Blog Post #50

New Year Updates

Happy New Year to all subscribers, and welcome to some new subscribers who have recently joined us. Well its 2023 and I am optimistic that good things will happen this year. I recall people saying back when I was a kid that by now we would be driving flying cars and living on Mars. Well maybe that hasn’t happened (yet), but if you had told me back then that my camera would take video as well as stills, would be able to store hundreds of images and that darkrooms were no longer required, I think you would have got some strange looks.

Goals for 2023

I would rather call these goals as opposed to resolutions as the later seems a bit formal to me. I think it is important to ensure they are achievable but that they also challenge me to improve. I’ll update you as we go along through 2023 as to how these are going.

For 2023 I only have a few;

1. Investigate and start compiling a submission for “Associate of The Royal Photographic Society”, (ARPS).

2. Do a second pass on my B&W negative archive to see if I missed any photos I want to digitise.

3. Get more knowledgable in the workings of my new Fujifilm X-T5

4. Have a go at video

5. Get more use out of my Elinchrom studio equipment

6. Try and become more proficient in playing my guitar.

New Publication

As I mentioned in Blog Post #49, Cafe Royal have published a selection of my photos in one of their excellent series of zines. This became available to purchase on 12th January from the Cafe Royal website and my own store on this website. It is an honour to have Cafe Royal publish my work. When I look at some of the names who also have their work published by Cafe Royal it is really humbling. The book is a sample of photos from my previous publications “Mother Glasgow”, “AcumfaeGovan” and “The Glasgow Celtic Way” plus a few that haven’t been seen before.

Almost immediately after the publication had gone live, I was contacted by the Nostalgia Editor of web based news channel ”Glasgow Live”. A short interview followed and the article went on-line on 15th January. You can see it here

It didn’t stop there. On Monday I was contacted by a journalist who had been commissioned by “Huck” online magazine to do an article on my book. To be honest I had never heard of it before but on viewing their website I was impressed by the content. The journalist mentioned that they had in the past covered the work of Alex Webb and Joel Meyerowitz, Street Photography royalty. I am looking forward to working with them on the article.

All of this exposure has also resulted in large spikes in my website traffic and this is great news.

One last thing. In the early hours of Thursday 5th January, my mother had a heart attack and we had to rush up to Glasgow to be with her. Thankfully due to the swift action of the magnificent personnel in NHS Scotland she is now on the mend. Having made sure everything was OK, I managed to slip out for a few hours and head over to The Barras with my camera. It was a freezing cold sunny day but that didn’t stop the hardy Glasgow folk from getting their “fix” of rummaging through The Barras. I am in the process of working on the Raw files and will post some up and add them to my website too.

Oh, one last last thing. I have re-stocked my zines “Mother Glasgow” and “AcumfaeGovan”, both of which are now available again from my website store. These tend to sell out fast if you are thinking of getting them.

I hope you have enjoyed this blog post and thank you for reading it. If you want to comment on this blog post please do so below or you can contact me by using the “Contact Me” facility in the website header.