Firstly from a shoot to celebrate my mother-in-law, the wonderful Pat Flynn, receiving her MBE for services to libraries in Leicester. She’s an amazing lady.
And in complete contrast a street portrait from the photographer’s mecca that is the St Patrick’s Day Parade in Digbeth Birmingham.
One of my resolutions this year is to shoot more people, portraiture’s one of the photographic genres that it’s completely impossible to get bored by.
Taking random pictures with the Birmingham Flickrmeet group is always fun and is something I’ve neglected over the last year or so. This ‘meet was an ideal chance to use that Lensbaby that had been gathering dust in my deep dark Drawer of Lenses.
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
One of the wonderful things about working in the visual arts is the way that ideas can twist and shape themselves into new forms. It’s always fun to reevaluate old work with new eyes. Two years ago I created a series of photographs based loosely on Wim Wender’s astonishingly good Wings of Desire. It’s a series that I’m very proud of, imagining the angels of Berlin amongst the brutalism of Birmingham’s city centre.
Recently I’ve been getting interested in the possibilities of film as a medium and the logical first step, at least for me, was to revisit thesse shots as a short piece of cinema. A return, in some ways, to the source. This is my first piece of major film work and is a bit rough round the edges however I submitted it to the Flatpack Festival in Birmingham and it was accepted. It’ll be shown on the 15th March at 8:30 at Floodgate Kino as part of the Close Down event and I’m very much looking forward to watching it properly with an audience.
This version is a little old now, the film has been rejigged slightly for its showing at Flatpack, especially with the quality of the black and white in the footage. For a better quality viewing you’ll have to come on the night!
Eidolon from Matt Murtagh on Vimeo.