Paul

Paul has a cigarette under the vine. Barratt Street, Summer 2011.

Life Bicycles

When I embarked upon a trip to Alpe d'huez in the French Alps this year for some riding at the ever famous Megavalanche event I was excited. I expected to spend my time split evenly between the local bars, the chairlift and riding down mountains as fast as I possibly could. The reality was that I slept on a cardboard box, got a chest infection, didn't make it to the bar at all and spent less time riding than an average week at home. On the plus side I did race the Megavalanche and it was awesome. Really really hard and really awesome.

When I wasn't helping to make our super demanding chalet dinner or trying to take the tyre off my bike or just generally taking medication to make me feel less like dying I made a video of our travels. Life Bicycles. It's very very serious. Seriously.

Names

I recently attained the title of odd-parent from my long suffering friend Gwyenth (yes - she's Welsh). Odd-parent as in a god parent with a lack of religious responsibility. The day was celebrated in traditional Welsh style with a rainy day, a few ales and a longer walk than expected including the standard pushing a heavy pram through a wet grass field whilst being chased by some angry cattle. My favourite.

Here's to lovely Gracie (that's my new odd-daughter).

River Usk.

Gwyn, Gracie and rain.

That's Gracie with a very well behaved (not very often) Rufus. More pictures on my flickr account here.

Greenman

Went to Greenman festival on the weekend and had a great time apart from realising that I'm older now and that lack of sleep, carrying a box of wine around for sustenance and sleeping in a tent just doesn't help.

Some great bands most notably Coco's Lovers, Laura Marling and The Burns Unit who are now on my shopping list. Check out this video of Coc's lovers playing out of the back of a van powered by bikes - awesome!

Getting there

I'm well on my way to Novo Mesto in the heart of Slovenia to take my seat at the 11th annual Fotopub photography festival. After a brief stop in Brixton to check up on the latest batch of gentrification and a trouble free but solo flight from Gatwick I arrived in Ljubljana with only a few hours to wait for Rebecca to join me. It's a long story but I booked the last seat on a flight out of Gatwick so we travelled at the same time from different airports to the same destination. I won't be booking any separate tickets ever again!

Rebecca and I have prepared a great schedule for the participants of the multimedia workshop at Fotopub and I'm looking forward to meeting our students and getting to work. It's going to be a busy week in Slovenia as the students have five and a half days to learn about photofilms, get out in the field and collect their material and build their finished pieces. The work will then be shown in Novo Mesto next Saturday as part of the Festival.

I've brought quite a bit of kit with me, the usual cameras, lenses and more cameras along with a laptop and additional speakers and a healthy dose of cables and headphones, so I ditched my current book for the trip. I was therefore left with the inflight reading material which is usually enough to drive anyone crazy. Not so as the Adria Airways magazine was pretty goo and even featured a piece on the Fotopub festival, which was nice.

Why Photofilms?

Rebecca and I were asked to give a small interview online the other day to ready ourselves and our participants for the multimedia workshop we are teaching in Slovenia at Fotopub next week. I thought I was prepared for everything that morning, but not perhaps for having the camera turned on us. Borut Peterlin from Fotopub was obviously very persuasive and so the video was switched on. So if you are struggling with the tuesday morning blues and the remnents of the weekends hangover please feel free to enjoy this video.

If you got to the end are still wondering why you should make photofilms? Then maybe you can't be helped. No seriously, it's because it's such a wonderful way to tell a story, that engages not just the audience but the subject so well.

In fact I have a new one sitting here to show you, I Just need the client to give the thumbs up.

le kandahar

I don't go on holiday often, although I'm sure my friends and family would disagree. I do constantly find myself in unfamiliar places but I'm usually working. This week is the exception to the rule (or perhaps not..) as I find myself in the French Alps in a town that the Tour de France has made very popular. The hill climb up to Alp d'huez has photographers stationed on the hill to capture the hundreds of amateurs that ride this section of the tour every day. It's not something I can really get behind as I am here to compete against nearly a thousand people riding the other way down the mountain and not on the road. To cut a long story short bikes require lots of spanners etc.. and this weeks spanner (in the works) is my spot of flu. So I haven't really ridden a bike at all. Instead I am sitting in our chalet working on material for the upcoming Fotopub 2011. I'm working with Rebecca Harley as a mentor at the photography festival that will be putting in it's 11th appearance in the small town of Novo Mesto in Slovenia. We are going to be passing on all of our skills to teach a dozen people on the multimedia workshop how to really wow people with their photofilms. I have a new photofilm that is with the client right now and I will be loading onto this blog as soon as I return to the UK. In the meantime...don't get the flu when it's sunny outside, don't ride up hills and go check out the Fotopub schedule - there really is something for everyone and I hope to see some familiar faces.

I leave you with this nugget. Shall we guess when this resort was built? Who would name their chalet Le Kandahar nowadays..