Last night I was at Nottingham Trent University again (I seem to have been there more in the last few months than I was in the final year of my Degree!) – this was another exhibition.
As part of the 170th year celebration (which I blogged about before here) last night was a photography exhibition – by Martine Hamilton-Knight and the RIBA. The focus was on Sir Michael Hopkins work.
Marine has been photographing the architecture of this particular practice for the last 20 years. And there was a romp through the last two decades. The Inland Revenue, The University Jubilee Campus and latterly the Nottingham Trent University Newton / Arkwright extension all feature. There are some magical photographs and iconic views.
You probably know I have keen interest in photography – I aspire to this level though! Martine spoke at the event and mentioned the importance of light and good architecture on her work. Some of this architecture is fantastic – and looking at the body of work on show you realise that we do have some truly inspirational buildings in the City. They have been portrayed well.
There’s always that question you get asked- if you could do anything other than your current job what would you do? And I would always answer – I’d be a photographer. I have always been interested in the medium and I get to takes lots of pictures for my work. But thats not the level of art Martine and others achieve. That takes work – not just snapping!
It was an inspiring exhibition. I am inspired. I will get the camera out more.
Nottingham – a sense of humour
I don’t often (read NEVER) take pictures in toilets. Especially on trains.
But this week on my trip to London I couldn’t help but smile at this picture in the toilet of East Midlands Trains.
Apparently there is a serious message behind this – in that there have been instances where dreams and goldfish have blocked the toilet. It brings a whole new meaning to ‘please don’t flush the toilet in the station‘…
Very funny.
And my picture got published in the The Daily Mirror, Nottingham Post and Leicter Mercury courtesy of twitter!
Jim’s camera club
Jim Taylor is part of the fabric of Nottingham – he was the Planning Officer at the City at a time when the place was booming -so you can deal with this two ways. If you hate the stuff built in his era, it’s his fault and if you love it, there must have been some really great architects around…
Jim is a harsh critic; he threw down the gauntlet to me a month or so ago and invited me with Margaret Tamplin, a skilled amateur photographer, to pit our collective skills in a sort of mini-club night at the Taylor towers.
It’s fair to say I was nervous. I take lots of pictures – thousands for work and a similar number for myself. But I don’t show them off really. Jim wanted me to. In the week running up to our evening – I hashed and re-hashed my modest selection – wondering about what I could include. I don’t really do people – just lots of buildings. I am also acutely aware of the worst eight words in the English language, “would you like to see my holiday photographs”…
60 were selected – from my travels – Shanghai, Venice, New York, LA, San Francisco and Nottingham. It did look like a collection of holiday pictures.
Margaret’s pictures were similarly spread around the globe – and it was clear I was with someone who took great care – tripods, cable-releases and the like.
I think I got away with it. It was interesting watching smiles, grimaces and hearing groans (from Jim). It actually inspired me to get out more and do some more pictures this spring and summer…
I hope you like the picture on todays blog – it was one the ‘panel’ liked best!
Time Lapse photography – some local talent
I come across lot’s of interesting people on my travels. But this week I had a call from Ashley Leung who had seen a picture he liked on my blog. He wanted to know where I had taken it! I luckily get to go on quite a few roofs around the city…
We got talking and it transpires that Ashley makes time lapse videos – and his showreel is below. I love this sort of thing – there are excerpts here of Nottingham’s station car park under construction, Hong Kong and Dubai. These are really interesting ways of showing how buildings are made …
Enjoy the video!
New 3d Mapping is on its way
It wasn’t that long ago when I first used a GPS unit in my car – it was on an old Psion ‘green screen’ hand-held computer. That was 1996, it was clunky but just about operable. Of course GPS is everywhere now – and my golf watch is just brilliant.
We are now used to having an enormous amount of data in our pockets – the iPhone was really a revelation – especially with the map feature. The mapping software is brilliant and I guess I use it most days. It doesn’t matter where you are in the world it finds stuff. Of course we are all used to google maps too – I use these at work (most days) although I find those on Bing to be slightly better. The 3d photographs are generally good – although sometimes the light isn’t great – making some views unusable.
But it looks as though the bar has now been raised by the Apple guys. They have a pathological hatred of Google and have evidently been chipping away at their dominance – after all we can’t have two giants ruling the world?
Apple have suggested that their newest maps will be in 3d. And an example has been released – showing a video fly through of Oslo. It’s amazing! Apparently this has been rendered from a mixture of satellite data, user photographs and some clever algorithms.
You have to watch the video to believe it. This will certainly take mapping imaging to a new level. I can see this being even more useful to me in my day!
Geneva Motor Show in pictures….
As I’m now back home I’m able to get some proper wi-fi – and an ability to upload some images from the Geneva Motor Show yesterday. So, when pictures speak a thousand words, there’s less words… Enjoy!
The Bugatti Veyron
The Lotus Evora S
The Pagani Huayra
The Maserati GranTurismo
The Mercedes SL63
The (only) Lamborghini Aventador J
The big question – which one to buy….
Nottingham in twenty images
You have probably guessed that I work in a visual way; I find it easier to draw something than write about it. I can interpret drawings without a second thought. I use photography every day – as a record, aide-memoire and visual aid.
This might be another one for the list?
A couple of days ago we were discussing in the office the need to brighten up our sales details. Often the buildings we are marketing are not entirely photogenic. It’s difficult to make an industrial unit ‘pretty’. We have decided that we should incorporate some stock shots to brighten things up a bit.
We were trying to work out a list of photographs which sum up Nottingham. Buildings or things which are unmistakably Nottingham. I managed the following list – does it fairly represent us? Have I missed anything?
Harts Hotel
Nottingham Castle
Robin Hood Statue
Castle Road
Playhouse (including Anish Kapoor dish)
Loxley House
The Cornerhouse
Nottingham Trent University Newton and Arkwright Buildings
Victoria Centre
Clumber Street
Market Square
The Tram
Brian Clough statue
Jamies
Carluccios
Paul Smith
The Contemporary
Broadmarsh Shopping Centre
Ice Stadium
Royal Centre
Broadway Cinema
Does this sum Nottingham up? Visually?