It’s the summer of 2011 and the madness of the season is as strong as ever.Riots,births,deaths,fetes,financial meltdown ,the reincarnation of Ghandi,Arab Summer .Whats the caption for this photo?

Here are a few photos I took this week in Scotland.Good to have a look at how stunning this part of the world can be. Full sun for five days, take it in before it suffers from fires which have started up already in several parts of the UK. The downside of global warming. No filters,postproduction CGI,reworking. Just be in the right place at the right time. A traditional piece of photographic advice in our time strapped times.

Coldbackie bay, nr Tounge

Three Sheep

Green Boat

Two photos taken over a decade apart .One is a scan fron actual slide film,the other is taken on what I call a happy snapper, happy snapping .

It seems I am not alone in noticing the prolific use of photography in ever expanding ways. As the medium continues from being a print based phenomena to a screen based one so film makers are taking up the challenge. This weeks winner of a Vimeo award Gabriel Bisset-Smith and Graham Turner film Thrush

Shoppers get snapping

mentions it at the beginning and weather this is fact or fiction it’s a great short film entirely made up of still photographs.
We are all photographers now. It seems to be the way we record our lives or remember that we have one. Vast swathes of the population carry a camera with them all the time, most on their mobiles but an increasing number because the digital camera has liberated us from the cost of film and processing. Any event can now lead to a media scrum of citizen journalists eager to record what they see. An average busker can feel like an X factor star. I would love to know what becomes of all this collected stuff. I am sure Goble and other huge cloud advocates are working on ways to hoover up this mass of digital data into some virtual experience that you can share with your agoraphobic mates who no longer venture away from their LCD screens. Here is a photo of snappers posing as shoppers, can anyone tell me what they are snapping? No postcards please, a screen based answer will do.

camera in nightclub

Digital cameras have popularized photography so much that snappers are absolutely everywhere .There is nowhere that a camera does not go. From the womb to the rave the all seeing eye is there.
Continuing my theme of being hooked on LCD the appearance of so many cameras at raves and dances is another symptom of our increasing desire to experience every thing via a screen. The rave or party that most visceral of entertainments with loud music and darkness allowing un-inhibited dance behaviour is now subject to numerous narcissistic party goers largely photographing themselves. The grinning to camera shot formally seen as the territory of Japanese tourists is now seen as cool and desirable for us all.OMG.

Must start and try and do this busy blog thing. Keep busy like the bees.have a look at this relaxing film, seeing if I can embed, no not with the army wiyh the busy tranquil bees!

Have a look at this Bee Film.

Seem to be very interested in making little films at the moment,will try and embed later….

Wow I just read that some one is saying beer is good for the bones geniuscook.com so I think I’ll catch up and stop all that bone wasting abstinance.Plus I have just sussed how to insert a photo in a blog, so instead of being down the pub I,m chatting into cyberspace.

Fab new 30 sec Lofty Life viral is now ready for your enjoyment .Watch it on you tube – leave your comments and rate it.Smoking

The ever growing popularity of photography seems to be steaming ahead at an amazing pace. Digital technology has undoubtedly helped make it far more accessible and relevant to masses more people than it was . The fact that digital means no film and therefore no running costs has I think greatly increased its popularity. This combined with having cameras on mobile phones, the general shrinking of the camera in size, huge improvements in auto pilot functions has expanded the use and quality of photographs for ever.
My project Somewhere Else looks at the alienating phenomena of phone use in public space which partly covers cameras , but camera use is becoming another digi-hell all of its own.
Went to a gig the other night, you know real musicians playing on instruments to a hall of people. Loads of people snapping away on there mobiles fair enough , a memento never to be printed. However there were a few too many mad amateurs holding their “cameras” at arms length watching the whole gig via a screen occasionally snapping. Is nothing real unless it happens on a screen? Are we getting hooked on LCD. The street seems to be full of people head down twittering and networking away completely oblivious to the actual physical world they inhabit.
The mobile is where many of us store that photo of our loved ones, no longer the dog eared photo in the wallet but a hole gallery of photographs of our recent past. Digital cameras have spawned a generation of screen and image dependant humans. Not only are we cctv’d hundreds of times when we venture out onto the highways and high streets, all our activities are only real to us if we photograph them. A night out is not real unless we have the smiling at camera group shot to prove it.
I think however that most of this gathering of the banal and profound will actually be lost . As most of the images do not get printed onto paper but remain as ‘files’ on a storage devise /camera/cd .When was the last time you got out your box of photo cds to have a look? Maybe we are heading to a world of total public digital exposure where the web will hold all our mementoes on social networking and photo sharing networks. Are we to trust our past to some silicone mountain in a far away place.

American Express in Brighton have got a plan to build a nine story building and several others next to their current one on Edward Street. When it’s completed,  they say they’re going to knock the old one down and create a public open space. The neighbourhood  residents are sceptical  about the plans , as so far ‘consultations’ have been somewhat sketchy and far from transparent. Watch this space..

This blog is intended to be an area where anyone can put down their thoughts, information and feelings about the proposals, as and when they happen.