Documentary Photography | St Phillips, Aldwych

This blog, in its heyday (and it’s had a few) was a twice weekly photographic blog exploring a broad range of subject matter and photographic techniques. All of it written by myself in my spare time and all the photographs taken by me also.

Each post was generally written in one go, with some taking a bit longer. There are about 53 posts on the blog (not including this one) and seeming that I am not a writer by any measure I’m quite surprised that I managed to write that much. Photography is a passion, it’s my passion, it’s what I do and what I’m known for. From time to time I try to write and that’s the main reason that the posts on the blog have progressively increased in size since I started this blog all the way back in August of 2009.

But I’m not done yet.

Earlier on today I was looking at photography jobs and saw a role taking photographs in a theatre. On the job post it said to send a CV and a link to a website/blog and as I added the link to this site and I realised that I had not placed a post on here since photographing my younger brother’s band on the 15^th of May. This calls for two things, the first is a short apology for the lack of posts I’m not sure if this blog had regular readers but I can guess that no posts may have been annoying. Secondly, a return to blogging, photography, writing, videos and such.

And so we begin.

Out of context, today’s photographs, and the video for that matter will seem kind of strange. If you skipped the text of today’s post you will have seen shots of empty hallways and photographs of people laying down on the floor taken at a very high ISO. Saying that, I have to say that the video is kind of dark but if does give a great explanation of the monochrome images and the context with which they should be taken in. So, I shall begin to explain the first set of photographs.

First off, the photographs of the empty hallways do have some meaning to them. They were taken in the St. Phillips building in Alwych which is on the campus of the London School of Economics. And the reason that you find photographs of empty hallways and gutted rooms in this post is because St. Phillips had been emptied out prior to it being handed over. This handing over will ultimately result in this building being demolished. Work on which, has started long before I wrote this post. The reason for this I place to taking so long to write this particular post.

There are certainly a few things to be said about a building that is going to be demolished. The first of which that pops into the mind of quite a few people is simply “Who cares?” and I can understand what they mean. A city, like London, is never actually finished. It will continue to grow and evolve over time and there will be never be a point when nothing new is needed. But that shouldn’t mean that when a building is set to disappear we should ignore the history of that particular building. And that is what the exhibition that inhabited the St’ Phillips building shortly before it’s handing over was trying to convey.

I was thinking about this viewpoint on construction and deconstruction as I was walking [and photographing] my way through the empty hallways. But a couple of other thoughts were going through my mind. These thoughts mainly occurred when I was looking out of the third floor window.

“No one will ever see this exact view ever again. No one will see what I can now see and no-one will be able to stand here and see what I can’t either”

A certain view at a certain time can inspire quite a lot in people and it just kind of struck me that this building wouldn’t have that opportunity to inspire in the future. And that’s what I meant when I said that no-one will be able to see what I can’t. I look down and see a street; someone else could have looked down and wrote a novel.

I came to this by accident really. I had met one of the exhibitors, Jesse Darling, last year and I have had her as a Twitter contact for some time. I had asked whether or not she had anything that she wanted photographed and it was then that I was told about this exhibition and through that I learned a lot about the history of the building.

The exhibition “Students, Patients, Paupers” wished to celebrate the history and the many roles played by the St. Phillips building. Some of which include a venereal hospital, a work house and a dentist’s practice among others. These are but a few of the roles this building has performed over the past century.

I was there on Wednesday the 11^th of May where as well as Jesse Darling’s exhibition piece “Live Sleeping Event” there was also a public symposium going over the history of the building and the idea of construction and deconstruction.

Like I mentioned above, I am not a writer. A good example of which is this post, that I’ve been trying to write this since May. This building has a rich history and an interesting one. But, for some reason I find it hard to write about empty hallways, except to say, that a lot of history has passed through them. But I don’t just want to give you a history lesson. If you would like to know more please visit the link below.

http://stphilips.tumblr.com/

But for now, I shall simply show you the photographs and the video, before I break right through the thousand word barrier without having said very much.

Documentary Photography | Dartford Market

As a general rule I will always have a camera on me or in my bag. Ever since I was younger and I saw the most vibrant sunset imaginable. At that time I had a camera but the batteries were dead. This was the kind of sunset that turned white cliff orange. Like I said beforehand, the sunset was very vibrant with a mixture of orange and pink. But I have found recently that although I have a camera on me I am not taking enough photographs for somebody that often considers himself to be a photographer. So this morning as I was getting ready to leave the house I decided that I would take my Canon EOS 50D and take my prime lenses out with me and take photos around the Dartford Market that happens every Thursday. The lenses in question are the Canon EF 28mm f1.8 and the Canon 50mm f1.8.

The market has been around for as long as I can remember which wasn’t surprising seeming that after a small amount of research one website claims that the market has been there since Saxon times. Throughout the market you find a variety of stalls selling a vast variety of goods, from your average household items to fishmongers.

I strolled around the market, first buying some magazines for inspiration as I have a photo shoot on Sunday with my friend Laura Giddings who was featured in a previous blog. Please see below for the link.

Portraiture Photography | Laura Giddings
Date Posted: Tuesday 27th July 2010

After I bought the magazines I took my camera out and had a gentle stroll around the market. It had been so long since I had been there and it was fun to just walk around taking photographs of whatever caught my eye and I was surprised at the variety. But then again that is the beauty of a market. I never got around to using the Canon EF 50mm instead taking all my shots with the Canon 28mm and I am happy with the images that I got. There will more than likely be no posts next week as I am away till next Friday at the very latest. I am planning for this blog to be posted on Saturday the 9^th of October where I would have already have left.

Hopefully you’ll enjoy the photographs in this post. In total there are eleven. My favourite photograph of the set is the one I took of the orange stand. I think I might start taking my camera out more to capture more aspects of daily life like the market. If you are a regular reader of this blog you can probably tell that I put quite a bit of work into it and hopefully it will expand as I hope to have an official website soon and this blog will act as a way for people to keep up to date with my current work and see examples of my work covering a wide spectrum of subjects, genres and techniques.

If you yourself would like some portraits taken or would like to talk to me about any aspects of my photography or you just want to get in touch feel free to use the details on the contact page above. Thanks.

Documentary Photography | Woods & Porter, Dartford

Walking into Woods & Porter on West Hill in Dartford you get the sense of a true camera shop. Lenses lined up in cabinets and a whole shop with cameras, equipment and books on photography. Many of them are older than myself. This was a welcome sight for me as I have always wanted to work in a camera shop. I find myself not counting places like Jessops & Currys as camera shops, as I have worked in both of them and they are only really interested in selling the brand new models. When I first started at Jessops a lot of the stock was film based with a healthy supply of darkroom but if you were to enter a Jessops store today, it’s not the same sight and although I am fully aware that the market is now digital, I have always had a tendency, a fondness if you will for film photography. As it has often been said, I was born 20 years too late.

When in the past I had a spare twenty minutes or so I would pop into the store. Mainly just to look around but I enjoyed the atmosphere in there all the same. Don’t get me wrong I had bought items from there in the past and sent a few things in for repair. I sent a Centon K200 camera into the shop for repair because my little brother wanted a digital SLR and I told him he had to master a film SLR first. He mastered the film SLR fine but it didn’t hold his interest too long as his first love is music and so he didn’t pursue getting a digital SLR. Just so you know, an SLR is a camera that is mainly characterised by having a mirror system internally allowing you to see out of the lens [which are interchangeable] and therefore being able to frame your shot perfectly. This mirror system is called a Single Lens Reflex giving us the acronym SLR. As you probably know if you have read this blog before, I try to do more than just a paragraph and several photos. I try to tech a little bit here and there. As well as an SLR [Single Lens Reflex] you can get a TLR [which is an acronym for a Twin Lens Reflex]. I have used a TLR is a few posts in the blog. Feel free to click links below to view the previous TLR based posts.

General Photography | London Through The TLR
Date Posted: Friday, 10^th September 2010

Travel Photography | Pisa, Italy
Date Posted: Monday 23^rd August 2010

So, keeping with tradition, early last week whilst I was in Dartford I decided to pop into Woods & Porter and that’s when I found out the last day of business on the premises will be Friday, 24^th of September 2010 [the intended date of publish for this post]. This saddened me slightly if I’m to tell you the truth. It puts the nearest camera shop [by my definition earlier in the post] in Eltham. This, in all fairness isn’t a vast distance to travel, but at the same the time it isn’t a commute that I would take in my spare time.

On the bus home that day I had the idea for this post. I wanted to document the store. Make sure that it would be remembered if that makes sense. So the next day I popped in and asked if it were ok if I popped back on the next Tuesday [21^st September 2010] and photographed the shop as a small documentary piece. The owner agreed and I went on my way.

On the Tuesday morning I had a baby photo shoot to do and I went to the shop at around 3pm and whilst taking the baby photographs I had the idea of expanding on my original idea and turn it into an interview as well. So that as well as photographing and documenting the shop I could also learn the history of the store which, now that I was aware of the store’s closure, became considerably more interesting to me. And so with my arrival to the store I asked if an interview was ok and he was ok with it. So from that commenced my very first [and hopefully not my last] interview.

The photographs in this post were taken with a Canon EOS 50D using a Sigma 18-50mm f2.8 lens as that was the camera and lens that I used earlier in the day. The interview is about 1,700 words and so I have made it a downloadable PDF which I will place just below this paragraph. The reason that I put it as a downloadable PDF was that I didn’t want the post to run too long. I have included 12 photographs with this post. As always you can feel free to contact me about anything to do with the blog or photography in general you can find how to do that on the contact page. Hope you enjoy the photographs.

Interview With Roger Woods – Right Click and ‘Save Link As’ to download the PDF.

EDIT: Sunday, 7th November 2010
I was recently informed that there were a few mistakes with the interview on the PDF file. With the spelling of some names. So I have corrected this and placed the new PDF below for download and I don’t really believe in masking over old mistakes so the old PDF will remain on this post for download. Please see link below. Thanks.

Interview With Roger Woods NEW

General Photography | London Through The TLR

It would be remiss of me to write posts about the cities that I have visited and not put one up about my closest and most favoured city of all, London. As you can probably guess I have taken a lot of photographs when it concerns London. But, recently whilst going through the photographs on my hard drive I found some that I had all but forgotten about. These were taken with my Rolleiflex camera. The same one that I took the Pisa photographs with. If you would like to see my photographs of Pisa please click the link below

Travel Photography | Pisa Italy
Date Posted: Monday 23^rd August 2010

As mentioned in the Pisa post, the camera was manufactured in 1935. I found this out by verifying the serial number. It is a twin lens reflex camera that takes 120 film that is still readily available. And, in stark contrast to cameras made today, it still works perfectly. Even at 75 years old. I do not expect any of my digital cameras to still be working fifteen years from now, let alone 75.

These photographs were taken in January 2009 with the camera and were processed by Jessops who also made the scans which this time weren’t as bad as I have previously. Half of the photos in this post are what I would call your standard shots of London. That is something that I try not to do but I do like the way they came out with the 120 format. And the other half are of the London Astoria Theatre. The London Astoria was a music venue that was shut down in early 2009 and so I went up to London that day to get some photographs as I knew that it would be getting demolished and I wanted some photographs as a record of the building.

For more information on the building and it’s history, please click the links below;
Wikipedia Entry on the London Astoria
History on the London Astoria

As far as I am aware I used Ilford HP5 ISO 400 120 Film. I believe that this is the film that was used because it was the film I use most in the camera. And I’m quite happy to say that these photos were all taken sequentially on the same film. The reason that this post is called ‘General Photography | London Through The TLR’ is because I am pretty sure that in the future there will be more posts with London as the main subject matter and I wanted to give this first post a unique title.

I have placed the standard London shots as the first four of this post and the photographs pertaining to the London Astoria at the bottom. The reason for this is to keep the subject matter similar throughout the photographs. The London Astoria was demolished last year, making these photographs a very small part of the venue’s last days. It was mentioned previously in the post but I’ll say it again. In this post I have included eight photographs all in black and white taken with the Rolleiflex Twin Lens Reflex 120 camera.