Lee Jordan - Midlands Web Developer » Featured

Refreshing Shower

Lee Jordan — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 11:53:29 +0000

Taken actualy just before a flickrmeet in Lichfield, we had treked up to the Roman Ruins in Wall and it had just stopped raining. I had seen the grass and wondered how close my compact canon powershot, that sadly broke, could get. Amazed with the clarity and the way those three blades lined up I set about boosting some contrast and colour in Photoshop, dodging some of the droplets and well this is the result. I now use this shot as my fave desktop wallpaper! Click the image to see the close up details!

Green Warp

Lee Jordan — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 22:54:16 +0000

Taken in the greenhouse in West Park, Wolverhampton. I commented to a good friend that I felt like jumping in the lake because it was that hot in there! She didn’t think it was a good idea and on reflection, the ducks would have eaten me alive!

Caldmore Village Festival 2010

Lee Jordan — Mon, 31 May 2010 18:27:39 +0000

This bank holiday weekend has been quite a lively one in this part of the shire! Caldmore in Walsall just played host to its first village festival over three days and I have to say it seems to have been a huge hit, attracting over 5,000 people.

“Caldmore is a multi cultural area on the edge of Walsall’s town Centre. For many years it has been the natural home of Walsall’s artists and artisans from many cultures around the world.” — Festival’s Blog

Organised by a massive effort in the local community, you have to admire these guys for getting this off the ground and making it work. A main stage was put up in a school green, hosting live music, dancers, poets and all manor of live enetertainment. Satellite venues provided further events and places of worship held open days, to top it all off there was a parade through the village green, involving things made by local people in workshops. It was a great thing to see in our town.

Community Photographers Found!
The reason I found myself taking photos there this weekend is because the organisers reached out through Walsall Council to our wonderful pool of talented photographers via Flickr. I posted a message up on the group discussion board which attracted a lot of interest and we had a core group covering the events over the weekend. Not every photographer sees the same thing in the same way and I’m really looking forward to seeing the diverse variations and angles from the weekend. This is what I love about getting the photography community involved, in the mix you get a wider range of shots.

It was a great show of various cultures coming together and saying, “you know what, let’s have a really good time!”.

Why did this work?
Simple, community! Everyone pulling together and at times like this when funding is tight you really have to applaud the efforts made. It was a great show of various cultures coming together and saying, “you know what, let’s have a really good time!”. And once again the council showed that they can reach out to the creative community and get us involved too!

Links

Birmingham Polarised

Lee Jordan — Sat, 29 May 2010 00:13:43 +0000

I was in Birmingham and had some time to kill after a meeting. It was during the build up to a scorching weekend of early summer weather and I thought it a good time to dust off the PL filter. This is Birmingham’s Victoria Sq in a way that I myself have never seen it, the crisp blue sky was captured amazingly well and the wide angle just gives it that feeling of space.

Roisin Murphy

Lee Jordan — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 21:31:32 +0000

Roisin Murphy, of Moloko, certainly put on quite a show at Summer Sundae Festival in 2008 with her solo material. I actually lost count of how many times she changed her outfits, the show was great fun to watch as well as photograph!

Summer Sundae in Leicester is my all time favourite music festival, it’s just the right size and has a wonderful atmosphere as well as some of the best line ups around.

Gotham City Hall

Lee Jordan — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 20:47:45 +0000

I was at the excellent Christmas Markets in Birmingham and was snapping a few angles with the tripod and saw this amazing perspective on a town hall in a big city, the fictional Gotham City maybe? What would it look like Black and White I wondered? Pretty amazing as it turns out!

New Art Gallery

Lee Jordan — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 22:59:58 +0000

In the summer I bagged this cracking warm shot of the art gallery in Walsall.

Halloween in Walsall

Lee Jordan — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 14:32:17 +0000

The New Art Gallery in Walsall approached me to organise a group of photographers from the highly vibrant Walsall Flickr Group, to provide documentary photography of an exciting Halloween event around the gallery site. A travelling art circus, known as The House of The Fairy Tales had chosen our town to set up their spooky Tim Burton style take on Halloween. It was a really fun event, culminating in a lantern parade through the main high street to ward off evil spirits. Really fantastic to see this in town and great to be a part of it too!

This photo is actually the main parade centrepeice item taking a breather from the energetic race up Park Street, they certainly do have a bit of character for paper monsters :)

Walsall Council Social Media

Lee Jordan — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 00:52:03 +0000

I love the bubbling Social Media scene in Walsall and wider Black Country region, there are a lot of highly talented visionaries in our bostin towns (and in the case of Wolverhampton, cities) chipping away at building a digitally connected community in the Black Country. None more so than Walsall Council who are using Social Media sites, the likes of Twitter and Flickr, to reach out to the electorate and engage at a time when harsh choices are being made about budgets and public services.

Much kudos to Dan Slee (see his blog post on the day here), PR and Social Media Guru at Walsall Council for getting in touch and inviting our flickr community into the inner sanctum of the council chambers to photograph. Together we managed to round up a small bunch of local photographers and Dan took us on a guided tour of some of the things in the Council House you wouldn’t realise were there! A highly sucessful day, leading to further collaboration and I think a great use of Social Media to calm the Modus Vivendi that often exists between local goverment and taxpayers.

Walsall Council tweet from @WalsallCouncil, often link in their tweets to the Walsall flickr group to highlight a picture of the day from any of the groups growing membership. The Council use Twitter to triage complaints, inform the public of events happening in the town and sometimes just have a chat with the local Twittorati!

What amazes me is the range and skills of the people involved in Walsall’s digital future, for example I discovered an amazing online hyperlocal news hub dedicated to Walsall and the surrounding areas called The Yam Yam. With a major network upgrade coming from BT 21cn soon, that’ll place fibre optics under our streets, Walsall could just be one of the places you might, just might not want to dismiss as a place to set up a digital online business!