Personal Map

I'm always interested in ways of mapping, especially how people move in spaces. This is a gps map of my movements since christmas. It includes driving my younger brother to his girlfriends, exchanging a duplicate present and metal detecting in a field of my dads. I love how individual this map becomes. In some ways it is very similar to a road map, but it only borrows certain elements, it becomes a narrative and quite personal as well. The more often you drive a certain route the thicker the line becomes, so building data and creating hotspots. Obviously this is just a few days of relatively mundane events but even so it is easy to see the potential. GPS also records information such as speed, altitude or just about anything you want.
To look out for on this map are the straight road that is involved in most journeys (an old roman road, the a14) and the two hotspots, at my house and cambridge town centre. The distance between these two points is about 12 miles.

Winter Photos

Beautiful low wintery sunsets and a need to photograph with my new macro lens have combined to make these pictures. I'm not sure what it is, but there is something evocative about bulrushes.

Coral Spot

Well after a long period of inactivity, (everyone knows I love christmas) heres a boxing day picture. Expect more of this sort of thing to come as my Christmas present was a set of extension tubes. So I shall no doubt be influenced by them for a few weeks. This fungi is normally found on dead wood and I believe is called coral spot although do correct me if I'm wrong. I also got a gps tracker so expect some maps of my movements in and around cambridge. Another notable gift and lets face it, me showing off, was a signed and personally illustrated book by Rebecca Dautremer (an absolutely superb french illustrator), given to me by a friend. Needless to say that was a sketchtravel connection. :)

Smiths Vol.2

Almost unbelievably the culmination of heaps of hours of work and just a slightly above average magazine. A good process though and I never would have imagined that trying to make a beautiful magazine would be so difficult. It is a huge improvement on the last one though.

Daniel Eatock

Anyone who knows Daniel Eatock's work will know how fascinating he is. I've really enjoyed his website for some time because of the richness of the content. You can get lost there for hours. Anyway, to cut a long story short I submitted a No Smoking sign to his collection. As there is no selection process I can hardly rate it as an achievement. The simple act of bothering to send an email is enough to get you included, but still I feel a weird sense of satisfaction. Anyway go take a look and get lost there for a while, its very interesting...

www.eatock.com

The Act of Doing

So got up very early this morning to get myself up to kings cross and do my installation. Here are the pictures complete with very disappointing grammatical error. I'll say more later but have to rush off to football now.

Fairy Tale

As promised a while ago, the story that is in the book that i made (see below) for the fairy tale project that I completed a month or so ago.

Power to the Pedestrian

Here are some pictures from the project I'm working on at the moment. Its based in the kings cross area of north London. I was looking into giving more freedom of movement to pedestrians who are the biggest users of this space. I made a lot of maps of the the most common paths that people walked through the space and then planned to put this as a crossing as well as signage and ramps for people with cases on their way to kings cross. Hopefully have the real thing soon. Just got to make it first...

Dartmoor

Just back from Dartmoor, with a greater understanding of the word 'tor', a sense of the England from stories and a deep seated mistrust of the merchant navy. Actually not true but it is beautiful down there. I can't get enough of the misty bleak moors that force you to feel a least a little bit of melancholy. So heres to lakes appearing from behind a veil of mist, stumbling upon little village squares with pubs and people driving land rovers that actually need them. Oh and wearing welly boots...

Sketchtravel

After the interview on thursday I photographed the book that the whole project is about. This is it as well as one of the illustrations within (go to the website to see all of them and learn more about the project). In short it is a book that travels the world being illustrated by top illustrators and is then sold for charity.

Quentin Blake

Yesterday I met Quentin Blake. We were filming for Sketchtravel so it was Catherine interviewing him, Sylvain came to deliver the sketchbook and I was filming and photographing. He was absolutely as lovely and easy to get on with as you would hope, as well as being funny. The filming went well and I even got a few nice pictures of him. Images of the sketchbook and links will follow soon.

Smiths Magazine

Smiths magazine came out today. It was our first effort and certainly not perfect but a promising start I think. The structure of having 25 designers and contributors (a co-op style set up effectively) didn't really work perhaps so we'll try something new next time. Anyway, we're all learning and apart from the loss of the uncoated paper that we wanted it sort of works.

Fairy Tale

The book that I made (see below) was a fairy tale writen using information that I gathered from my research. The idea was to change the idea of Marriage as a holy grail in fairy tales and instead put a more realistic spin on its role in life and the effort need for a successful marriage.

Barcelona

A group of men with unexpected dogs. They were sat around in Barcelona, before the older guy went and sat all lone on this ball with his two dogs. Oh, and some sunflowers that I saw early one morning in the countryside.

Spanish Town Life

Some pictures from my trip in Spain at the end of September. These are from some of the small townson the north coast on the famous pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostel.

My Final Project

Working late into last night I finished this piece in response to my marriage project. I wrote a fairy tale from the surveys I conducted at an old peoples home and then went on to make an interactive book system.

Mas De Clemany

Here is a website that I took all the photos for that has just gone live. See all the other photos on my flikr account to the right.

www.mas-clemany.fr

My Summer Project

This website was the main project that I worked on during the summer, both the design and the images that make up the content. Take a look and remember to manipulate the images when you get there, you can see in full 360 view in all directions.


www.aveyron360.com

Stamp out Racism

A painting for Vincent to say thanks for the last three months. Marmite was a hot topic in the land of cusine. A country where food racism is rife and needs to be address in clear and understandable terms to change the mindset of the populace. Otherwise the prejudice will live on. Maybe they are right though, maybe it isn't exactaly haute cusine...

Channel Crossing

Just found a couple of photos on my computer from when I was coming over to France on the ferry. Nervous about what lay in store for me and already missing Martha. That was all nearly three months ago now though, the only thing that hasn't changed is missing Martha.

Second time at Puech Maynarde

I completed a second sejour at the horse ranch in north Aveyron called Puech Maynarde last week. This time I was photographing and also following the TV crew who were making documentary for French television. Again a really interesting time and I hope some good pictures and video. All the photos from this trip are available HERE on my flickr portfolio for this summer.

www.flickr.com/puechmaynarde