A Photo Retrospective 2008

Thank you to everyone that has taken time to comment or just look at my photos in 2008 and so far this year. I have always been in the opinion that there is no point taking pictures if nobody see them.

Yes maybe I’m an attention whore but everytime I look at how many people have views my picture each day it help drive me to go out and take more.

This video is something I have wanted to puttogether since the start of this year. Mainly for myself as a reminder to what I had archived in 2008, the things I had learned and all the memories from each photo.

Please let me know what you think of the video and don’t forget to check out my photos.

http://www.flickr.com/biscuitSMLP/

If you have join the world of twitter you can follow me @SMLP

Winning Hand

smlp.co.uk posted a photo:

A trip back in photo library time again today. I’ve been looking for some photo to delete from the library to try and get my 100GB of shots down a little so that I can more easily back them up.
I noticed that I had a massive number of shots taken on various poker night with the lads, most of them are of winning hands or just drunken shot of chips stacks.
So I have trimmed them down from around 900 shots to 10.
If I remember correctly this shot is not one of my winning hands but someone else. I was probably sitting on the side lines pondering why I went all in with craps cards.

Light afternoon reading

smlp.co.uk posted a photo:

I’ve not actually had my camera out for some time so while I sit here waiting for my shopping to be delivered I thought I could I take a picture to make sure the camera is still working.

After no being able to think of something to take a picture of I thought what is the most un-enjoyably thing I could do this afternoon instead of taking pictures. My bookcase had the answer.

The Liver Building from the river Mersey

smlp.co.uk posted a photo:

I just got back from staying at the over side of the river in the Wirral this weekend. I didn’t take my camera but I was sure that I have some pictures still waiting to be at looked from the last time I went to Liverpool in October last year. I found this shot of the Liver Building taken from the Mersey Ferry.

Probably the most photographed and well known building in Liverpool. It is located at Pier Head and stands proud and majestic against the skyline of Liverpool and the riverfront. The building is made of reinforced concrete and was the first large scale building of its type. It was built in 1911 for the Royal Liver Friendly Society.

This impressive architectural masterpiece features a pair of clock towers from which shipping could tell the time as they passed en route along the river. The clock faces are actually larger than the clock face of Big Ben in London. In fact, they are the largest clock dials in Britain. In 1953 electronic chimes were installed to serve as a memorial to the members of the Royal Liver Friendly Society who died during the two World Wars. At night time the clock dials are illuminated.

A statue of a Liver Bird spreading its wings from the top of each clock tower enhances the glory of the building and its impressive features. The Liver Bird, the official mascot of Liverpool is a cormorant (seaweed bird) which in bygone times could often be seen flying alongside the Mersey River with seaweed in their beaks.

Please let me know what you think of the shot.

smlp: http://twitpic.com/9axss The sun going down over Liverpool

smlp: The sun going down over Liverpool

Frozen New Year

The new year is here and lets be honest 2009 is going to be all about the money….. well lack of it.

As we land into 2009, House prices are falling, the UK VAT rate is all over the place, Banks are going under and retailers on the high street are going under like its going out of fashion. While everyone is starting to thinking about how to achieve their New Year Resolutions I was wondering how many peoples New Year Resolutions are all about getting themselves sorted finically; instead of just ditching pork pies from their bellies.

Lets be honest if something’s going to go tits up in your finances its a high chance that its going to happen this years. You could ether sort it out and get out of debt or you could just screw it; pretend that everything is going to be ok and prepare for the worst.

Personally I’m going to work my nuts off, make the most of my time and do it with a big fat smile on the face the whole time.

This year I am restarting my mission post one picture per week for the whole of the year. Any one interested join in at http://www.flickr.com/groups/pic52/

52 Weeks – PIC 52

Happy New Year to you all – X

Frame it?

I was having a look round the Newcastle/Gateshead Glow Festival last weekend with the boys and girls from the Newcastle Photo Walk and I decided to put some frames on my images when editing.

The comments I received from my images was that frames as part of the edit were not always a good thing; “Distracting” or “Pretentious”.

I know a lot of photographers that use frames on their Flickr uploads and I always think that they look good. So then what the crack, Frame it or not?

How do you know if you should add a frame to your photos for digital viewing?
When is it OK to add a frame?
Should framing be kept for prints?

Show me your Flickr Fav

So you find a good picture on Flickr and “fav it”; then that’s it. You don’t tell anyone about it, you don’t twitter about it and you probably don’t even look at it again. Well I thought it was about time I shared some of my finds on Flickr with you all. I got me 286 favorites’ across 8 pages so I thought I would pick one from each page and share them with you here and tell you why I have flagged them.

“smiling rust”

Image by: Werner Schnell

If I remember correctly I found this photo after looking over some of Dave Gorman “I see faces” set; which if you have not yet looked at; I would recommend it (See it here). This I found by following some of the groups that Dave has his images link to. I like just because of the texture of rusty metal and creative positioning of the nail.

“War Child”

Image by: visualworld

Around the time the smoking band came into play in the UK I was planning on setting up a photo with a Ash Tray, Cigarette and lighter but I always I got side tracked I never got it done. When I remembered about it and was going to set the shot up I did a search to see what was already out there when I came across this shot. The Vietnam Lighter just make the shot for me.

“Usina”

Image by: DeniseSchwenck

Usina (“Plant” in English) is just one of them photos that standout on Flickr. When your looking thought pictures on Flickr its not that often that you come across a images that has been processed beyond the original camera shot. When you do you can’t help but stop for a moment and look. Can’t remember how I found this one but you have to admit there is just something about it. Denise Schwenck has got some great shots I would recommend having a look over her photo stream.

“My Brain Hurts”

Image by: aknacer

This is one of the most creative images I have seen and I just think that it deserves more attention… Please “Fav it”… I did. (click on the image above)

“Flamenco or Flamingo ?”

Image by: Andwan

I like girls! My girl may not like it but I do and a do checked out a lot of “Fem Art” photos. Sol Lang is one of the best Photographs on Flickr (In my opinion) for this kind of photo. I often look for user links in with the comment on his photo to find other people that are into these kind of photos. I found this little gem of a shot on one of my user hunts. Check out the head on the left side of the shot. Just Great.

“Shit Happens”

"shit happens" by lachance.

Image by: lachance

Like the Usina shot this stud out to me big time. Just look at it. God don’t you just love it. Great processing.

“Amphetamine Com Tab 7.5MG”

Image by: jisanna

I was looking for a photo of some drugs for an Blog post sometime ago when I found this. Colors are just unreal.

“Day 121 – Lazy bitch”

Image by: like_shipwrecks

Cute girl, Great statement. I do think all Flickr user should spend more time replying to comments on your Flickr stream.. Me included.

I’ve shown you mine, now you show me yours

I’d love to see what favorites people have in there list. Blog some of what you’ve got or post your links in the comments below.

Taking the Sparkle

The weather has started to get worse as winter approaches and when its too cold to go outside to take pictures you need to find another way.

I had myself some leftover Sparklers from Nov 5th; so I thought I would do a little indoor fireworks photo action.

I set my camera up in the kitchen pointing from a high position looking down into the white kitchen bench to give a clean background for the photo.

I set myself up an holder to stand the sparkler upright using a chopping board as the base to minimize any burns on the kitchen bench. Positioning the camera at the sparkler to ensure only the white kitchen bench was visible in the background.

I took about 90 photo’s overall so that I had enough to find a decent shot. I picked out my two favorites not including the one’s where I light the sparklers.

Due to the fact the two pictures of burning sparklers don’t actually look that different I decided to invert the colors on one to give two very different photos.

Let me know what you think in the comments below or @smlp me on twitter.

You can also click on the image to comment on Flickr.

NCL Photo Walk – The Calder Leadworks.

It was the day after the worst flooding in Morpeth since 1963, heavy rain falling all across the north east, massive train delay in and out of Newcastle and I didn’t bother to bring any decent water proof clothing!

The fourth Newcastle Photo Walk went ahead yesterday and it was a wonder off to wasteland next to Newcastle Metro Arena to find a derelict building. I found out about the building from Flickr user Arron Cupid. The waste land the building sits on was the site of Calder Industrial Materials, a lead manufacturer. The site shut down in 2002 and since I don’t remember it even being their I thought I would have a quick look and see what I could find out about it. Continue reading NCL Photo Walk – The Calder Leadworks.