landscape 2

Since the last landscape post I learned something new, so here goes... Landscape as a photographic genre is usually associated with the picturesque or beauty. Most often images of rolling hills, sunsets and sublime natural scenery spring to mind - fantastic natural beauty. The purpose of these images is maybe to create a feeling of awe, fantasy or transcendentation or some other. However, we all know the landscape, is not always so easy on the eye, it can be fairly neutral or even ugly, it can be city, rural or suburban. But whether it is picturesque or topographic, in any landscape image there will be content within the image that says something about us; our social identity, our political environment, a country's ideologies, our interaction with the environment. For me this puts a completely new slant on landscape photography; it what tells us about the land, its people and their culture.

fun fair

This is a selection of shots from the trip to Holland recently. Staying with good friends, Kasia and Tomek in Nistelrode, we hit the fun fair in a small town one night. I've never been one for fairs, to me, theres too much going on and too many kids; frightening. When I was a kid it was the same , I felt I had to like fairs cos everyone else did. I think the pictures I shot in Holland reflect some of this feeling. I can see what is is about fairs though....some kind of sensory saturation. 

I did win a cuddly toy though !

jerez, cadiz and ronda

A holiday to Spain took in three very different places; Jerez, Cadiz and Ronda. A strange thing also happened in that at first I wasn't reaching for my camera very much. Not sure why that was and I thought perhaps its got something to do with the fact that I've been to this region of Spain before and possibly recorded all the images that caught my eye first time round. What I was left with was a feeling of dread with the anticipation that maybe I'm not gonna be inspired on this trip and will come home with nothing new and no travel discoveries (an aspect of travel that I love). Luckily for me this feeling didn't last long. As a photographer I am drawn in by many things, sometimes its very simple; light, colour, texture, shape, sometimes its people; spaces, atmosphere, life or a combination of all of these things. The streets, people and markets of Cadiz caught my gaze. Once I'd reached for my camera, I was transported into a another blissful dimension. See the photo journal for a small selection of photographs from Spain.

parking spaces

Got many strange looks photographing this car park this year. Westgate multi-storey car park in Oxford is due to be demolished in 2009 sometime. We used to skate here when it rained and before they furnished it with a load of anti-skate measures. The car park is run by the city council and it is no longer really cleaned or looked after, its a well used city amenity though, which when compared to the affluent, historical and well-visited side of Oxford, is in stark contrast. Multi-storey car parks are intriguing spaces; they are cold and empty at night, for a few, providing shelter from the rain and a dry place to skate or ride flatland on a bmx. During the day, while drivers hurriedly look for spaces in the narrow parking slots, the sound of tyres and closing car doors echoes.

landscape 1

Not sure what the rules are to landscape photography and not sure I want to read some book about it. I'd prefer to try look at pictures and work out what works for me and what doesnt, I think this image of Southborne beach on the south coast of England provides some clues;  it has some interesting looking lighting and clouds and some subtle colours and landscape features, an English beach with no sign of people, the day drawing to an end. What I am nearly sure of is that the things we find aesthetically pleasing maybe due to some random or fleeting moment or event we recall from our memories, the picture we make is the picture we are moved to take. Had I experienced this moment before ?

a moment of truth

a decisive moment?... the single point in time when elements of a scene come together. This image is of my cousin Priya getting ready in a hotel room for her wedding. I hung out with my camera in the room with Priya and her sister, Sushma who was helping her. Priya was very emotional and after months of organising this event all by herself, she was at a point where she felt overwhelmed. As I was taking this picture she was explaining to us how she felt like she would burst into tears at any moment.

To me this is the image of my cousins wedding. It shows in one picture, a truth. The truth of how much this event means to Priya and how much of herself she has invested in it. I was so happy for her and I believe she was happy as well in the knowledge that her closest and dearest are with her all the way into her future.

paris 2

Paris transparencies and black and white film...its always gonna take longer. These are my two favourite shots, looking up to the street through a vent in the metro and looking at tourists at the Louvre...a few other images are on the main site: www.sunilphoto.com

hnc photography

Nice one. Two years of study at Oxford College complete. Not entirely sure how I managed to complete 2 years of projects and assignments in the space of two months but somehow it all got done and handed in. The course has been a great thing to have done. Over the course of these two years, I've found some direction with photography, met some good people and learned some skills. I'll take this further on the upcoming University of Westminster course starting Sept 2008. For now some R n' R is in effect.

annie leibovitz and paris..

......the two merged sweetly this weekend in Paris at the splendid Maison Europeenne de la Photographie, which also hosted an exhibition on dressage by William Klien and two installations by Eric Aupol and Sophie Elbaz. I'm gonna be honest here, I'm not really into rock star/movie star/celebrity studio portraits, to me its a reflection of how we elevate these celebrities to god-like status and how the human ego laps it all up. Having said that, I saw some of this in a different light at the annie liebovitz show, shes pretty much a household name with some very famous images through the decades. This work actually seems to be a reflection of how the photographer chooses to portray the image, you can def tell that she puts a great deal of thought in what she does commercially, and she does it pretty f'kin well. What totally blew me away however was her personal work. Her family and private life work is filled with so much love and care, it really tells you a lot about her and how she feels about her loved ones, who she is and what she does...The work is shown together and it puts all the rock star and movie star stuff into perspective, firmly into the realms of fantasy where it belongs and in that form it was definitely more palpable.

www.mep-fr.org

final year exhibition

I'm now nearing the end of a 2 year HNC course and this friday is the final year exhibition for us. Its been well hectic getting things done for this in addition to having to get all the assignments I've been putting off for months done in the space of one...damn

Anyways the private view is friday 13th and then the exhibition stays up for a week. Todays Fading Lifestyles will represent.

Its at Oxford College, Oxpens Road at the Art and Design Block Kennet Building if you are in Oxo and fancy checking it. University starts in Sept....just what am I getting myself into???

iceland rocks

Just got back from iceland. Jesus, what an amazing place. As I write this I'm struggling to find the words that can describe just how truly awesome this place is. Its like going back to a prehistoric world, probably because much of the land is (geologically speaking) new. There are constant and unrelenting jaw dropping vistas over every horizon. In fact a good opportunity was taken to do landscape photography in black and white with Ilford delta 100, in addition to the digital stuff and I discovered that with landscape photography, you need a great deal of time, patience, perseverance and the ability to pick the right time of day, but thats another story...Another great thing about Iceland is that despite the tourism and sights to see, the country has not sold them out like you'd expect. What you see is mainly natural and pretty much kept that way. Icelanders like it that way and in fact they do seem to have their own style, creativity and autonomy to the rest of the world which was super refreshing to see.

The summer is coming and due to its position near the Arctic Circle, it got dark for only a couple of hours every night and so there was a twilight for much of the night. So it was a good chance to to do some midnight photography in the low available light. Photos up on the main site well soon.

dope ammo roots and future album launch

Coco's done it again, another huge release and another classic night and a coach load.......album release date 27th May, features DVD made by William Sansom, formerly of cardbored productions, now of close range films fame...

as they say in Banbury - fair play mate!

hay-on-why ?

outdoors 'its a knockout' weekend with bob zoid ruled including muddy bikes and canoe racing, wales? england? lush this, charlotte church that, who the heck cares... it was beautiful countryside in this green and pleasant land.

experiment in colour

fuji 160s print film has some good colour saturation and I wanted to see what colour I could find on a cloudy oxford sunday, heres some of it...a red postbox, green bus, blackwells book store, gents toilet and hotel flags.

reema and vega

my cousin reema got married to vega last sat.  what a great wedding, all the best things; family, friends, food and dancing came together and made the day special for us all. I dont ever see myself as much of a wedding photographer but here are some snaps from the day !

ss20 corby session

SS20, Oxford skateboard store is 20 years old this year. By way of celebrating this birthday, Mon and crew have decided to put on some events and put together a little dvd feature dvd. I'm involved with getting the latter together with William Sansom of Cardbored Productions. We took this skate session in Corbys indoor park as an opportunity to film some interviews with the help of pro cameraman Jay Tubb and Zorlac legend Barry Abrook ! ....nuff said already.

Looks like we're all set to do some more too later this year.

I wasnt there doing much photography, but i did snap (with a dust covered lens) Sean Goff and Jay Tubb riding that huge vert ramp; it was a pretty awesome sight seeing these guys tearin' it up especially as some 23 years ago I met them at Mons ramp doing the same...

ZORLAC ! ZORLAC ! ZORLAC !

goggles 2

goggles again featuring my coursemate Henry Merwhether this time....

H's 1970's bitchin 'bob haro' haircut enhanced this shot no end. Looks rad.

easter in poland

Easter is an important date in the catholic calendar and I was in Poznan, a city in west Poland. This was my first visit to this country and I was lucky to be staying with some of the finest people I have ever met; my girlfriend Alina and her family.
I found that my preconceptions of this land were both validated and shattered. Validated in the sense that this part of the world is just emerging to what is considered in the west as healthy economic growth and shattered in the sense that the cold war and what was at times a dark history by no means pervades over the people and their culture, what I witnessed was incredible warmth and faith in the power of community and religion. The pictures I took both show my preconceptions and discoveries and I reckon the urban landscapes would have taken a different feel if I was there in the summer and it wasn't what was described as the coldest Easter in years !

dope ammo in portugal

Dope Ammo is my brother, Coco. here he is doing what he does pretty well in Porto, Portugal. The life of a DJ might sound pretty exciting, but being a first hand witness on this one night trip to Portugal I can tell you that its pretty tiring and involves plenty of hanging round pretty much doing nothing....then just when your tired enough to hit the sack a taxi picks you up to get you to a club where you have to play music to a few hundred young party heads. Its a strange feeling going from a lonely hotel room in a unfamiliar deserted urban 3 star to the complete adoration of a big happy crowd. The Portuguese don't even get to the club til 3am, so we were there to see the sunrise before sleeping it off to the airport. Occupational hazard county.

fading lifestyles again

Dont do what I did....have four really important shoots in 2 days, panicking to get stuff together for a portfolio and final year project work, just aint worth it...believe me. To top it all, this smart ass also decides to shoot with no less than 3 different cameras, 3 different formats.....talk about making life hard, it was a stressful 48 hours and I thought this was supposed to be fun.... anyway, some good stuff came about, some bad and I'm gonna put it all down to experience, heck photography these days for me seems to be all about making mistakes, well, at least its an education !....ah well here's some of the work, its not too bad, i'm exaggerating as usual...