Pure Mono

Originally uploaded by HotshotsSR1

I took this image when I went on the annual camera club trip, we went to York for the trip. York has a lot of art installations all around the City centre, there are huge paintings on lots of walls and along the riverside, most of them are very nice indeed you can’t help but just love classical style paintings, there were no skinny female icons in their day only curvy women, I prefer to shoot models with curves as well, the reason is I like the curves over skin and bone. The other great thing is that they were all painted in natural light, the master in my eyes is definitely Rembrandt, I liked his low key work and as you can guess by most of my portraits I love doing low key, the main one that sticks in my mind by Rembrandt in low key is the portrait of Saskia van Uylenburgh she was the daughter of the top lawyer Rombertus van Uylenburgh and the youngest of 8 children, she actually married Rembrandt after meeting him through her cousin the art dealer Hendrick van Uylenburgh whom which Rembrandt lived with in Amsterdam. The painting in this photo is not by Rembrandt but Sir Joshua Reynolds is it titled “Lady Cockburn and her Three Eldest Sons”. I think about another three photographers got this shot, including my friend and President of Washington Camera Club, Ken Henderson, so now you know why group photography shoots are mentioned in the title, the reason I put it in is to tell you that if you want to take a unique shot then you have to make it unique, so not only do you need a creative idea you also need to make sure you go it alone as you could take days setting up a photoshoot and invite other photographers but at the end of the day if others are there they will take the same shot as you, if you are just portfolio building and not wanting to set the world on fire then it is totally acceptable go for it, group shoots make a great fun day out and help reduce the cost of hiring models etc it is a cool social aspect of photography, but, like I said if you want original go it alone!

Mrs Papa Lazarus

Originally uploaded by HotshotsSR1

Sunderland has one of the biggest air shows in Europe, it is on in the last weekend on July every year, most people love taking shots of the planes and other vehicles, nothing wrong with that it is an air show, but what floats my boat is people. The air show is full of all the fun of the fair, there is the obvious attractions like the planes and the boats and the best Army in the world is there showing us what they are made of, this is the British Army of course! There is also a lot of side shows which is the usual things like Merry go rounds and catch a goldfish blah blah, but the thing that caught my eye was the scruffy caravan smack in the thick of it, now don’t get me wrong there are some things that I believe in like love at first sight and the fact that if you think well you will feel well and looking good makes you feel good, but, some people seem to go the extra mile and believe that there is a whole other world living among us, that world is the living dead. Let’s be honest here, yes there is a lot of things that can’t be explained, yes strange things happen and we have no idea on how they happen, but come on, to say that some people can talk to the dead is the biggest scam there is, the say prostitution is the oldest profession in the world, if so these so called mediums have to come a close second in the oldest profession stakes, instead of paying psychic investigators in trying to work out if these people are real or not would it not be a good idea to pay psychologists instead to find out what makes people believe theses charlatans instead? I have nothing real nice to say about these people as in my mind they prey on the weak and vulnerable and end up making the grieving process last a hell of a lot longer than it should, I guess it is in human nature to want to know, and that some people will get comfort thinking that their loved ones are right with them, this is fair play, I would certainly hope that there is life after death and that we will all meet again but I don’t need some muppet with a tea towel on their head with more jewellery hanging off than Lotto winner Michael Carol to tell me they are at peace and watching every move I make, FFS if this is the case then I am now going to be paranoid as hell, if it is true then all of my family and friends who have died after I reached the age of 16 have not only witnessed me breaking several hundred laws which I wont go into on the WWW but also witnessed me getting so pissed in a pub on my 18th birthday after been forced to neck a pint of spirits which just so happened to make my body reject this deadly concoction onto the back of some poor female college friends back and legs, yes it is all part of growing up but ouch the shame of it, talk about paranoid I’m shitting bricks for when I reach the pearly gates I’m not only going to get a right old bollocking of my older relatives but my dead mates will be pissing themselves with laughter as soon as I get there, I seriously do not want to die now, lets just hope technology finds a way for us to live forever or at least until we are about 300 as people seem to forget over time ha ha.