It’s not been a bad start to 2012 on the website front, so i thought i’d do a little roundup of the highlights.

The new RichFlintPhoto | 50mm Tumblr blog is set to stay, and i may even invest in a better theme for the site later this year. It difficult to describe the difference between a Tumblr blog and the WordPress/Blogger, so lets just say it’s a nice, quick, daily updated addition to the blog family. Check out 50mm on Tumblr at http://richflintphoto.tumblr.com/

I also invested a little more time in my main blog including a review post of the content and publication application SlideShowPro Director. I haven’t done a review on the blog for some time – years probably – but i was so impressed with the SlideShowPro software that i thought i HAD to do a review. No sponsored review – i bought the software with my own money – just a simple review of what SlideShowPro Director offers.

If you are waiting for the release of the well overdue podcast, then you’ll be glad to know that I’ll be recording it over the next couple of days. It should have been released (or do they escape?) by now, but a sound card failure delayed the recording. I really do need to get some kit to make it slightly easier to record i.e USB microphone. Expect the extended December/January photography podcast with news and links very soon.

OK, OK, I admit it. I severely underestimated the amount of work needed putting together the Norfolk project book. This week i added more images to the gallery for the project on my website, and it suddenly dawned on me the task that lay ahead. It’s pretty damn big.

I want to do a good job on this book. No, actually i want to do a fantastic job on this book, and it seems only right for me to take my time doing it. I have hundreds of images to go through, and i have to choose a total of 100 for the book. I can’t really do that without having some idea of what i’ve actually got. The images i’ve shown so far are just a fraction of what i shot. I haven’t really gone through the work in detail, apart from the occasional quick scan through the negatives and digital image files. I really need to collate all the work. I thought i could do it all in 3 months. Ha!

With that in mind,  i’ve decided to delay the release of the Norfolk project book until early 2013. It will give me this year to thoroughly go through the work and see everything, every last bit of the project. It seems pointless to rush the book, and I already have a book planned for later this year with images of Scotland, so i will produce a book in 2012.

I’m looking forward to exploring and producing images in an area of the UK i’ve never been to before. Scotland looks fabulous. I’ve already started using the impressive power of Google Earth to help me spot the best shooting viewpoints, check out the surrounding area and plan what images i want to take.

“Some pros are dabbling with digital but most still shoot on film“. A remarkable claim by the great Eamonn McCabe made on BBC Radio 4 recently. I’ve been a fan of McCabe’s work ever since i first saw his sports photography in a copy of amateur photographer around 20+ years ago. In this case though, Eamonn seems to have got it rather wrong.

The problem is, is that photographers tend to believe that everyone works like they do – I shoot mostly on film, so therefore everyone else does. Only they don’t! Photography is a fascinating business because it is made up of so many practitioners doing photography their own way. We customise it to our own way of seeing, thinking and our attitudes to the world. We build our own methods, philosophies and believes, creating our own view of photography – and then we guard it fiercely. I’m right, you’re wrong!

For my part, I shoot digitally and on film. I love both and always will, but i am aware that there are photographers, out in this big bad world of ours, who will NEVER touch a film camera ever again. Likewise, some photographers stay away from digital photography. That’s a decision that they’ve made, just like i made a decision to use both digital and film. That’s the beauty of photography – we mould it into what we want, and no mould is exactly the same.

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.

In the news with have the launch of the Nikon D4 and the rumbles of what looks like the end of that once mighty photo leviathan called Kodak. Both stories reflect how quickly the photo industry can change, It wasn’t that long ago that Nikon was seen as lagging some way behind Canon in the digital technology stakes. Now Nikon seem to have the edge.

Kodak’s demise is sad though. I’ve never been a huge user of Kodak products, but for a time i was a dedicated fan of their TMAX range of products – i still (though for how much longer is anyone’s guess) use their TMAX developer. I certainly won’t shrug off the demise of a company that has helped me take photographs over the years. Some others seem less bothered. Photography, for me at least, does not just mean digital imaging.

One of the more popular photography blogs had a post that enthused about the ‘end of the film age‘. Personally i believe that film will last for some time to come, but like in many industry sectors, only a small number of film manufacturing companies will survive or remain in that sector. In the film sector, companies like Fuji and Ilford may remain the only big players, especially if Kodak does go down. I do hope that film remains available. Film offers the user a different picture taking experience to digital. That should be encouraged. If the Impossible Project can make Polaroid film sales viable – surely 35mm, 120 and 5×4 film can have a place too.

Final thought: The decline of our high street photography shops can be linked to online competition, but a massive factor was the switch to digital. The market for photographic materials just vanished. After buying a camera and a memory card, why go back to the store? A lens? A bag maybe. Not regular items you’d go and purchase often though.

Digital changed the business model for the camera store on the high street, as much as it changed the photography industry itself. We have gained much from the digital imaging revolution, but that gain comes at a price. Those that can’t keep up will fall. Kodak, sadly appears to be one of those falling.

I’ve decided to start something new for 2012 and it comes in the shape of a Tumblr blog called 50mm. Unlike my other wondrous blog creations, Tumblr will feature quick, short, daily posts of images, audio, video and text. AudioBoo links in too.

So it’s short and simple posts full of photography miscellanea as i call it. It is experimental, so it won’t be linked into Twitter just yet, but it should be fun to have a play around with.

You can visit my little 2012 experiment at richflintphoto.tumblr.com

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,100 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 18 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Just a simple photograph. Most family albums contain photographs like this one.  A young lady holding a child, the photograph probably taken around the mid 1930′s by the fashion. She could be anyone.

Click. We often take photographs and then forget about them. In this age of easy digital photography we seem to be taking more and more. I just wonder how many family images will make it to become 75+ years old. Click. Moment captured, moment gone. We don’t appear to realise the value of something until much, much later. Photographs, like a good wine,  get better with age. They even attain new meaning as they get older. Photographs constantly develop long after the camera, computer or chemicals have been put away.

I remember when i was about 16, being shown an old photograph of my Grandpa on his motorbike. He would have been around the same age as me when the photo was taken, sometime during the mid-1930′s. Until that point i realised that i’d always thought of my Grandpa as the old person he was. He had never been young – at least, I’d never really thought of him as ever being young. The motorbike photograph opened my young eyes to the fact he HAD been a youthful, adventurous and care free person once. Once there was just my Grandpa, the open road and his motorbike. Then came the war.

Coming back to the photo above, i have a confession. I do know the lady above, or at least i did. When this post publishes, i’ll be at a funeral service for my Gran (or should i say Nana – the term Grandma made her ‘sound old’ she said ) who died at the age of 96 this month after a stroke. It was kinda hard to associate the frail old lady i used to see at the care home with the youthful person in the photo, but they are one and the same person – separated by 70+ years or so. Time and photography often conspire together to taunt us.

I won’t end the post on a sad note (even if it is a sad day) but I’ll finish with something that has always made me laugh. Some years ago, when i was a photography student, my Nana was chatting to friends and proudly talking about what her grand children were up to. Finally it got around to me  ”Our Richard”, She proudly stated “ Is studying pornography (pronounced by my Nana as porn-e-ography) at art college”. Fortunately  i wasn’t there to die of embarrassment and someone, thank goodness, corrected her on my behalf We all know what you mean Nana.

Dedicated to Elsie Davison 1915 – 2011

On the Tyne Bridge – Newcastle Upon Tyne

The new website design allows easier expansion of the website. Already a number of ideas have come to mind.  The other benefit is that, at least so far, the design seems to be functioning perfectly – no hidden gremlins to work on.

A number of new website features have (or will be) introduced over the coming months. Check out the new news section to find out what’s going on.

During the early part of 2011, the website was rebuilt with WordPress used to power it. I’m immensely happy with the way that decision turned out. I’ve become a BIG WordPress fan and the website will continue to be powered by this fantastic content management system.

The problem came with the theme i choose. What worked well on the demonstration page, turned out to suffer from a number of problems.  I’m not bad with websites, so i was able to repair a number of issues myself, alter the CSS and PHP code where necessary, tweak the design and beat the theme into what i wanted. More needs to be done, and the solutions aren’t simple. This is why I’ve decided to move on.

Some of the problems can only be fixed by PHP coding a solution. I’m not THAT good. My PHP code skills are basic. There are no upcoming update releases to solve these issues (it turned out that the designer of the theme has abandoned his creation and no one seems fussed about taking on the case). Enough is enough. A theme should work straight out of the box. This didn’t and still doesn’t.

I could spend another year figuring out how to fix these problems…. but i’m not going to.

The new website design, including some new features, should be up and running by January 1st 2012.

Another three  photographer profile posts are due to be added to the website over the coming months.

To check out the photographer profile page click HERE

I’m about to start on another photography book release via blurb.com that should take me most of the winter to put together. This is going to be a big project and an important landmark book (at least for me!) that completes the first phase of the Norfolk project.

Ten years ago, i decided that i needed a long term photographic project. What began as a loose kind of photography exercise in Norfolk, ended up gathering pace and direction. After ten years, it’s time for a break and some contemplation of where to take it next. I have lots of options open, plenty left to photograph in the county, and after a year or two i’ll return.

Over the next few months I’ll be putting all of the photography  together, around 80 images or possibly more, to make a retrospective book that , I think, will be the perfect way to present the first ten years of work. The majority of the photographs that have been released online have focussed on the landscape side of the project, however, the book will stay true to the original idea with a broad mix of landscape and documentary photography. I aim to release the book on March 21st 2012.

I love these seven benches at Sheringham. They were all dedicated to people who holidayed there and loved the place. A nice touch that at least gives the sitter a small personal detail about the memorialised person. I know Arthur loved this place.  Would i get that from a headstone in a cemetery? I very much doubt it.

I  hope i get a bench one day. Some weary photographer, carrying too much gear, may need it!

This photo kinda amused me at first but maybe it says a lot more to say about Halloween than you’d think at first glance.

Where has the seasonal magic gone? Even the Mummy is trying to sell you something! I really do miss the magical atmosphere that this time of year had for me as a kid. I want it back!!!

View from a roadside stop – North Lincolnshire, UK