Wolverhampton Low Level railway station

 

It may be more common knowledge amongst others but I had no idea that there was once two separate railway stations in Wolverhampton, one built by GWR (pictured above) and the other by LNWR which has since been rebuilt and is used as Wolverhampton's main railway station today.

It appears to me that the old low-level GWR station was only partly demolished, and has subsequently had new developments built amongst the original structures; shown above, you can still see the platform edge, the wooden roof and footbridge are still intact and a garden has been planted where the lines would have been.

It's a small world...

A tattoo by Sean Healy of The Ink Shack, spotted in a video installation in Wolverhampton Art Gallery in November 2013.

Photographed on 35mm film, forgotten, then finally developed yesterday; see the full video "Market places, familiar faces" here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q0gQBj83QQ

Final Prints at the Exhibition

Would those of you who saw my photographs at the exhibition please be so kind as to give me some feedback?

Thanks!

Clean-up!

Cleaning, painting and prepping the gallery space ahead of tomorrow night's Twenty_14 Exhibition at The Old Print Works

FMP DSLR Shots

While shooting my project, I took these with my Canon 550D and a newly-acquired manual 35mm lens attached with an adapter, as additional material to accompany my film photographs; it was extremely fortunate that I did or I would have ended up with hardly anything from the weekends shoot.

They've been put through Lightroom twice, I think some look over-cooked so will re-edit, but I think the cross-processing has worked well with the Star Wars figures.

Paul's Treasures:

Emma's Treasures:

Everyone's treasures:

Below is a scanned 120 negative, the only survivor of the disastrous shoot...

Disaster!

What does an entire weekends worth of shooting without syncing one's flash properly look like?

A bit like this:

Four whole rolls of 120 film wasted; apart from one single frame (the very last one I shot, ironically).

Ink & Iron Tattoo Convention 2014

Paul Sims tattooing at Ink & Iron Birmingham, April 6th 2014
Follow on instagram: @tattspauly
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theinkshack

Sean Healy tattooing at Ink & Iron Birmingham, April 6th 2014
Follow on instagram: @seahealyart
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theinkshack

FMP Reference Material Links

Paintings Of DIY Tattoo Rigs By Prison Inmates

Scott Campbell - Things Get Better

Tracey Holland Website

Tracey Holland Flickr

Using Live Animals in Art

FMP Ideas

For my final major project I have been toying with a few ideas; I'd like the pieces I choose to exhibit to reflect my strengths as well as my interests, so my chosen medium will definitely be film, be it large, medium or 35mmm-format.

I rather like the idea of a very traditional black and white series, uniform prints all mounted and framed however I am struggling with a subject.
One idea was to showcase unusual homes and buildings, for example I often notice the odd little houses that don't match the rest of the street.

e.g This little cottage on School Road, Shirley is right in the middle of a mixture of houses, opposite some very ordinary suburban homes:

This one on Blossomfield Road is completely different from the surrounding homes, it’s facing away from the road which to me suggests it could possibly be older than the road itself:

This crooked house is a few hundred yards from Claverdon railway station and is structurally a million miles from the huge houses that are its neighbours:

There are loads of weird and wonderful places like this around this area, and I am genuinely fascinated by them, they’re little anachronisms standing stoically in the middle of “Metroland” ribbon developments.

I would have to recce lots of locations to pursue this idea, and contact the owners of the homes to get permission to photograph them, especially if I were to use a large format camera.

I should also think about how I would convey the idea of them being different to their surroundings with or without including other houses in the frame.


I have also considered making the most of my home in Wales as  a base for exploring Snowdonia and photographing the welsh mountains, however having to rely on the Welsh weather and waiting for the right lighting conditions would mean completing a series within the given time scale would prove difficult.

Another (radically different) idea was to do a series looking at people who not only work with their hands but are reliant on machines. This stems from my interest in tattooing and it may work well to pursue other professions rather than focusing solely on tattooing and body modification.

For example, a tattooist is reliant on a machine to reproduce an image onto skin; a photographer is reliant on a camera to reproduce an image in print; a hairdresser/barber is reliant on their scissors and razor to provide their service; so I thought of photographing the tools of the trade in some way, focusing mainly on them in the hands of their operators rather than the actual people.

Staying with the tattoo theme I also have considered using the tattoo machines to create a portrait of the artist.

Whilst researching tattoo artists I came across an exhibition of oil paintings by the tattooist Nikko Hurtado, and this particular piece caught my eye:

I set about making a copy of this image to see how well it could work as a photograph, and managed to find a frame in a pound shop, chopped up a red velvet skirt from a charity shop and used cheap costume jewellery (also from a charity shop) to recreate this for myself.

I borrowed a tattoo machine and grip, and after stretching the fabric over the back of the frame, propped the machine up on nails; I used two household lamps to light it and this was the result.














It cost less than a tenner to make, and as a practice I am very happy indeed with it, however it looks much better as a cropped image (which could then be displayed in a rococo frame to better mimic the original):

I would expand this still-life kind of set-up by constructing a themed composition to reflect the personalities and tastes of each artist, like a portrait of them using their machines.

D&Ad Awards : Find Your Truth

Tell don't sell. Make Your Mark.
Share your own personal story. But don’t tell us what you think we want to hear. Explain who you are, your values, your identity, your purpose… your truth. This is telling, not selling.

• Know who you are
• Communicate it