CVTEC Summer Run

So, on Wednesday evening, Cheshire Vintage Tractor and Engine Club met up for a nice drive round the Cheshire countryside, this time starting and ending in Byley. The run was organises by Phil Moston, and a collection held by Lowes farm was at the end offering all enthusiasts a chance to have a look round. A nice slice of cake was provided before the journey home.

This time though, I have decided to try out a different look with my images of the event. I've used a filter and a vignette. Some of the images I believe work better than others, but this was only an experiment. 

This first image is by far my favourite of the evening, the light is so pretty in it.

My view for most of the evening.

Hello.

Wave!

Smile.

Happy drivers...

All lined up pre-collection viewing.

I didn't take any images at the collection. And the first image on this post is one I am likely to continue playing with as although I like this edit, I think other options could also work really well. 

My Day With Menna

Yesterday I spent my day looking after my nearly three year old cousin. We had a very busy day together, spending time drawing, singing and doing role plays...

Menna	You be rapunzel and I’ll be Prince Charming.. Who is your Prince Charming?
Victoria	I don’t know, he hasn’t arrived yet.
Menna	I’ll be your Prince Charming
Victoria	Oh thank you, are you rescuing me?
Menna	Yeah.
Menna	*10 minutes later* I’m not your Prince Charming anymore, I’ve retired.

We also played with dogs, visited the chickens, fed the rabbit, watched some cbeebies, made crayon coffees, read a story, played with dollies - feeding them and putting them to bed. But we also did my coursework, where Menna found out how much fun a ruler can be and loved drawing lines on her piece of paper. The rubber also provided some fun, rubbing out my pencil lines. And we did some gluing. She was ever so helpful.

But the most fun came when I took some pictures of Menna. I have borrowed a Hassleblad for Easter and wanted to try and get some shots of Menna playing. This worked for a while. But then Menna wanted to take some shots of me. So we struck up a deal that Menna could take 5 pictures of me and this is what we got.

At the top is an image I took of Menna while I checked the light meter reading. Below is one of Mennas photographs of me.

I had a wonderful day, and I cannot wait to see what images I got using the Hasselblad. That will be a few weeks wait though while I finish shooting.

Oooh, Two Posts In A Day...

Yeah, I know I posted earlier but I popped down to the post room today and got two letters and a parcel. Two of which were from two of my favourite non-related people ever back home in Davenham. I decided to share an image of them in this case, before I write back to them.

Ray King. 

I got to know this man through working in the newsagents back home (a brilliant place to work). He helped me out a lot and we always had a good chat on a saturday morning when he came in for his paper. In fact, he helped me out with the project I've photographed below and helped to get me in to the courthouse in the town to do a project. 

I got a parcel from him today with two books in, one from WWII times (a big passion of mine I discovered when doing a portrait project based on WWII children) and the other from the 60's based on towns still recovering from the effects of WWII. I now have to hurry and finish my other book so I can start these.  

Jim Conboy.

He's been my next door neighbour for my whole life, a whopping 18 years. He used to help me with my maths when I was little, we did sums over the hedge using door numbers and registration plates on cars. There are still numbers in blue chalk on the side of both houses. I used to go to Bingo with Jim and the old ladies, both of us were callers at the legion.

This photo of him was part of my WWII project, he was one of my "children" so to speak. I loved this project and Jim was an amazing person to photograph and ask about as his Dad used to drive the POWs between camps and often took them home with him if it was tea time in the middle of the shift (if there was only one or two) and his Mum would cook for them as well. Amazing ey?

I got a little letter from him today, with RBL stickers celebratiing 90 years. I'm going to write back to him tomorrow in my break between lessons. 

I'm looking forward to going home in the middle of November, it will be nice to have a quick catch up with everybody. I wrote to my Gran as well yesterday, sent her some photos of both me and a bit of my work so she can see what I'm up to. It wasn't till I got here I realised how so many people have helped me to do so many things!

Apologies for the sentimental post, feeling a bit emotional tonight.

Mugshot

So we all know that a few weeks ago I went and photographed Tewkesbury Mop Fair, (if you didn't you should click here). Well there is a portrait from that night that I keep noticing. I didn't include it in my final edit because it's a little grainy, despite shooting 400 ISO, I'm not sure why this is but it can't be changed. Sadly. But anyway, it's this one:

I love it, I didn't even need a flash to light her face up. 

On another note I'm still having trouble with Redbrick, the student newspaper at Birmingham uni. They don't seem to want to give inabout crediting me. They've now got it in to there heads that because they posted the article online with another of my photos it's okay and that should be enough for me. Well they are wrong. (Oh yes, article available here). If printing my work was going to be such an issue for them they never should have - that's how I see it. Correct me if I'm getting this all wrong.

Chickens!

Anyone who has seen my FMP from college last year will know I'm a bit of a sucker for animals. So when I went over to the animal enclosure in the park today I couldn't resist taking photos. Admittedly, I only photographed the chickens and a peacock because the chickens were pretty and reminded me of my Nan's at home, and the peacock was just chilling near the fence posing for me.

You must admit this is a very pretty chicken. 

And this I like because you can see the chickens and the other people in the park admiring them. Along with the other birds in the enclosure too. 

The peacock. Posing, playing it cool.

But whilst in town today we also saw this unusual sight, a girl who I assume you would call a busker even though they weren't playing music. 

She's very yellow, and very cheerful looking. I've no idea how she is balancing on that wooden stick either. 

Tewkesbury Mop Fair

So tonight I've been along to Tewkesbury Mop Fair. Unfortunately I've been ill all week in the build up to the event and so my heart hasn't been in it at all tonight. But here are some of my favourites anyway.

It struck me how young this lad was and yet he was running a stand at a very popular fair.

One mountain of tack ready for people to buy.

Everybody enjoys a good session on the dodgems, as you can see.

I love how mysterious this photo is as the woman walks in front of me, out of the focus.

One very happy stall holder.

These three lads are being very carefully watched by the stallholder.

This  shot is my absolute favourite out of all them. I just love it.

Another mysterious one as you can't see the people on the ride. 

Movement

I thought I'd try something new today and use slow-ish shutter speeds in daylight. I've not done it before. I set my ISO to 100 and my shutter speeds varied between 10/1 and 6/1 with an average aperture of 9.

A very busy shot, this was one of the first I took. I don't like the angle, looking across however I do like how many people there are and the variety as some people move and others don't.

This image is much quieter than the previous, and most of the activity takes place on the right hand frame. I should have cropped this image a bit further to remove the exits of the shops in the background, even though you can only see the floor of them.

This image I think is much less obvious that the blurs are people as they just look like splodges of colour. I'm fond of the the change of texture throughout the floor - I think it keeps the shot interesting.

A busier shot with people flying in at a few directions, even if you can only see a small part of the foot on the right hand side of the shot. 

Out of the four images I prefer the latter two, because of the angle, looking down.

To all of the images I have reduced the saturation before uploading them and increasing the lightness a tiny bit, I do like the effect it has given them, it makes the frames look much colder, silvery almost. 

Tomorrow I'm off photographing a protest in Birmingham - so excited!

People At Work

We were set a little task today in our lectures to photograph people at work. I headed out to the High Street and hit the Charity shops, I went to find people that were working to help others. These are the results I got, my favourite two images.

When I first went in to this shop - Oxfam (it was very well hidden) I wasn't entirely convinced I would be able to shoot. It turns out however, that this woman knows a lot about photography and so was able to tell us some stories about her own personal experiences - including one about a friend which had her in stitches, as you can see.

This lady was very lovely, and very softly spoken, to stereotype she's the type of lady I would expect to find in a charity shop, she was lovely to talk to as well, and very interested in what we were doing.

In order to keep these portraits as natural as possible, I had Ellie to talk to them and keep them distracted whilst I was taking photos, this way they payed less attention to the camera and became less selfconcious.