Creative Updates – May

Circumstances are forcing me offline more and more at the moment, hence the sporadic nature of my blog posts. But there IS some good stuff on the horizion from the creative powerhouse and some rather cool things that have already happened.

Happy Snapping and Cool Coding
My photography work is going ten to the dozen; Local Irish Contemporaries, The Teds, have launched their debut album, You Me and The Sea Between Us, featuring photos and artwork that I collaborated with them to produce. They have been gigging at the Irish Centre in Birmingham as well as a few gigs in Sutton. The album is amazing and during a live gig, they create such a wonderful atmosphere. I feel quite privileged to know these guys, they really are a good laugh and it has been so much fun to have created the logo, artwork for the album and official photography to help complete the launch pad of their future conquests.

Oh yeah, I photographed a family wedding back in April too, my first wedding shoot, very nerve wracking, but good experience that I hope to build on. My heart is certainly in live music photography in the midlands though!

Hyperlocal Walsall News Service goes Web2.0
I must also mention the excellent walsall news service, TheYamYam.com. I might add, having supported them, technically with some web jiggery pokery, they have now exapanded their hyperloal regions and are becoming a cracking news hub for the Walsall area. The coverage on the local and general elections was superb and more eaiser to navigate than the BBC election site!

“I truely believe The Yam Yam has the foundation to become your first destination for news in and around Walsall and because it’s human edited and highlights local blog content, it offers a powerful local advantage over traditional web search for local publishers!” — Lee Jordan

Walsall Museum Open Their Stores!
Involvement with the ever expanding and hugely successful flickr community in Walsall continues. It is one of those things where I have little time to communicate how awesome our little community is and how well receieved we are by the council. The ever wonderful Dan Slee, knocked heads with the Omnipresent social bumble bee Steph Jennings of the Lighthouse, Wolverhampton, to arrange a behind the scenes tour of a storage facility for Walsall Musuems. Dan’s blog entry, How Walsall Museum is cooler than Ben Stiller captures the moment well. Walsall Council really are reaching out with social media, this warrents its own blog entry!

“One Spring Saturday, photographers of the Walsall Flickr group were given special access all areas to take pictures at Walsall Council’s museum stores” — Dan Slee

Bristol and Bath
That weekend we had the sunshine, way back when (it has since turned back to winter), I had a cracking time in Bristol and Bath. I had wanted to go back to Bristol for a long time and had immense fun photographing the city once more. The Clifton Suspension Bridge was immense and I spent a good two hours snapping and listening to some awesome tunes, while taking it all in! MEGA! I really do want to jump off the Clifton Suspension Bridge ………. with a bungee rope attached! I want to go back, because it’s so awesome.

Rising from the Ash
We’ve had an ordeal at work to say the least this past few weeks, but rise from the ash we shall! We have such wonderful staff, who’ve really been there for holiday makers in this uncertain situation the volcano has presented. We’re coping well on the web front and doing some really cool things, this week infact, I completed a database migration of our Holiday News wordpress blog, where we send out updates and news relating to the holiday industry.

And finally – We are Greener Together
I’m having a right ordeal trying to get to the bottom of my daytime sleepiness. It has been on going for well over a year now, but I’m still chugging along and learning ways of just living with it. In fact the rest period it gives me allows me to churn things over and have flashes of inspiration. In a bid to improve on this and without the use of my car (for a short period of time), I’m embarking on a public transport mission …….. with my bike, to improve my fitness! I LOVE cycling and am leaving the car at home, to take part in a 6 month project organised by The Co-operative and invested in by Defra. When I worked with Defra a few years back, I was always interested in these sorts of things anyway.

Greener Together aims to assess what barriers are facing people making more greener choices in their lifestyles and aims to track members of organisations invoved in the project to see how we can all be greener together. I think it’s a fantastic take on the notion that we all do something small in our own lives that adds up to a network effect. I aim to get local knowledge of how to get to work without a car and I’m getting involved with the future of public transport by investigating plans outlined by Centro for the next 10 years.

The “c” on my keyboard has stopped working, how random! Phew, see I don’t think I have Narcolpesy, I don’t think there’s any need to fix me, I think I just have an awesome life that is jammed packed with good stuff! It’s an uncertain time for me at the moment, but I sure am looking forward to throwing a lot more focus on community, people and projects. It’s all good, I wouldn’t have it any other way, even if now I do need to collapse into bed :)

Posted on Friday, May 14th, 2010