Last weekend a couple of friends, Ben and Emma, had their house warming party.  They’ve been living together for a couple of months now, but hadn’t had chance to get around to having a party until now.  When I first found out about them moving in I asked when the party was going to be.  I was told they weren’t having one.  Of course that meant that when I received the invitation I couldn’t exactly say no.

So off I went back up to Halifax for the weekend.  The party was Saturday night and I travelled up on Saturday afternoon.  The plan was to go up on the train to Halifax, walk to their house, stay there the night, and come home on the train next day.  I deviated from the plan sightly to visit my parents on the Sunday (and then get the train from Brighouse), but other than that it all worked out.

The theme for the party was Vikings and Princesses.  Naturally I chose to be a princess.  My costume wasn’t very ambitious: it consisted of a pink shirt and a tiara I sent Miss D out to buy from Claire’s Accessories earlier in the week.  I did try to accessorise through my presents, although wasn’t very successful.  On the journey up there I’d come up with the idea of taking pink champagne with me — after all, what else would a princess drink? — the plan was to buy it once I got there as I knew I’d arrive a bit early. (Here’s a tangent: I caught a great new service provided by the open access operator Grand Central Railway directly from London Kings Cross to Halifax.  It was very interesting.  The train runs fast to Doncaster on the East Coast Mainline before taking a slightly unusual route via Potefract, Wakefield, Brighouse and Halfax to Bradford.  Both legs of the journey were remarkably pleasant (I say this as a regular long-distance rail traveller).  The train had plenty of legroom (if I’m going to be picky, possibly slightly too much — being 6’3″ I’m used to curling my legs up, slumping down in my chair and wedging my knees against the seat in front, however this wasn’t possible because it was just too far away, while there wasn’t quite enough space to stretch them out fully forwards without banging my shins on the seat in front) and comfortable seats.  The conductor was very friendly: I had the same one both ways and he was kind enough to bring me a timetable on the way out, and remembered me on the way back (actually that was kind of embarrassing — it was the next day and I was clearly wearing the same clothes, thus advertising I was a dirty stopout).  Anyway, their service comes strongly recommended by me.)  Unfortunately it seems expecting Sainsbury’s in Halfax to have pink champagne is a little too much to ask, so I had to resort to normal champagne and pink straws.  This wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t decided against going to M&S for the champagne, who would have had it, on the way past.  I consoled myself in the thought that I also wanted to by Southern Comfort and lemonade for me.

The party was pretty standard.  Some people I knew, some I didn’t.  I spent the evening with my camera, and didn’t drink (see, could have saved on the Southern Comfort as well).  As the evening wore on I began to get more tired, and with that more fed up.  If you follow my Twitter feed you’ll know I’m getting too old to stay out all night.  By the early hours of the morning I just wanted to go to bed.  A proper bed.  Next morning I was up before everyone else (this is usual when I stay over night at someone’s house) and did some tidying (this is, historically, also pretty usual and means you usually get invited back).  I got a lift into Halifax with Becca and met my mum at the Minster.

I only spent a couple of hours with my parents, but it was very pleasant.  I got to see their new solar panels, and let my dad know how I was getting on with some work I’ve been doing for him.  I also showed them some photos I’d seen on Facebook taken at my cousin’s wedding which they’d attended the weekend before.  My dad then gave me a lift to Brighouse to catch the train back to London.  I arrived home about half six and, after letting my parents know I’d got back and having something to eat, fell asleep almost straight away.

It was a tiring weekend, and to tell the truth I’ll be glad when this week’s over so I can spend the weekend in bed, but I think it was probably worth it.  It might even end up paying itself off late next year — a couple of my friends asked if I’d shoot their wedding for them.  More on that later.

In the spirit of my previous post, and because I’ve already released a couple of these photos under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence, I’ve decided to post a few of photos I took at the West End Live event last weekend.  I’ll try to do this more often when I take my camera out just for fun.

All photos are Copyright 2010 Carreg.  Indicated images are licenced under a CC-BY-3.0 licence (attribution to Carregs-Blog.co.uk, please), for licencing of other images (as well as details of further images) please contact fluttphotographic.com.

And I think sometimes it’s the same with my photography.

I take photos for a living and, don’t get me wrong, I love it.  I get a great feeling of satisfaction from producing something which brings people joy without them thinking about who I am.  (That’s the same with a lot of the work I’ve done: when I’m doing costume character work I enjoy walking around the place I’ve just been working knowing that none of the people who I’ve been interacting with have a clue who I am, and I enjoy working back stage in theatre, adding to the magic without people giving a second thought to me being there.)  But sometimes I get home, collapse into bed, and wonder why I just put myself through that.

This happens most when I’m out with my camera for fun.  I think this is mainly because a lot of the stuff I do for myself is different to the stuff I do professionally — my professional work is usually rehearsal space, studio or theatre based and generally pretty controlled (with some exceptions, of course, and I’m pleased to do those other things), while the stuff I shoot for myself is often outdoors in unpredictable public environments.  It’s kind of the difference between photography as an art and the thrill of capturing that candid moment.

When I’m out for myself I can spend hours on my feet with my heavy kit bag, sometimes walking for miles.  And today I’m suffering from the weekend.  But I still do it.  I still go out with my cameras when I have free time.  Occasionally I have the moments I just described, wondering why on earth I would put myself through that for no apparent gain, but I do.  And you know what?  I love it.

I’d been planning for a while to take my camera out to Brighton but hadn’t really had much chance — it takes while to get there (via Clapham Junction), and whenever I’d had a free day the weather hadn’t been up to much — until yesterday.  I was lucky enough to be doing a shoot on Brighton pier, and as it was a glorious Saturday I decided to hang around for a bit and get some shots in for fun.  The following photos (along with sunburn) are some of the results.

All photos are Copyright 2010 Carreg.  For licencing of these and additional images please contact fluttphotographic.com.

It’s not especially a secret that I’m a leftie.  I’ve not talked about it much here, but I suspect you could decode it from my posts, and especially via Twitter.  So it won’t come as much of a surprise that in the upcoming general election I’m backing Labour.

As the election looms it’s looking increasingly likely from the opinion polls that the UK will get a hung parliament on Thursday.  Accordingly the Queen would invite Gordon Brown, as the incumbent Prime Minister, to form the next government. It’s likely that Mr Brown would then approach the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg in an attempt to form some kind of anti-Tory coalition government.  For a moment I’m going to assume this happens — that the Liberal Democrats would rather form a coalition with the Labour Party than the Conservative party.

It struck me the other day while listening to Andrew Pierce and Kevin Maguire talking about the Labour leadership on the radi0, that there’s still a way the Labour Party can come out of this election (for a definition of “this” see below) with a strong mandate to run the country for another 5 years.  Let me explain.

So Gordon Brown is the Prime Minster by virtue of a hung parliament, but he has no mandate for the long term.  He talks to the Lib Dems and agrees on a coalition where they get a number of cabinet members (arguably more than they ‘deserve’ given their size in Parliamentary terms), and an agreement that there will be electoral reform.  For the next 6 months the government gets to grips with reforming the electoral system, but not much else (it’ll be a pretty lame duck, with challenging policy hard to push through even the lower house).  They also keep the pressure on the Torys on the policy and fiscal front.  Towards the end of the 6 month period Gordon Brown announces he is to step down as leader of the Labour Party, and thus the Prime Minister, in November — he feels he’s made a big difference to the country and that the time has come for him to move on.

Labour elect a new, younger, more media friendly leader — a Milliband brother, perhaps.  And this is key.  The new leader announces an immediate general election.

New leaders always get a bump in the polls, and a lot of people will see anything as better than Gordon Brown.  While the other party leaders have been through the mill in this election (and I see no sign of any of them stepping down — David Cameron will have more seats than any other single party, and Nick Clegg will have lead the Lib Dems to the largest number of seats in the recent history of the party), the new Labour leader will be fresh, with new policies and new ideas.  A quick winter general election later and the country welcomes in another 5 years of Labour Government, with at least a small parliamentary majority.

There are, of course, flaws to this plan.  Obviously it could backfire if the new leader doesn’t get quite the bounce needed, or if something goes wrong in the first 6 months of the coelltion (an early VoNC by the Conservatives, supported by independents and rouge Labour MPs would cause problems, as would a fall out between the Labour leadership and the Liberal Democrats).  It could also backfire if the Conservatives simply won the November election, but at least the government would be able to reasonably gauge if this was likely before committing themselves to another election.  Finally there’s the cost involved — I’ve heard it said that the only people who could afford another election campaign would be the Conservatives, with assistance from their wealthy backers.

It may be a risky strategy, but from where I’m sitting, it’s about the best chance the Labour Party have of getting another fully effective 5 year term of office.

I expect (kind of hope) a few days will be occupied by the Grim North stuff. It’s my one (perhaps two) chances each year to stretch my lighting design legs.  Lighting was something I did quite a bit of when I was younger in one way or another, and I really love.  At one stage I considered training to work as a theatre lighting designer, but it never happened.  I also do their photos for them.  I’ve read the script a couple of times now, but to be honest still no idea what’s going on.  (This is the same as last year.  Then only having seen it a few times did I begin to get the hang of it. I don’t know how anyone watching it once could possibly have understood it).  I’m hoping that I’ll get chance to talk to the director about his artistic direction at some point early in the week, then on Wednesday night I’m going to attend one of their rehearsals to see how they play it out.  By this time I’m going to have to have some idea of how I’m going to light the thing and will, hopefully just be finalising ideas by then.  I’m told we’ll have time in the theatre on Thursday for rigging and focussing, but it’s not confirmed yet.  If we don’t then we’re going to have real problems.  The company is in the theatre 6-10pm on the Friday when the plan is to have a block run and, hopefully, a quick tech run.  This doesn’t leave much time for anything else.  They are looking to hire a small space in Hebden Bridge on Saturday to do some final polishing, which hopefully I’ll be able to shoot, as I’ll have finished everything else by then (to be honest even if not there’s not much I can do by that stage), before being in the theatre 6-10 on Saturday and Sunday.  I think the show goes up at 7.30 so I’ll have an hour and a half to, hopefully, relax before each night.

One problem with this company is they don’t have anyone there all the time who is technical.  When they book the venue they don’t give any thought to when any kind of technical get-in might happen, so when I turn up and ask about it, it always seems to take them by surprise.  Along the same lines they don’t have many people with professional theatre experience, although there are some who have trained professionally, and certainly no one who has experience back stage, so no one thinks about the general house work needed around the theatre, so I end up doing all that too.  It gets a bit hectic.  I’m hoping this year will be a bit different – the production team have more experience and I gather there will even be a stage manager.  It could be all different.

Either way, I think I’m looking forward to it.  Despite the hard work last year, I really enjoyed it.  I’ll let you know how we get on.

I’m at Wakefield Westgate now.

Events on the main stage in Trafalgar Square were due to kick off at 12noon, so I headed into London in the morning. I had spoken to Miss T the day before and she’d talked about meeting up in the afternoon – she was babysitting for her sister the night before, and so would be passing through London.  I’d agreed to lend her and Mr S one of my old cameras, so this was an ideal chance to hand it over – so I wanted to get plenty of time in before I met her. When I arrived at the square, at about quarter to 12, there were already a lot of people waiting and so I went to find myself good vantage point at the top of the stairs leading up to the National Gallery where I settled down for things to get going.

12 o’clock came and went.  As did half past, as did 1pm.  And still we stood waiting.  Finally, about quarter past 1 our two hosts appeared on stage.  They were two young ladies (Not young young I don’t suppose.  Not what I might have referred to as young before, but from the view of my advancing age, young enough.) dressed in traditional Chinese outfits. It took me a little by surprise when they introduced themselves as Yvonne and [something equally non-Chinese].  Anyhow, they proceeded to introduce a whole load of dignitaries ranging from someone from the Chinese embassy who couldn’t speak English, through to some senior policeman, via Boris Johnson who couldn’t be bothered to turn up but sent us a video message (which we ended up seeing twice, apparently because of technical problems), all of whom made speeches about how great the occasion was and how proud they were to be associated with it.  After around 45 minutes, the painting of the dragons’ eyes and a photo call on the stage, the entertainment started.

The first, and by far the best, act was a dragon dance.  We were told that it was telling the story of a dragon who was sent into the mountains to collect some kind of special tea.  He had to overcome a whole load of problems on his journey and, apparently, was scared for a long period around the middle.  The dance was impressive.  The dragon was made up of two people and the whole dance took place on top of a set of 7 and 8 foot poles.  There were lots of acrobatic jumps from pole to pole accompanied by traditional Chinese drums and thing which no one but the front row of the crowd right by them could hear because it wasn’t amplified.  Following that there was some singing and something else (probably: I can’t actually remember, it made such an impression).

By this time I was losing interest and wanted to wander up to Chinatown, but was a little bit trapped.  Even when they moved the barriers back to make more room on the ground the steps were pretty crowded and I was struggling to escape.  I found my way down the side of the steps in the end, knocking out as few people as possible on the way down. I took some general shots around Trafalgar Square and then my phone rang. It was Miss T.  She was just setting off from her sister’s house and, after a little discussion, we arranged to meet outside of Leicester Square tube.  This was on the right line for her, and was a good reason for me to head that way.

So I did.  I walked up around Trafalgar Square stopping to take some shots of the stalls and people around the edge (as well as taking a picture for some foreign visitors. It seems if you have professional kit on your shoulders people expect you to be able to take good photos on their little instant digital cameras.  This is, of course, the opposite of the truth.), and headed up the (closed) road to Leicester Square.  There was more going on there, and I spent some time taking pictures around there.  The plan was to then go into Chinatown itself, but a little exploration revealed that wasn’t going to work because of the crowds and time.  So I just went to meet Miss T.

Once she arrived we headed off for a break at a lovely little cafe in Covent Garden.  On the way there we spotted a whole load of TV OB trucks parked outside the Royal Opera House so went to investigate. Of course neither of us had realised it was the night of the BAFTA awards; why would we? It’s not like we both work in the entertainment industry or anything. We sat for an hour or so in the cafe, Miss T had soup while I had a very large slice of Chocolate Bombe and surprisingly nice Apple juice.  We chatted and I got to take the weight off my feet for a while.

One thing Miss T wanted to do was get photographs of some graffiti which had appeared on some building site hoardings near London Bridge.  We decided we should head there before the light faded too far.  With those photos in the bag, we walked back along the south bank of the river toward Waterloo, snapping away as we went.

As a theatre and events photographer it’s been a long time since I took landscape pictures so it was a bit of a change for me, but still remarkably enjoyable.  It’s also been a long time since I went on a shoot with another photographer, and it’s always very interesting to see what they spot that you missed, especially when out of the confines of a performance space.

Miss T and I parted company once we reached Waterloo station.  It was pretty late by this stage and we both needed to get off home.  We sorted out who was taking what camera kit (I was still carrying some of the things she wanted to borrow in my kit bag), said our goodbyes, she headed off underground and I went and got my train.

On the train home I sat opposite a photographer who had clearly been on the BAFTAs red carpet.  He was editing and tagging his photos with the help of a celebrity cheat sheet issued by BAFTA.  It crossed my mind that it would be very helpful if something like that could be provided by producers when I’m working with particularly large casts.

I beat Miss T back home for once, although unusually we did start off from my main station rather than hers.

I was glad of a few days with nothing planned this weekend.  The last few weeks have been a bit non-stop.  Early in the year I bought a whole new load of camera kit but hadn’t had much chance to take it out for fun and play with it through January so, on Valentine’s day, I packed up my backpack and headed off to shoot the silent disco in The Scoop at More London.  I was expecting it to be a reasonably busy event with plenty going on to photograph.  Unfortunatly that wasn’t the case.

My trains arrive into London Waterloo which is just a few minutes walk away from the London Eye and South Bank.  Once on the South Bank you can walk along the Thames path right down to Greenwich (in fact the path runs 184 miles from near the river’s source, according to the National Trail website).  So I decided to walk from the station to City Hall, quite a nice walk I’ve done plenty of times before with a full kit bag.  What I failed to factor into my journey was how much heavier my new kit is when compared to my old kit, and how out of practice I am at walking with it after winter (in fact quite probably how out of practice I am at walking at all since I started using my bike for local journeys just under a year ago).

Once I reached The Scoop I was disapointed that there weren’t many people there, and it wasn’t much of a sight.  I couldn’t even easily get close to the edge of The Scoop because they had security barriers around it.  There were pretty friendly looking staff around (one of the young ladies gave me quite a smile as I walked past, actually) and I’m sure, had I asked, they would have been quite accomodating, but I wasn’t really in the mood having walked all that way, so I just stomped past, around the other side of City Hall and flopped onto the stone seating / steps for a rest and to decide what to do. For some reason I chose to walk a bit further.

I wandered across Tower Bridge, in front of the Tower of London and along some of the roads in the City. I didn’t take any pictures.  I had half an idea to walk to St Paul’s, but didn’t make it that far.  I came back down to the north side of the Thames by St Magnus the Martyr (who were ringing their bells at the time) and walked back up to Tower Bridge.  By this time I was starting to hurt; my feet and legs were the worst. I crossed back over the river with the intention of seeing if things had hotted up at the disco, but they hadn’t so I decided to head home.

By this time my shoes were feeling really quite uncomfortable and I was limping slightly.  It felt like my sock had shifted slightly aroud in my shoe and the feeling of it moving against my foot was starting to annoy me, so I stopped to sort it out.  Unfortunatly it wasn’t my sock, it was the skin on the ball of my foot which had blistered very badly.  I hobbled on to London Bridge tube and back to Waterloo where, thankfully, it wasn’t much of a wait for the train.

I continued to suffer for it the next few days.  While my feet felt a little better after a good night’s sleep my legs decided to start aching more.  I think perhaps I was a bit ambitious (albeit not intentionally) on my first outing of the summer, but at least I know now how much practice I need to get in before we really hit the summer events season…

To be honest, dispite a promising start to the year, I didn’t do very well.  I suppose, thinking about it, I didn’t really go out of my way to find anyone.  I think I kind of hoped one would find me.

This plan obviously didn’t work.  So to this years resolutions…

I’m in about the same situation as last year in that I’m sure I thought of more things I wanted to put, but can only remeber one — the same one as last year.  Granted, last year was more successful in the romance stakes than the previous year (in fact I feel it was more successful in a whole range of ways), but I’m still not there yet.  So, once again, I’ll kick off this year’s resolutions with finding a nice young lady to share my time with.  And while we’re at it, why not clarify that: actually put some effort into finding a nice young lady to share my time with.

As ever I’ll keep you posted.