Waiting on the rain... in Ireland!

So, I missed another week of the Street Photography Now challenge - week 16. Last week Martin Parr set the challenge, "wait for the rain, it makes shooting in the street easier and more interesting". So, this was quite a funny one to receive whilst in Ireland, which is notorious for rain.

With no rain to work with I just burrowed on with other work - relating to research on Modernist Churches and camera obscuras - until Thursday. On the last day I made a point of finding something to work with that would fit the brief! Ironically enough attending a photography talk in Belfast Exposed led to me not getting home in time to upload the photo onto Flickr before the midnight deadline. Oh well, there are still plenty of weeks to come...

Upon swooning...

swoon |swoōn|verb [ intrans. ]- be emotionally affected by someone or something that one admires

I love little notes that will never be sent, seen, used or abused. Above all I love notes that are silly - and that should never be shown to beautiful people who deliver you tea. ;)

-PM

Artsinthehouse in 2011...

The first Artsinthehouse event of 2011 took place on Saturday the 15th of January. This is my record of how it happened... I will have to photograph the finished paintings and pages in the near future to properly document how it ended.

-PM

Forgotten Photos form 2010

With the New Year steaming ahead I decided to flashback to 2010 to find some forgotten, or overlooked, images that were hidden on hard drives and contact sheets. The first half of the year was mostly consumed with photographing prosthetic limbs and napes so the majority of unseen material came from the latter half of the year. So, out of some 22,000+ files, here are a few choice images that brought back some memories:

7/4/2010 Antiracism Pie

25/4/2010 Choose Pie

1/10/2010 - CCTV in Enniskillen

3/10/2010 - Sunday at the Ponds

26/10/2010 - Gerard, Behind Castle Court shopping centre, Belfast

Week 15 - Aimless

Upon receiving the fifteenth brief from The Photographer's Gallery for the Street Photography Now challenge I was elated! "Wander aimlessly most of the time", set by Melanie Einzig. Great, we were given carte blanche for a week. As the days progressed and the entries started appearing on Flickr I had to sit and rethink the challenge. Primarily other photographers were focusing on pedestrians walking, normally, into or out of some wittily composed scenario.

This was not enough for me. Wandering aimlessly can be a meditative state, a vibrant pseudo-somnambulistic experience where you are led by instinct or impulse. Maybe I have spent too long musing on the Japanese philosophy of 'mono no aware', which celebrates the transience of things. Thus, photographing whilst aimlessly walking meant I was capturing fragments of a personal experience and producing a visual record of how I was led, and where I wandered.

-PM

Aftermath...

Week 14: "Show us the aftermath." - Maciej Dakowicz

With limit time this week my photo opportunities were limited to what I could find whilst shopping or walking to and from work. Luckily my work is firmly based on the fleeting moments so I found something quite fitting for this week's brief.

This 'aftermath' scene is the result of a few things: one, bad parking by the guilty owner of the silver car; two, the placement of the car beside the freshly painted taxi mural; and finally, the 'Keep Right' sign pointing at the traffic warden who is upholding his position and booking the silver car.

-PM

Films of 2010

Ok, my top 5 films from 2010! At first I thought this was going to be a tough list to draw up as nothing really jumped out at when I thought, "what have I seen and loved this year?" Sadly, I missed a few films which may have made the list, such as David Fincher's The Social Network, Mike Leigh's Another Year, and Lee Changdong's Poetry will have to wait until a DVD release before I amend my top 5.

So, in no particular order:

[Oh, click on the film name to catch the trailer!]

Enter The Void

Gaspar Noé

Winter's Bone

Debra Granik

Black Swan

Darren Aronofsky

Summer Wars

Hosoda Mamoru

Toy Story 3

Lee Unkrich

However, one film came very close to slipping into my Top 5 because of the perfectly nonchalant surrealism and unfettered mysticism that exists in nearly every scene:

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Apichatpong Weerasethakul

The other films worth a mention include: Francis Ford Coppola's Tetro; Banksy's Exit Through the Gift Shop; Gareth Edward's Monsters; Chris Morris' Four Lions; Tomm Moore's The Secret of Kells; and, Anton Corbijn's The American.

Closer to home...

Although I have missed the deadlines for the past few weeks of the SPN photo challenge I have been keeping up with the challenges. The "Closer to Home" mission, set by Lars Tunbjork, was a tough one for me as I had just returned from my real home in the Antrim Glens to Belfast.

So, I missed photographing the frozen fields of home and had to consider what else to do now since I was stuck in the city. My current house in Belfast is also technically my 'home', so a deadpan view from the front door was quite appealing. I pass this scene everyday and it has come to be as homely as it is boring and mundane.

The other aspect of 'home' relates to my current workplace, Odeon cinema. I have spent the majority of my waking hours in the cinema over the past few months so, even by default, it has become a home from home.

-PM