Category Archives: portfolio

Glencaple Trawler Bow II

So here is the final image of the Glencaple Trawler. I thought i’d add a third photograph to make a nice trio This final shot looks up the River Nith towards Dumfries.

All of the photos were taken on the morning i was heading for home. After a rainy day or two the clouds finally parted, blue sky was revealed and the sun made a welcome appearance – just as i was heading back home. Typical eh. So I took my shots in the rather warm light of the mid morning, got back in the car and headed for home.

As for the trawler seen in the photographs, i’m not exactly sure if it was in the early stages of restoration, used as somewhere to stay or just waiting for the scrap man to arrive. From certain things i saw it could be the second of those options.

There is something compelling though about boats and ships that are at the end of their working lives. Something rather sad. We attach a lot of emotion to boats and ships, maybe more than we do any other method of transport.

A new Scotland gallery has been started on the main website and features a rather good panoramic photograph of the River Nith. The gallery, which is a work in progress with new images to be added regularly, can be found at:-

http://www.richardflintphoto.com/portfolio/scotland/

End of Tradition?

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Earlier this month i mentioned that i would be photographing the Mayday events taking place in an English village. I’m glad to say that i did manage to cover the maypole dancing that day even though the weather forecast was less than encouraging.

Twelve people dancing around a Maypole doesn’t sound too difficult to photograph, and most of the time it isn’t, but it does offer the photographer a slight challenge. The weather didn’t help either with dark clouds threatening to soak everyone. Fortunately the rain did not appear and the dark clouds did make a dramatic backdrop to some of the images.

Traditional dancing is a popular spectator event, but it seems that the numbers of people wanting to take part in the dancing itself are dropping. Several local groups are finding it hard to gain new members – one local Morris dancing group closed due to older members retiring and a lack of new recruits joining. Many other groups may meet the same fate.

Even the garland dancers featured in the gallery photographs are finding recruiting very hard. It may be the case that in a number of years, events like this just won’t take place. Once these traditional dance groups go, it will be incredibly difficult to start them up again. Sadly there just doesn’t seem to be the interest in carrying on many of the rural traditions.

I will be photographing the event next year as well as part of a multimedia piece. I’d like to capture the sounds and atmosphere along with the images before they possibly disappear forever. Hopefully I’ll get better light to shoot with too.

More images can be seen at http://www.richardflintphoto.com/portfolio/maypole/

Conversion Completed

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Yes! Yesterday, the final galleries of the portfolio were converted over to the SlideShowPro system and the WordPress gallery plugin I’d been using was deleted. I finally got rid of what i regarded as the weak link in the chain from the website.

The gallery plugin hadn’t been updated for over a year, with the developer just abandoning his creation – no word, no improvements, nothing! I just knew that eventually i would update WordPress and find that the galleries no longer functioned. Sadly, the options available in the plugin repository were rather lacking in features, and so i ended up looking for alternatives outside of the WordPress system.

So what now? There is plenty left to do, with the work now focussed around the editing of gallery images and uploading them the website. I am, for once, ahead of schedule - the complete conversion to SlideShowPro was pencilled in for completion by the end of January – any further developments this month will be an added bonus.

Phase One

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The last couple of weeks have seen me move my attention to the design of my main photography website. Overall I’m pleased with the look and design of the site, but certain areas need a lot of work to bring them up to a completed stage. I’ve lost count of number of versions my website design has gone through. I believe this current site is around design version 6… but I could be wrong.

I’ve never been happy with my online portfolio page. I doubt i ever will be. I often use the term ‘work in progress’ regarding my website and that is true. I don’t thing it will ever stop being tweaked and improved. Websites are never finished, just abandoned. I definitely believe that to be true. We just move onto the new design and the process starts anew.

The remainder of this year will see me try to sort out a number of online projects I need to complete. The portfolio needs a major update, though that is in hand. The other issue is e-commerce which is divided between artprint websites (redbubble, imagekind), online store (cafepress) and the final sales system FOTOMOTO which is used in the printshop area of my website. Only Redbubble has been updated to where I’d like it to be… the rest need to be developed further.