Half Term... Waddecar

The start of the October Half Term was spent with out Scout group at Waddecar, in Lancashire.  Amys' Dad used to work there, so it became something of a regular location for us to do photoshoots.

The first day was spent helping the Scouts with some repair work around the site (because I, Ben spend all week helping kids do Design Technology work, naturally I spent the weekend doing the same at Waddecar).  Though therein lay an absolutely brilliant, proper workshop we used as a base for the building work.  Seemed like a nice space to explore with a camera...

Proper storage in a proper workshop... it would be great to have somewhere like this at home...

Outside, some nice rust patterns on some abandoned chairs...

...a barbecue pit...

...and some oil drums, cut down to use as fire pits.

We used one later that night, so thought we'd see how the iPod camera coped with exposure to that much heat.

OK so we were mainly there as Scout Leaders, but at least we got chance for a bit of photography.  The main bit of work on this weekend was Amys "Light Trails" project, which will be up in a future post, shortly.

Preview of the Half Term shoots...

It was a slightly manic half term… one of the minor irritations with having the both of us working in schools is that we now have identical holidays, which means cramming a lot of photography and art work into a short space of time.  In the space of seven days we ended up taking a lot of pictures, which will be going up on the blog over the next few days, and much in the style of “Thunderbirds” where they used to show snippets of what was going to happen, at the start of the episode to whet peoples appetites, here is a little glimpse of what is coming up...

First off, we got in some photography work whilst on Scout Campsite in Lancashire:

Ok so not the most enticing of pictures, but it will make sense in the update...

With a return visit to Blackpool for the Illuminations, for another Amy “Project:Light Trails” shoot (with the shiny new camera):

Then it was home briefly before off to Wales for the last time this year.  The weather wasn’t brilliant, but it didn’t matter for the sorts of shoots we’d be doing.

A bit of slightly generic sightseeing, and more experiments using the iPod as a mini camera:

Some long exposure transport shots:

And a return to “Project: Inflate-Deflate” on the beach at night:

Anything else?  Well yes, we have some of the ex-“Wonderland” show pieces (and a couple of new designs) in the Christmas show at Cupola Gallery in Sheffield:

…and we also recently (the week before half term) had the books of “The Home Is…” and “Inflate-Deflate” on display at an artists book fair event at the Impressions Gallery in Bradford:

We did snap some pics at the event itself, which will go up in a separate post with a bit of luck...

Busy old us.

A walk in the woods in Formby

Hey look, another update from The Past.  There were some other pics on that memory card...  Amys brother recently moved to the other side of the proverbial hill to us in Yorkshire, and now lives near Southport.  So we had a little stroll whilst The Childs cycled around, in some pretty countryside near Formby. 

The weather had cleared nicely, so we snapped some pics in the woods.  Not a project, not a 'story', just taking some pretty pictures.

OK so that really IS us all caught up now, so the updates from the Half Term should be up next...

Llechwedd Slate Caverns; Going Underground...

Meant to put this up a while ago, but lost the memory card… whoops.  Anyway, tonight on the blog we have a trip to the Llechwedd Slate Caverns; this location turned out to be a very handy bolt-hole when it was raining (see above, snapped en-route), and somewhere neither of us have been since childhood.  It also could do with a few more vowels in the name, but that's just my opinion.

Llechwedd Slate Caverns are a former slate quarry, in fact one of the biggest in North Wales, it has undergone something of a renaissance of late amongst the adventurer-set, what with its zip lines, army-lorry tours, and such.  But what we both remember it for was the underground tours, which were always terrific and not a little frightening when you’re five.

With the rain belting down fit to flood the planet, we descended underground for the tour.  The pictures which resulted were purely experimental; neither of us have tried shooting pics underground really (certainly not freehand, but then carrying a tripod around down there would have been a bit risky, not to mention an inconvenience for the rest of the tour group).  They're also really ust photography as a reflex action; it was too wet to take pictures up on the surface, and we were just wanting to take photographs of something, anything...

Got a bit bored of trying to balance the camera on piles of stone, so started some motion blurring shots just for the sake of it...

The underground lake was nicely lit anyway, so a few different colours for the shots anyway...

Not a camera effect, but part of the sound and light effects of the show there.  OK so I know the shots are not brilliant, but making the best of the lack of opportunities given the weather.

These shots, taken of the waterfall up top near the entrance, give some clue as to the quantitiy of rain which was hammering down, not to mention the misting-up it was causing on the lens…

…as do these later shots taken near Porthmadog, of the River Glaslyn.

Later that night, for the sake of something to photograph, it was back out to the waterfalls near where we were staying, and some experiments with long exposures, and coloured torches...

Right... I think that is us all caught up.  Some more recent updates (who am I kidding, a LOT of recent updates; we've done a lot of photography the last two weeks) coming soon.

Wedding of Mrs and Mrs Walker-Dennison

Going back in time slightly for this blog, back to the end of the summer, for two reasons; first, this crashed when we tried to load it at the time and I've had to re-do all the images, and secondly because we're still bogged down with editing the mass of images shot at Half Term.

Largely due to a change in work and The Childs moving in, we stopped doing wedding photography (it was also because our taste in photography was shifting to a more fine-art style).  But we always said we'd do weddings again for friends and family, so when Tiffany, friend and former workmate, asked us to photograph her wedding, we were more than happy to oblige.

We're not going to put a ton of images up, just a few for the flavour of the day.  Tiffany and Amy were getting married at the Guide Post hotel in Bradford- oddly enough, the venue for the evening-do of the first ever wedding we shot, years and years ago.

The rooms are somewhat brighter than they were back on that first visit too, which meant our cameras coped better.

The weather was also fantastic, and whilst (for the privacy of the people involved in the pictures) we're not posting any of the shots on the blog, we shot the group pics immediately nextdoor to the hotel, which is in an urban industrialised bit of Bradford; by careful use of a drystone wall next to an allotment, and a little triangle of park down the road, we managed to make it look like a country wedding...

The happy couple at the evening do, First Dance- weird colours off the disco lighting lending some odd effects, but the new SLR (bought especially for this wedding) coped brilliantly.

We couldn't resist some arty shots too, naturally.

Conclusion?  It was fun to do a wedding again (even if freighted with all the concerns of a wedding, the stress of getting it right for the couple).  Tiffany and Amy were brilliant clients for the shoot from start to end, and we wish them the very best in their wedding.

Next up, another back-in-time post from the summer which also crashed on loading at the time...