Birmingham Photospace Flash Swap Exhibition

Saturday lunch time I made my way down to the Custard Factory to hand in my picture for the Flash Swap Exhibition and then off I went to watch my son play football, I got a bit sunburnt or wind burnt and returned to the Custard Factory in the early evening.

As you can see there was a very good turnout of photographers of all levels of experiences and reputations. I bumped into so many people I hadn’t seen for a long time, a quick mention for Mike Hale whose website address is the only one I know, I first met Mike on the Creative Alliance course in 2006. It was a good course that introduced us to the business side of the arts, ideal after you have finished your degree and think how can I make a living as an artist. On day one we were separated into pairs and had to introduce the other person to the group for me describing Mikes work was easy because he included so much experimentation and variety at such a high standard.

It was nice to see Pete Ashton the blogging guru or Journeyman of the blogging spheres, that’s his description but it is very accurate he had just returned from some techie, bloggy web2 networking event in Austin Texas yep this is a hardcore blogger with about 3 or 4 on the go at the same time plus a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and loads of other social networking sites that the rest of the world will discover in about 12 months time, he’s the type of person you would see in the corner of a bar or restaurant tapping away on his laptop, its thanks to Pete and his friend Stef Lewandowski who talked me into blogging

Pete donated some of his business card size photos (as a set),

Birmingham Phil of Flickr fame was there; although he is one of my contacts/friends on Flickr I didn’t recognize him in the crowd.

So after a short speech everyone was able to select the photograph that they wanted to take home. When we originally handed in our pictures at reception we received a small label with a number on it (one picture equals one label) and this is how we notified our claim to a photograph.

This picture by Richard Gill created a bit of controversy because it was it was chosen by two people I don’t know the outcome.

I don’t know this gentlemans name but he sure has a great taste in art, he went for the “Untitled” Giclee print by John Garghan and when I’m famous or dead he can look back on this moment when he made his fortune.

This is the photograph that I chose Birmingham Music Legend Steve Gibbons; I had my eye on it during the opening speeches so I positioned myself very close but when we got the go ahead to make our selection I couldn’t find my label. The photographer is Tim Ellis

Judging by the turnout and the feedback on the site from people who couldn’t make it I’m sure we will have a similar event in the future

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This Saturday I’m off to the Flash Swap Exhibition

An initiative that has my full support is Birmingham Photospace I started to write about it and then I thought the organizers have already produced an excellent explanation and posted it on the Facebook group page.

The group is seeking to galvanise interested individuals and organisations in Birmingham towards the ultimate aim of creating a world class venue for photography in Birmingham. This could be in a reclaimed industrial building close to the city centre. This could build on and support the interest in photography in the city, showcase our magnificent photography collections and fill a gap in Birmingham's visual arts facilities

You can also read the Vision For Birmingham and then visit the informative blog

The Flash Swap Exhibition organized by Birmingham Photospace takes place this Saturday 21st March at the Custard Factory’s Vaad Gallery this is an opportunity for photographers of all levels to showcase their work for free.

Basically you take along at least one photograph and you are then entitled to choose a picture.

Comprehensive information at the Birmingham Photospace Press Release

I decided to take one of my earlier photographs in fact it was taken at the first burnt out car I ever photographed. You will notice that my work today is very different than this first photograph as now I look to disguise any notation that of the origins of the photograph. The only problem now is I have to find it in my spare bedroom.

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I’m flabbergasted! “You Will Never Look at Them in the Same Way Again” gets 1500 hits in one day!

I had a massive surprise at lunchtime today when I logged into my web tracking program statcounter.com to find that the blog had achieved 1345 hits in less than 12 hours, it eventually trickled over the 1500 line just before midnight.

So how has it jumped from 350 hits on a good day (if the wind is in the right direction) to this impressive figure? I have no idea.

Once I have loaded a new post I “Ping” the blog url to a few weblogs in particular alphainventions.com which does seem responsible for 99.99% of the hits every day. alphainventions.com must be having a very successful period because not only did this site drive so much traffic to “You Will Never Look at Them in the Same Way Again” but when I tried to access the site about 7pm GMT to top up the Ping I found alphainventions.com was down, perhaps because they had an overload of visitors themselves.

Analysing the data further: I found there were 39 returning visitors, this seems to be my daily average which I’m very happy with because it shows the blog has a following and that has always been the aim. However, I’m disappointed to find that there was no follow on clicks arriving at my website www.johngarghan.co.uk and that of course has to be my ultimate goal. So why is this happening? Is it because when a visitors sees the blog on alphainventions.com it some how is enticed by the headline or pretty pictures and clicks to find out what its all about but then realises in a matter of seconds that the art practice of someone who photographs burnt out cars is not for them and then clicks away to the next flash of interest. Or has it something to do with the layout of the blog page that doesn’t direct the visitor to the website, I shall experiment further.

About Alphainventions.com: just post your blog and select a category that the blog can be pigeon holed into, for example I would categorise “You Will Never Look at Them in the Same Way Again” under “art” (naturally) , “arts” and something like “Shopping” and “Gifts”. As you are doing this you will notice several blogs appear on screen and your blog will shortly appear there too. The blog stays there until it becomes the last one pinged (and effectively the first blog) then someone pings their blog to knock you out of the list.

About Statcounter.com: By pasting a small piece of code onto your website Statecounter immediately counts and analyses all the visitors to your blog and provides you with so much information How many visitors, their location, what sites they came from and how long they spent on the blog. Best of all, its free (although there is an option to make a donation).

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Flickr – Or I’ll Scratch Your Back If You Scratch Mine

I enjoy photography and I love Flickr.com, I can spend hours looking at photographs on the site comparing different styles, subjects and the variations that each photographer will use. Here are some pictures from my Flickr site.

The Day Job: - This set is associated with the body of work found in my art practice; here I can test the response to a new image by noting how many clicks a photograph achieves before I spend more effort marketing it.

Cricket (click image for a larger version)

My hobby: That’s Playing Cricket, Watching Cricket and now photographing Cricket.

Other sets include

Birmingham

Live Gigs

Dogs-Pets

Holidays

Two photograph series that have grown into larger projects:

The Last Snow to Fall in Yardley Wood

With the threat of Global Warming I have this mission to photograph the last snow to fall where I live in Yardley Wood, Birmingham.

The 365 Project:-  Take a photo everyday and post it to Flickr on that day, every day in 2009. This has been a great exercise in making me look for a photograph everywhere I go during the day, I find myself walking along the road and looking up alleyways or above street level for that piece of interesting and unique architecture or a reference to a bygone age. I’m forced to always carry a camera and now never say “I wish I had a camera” (with me).

Having posted to Flickr I want as many people as possible to look and comment on the work, and if I see anything of interest I will do the same. In this quest for more viewers each picture is added to a relevant Flickr Group, as soon as you do this you will see the number of hits on a picture increase and nice comments start to be added to the picture, great. Or is it? Most groups have rules. Basically if you past a picture to the group you have to comment on other pictures in the group. I realised as I was commenting I’m only fulfilling my contractual obligation, would I really want to comment if I didn’t have to. I would rather have that choice. So I stopped throwing my comments around now giving only to a deserving image.

The Group Administrators and Group Moderators are threatening to throw me out of their groups if I don’t abide by there rules. Am I really bothered? No I will just link to groups who don’t have this rule and rely on traffic from relevant Tags on my photos and the network of friends and contacts that I have built up enjoying their company over the last year. If I had some spare time I might start my own group The “Just Post It - Comment On Another If You Think It Deserves It” Group.

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The Artist Talk

As part of the exhibition at Solihull Arts Complex I delivered an Artist Talk in the gallery space, the event was very well attended and included in the audience were the students and the head of Art at Tudor Grange School. Dan Burwood an artist friend of mine is working with the children on a project which will tie in with the show and have some reference to my art practice.

It was great to have them there but it did create a problem, photographing young people is a very sensitive area and I cant place photographs of them on the blog without establishing if permission has been granted by the parents and at the moment I do not have that consent. When I photographed the children who were involved in the workshop earlier in the month I got the parental permission as they brought the kids to the gallery or came to collect them, indeed quite a few parents were just out of shot holding bags and jackets. Sorting and editing the photos from the night I found some great images of adults listening and contributing to the talk but there would be a young person strategically positioned to void the picture.

The main topic of discussion was should I display images of the burnt out cars as part of the show and indeed should I even explain were the images originate from, many of the artist present thought that the photographs on the wall should and do stand by themselves without the history. I agonised over this topic when I first began the project in those early days I swayed backwards and forwards but I’m comfortable with my decision to go the route I have taken.

At first I was concerned that if I divulged the origins of my work then other photographers would copy my methods. In those early days I had a lot of input from Arlene Burnett and we talked about this aspect and for various reasons it was established that it wasn’t a problem. In the main because if two photographers were to work on the same car the images would be totally different, it is the unique human senses that create the image and we are all different. In fact I have tried to repeat a shot and found it impossible to match the angles and lighting conditions, Furthermore its not just about taking photos of cars it’s also about the ground work that goes into building the end results e.g. finding the burn outs in exactly the right condition, etc.

Since the work began the artwork has taken on a wider scope with the documenting of the “Finds” and the meeting of people who help me or even just stop for a chat “You Will Never Look at Them in the Same Way Again” has developed that in an artwork of documenting. Indeed if I didn’t reveal all there would be no blog.

Solihull Arts Development Officer Aimee Green takes the sign down

On Saturday the show came to an end and early Monday morning I arrived with my carefully constructed packaging. It was important that we got the work down as soon as possible because the walls had to be treated, holes filled, smudge marks painted and everything made good, ready for the installation of the next show at the Complex:

Dear Miss Hubbard

16th March to 16th May

In 2004, artist James Bouren, stumbled upon an unopened envelope addressed to a Miss J.E.Hubbard postmarked 1970. James has worked closely with Solihull school children to investigate what could be inside this unopened envelope. The exhibition displays his explorations and responses to children's artwork

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Bugs, Bridge and, and, and I forgot: Memory

I can’t have a post on “You Will Never Look at Them in the Same Way Again” without a picture. If there are any loose panels around when I photograph a car I will take them home with me. The bonnet from the car featured in the post “Bloody PCs, bloody Microsoft and a great new car to photograph” has been battered by the winter weather in my garden and today we had the great combination of rain, frost and then brilliant sunlight. It just looked right for a few photographs.

Bugs

Spent today fixing the bugs in the website, well its impossible to do a complete re write of a site (or any software program) of any size and not have a bug that will not turn up during initial testing. This bug was on my main template file and it had been copied all the way through the site.

If I was flying a Boeing 747 we would all be dead by now. I’m not and its no real problem because nobody has been on the site since the change, Oh really? Well that’s another bug because I didn’t put the code on from the website tracking sites Google Analytics and StatCounter

 Memory

Finally found out what was the problem with my PC, regular readers of the site will know that a few weeks before my exhibition I began to experience problems and since then I have been nursing it along and trying to work while expecting a crash at any moment so of course I had to be extremely vigilant with excessive backups of files. A simple task like replying to an email meant copying the email onto a memory stick and then moving the file to a very slow laptop.

I have tried all kinds of tests, restored and restored so yesterday I began to try changing components so that through trial and error I would get the answer. First, because it’s the quickest and easiest to get at I changed the memory sticks and it appears to be the 2GB stick that’s faulty.

Adobe Bridge

Having restored my PC originally just after New Year I had lost all the programs that were installed, normally that’s no problem because I have the software on disk and I would just re install, but my sick pc wasn’t always recognizing the CD drive and when it did most of the time would not run a setup file (even when I copied the contents of the CD or DVD to my hard drive) now of course everything’s working just fine.

Do you know what I missed more than anything? Not being able to use Adobe Bridge I didn't realize how much I rely on it but I find it so good for organising my photos. So now I can get to work on all the pictures from the exhibition and the artist talk last week. Hurray!

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Artists at the Show

My one man show at the Solihull Arts Complex continues into its final weeks, at this stage I’m beginning to think about collecting bubble wrap and cardboard for packaging and make some space again at home for the pieces. As my work is printed on glass you will appreciate the necessity for good protection and during the last 2 years I have developed a combination of cardboard, and packing that fully protects particularly the corners but is very quickly assembled and taken apart if I want to show somebody, perhaps a gallery owner.

While my show has been running there has also been a small exhibition of photographs by Lorna Jones down on the ground floor of the Arts Complex.

Lorna attended my private view and I have been meaning to feature her on “You Will Never Look at Them in the Same Way Again” but I couldn’t find the photographs (because of my iffy computer – yes its still not right but I’m getting by) .

Because of the light in the area and the glass mountings it proved very difficult to photograph all of her work but as you can see she also relies on the automobile business for her images. Notice she has some magic red dots next to these pictures, well done.

A few weeks ago I was taking some reference photos of my work in an exhibition situ in the gallery and asked a young lady to pose for some shots next to the work.

She visits the library for her weekly Spanish lesson and I found out that she is a Fine Art Degree student at Coventry University, her work centres around scaffolding and she showed me her sketch book containing some great textile images.

We didn’t swap contact details but I hope I get an invite to her degree show in June.

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The Redesigned Website Goes Live

My website www.johngarghan.co.uk gets a rework and hopefully reflects my current practice going forward. Its been two years since I originally built the site, and recently its looked a little tired not to mention most of my portfolio was not featured and half the work that was on the site is no longer marketed by me.

I hope the new site can be a dynamic experience with in the future some audience interaction, complemented by the blog: in fact they will both cross one and others paths but at the same time without any duplication. Quite a challenge. Pop over to the site and then keep in touch to see how it evolves.

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