s a nice loop: I take the originating photos the youngsters paint using the photos as inspiration and now I’ve photographed their work.

click on the image to view larger

The exhibition signage was not on display the first week and this was perfect to let their imagination run wild thinking what the pictures originated from.

There are various events in schools and youth centres throughout February centred on my exhibition, organised by Solihull Councils Arts Development Department.