Social Media Helps Track Down The Birmingham Riots Produced Artwork

 

When the news programmes show wars and riots around the world I wish half heartedly I admit, that I could be there dodging the bullets to capture the surfaces of burning cars and military vehicles, can you imagine the cross fire is in full flow, the heat and noise is intolerable as I crawl from the barricades to the burning mangled upturned mess of metal in my bullet proof combat jacket and helmet.

Of course while I do have to keep an eye on my surroundings when photographing and I have been in situations were I have felt at risk and I keep one eye on my escape route there is no need as romantic as it sounds to jetting into flash points around the world to get my stock of images.

On closer evaluation the images that I would get from those vehicles isn’t worth getting my head shot off for. To produce the conditions for a good surface to photograph I need the fireman to attend and soak the hot metal with their hose pipes, don’t think that will happen in the Lybian desert or downtown Kabul. It would also stand to reason that in dry climates there will not be the reaction from the damp in the atmosphere. This week I had the perfect scenario the trouble spots came to me in Birmingham but I also had perfect events and elements not only did the fireman attend but we had a night of rain.

I had no interest in photographing the mindless idiots who rioted in Birmingham I felt embarrassed the way my great city and the country in general was being projected on the television screens around the world. I was tempted to drive into the effected areas and try to find a burnt out car but with a very busy schedule I realised to get up early in the morning before the debris from the night before is cleared would mean I wasn’t going to get any sleep, so I left it. One of my Facebook friends posted a photo of this car with a message that it was wasn’t far from where I live and it was still there. As this arson attack occurred outside of the riot areas I don’t think it was related but, because the clean up had stretched the recovery yards to the limit it meant that this burn out for once was here for a few days

While Facebook provided me with a car on Friday morning I discovered this beauty via the excellent community blog Digbeth Is Good overnight they reported on the clean up campaign and itemized outstanding damage to the area, Ah Ha,

Interestingly, both this van and yesterdays cars produced very poor specimens of scorch marks so in both cases it wasn’t worth photographing them but the story is great to add to my now resurrected blog. I wonder if its karma as I have started blogging again and the burn outs have suddenly appeared

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A Return To Blogging

About 12 months ago I had this wild idea to reorganise my existence on the web, to stop blogging on my various sites and spend time planning the future strategy. The main problem and reason for this drastic pruning and remodelling was because I realised that my websites and blogs have evolved over a period of time, there is no planed framework and this led to duplication.

At that stage my plan was to change my website to a portal of all my online activities linking to separate websites for each of my projects and further more linking to my social media Facebook and Twitter activity. This Blogger blog would be no more because I was going to produce a Wordpress blog attached to my website, indeed the blog illustrates the reasons for change, the title of the blog “You will never look at them in the same way again” refers to one project a very important large project that no longer needs research and developing. It runs.  But, I have now moved forward with so much more work and in the last 12 months I have:

Become a Getty Image Artist. Exhibited as part of a collective at the Format Street Photography Festival Had a series of Self Portraits published in F-Stop Magazine Completed the 100 Strangers (well 99 with one special one to finish off) I’m in year 3 of the 365 a Photo a Day Everyday And I have also photographed the odd burnt out car

So why am I posting now, why the change of heart. Well I never did get round to delving into code and creating new sites, or clear the kitchen table and produce artistic Mind Maps and Mandellas, the project manager software remains in the box and I thought at least with the old setup at least I’m produced something to tell the world about my art. So I’ll keep it going until I defeat this procrastination thing.

del.icio.us Tags: social media,facebook,twitter,blogger,wordpress,getty,image artist.,format street photography festival,self portraits,f-stop,magazine,100 strangers,365,photo a day

Technorati Tags: social media,facebook,twitter,blogger,wordpress,getty,image artist.,format street photography festival,self portraits,f-stop,magazine,100 strangers,365,photo a day