Martin Parr: Strange and Familiar at the Barbican London

Posted on 19th Mar 2016 by lomokev

Strange and Familiar: Britain as Revealed by International Photographers explorers how Britain is seen by the lenses of foreign photographers. The show has been curated by Martin Parr one of the world’s most prolific documentary photographers and president of the Magnum Photo agency.

Jim Dow prints at Strange and Familiar at the Barbican

Jim Dow‘s images of shops from the 1980s – 1990s

The work on show spans almost a century with images from: Henri Cartier-Bresson from the 1930s to Bruce Gilden’s floor to ceiling portraits shot in the last few years. The show is huge using both floors of the Barbican Gallery and includes the work of 23 photographers, so it’s a really diverse. Continue reading →

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Lee Miller: A Woman’s War at the Imperial War Museum London

Posted on 18th Mar 2016 by lomokev

A Woman’s War tells the story of photographer Lee Miller’s time during the Second World War. The exhibition takes a journey though her war years and then tells the sad tale of her post war struggles with alcohol and post traumatic stress disorder. The images focus on women’s roll in the war, instead of male solders you presented with the world of female volunteer firefighters and female members of the French resistance.

Lee Miller London Bomb Damage 1940

Model shot with the backdrop of bomb damage in London 1940.

During the war Lee Miller shot for Vogue. As a woman in the 40s, she was not afforded the same opportunities as her male counterparts. To get to continental Europe she had to stow away on a hospital ship heading to Normandy. The exhibition tells her incredible story though her photos of a bombed out London, the battlefields of Europe, the end of the war and the horrors of the Dachau concentration camp. Continue reading →

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Brighton Starling Murmurations

Posted on 4th Feb 2016 by lomokev

Every year between between the end of October and the start of March tens of thousands of starlings can be seen flocking around Brighton Pier. I am lucky in that my office is only a 3 minute walk from the pier, so if the weather is good I will often wander down to the pier 20 minutes before sunset to watch and shoot one of nature’s wonders. That said they flock no matter what the weather and it’s amazing to watch them move in unison even in very strong winds. Below are some video and photos of Brighton’s starlings that I have shot over the years.

Update March 2017: I’ve now made added a section to portfolio of starling murmuration pictures.

Brighton Starling Murmuration January 2016

Shot in January 2016 on a Samsung NX1.

What makes Brighton Pier such a good spot to watch the starlings is that swoop below you so can look down on the Flock. Once the sun goes down they start moving closer and closer to the pier to the point where you hear the air rushing round their little wings and you can almost reach out and touch them. If you’re near Brighton Nov – March it’s definitely worth making time to see Brighton’s starlings.

Continue reading →

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Photo Library / Lightroom Library Backup Guide

Posted on 31st Dec 2015 by lomokev

Hopefully I’m preaching to the converted when it comes to having a good backup strategy for your photo archive. Lately I’ve been hearing a lot of digital horror stories including one about a wedding photographer that lost a weddings worth of photos and subsequently had to refund what I assume to be a very unhappy couple. To me this is insane, if your digital data has commercial value why would you not own a £100 backup drive?

Backing up a photo library

Entrusting your precious photo library with Family memories and commercial work to one fragile hard drive is insanity, better to hedge your bets a bit with multiple backups.

Backup is like insurance for the most part you don’t need it but when you do you’ll be thankful. There’s only been one occasion that I’ve had to rely on a backup, 5 years ago I upgraded my storage and with in 2 months one of my new drives died. It is not uncommon for new drives to fail, Google research shows that hard drives will either fail when they are very new as they were defective from the beginning or they will go on for years. Just because a drive is new does not mean you can slack off backing it up. If I had not backed up this little hard drive failure would still be a disaster story I would be telling now, fortunately it was just a mild inconvenience.

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Posted in Adobe Lightroom, Tutorials | Tagged , | 2 Comments

TriggerTrap’s LapseWorld Time-lapse Film

Posted on 2nd Dec 2015 by lomokev

In October I took part in TriggerTrap’s LapseWorld, a crowd sourced time-lapse shot in multiple locations around the world. At the London event TriggerTrap asked me to give a short introduction to time-lapse photography for the benefit of people who were new to time-lapse. In Total 40 photographers in 5 cities shot 65,000 images which made 45 minutes of time-lapse footage.

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Nikon Coolpix S33 / S32 review: The Ultimate Camera For Children

Posted on 2nd Dec 2015 by lomokev

This review has been written after my daughter has been using a Nikon S32 for nine months, but it’s relevant to the newer Nikon S33 as it’s only marginally different. In March 2015 my daughter turned five years old and I decided to get her camera. Quite often I would find myself being art directed and being told to take photos of various different mundane things by her; Matilda can be a regular little Martin Parr. I decided it would be far easier to get her a camera of her own so she could take her own photos, and being a photographer I wanted to get her something decent.

matilda and her nikon coolpix s33 a32

The Nikon Coolpix s33 / s32 is perfect for little hands

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2016 Brighton and Hove Calendar now available

Posted on 31st Oct 2015 by lomokev

The 2016 Brighton and Hove calendar is now available, this is first year that Finn Hopson of Brighton Photography has taken over it’s production from Nigel Swallow. The calendar is comprised of the work of local Brighton Photographers including four of my images.

Brighton and Hove calendar 2016 cover

Brighton Calendar 2016 cover – Cover image by Finn Hopson

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I’ll be at Triggertrap’s LapseWorld in London on the 11th of October

Posted on 2nd Oct 2015 by lomokev

TriggerTrap have asked me to give a short time-lapse talk at LapseLondon on the Saturday the 11th October. It’s a free event, all you have to do is register online. LapseLondon is a crowd sourced Time-lapse showing a snapshot of London life, they did something similar in April this year. If you want to be part of it bring your camera to London on the 11th of October.

London is just the first city to get in TriggerTrap’s LapseWorld tour next up is New York, San Francisco, Cape Town, and Milan. You can get all the LapseWorld details on TriggerTrap’s website here.

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