My photographic life.
I started my photographic life when an aunt bought me a Brownie 127 as a birthday present when I was about ten in 1960. I loved it and progressed to using my fathers Agfa Isollette and exposure meter. Later I joined my school photography club and we beat all the local schools in a competition run by Frosts the chemists. I had started to develop, print and enlarge my own images and was bought a Pentax 35mm SLR by my grandmother. I left home in 1969 and hit the road leaving my camera behind, becoming disabled I headed back home and joined a photography project at Weld in Lozells and my love of the art was reignited. In the 1980's using a Canon T90 with a 35mm lens I started to photograph the city of Birmingham in colour slide and acquired a full Ilfochrome, automatic processor darkroom. The city of Birmingham suffers from a poor image and a definite lack of good representation from the media, it was my idea to show the city as it was by photographing on the street. In 1997 I built my own computer and started this website, slowly adding to it over the years. With the advent of digital image making I like many photographers have had to adapt to the new medium. Once done though it becomes intuitive and the art of image making is just the same as film, except you have the freedom to make many more images and so increase your chance of getting a good picture. I take the camera out once or twice a week and take anything from a few hundred to a thousand images, later editing them down to about thirty or forty of the best. These I publish on Flickr and every year pick out the best of the best and publish them on this site.
There was a rather nice photographic gallery in Gosta Green, but it closed down some years ago. Run by proprietors who had a feel for the city, being photographers of some note, it nurtured and supported what few silver nitrate cowboys/girls the city had. The city does not now have a dedicated photographic gallery.
The best exhibition I ever saw was an open air show of Sir Benjamin Stone's work in Centenary Square, quite stunning. The next best was some fine images taken by a miner on benefit about the noble stand of the National Union of Miners, it was photographic poetry and most moving. Recently an exhibition by John Myers called Middle England has been running at the Ikon gallery and it shows he is a local artist who was ahead of his time, producing a fine show.
Keep it simple, content, content, content.
A hidden treasure of Birmingham photographs lies in the collection of the central library and the family photographic albums of our great city.
Employing a couple of talented photographers to get new positive images of our city, would be a good idea. Sadly the huge plant at Longbridge fell with no artistic or photographic record being made as did the workhouses/asylums at Erdington and Rubery and many fine world class engineering firms.
We need to go into the hospitals, police stations, schools, community centers, places of worship, pubs and anywhere there is city life.
Image making on the streets of Birmingham is not easy, art never is, if you're not thought of as being the social, the thought police or just plain different then there are the muggers to contend with, but if you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen. Occasionally you are rewarded with a good image and it becomes worth while. Be kind, be generous but don't get to involved with your subjects and if nothing else it's good exercise.
I've hardly scratched the surface.
Thanks for taking the trouble to journey to my web, I hope you enjoy it.
Best wishes and happy snapping.
daytripper
Birmingham UK.
Web edited and updated October 2010.
Web edited and updated October 2011.