Exciting times.

I got my second daily deviation, for one of my old Geometric Autumn photos:

Not actually one my favourites from the series, but the series overall is one of my favourites so I'm glad it's getting some exposure. I'd like to reshoot it some day, while they look fine at screen resolution they are unfortunately a bit fuzzy for print. Rest of the series:

And thank you

Meanwhile, this:

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Has also been selected as an honorable mention in the 2011 International Photography Awards, yay.

Sooo, uni is finished, at last, I was there five years due to swapping courses, so am ready for something new now. I got a 2.1 in the end, which is fairly decent, though I'm not perhaps as enthusiastic as I should be because my third year results were rather disappointing, meaning my grade was only pulled up by my more successful second year. Oh well.

Job hunting now, that's fun...

In my busy busy third year I didn't have time for things like DA, so I'm massively behind. I've so far worked my way through squillions of journals and comments, and now just have hundreds of people who've favourited me to check out, and thousands of deviations to catch up! And so much work from the past year to upload. So, stuff on the way...

Soooo, I’m in my third year at uni now, and am about to start work on an ambitious project exploring self identity. I require a diverse range of participants to take part in the project, so if you’re nearish to Lincoln, have a read. The project is tentatively titled “Self Summary”. Here’s what it’s all about:

The premise is that clothing acts as a mask or façade. Whether we’re consciously aware of it or not we carefully construct this mask so that we might portray ourselves favourably, or express ourselves in a certain way. So I want to remove this façade, and place the participants of the project in the studio location, thus making them essentially neutral, a standard edition human in a standard edition environment.

However, at this point you will have two ways to express who you are as an individual: In the way you hold yourself in this situation, how you pose, how you express. And in a word: Each participant will select a single word to summarise themselves. The choice of word is entirely up to you, but the idea is that it represents as honest as possible who you are. It can be a description, a label, an identity, an emotion, anything, but crucially it must be as true as possible you. I will be supplying each participant with a big cut out version of their word which they will hold. The only restriction on words is that I don’t want any repetition, so if two or more people pick the same word only the first person gets to use it.

The final image is the person, stripped of social status and cultural influence, purely them, able to present their individuality through their chosen word and how they hold themselves.

The project will make up one of my university projects this year, and I hope to present it at as a book. I’m hoping to photograph as diverse a range of people as possible; all ages, builds and backgrounds.

You might have seen some of my test shoots developing the format for the series. The most recent one (which is pretty much as images in the final series will be) is this:

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“Image” isn’t actually my chosen word, that’s a just a test one.

So if you’re local and interested get in touch

...oh Kenya, where the giraffe roam, and zebra! (www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/ken…) But other than that rather catchy song with amusing animation, I did so just go there. Yup yup. Twas very good, I saw many an animal, went on a hot air balloon (which was like living an episode of Planet Earth), fed giraffes and took quite insane numbers of photos (something like 1300 digital, 200 panoramic, and an underwater disposable camera's worth), so there will be lots of Kenya stuff coming as I work my way through all that.

I think I will update this journal entry as I upload to give an outline of the trip, so more pictures will start to appear:

I went with family (my dad, my sister, my dad's girlfriend and her son and daughter!) and the tour thing was with two other families (a family of scouts - I kid you not, parents scout leaders and children all members) and a bunch of wild Australians, who I probably had a little to much fun with for accent play; Doctor Who travels in the Ta-dis?

Aaaaanyway, for some insane reason, despite their being direct flights to Kenya out of London we went from Birmingham which meant 7-9 hour stops at Dubai either way. Which I was excited about really as i wanted to see Dubai, but nooooo, when travelling with old people that get grumpy when tired and young people who just fall asleep that doesn't happen *grumble*. At least the airport was nice to look at... and had odd toilets with heated water in the bowl, it was like going to the loo over a sauna! I watched Star Trek three times on the flights there and back... (as well as The Incredibles, Wall-E and one or two other films I've forgotten about)

So, get to Nairobi, wow I likes Kenya a lot already, everything is so laid back, people walking everywhere, tis just nice. If there's somewhere in Africa with rather better infrastructure I'd be very tempted to move there for a while. Anywho, night in Nairobi then down into the rift valley for animalness. Which starts quite soon after you drive out of Nairobi; zebra, warthogs and baboons aplenty.


The first couple of days there we went to a couple of lakes, one with many many many flamingos.


Also had some fun at night:


Then we went to the Masi Mara. The first morning we went on a hot air balloon ride, which is the most amazing thing ever. Really just outrageously good. When we landed we had breakfast in the grasslands, with gazelles and stuff right over there *points*, which was surreally good. On the way back to meet with our truck thing - we did most of the travelling and safari in this bloody great lorry with windows, was the bumpiest thing in the universe! - I spotted a chetah, go me. which we got really close to, cheetahs are awesome, yup yup, very elegant. Then later on we also got our first elephant and a bunch of other stuffs.

Then we did more days bumping about looking at other animals and saw pretty much every large animal there is to see except a white rhino. I used my cat spotting talent again to spot a medium sized cat called a Serval, which is apparently not often seen in the day, go me again!


On the last day we went to a Maasi village. I did not like this bit, I took one photo there of a band of tourists (us) gawking at a band of Maasi dancing. I found the whole thing fake and patronising, for both parties.


Then we went back to Nairobi, stopping at an "orphanage" on the way back, which was basically a glorified zoo, with rather cramped cages. Another place I did not think very highly of. Though it did have its upsides; getting to see Servals and a cat called a Caracal much closer, and surreally getting to stroke a chetah!


For the night in Nairobi we went to this insane restaurant called Carnivore, where they just bring meat after meat after meat after meat (and so on)

Next stop was at a beach place outside Mombassa. It was very resorty... a few families, a lot of middle aged people and a handful of hyper-attractive young couples. Turns out I've got better at sport since taking up Ultimate Frisbee. I did rather well in Volley Ball and Water Polo. Highlights of the stay there included being chased by an angry monkey and going snorkelling. And sub-highlight of snorkelling was this abandoned resort we went to catch he boat. It was surreal, like Jurassic Park. I had five minutes to take photos there as everyone else made their way back from the boat to the cars. I almost killed myself running about in wet clothes and rather slippy sandals. (really hope those ones came out!)


Anywho, after all that it was back to Nairobi again, we took the afternoon to go to a giraffe sanctuary, which was freaking amazing. They had this platform to take you to giraffe level and feed them. and there's a mansion there you can stay at, so going there next time I visit Kenya!


And then it was home again. And here I be.


In other news my entries into the International Photography Awards did not get any further than honourable mentions. Ah well.

I am presently very excited So as part of my cunning scheme of "keep entering competitions eventually one will like you" I entered two single images and a series into this year's International Photography Awards. And today and a couple of days ago I got emails telling me all three have been selected in the first round of judging. Which apparently makes them "Official Selections". Round two results are due on Thursday or Friday, and if I any of my entries get picked for that they become "Honorable Mentions".

These are my entries:  


UPDATE: The planet one got as far as honorable mention.