Film Screenings, Planes and Concerts

As I said in my previous post, I was planning to hold a film screening up in Manchester, to showcase my latest film and the films of some good friends of mine. On Sunday, 10th July, this event took place. I don't have any pictures of this event, sadly, as I was a bit busy presenting it at the time. I might be an OK photographer, but being able to shoot my own pictures while doing something else is way beyond me!

Anyway, the venue for this event was the Cresta Court Hotel in Altrincham, and myself, Richard (another keen photographer, and good friend of mine, as regular readers will know) and Helena (another very good friend) arrived at about 4.15, ready to set the room up and generally prepare. You can ask either of them, on that particular journey to Altrincham I was VERY nervous, but they kept talking to me about various topics and the nerves disappeared, til we arrived.

It was an easy setup, plug my laptop into the mains, plug the laptop into the projector, and plug the speakers into the laptop, check the DVD worked and I was good to go. People began to arrive and in the end there were roughly 30 people in attendance, a great result for me, and we began proceedings.

After the first introduction, the nerves disappeared completely, and it was just like talking to a group of my friends. Which, to be fair, it actually was! All the films played no problem, and I think it was a great success. But then I'm biased, so I'll let people who were there pass comment :)

Anyway, we wrapped up the evening and headed out. By that point Helena and I were quite hungry, so we decided to grab some food. It is here that I learnt the art of the spontaneous photo shoot, the value of smartphones in certain situations, and to ALWAYS bring a camera, even if you're hosting an event and probably won't need one!

Richard had an idea, since we'd been talking about it earlier, to go to the Runway Visitor Park at Manchester Airport. This is where the smartphone came in handy, I was able to look up the postcode and opening times, and we set off.

I'd never been to this bit of the airport before, and it was actually a really enjoyable experience. It's basically an open air area with various exhibits, and obviously places to stand, watch and photograph the planes. We enjoyed a good hour there, I think, before we had to leave, and I REALLY want to go back for a day, because I've found I quite enjoy taking pictures of planes.

This is one I'm pretty proud of:

As well as this one:

This one, I hadn't realized there was a plane in the sky as well as the one on the ground:

The rest of those shots can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/45456370@N02/sets/72157627169677512/with/5926664726/

So, after all that, you'd think I'd be taking a break from pointing a camera at stuff? Oh no, I went to 2011 Live, an open air concert that was held in one of our local parks. I'll write more on that in the next blog, but to give you a preview, I'll tell you that, that was the day I learnt a lot about photography with a point and shoot camera.

New Kit, and a few interesting happenings...

Well, it's been a while, again, and things have moved along quite a bit since my last entry.

First thing first, I'm not going to be dropping the "film" part of this blog title just yet. Short version of events: chicken pox set me back more than I thought, I've got to retake 2 modules at uni in January. So that's a pain, but, what can you do?

Now, the good stuff! I have a new camera! I am now the proud owner of a Nikon D5100 and a whole load of extras for it. Wonderful camera, loving the results so far, and looking forward to experimenting further.

Big, big news on the film screening that I was hoping to put together! It's going ahead, and all the details can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=200511993325046&ref=ts

Lots of films, hopefully lots of people, it should be a great night.

I took my new camera out for the first time, to a couple of local museums, and the pictures from those visits can be found on my Flickr page.

I've also been asked to take photos and video at a local event tomorrow, so those pictures will hopefully be up next week. I'm looking forward to it, it'll be a chance to build my portfolio, and more importantly, hopefully build contacts to get closer to my goal of making this hobby at least part of my profession.

The 4 days in Southport went very well, great company and a lot of hard work, but all worth it when I got to see my first professional camerawork go out on a big plasma screen in the closing sequence. I will admit, I shed a few silent tears of joy and pride at that.

So, until next time, bye bye!