Looking down St Stephen’s Road – Norwich, UK 2007

This week the portfolio pages of my website were updated. Hurrah! It’s only taken me about ten months to get around to doing it. I like the idea of having a place where the best of my work is displayed. The only dilemma i face is what to put on the site. So far i have seven galleries with an eighth in development. I’m being careful with my choices.  Can you have too many photographs on your website? I think you can.

I’ve been taking photographs for over twenty years and have built up quite a number of photographs that i regard as my best work. The oldest gallery dates back to 1997, so i’m not going too far back, and the most recent was shot just two weeks ago. I’ve only just started going through the work to see what i’m going to add. One plan is to have a secondary ‘legacy’ area where older work is placed as it is rotated out when new work is added. I must admit though that i regard the age of photographic work as pretty much irrelevant. If a photograph was a great image in 1940 then it’ll be great in 2040;  more so, because it will gain in historical value year on year.

Anyhow, for the rest of this year and into 2010, i will be adding bits to the portfolio and experimenting with the look of the page. I really don’t want to add too much, but i do want to show enough of what i regard as my best ( and most interesting) work. It’ll take a bit of time to get right but the journey will be worth it.

A sunset portrait in Whitby, North Yorkshire, UK

It’s not often that i post about my day to day work. The vast majority of my pro photographic work, the stuff that earns me a living, usually stays out of the blogs. My recent shoot for a film is different though. Promotional photographs are usually the first thing a film needs to get the idea and story across. Interest can create financial investment into a project, so even though we are six months away from shooting the film, photos need to be taken to get the ball rolling. The person in the photo above is actually the film’s director, Matt Bland, who stood in to portray the Christian character. The role of Christian isn’t due to be cast until early 2010.

I rather like the idea of making portraits of the film characters. You can let your creativity run free and really try and capture what makes the hero or villain tick. I realise i’m lucky to have such a great backdrop as Whitby to use. If the movie has six main stars, the seventh must be the town of Whitby itself. Somehow you understand why Bram Stoker, who stayed in the town in 1890,  used Whitby in his book Dracula. The place has an attractive and yet…. dark undercurrent about it. Maybe it’s the abbey or the churchyard on the clifftop. Bleak is the wrong word to use. Atmospheric is probably far more apt. Whatever it is, Whitby certainly makes a great location for a film.

This week will see the local paper, The Whitby Gazette,  write about the film, and hopefully, use one of the promo images.  I don’t know which one yet, some are a bit scary, so it’ll be interesting to see which one is deemed OK to publish. I might be surprised!

Nothing impresses me more that a great building. We tend to take them for granted, but over the years i’ve come to realise that great architecture can improve the way we live our lives. One of the most impressive buildings i can think of is Gateshead’s The Sage featured in the photograph above. The Sage is a large venue that hosts concerts, events and conferences that has really made an impact, in a good way, on the landscape of Gateshead, Newcastle Upon Tyne and the North East of England. It is a beautiful piece of architecture that really takes your breath away when you see it.

I want to do more architecture photography. I really enjoy the challenge of photographing a building, capturing its character and producing a photograph that sums up a building. I’ve got a few architecture photo projects planned for 2010 which should be fun. I’d like to do a mixture of old and new buildings just to keep a good balance. I’m certainly not someone who looks down with disdain on new architecture. Like all creative projects, the design has got to be right for the role and sadly some buildings tend to end up being more about design than functionality. One thing is for certain though, The Sage certainly fulfills all of the criteria for being a great building.

A Tyne and Wear Metro train makes it’s way across the River Tyne heading towards Gateshead.

The mountains around Llyn Ogwen in Snowdonia, North Wales, UK

Well, the Darker Skies blog has been running a few weeks now. So far so good. There are lots of improvements on the way, often a blog takes a while to find its feet and i shouldn’t think that this one will be any different. Any comments or questions regarding the Darker Skies blog can be sent to darkerskies@richardflintphoto.com

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The view from my back garden. I took this photograph a couple of years ago using a Soviet Kiev 60 medium format camera. Although the camera is a basic, rather crude, type of camera, i’ve found that really enjoy using it. I think it’s the back to basics aproach to photography that the Kiev offers. No metering, no autofocus and no program modes – just a simple mechanical camera that’s devoid of technological distractions. You have total control over the image making process, and i like that feeling.

This winter, i’m going to start on a landscape project, and i’m seriously considering using the Kiev 60 as the camera for the project. I’ll be shooting using 50ASA film (Ilford Pan F probably) with the camera mounted on a tripod.  The choice of camera format will be important, so i may end up compromising and use two cameras. Maybe two separate projects running alongside each other might work better, one using the 6×6 Kiev and the other using the 6×6.45 Bronica ETRS.

The winter landscape projects will be released as a downloadable PDF book in late 2009/early 2010.

It’s always worth looking down at your feet when you’re on a beach.  This still-life was taken at the high tide mark on a beach at East Runton, near Cromer in Norfolk. I especially like the campagne cork; although it would have been much better if the campagne drinker had taken it home with them and not added to the beach litter.

Leaf and bottle still-life taken in the old graveyard of All Saints Church, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK.