About Me

My photo
Leeds, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom
I am a father of two, who has been a paramedic for 15 years and a professional photographer for around 5. That is until recently, from the 1st of May 2017 I will no longer work on the frontline full time. Instead I have made the transition from specialist paramedic to advanced practitioner and will be working full time in primary care. This blog will chart the development of myself from my current role of specialist paramedic to an advanced practitioner. In the last year I was diagnosed with Ankylosing spondylitis. Which is a degenerative condition which affects the spine. While this diagnosis saddened me obviously. It also came as a relief as I had struggled for over a year and had no idea what was wrong with me. So the diagnosis also came with some relief as I finally had a name to put to my condition. It did help me to look forward and consider a new career pathway. I am the first paramedic to work in primary care in my practice area. This is quite an accolade.

Thursday 20 May 2010

Ian Beesley - Bobbin Doffers

Ian Beesley - Bobbin Doffers


Ian Beesley collaborative photography work for the shining out book


Ian Beesley collaborative photography work for the shining out book

Ian Beesley - Shining out

 


Mills Card fettlers,



Suchitara 14 years old, kids with cameras

Photograph taken by Suchitara, 14 Kids with Cameras.

Ian Beesley - Shining out

Paul Floyd Blake

Ian Beesley meltdown 3

Ian Beesley meltdown 2

Ian Beesley meltdown 1

Don Mc Cullin

Research images for my presentation

Tuesday 18 May 2010

Essay research

Here are some of the links that I looked at to help me compose my essay :


E.mailed this chap, very helpful too.

Took lots of notes at  the NCM symposium in Wakefield there were sevral photographer who attended, this was extremely helpful in formulating my essay :






This was one of the last webpages that I found, it was really helpful in showing that social documentary photography had moved into different directions. 
 



Social Documentary essy

Social documentary essay.

I had reached a bit of hiatus with my essay after handing my draft in to my tutor.

My tutor guided me in the right direction and suggested that I add more of a critical element to my essay. So I got several books from the library and copied pages from other books and got reading. She was of course right, unlike the odd person I am wise enough to recognise good advice when I hear it

It took a while to gleem the relevant information, but as I  started to compose the slides for my talk things started to get a little easier. Today I looked at my essay again and started to finalise it further, by now all my e.mails that I had sent out to various photographers had arrived. This was very helpful in putting the finishing touches to the essay.

All in all I have enjoyed the essay and felt it was a very enjoyable and rewarding process. It is great to be self directive in your own study and I feel I have developed greatly in such a short space of time.

While I accept that I am never going to be the best essay writer in the world I do think I have learnt and developed futher from doing this and all the other essays and will no doubt improve further the next time I write.

Fingers crossed for my talk on Thurs. 

Film problems

I took the Hassleblad camera out the other dayto try to attempt my landscape work,

It prove to be a challenge, but one which I enjoyed. I anticipated making mistakes and enjoying using ther camera, so I bought extra film just in case. I was right on both counts.

Turned out I had loaded a film the wrong way round, frustrating but not the end of the world. I intend to go out again and re- shoot the bits of work I have lost. Sadly though I shared a roll of film with Alison so I messed it up for her too. Oops.

On the plus side I felt that I really got to grips witht hte camera very quickly and intend to print my negatives out. It's quite exciting really waiting for the film to be processed. I have absolutely no doubt that I will embrace both this and large format cameras again in the future, I can see lots of potential.

Friday 7 May 2010

Richard

This is one of the images I took for my social documentary assignment, He is my colleague and a friend. 



Paul

Roni

Assignment 2 - Re visited

Assignment 2 has continued and does continue. I struggled to get the people together to meet up with me.

Because of this I took the opportunity to shoot in and around Windsor, while I was staying there. It differed from my original idea, nut I felt it would be better to present something rather than nothing.

I had only managed to shoot 4 people in total before presentation day.I wanted at least 6.

As ever it is always people who let you down, I did anticipate this though.

Since the presentation I have managed to shoot a total of 5 colleagues in their home or social environment. I have been very pleased with the results, so far, I believe it has been a worthwhile project.



Tuesday 4 May 2010

Narrators Gaze

I recently went to an symposium and exhibition at the National Coal Mining museum, the symposium featured(luckily for me) lots of photographers who's work I have been looking at recently.

http://www.ncm.org.uk/displaypage.asp?id=150

John Bulmer : http://www.johnbulmer.co.uk/

Ian Beesley :  http://www.ianbeesley.com/

Homer Sykes : http://www.homersykes.com/


This was a really valuable day for me as I was able to make lots of notes and compose direct reasearch.  I have had a re-newed interest in social doc photography recently. Seeing lots of people i respect talking about social documentary photography and its highs and lows really inspired me.

It was fantastic to meet John Bulmer and Ian Beesley. Also very usefull to be able to direct some questions to them too.

Afterwards I asked Ian if I could e.mail him regarding some research that I was carrying out for my essay. He kindly agreed.