2011 Sideways Summary

A brand new year is just around the corner so I'll try and summarise 2011 with some of my favourites shots/shoots along with some pictures that never ended up going on the blog. I'll be the first one to admit that blogging has become a bit of a burden this year. The black hole of never ending good stuff that is Twitter overtook the sharing of online content. The planning of my wedding took up an enormous amount of time too, but lets be honest, laziness is at the heart of the problem. Enough with the excuses, here we go.

The moment my now wife said 'yes' to me on top of a castle overlooking the sea, with friends and family from all over the world gathered in one spot, was definitely the highlight of the year (and my life!), and these two pictures are from our resulting mini-honeymoon to Dorset, where amongst other things, we took in the delight that is Durdle Door.

One the funniest and most rewarding of my own projects that I worked on was the phenomenon of same-sex dancing. This picture is from an event at The Rivoli in Brockley, where couples from all over the world come to compete in ballroom dancing. An audio slide show will hopefully be complete in time for next years competition.

Sitting beneath West Norwood Cemetery is one of the country's few large-scale catacombs. Known as the Millionaire's Cemetery, it was one of the most fashionable places in the city to be buried during Victorian times, when death was commemorated in the most indulgent way a family could afford, and catacomb burial was seen as the pinnacle of high status. Chipped and moulding coffins are on plain display. There are approximately 1,500 coffins down here, with capacity for about 2,000.

The first thing to greet you when you enter the catacombs is the old hydraulic catafalque (above), aka coffin lift. At the end of a funeral, as something of a dramatic conclusion, this would have been used to lower the coffin straight into the catacombs from the old chapel above (which was destroyed by a bomb in the Second World War). Waiting below would have been a team of pall bearers, who would have then unloaded the coffin and taken it to its allocated space. An awesome place, which really gave me the creeps.

Since 2010, I've had the pleasure of working with Kick It Out. This shot is from one of their many coaching sessions for black and Asian managers, where England U19 manager Noel Blake (R) and Chelsea FC's Michael Emenalo (L) took part. The work they do is much needed, with only two black managers involved in top-level football in this country, and as racism charges against John Terry and Luis Suarez have proved, there is still a lot to do to stamp out racism from the game.

More sports, this time a nice portrait. I was sent down to Ladywell Fields in Lewisham to get a site shot as they had just had a new surface laid down on the athletics track. A chap which I vaguely recognised was about to start training and I got chatting to him. Turns out it was Conrad Williams, a Team GB athlete training for next years London Olympics, and he was more than happy to pose for a few shots.

A final sports pic, this one from Wimbledon, where sadly I only had time to go for one afternoon. This is ultimate champion Novak Djokovic twisting his arm unbelievably as he serves. I love how this looks and have a whole series of these.

A couple of shots from the flash mob outside City Hall in May, where security guards have made it into a sport to stop photographers from getting their cameras out. Getting creative with the message are Leah Borromeo (top) and NUJ's Jess Hurd. More on all things related at PHNAT.

The Royal wedding was fun! The nation went into hyper drive and got a day off for their troubles. Little girls dressed as princesses and neighbours threw street parties in a seldom seen show of friendliness. For me, it was a extremely busy day, but luckily I didn't have to go into Buckingham Palace, where photographers have been speaking of the job from hell. I was well fed and watered all day. This shot is from East Greenwich Pleasaunce.

More royalty, here's Camilla getting a stiff upper lip from an equestrian friend as she visited Ebony Horse Club in the middle of Brixton.

The biggest story in London was probably the August riots. I came back from work just as Hackney was erupting. I went down to have a look and within 10 minutes I'd seen three people being robbed of their cameras. There was no police in sight, people were committing robbery right left and centre, and as I wasn't covering it for the paper, I decided it wasn't worth the risk. Numerous photographers got beat up and robbed, and I'm kind of glad that I stayed away. The above pic's are of the aftermath in Woolwich and Lewisham, but, the riots also brought some good things. How about these (below) riot inspired custom finger nails from an art exhibition in Peckham?

Finally, here's a round up of links to some of the numerous 'Pictures of the Year' out there:

Tom Jenkins of The Guardian, AFP's Leon Neal, Time, The Guardian, BBC, Greenpeace, The New York Times, The Telegraph, MSNBC, The Big Picture parts I, II and III, Reuters UK and global, Flickr, The Daily Beast, British Red Cross, to name but a few, and of course the pictures of the year in LEGO.

Happy New Year to all of you!

Perpignan

 Marcus, Mattias and fellow visitor.
 
Now that the cuts and bruises that I got at Visa Pour L'Image are starting to go away, I thought I'd briefly take you through the trip to Perpignan in Aug/Sep. I stayed with my friend Mattias Johansson and his mate Marcus Funke in a swanky new hotel, much closer to the town centre than in previous years, meaning that we managed to walk a lot less and drink a lot more than usual. Bad tings.

Perpignan street.

Anyway, the streets of Perpignan are beautiful and in previous years my go-to-camera has always been the LX3 but it now sits in the most-boring-camera-ever category and therefore most of these are iPhone pictures using mainly Hipstamatic (Nick Turpin is excused from looking at this post*).

Mmm, wine.

This being my third year, I was determined to actually see ALL the exhibitions on show, something we hadn't managed previously. You'd think in a small town like Perpignan it isn't a big problem, but when you factor in 1) we're on holiday, 2) its south of France and full of restaurants and cafes and 3) phojofatigue** and 4) all the free drinks, etc, it becomes a problem. In theory you can probably see all the exhibitions in one day, but for the above stated reasons, we paced ourselves and tried to make the most of it.

Dedicated photojournalists as we are, we always start the week with a champagne breakfast and this year was no different. I flew straight from London to Perpignan while the rest of the 100 or so Scandinavian PJ's flew to Barcelona and then caught a bus to Perpignan, leaving me to do the shopping for my room mates, below.

The traditional champagne breakfast.

When it comes to the exhibitions, the one that really stuck with me was Martina Bacigalupo's 'My Name Is Filda Adoch'. An essay about one woman's daily experiences of life in the Ugandan civil war. Heartbreaking yet tender, not to mention humbling, but what set this work apart from everything else on show was the handwritten captions on the frames, direct quotes from Filda herself, with short succinct sentences about her daily struggle, making an immediate impact and giving a strong voice to the person depicted, something that felt distinctly lacking in almost every other exhibition; the voice of the subject/s.

My Name Is Filda Adoch exhibition.

My second favourite was LA Times Barbara Davidson and her work of Los Angeles residents who have been caught in the crossfire of gang warfare. Again, low key and intimate photography with lots of voices from the people affected by stray bullets.

It comes as no surprise that the two best exhibitions are by female photographers with stories away from breaking news, instead focusing on long-term projects, Davidson spending over four years on hers, initially in her own time, then having to nag her editors to let her continue.

Caught In The Crossfire exhibition.

We of course wanted more of the same and, against better reasoning, got up early one morning to see Brian Storm and hear more about the multimedia converts in our business. It wasn't until about 50 minutes of watching slide show after slide show that we realised that we had misread the schedule, today was only a showcase of MediaStorm's work, yesterday was the actual talk. Brian was only in the room to cue up the projects, one after the other. Photojournalism 0 - 1 Alcohol. :(

Some of the drinkers.

Also worth a mention was Joceylyn Bain Hogg and his work about the London underworld families who are now slowly fading away, a continuation of his work The Firm from 2001.

Again, we never made it to Campo Santo, the place where they do amazing outdoor screenings, but the screen in the main square; Place de la Republique, where you have the added benefit of eating and drinking at the same time, is just as good. Its even better if you can view it from a rooftop overlooking the square, with some champagne and nibbles. Thank you Christina!

The view from Christina's  rooftop.

My friend Maciej Dakowicz also had his 'Cardiff After Dark' series shown at the big screen (the day before we arrived) and when we bumped into each other outside Cafe de la Poste where he told me that it had gone down really well. Last week The Daily Mail decided to run a series of the pictures with bad crops (their own, not Maciej's crops), misleading caption information and of course the word 'foreign' in the headline, cue a shit storm. To date there are over 2200 comments from 'outraged' readers, and Maciej apparently saw a spike of more than 500.000 hits in one day on his flickr pages. His work is great, just sad to see the Daily Fail use it for its own scaremongering purposes. Luckily The New York Times and The Guardian took a more measured approach.

A lone musician on a corner on the last evening.

All in all a great week but slightly exhausting, luckily we made it to the beach on the last day for some much needed frolicking in the sea. A special thank you to the Scandinavian organisers Christina (SFF), Per (Canon Sweden) and Jamil (Canon Denmark) for pulling out all the stops, especially on the last dinner at L'Arago! :)

The beach.

* to be fair, Nick was talking about not sending Hipstamatic shots to his in-public mag, his tweet here
** the feeling of deja vu after each new image, and/or succumbing to depression of seeing too much photojournalism in one day.

Postcards from Sweden

Little Stina at her christening party. © Magnus Andersson

We went to my hometown Varberg, Sweden, for Christmas and had a wonderful time. It was -15C with clear blue skies. The hairs in our noses froze! Sadly the schedule was packed with social engagements and there was little camera time, but here's a few selections. The highlight was becoming god parents for little Stina (above), my brothers third daughter, cute as can be!


Fishing boat in a frozen harbour. © Magnus Andersson


Ice surrounding rocks in a frozen sea. © Magnus Andersson


Kallbadhuset, the bathing house which stays open no matter the weather. They just chop a hole in the ice when the sea freezes over. © Magnus Andersson


The view from Varberg's fortress. © Magnus Andersson

Postcards from Tunisia

A lucky shot where a butcher cleans his shop front wearing a cow's head. © Magnus Andersson

Back from a fantastic holiday in Tunisia, I though I'd share some impressions of this place. We stayed in a beautiful hotel in the tourist resort of Hammamet on the northeast coast, which is dominated by these huge hotel complexes along the beach with the rest of the city up in the hills. We arrived in the evening so our first impressions was that of darkness and crazy traffic. This is a place without a single traffic light and I must say, as someone who navigates horrible London traffic every day, it was a breath of fresh air. It simply works and I think we should introduce the system here as well. What do you say, Boris?


A woman doing the arduous task of weaving a carpet. It takes a month just to do one square meter. © Magnus Andersson

Dust! It gets everywhere and it isn't that strange, its a country in the Sahara desert, and you soon learn to breathe through your nose at all times, otherwise you get a mouthful of the stuff in just a few minutes.


Collage of some of the portraits of the president which were everywhere. © Magnus Andersson

The police seems to be everywhere, every single roundabout is manned day and night, and they routinely stop vehicles although we didn't have any trouble with them. Another omnipresent was the portrait of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, the man who has been Tunisian president since 1987. Add to that that during our stay there were local elections in the whole country, and you felt that he was watching you from every corner. The ruling Tunis party took some 90% of the votes, but you can hardly call it a democratic country, more a one-party state. The EU have now entered talks with Tunisia with their record on democracy very much in the spotlight.


The old Medina in Karouan, central Tunisia. © Magnus Andersson

There is a lot of construction going on in the tourist resorts but elsewhere in the country it seems as if construction all of a sudden stopped. Endless houses are left unfinished and there are many shanty towns where the poorest live. There are also nomadic shepherds along the roads and in the fields. They stay in makeshift tents and roam from area to area in order to feed their sheep. I never managed to get close to them but they seemed to lead an age old existence and would love to explore them more when I return.


iPhone panorama of the amphitheatre in El Djem (El-Jem). © Magnus Andersson

Once you get out of the tourist resort Tunisia becomes much more interesting. We hired a car and went to Karouan in the centre of the country. Here we visited the Great Mosque, the 4th holiest place in Islam and a beautiful building to behold. While there we also looked around in the old town Medina. It is of course a very poor country but the beauty of their buildings and especially their doorways was extraordinary. We also went to El Djem and its Roman amphitheatre, dating back to 238AD, capable of seating an amazing 35,000 people, and still in great condition.


Fruit stalls by the road side like this one are all over the place. © Magnus Andersson

We got lucky with the ash cloud, on the day we left the airports of nearby Morocco had closed but we managed to find a window and leave on time, however, with our very last meal, my fiancee managed to get food poisoning and had to seek medical help in the airport. A word of warning, Tunisian health care is not of the same standard that we are used to back home. The doctor was going to inject her with something when he dropped the needle on the floor. He promptly picked it up and tried to attach it to the syringe again, thinking it was perfectly normal practice to use dirty needles. My fiancee protested and he grudgingly replaced it with a new one. He then needed two attempts before a successful injection. Yikes.


One of many tanks left from WWII battles in the eastern hills of Tunisia. © Magnus Andersson

There is so much more to say about this beautiful country, but tomorrow its back to work again so I need to catch some sleep, but man, it was a good holiday.


The Great Mosque in Karouan. © Magnus Andersson

iPhone dump #03

Line of yellow buoys in Greenwich Dock, Rotherhithe. © Magnus Andersson

Time for a little blog pause! I haven't been prolific in my postings lately and as I have the next two weeks off work, I've decided that I might as well officially rest the blog along with myself. A trip to Tunisia beckons and I think that the batteries will be recharged after that.

I've been told that there were some 70-odd applicants for the job we had going at the paper, luckily I wont be involved in sorting the wheat from the chaff, instead I'll be on a beach in north Africa with no internet access. Bliss.

BTW, these iPhone dumps are all shot and edited in-phone so to speak. The only Photoshopping I do on them is amending the meta data with a copyright notice and resizing them to be 750px wide, the rest is edited via either the brilliant Photogene and/or TiltShiftGen (such as the one above). I've also been in touch with Omer who developed the Photogene app and he will be looking into adding the GPS-location when tweeting a picture. That would be sooo nice.

Now I have to pack and I've been thinking about bringing the Hasselblad or perhaps the D700 with a 50/1.4, but this is a holiday after all, so the pack list reads: sunglasses, t-shirt, shorts, sandals, towel plus a good book and the LX3.

Photographers and hard labour

My dad trying to shift the relentless snow, sometime around midnight, in the middle of a 3-day snow storm. © Magnus Andersson

Wahey! I made it back to London in one piece but I have to say that I am really missing the snow. Upon landing at Stansted it was miserable, pissing down with rain.

Back to Sweden: with snow comes a lot of snow-shifting and this is done manually, i.e., we all have to chip in to shift the snow. If we don't, we simply won't get anywhere. This means hard labour, and during my stay we did the shifting at least four times a day just to keep our drive clear, because the snow just didn't stop.

That's my dad up there (top) and to be honest, he did most of the shifting, and I did most of the 'documentary' photography. Photographers are of no use when hard labour is required.

But snow also comes with a free license to create mischief. Ebba and Alice, my two little nieces, ran me ragged with snowball fights. Pure pleasure, no matter what my aching body tells me now.

Now that I'm back in London I had a look through the files and realised that I had a couple of shots that will stand up to comparison. The angles are not quite the same but it doesn't matter.

The first one is from Christmas '09 and the second one is from this weekend - a mere 2 months apart. I like the snowy one, even though it involves shifting of the white stuff.

Now I'm just hoping that I wont catch the stomach bug that one of my nieces had last night. At least its not the winter vomiting bug because I'm not feeling anything at the moment (famous last words).


Sunny day around Christmas. © Magnus Andersson


Snowy day around 24h ago. © Magnus Andersson

Snowcards from Sweden

Apparently we haven't had this much snow for at least 35 years. Its amazing. I am seriously knackered after finally getting out to play with my nieces and their neighbours kid. Snowball fights plus igloo's plus climbing snow mountains equals one aching body.


Snow plough outside the house. © Magnus Andersson


Snow lined tree. © Magnus Andersson


Man clearing the snow on his garage. © Magnus Andersson


More snow ploughing. © Magnus Andersson


Dad knee deep in the snow. © Magnus Andersson


Large icicles, especially at the back. © Magnus Andersson


My brother clearing his drive with the tractor. Bluuu light! © Magnus Andersson

Merry Christmas folks!

Open fire next to where we ice skate, hot dogs and mulled wine. © Magnus Andersson

I am currently celebrating Christmas back in Sweden and we've been fortunate with some snow this year although some of it has rained away already. I've also been reliably told that Santa will make an appearance but I doubt that he will bring me a replacement Nikon D700. That's right, mine broke yesterday, bohoo.


My brothers new kitten, Smulan, who is just like her mum Sivan, seen here in an earlier post. © Magnus Andersson

All of a sudden it wont record any new images to the SD card. Everything else works fine; AF, flash, shutter etc, but instead of writing a new file to the card when I've taken a shot, it shows the last image taken before it broke down. Seems to be some fault with the processor/buffer. I spent a half day yesterday Googling for a fix but to no avail, it is unusable at the moment and I will have to take it to Nikon in London when I'm back, and instead rely on the LX3 for the Santa shots.


Portraits in the snow. © Magnus Andersson

Luckily I've managed to get some nice pictures already - and I still have my health - so Merry Christmas to all and sundry! See you in the new year.


A pine tree mid-fall. © Magnus Andersson