Tag: photography

Today’s RNLI on wet collodion: Jack Lowe’s The Lifeboat Station project

The Lifeboat Station Project

Newcastle-based photographer Jack Lowe is been a lifelong enthusiast and supporter of the RNLI, and is now pursuing an extraordinary project travelling the UK in a converted ambulance photographing lifeboat stations, coxwains and crews using the 19th century wet plate collodion method.

The result is an extraordinary collection of striking photos that have more than something of the look of old photos of Victorian lifeboatment – but with the twist that these folks and places are in the here and now.

Part of the aim is to raise money for the RNLI, but Jack also intends to create something that will involve and unite the RNLI community, and finally to create an exhibition in which the glass plates are hung in geographical in order around a huge room to create a sense of seeing the entire coastline of the British Isles.

It’s worth checking the Jack’s weblog posts at the bottom of the home page. These are full of his personal take on his journeys. Entertainingly, the one about his trip to Teddington on the Thames includes a series of family and friends photos including his grandfather Arthur Lowe and the cast of Dad’s Army, among others.

My thanks to Malcolm Woods for spotting this one!

Jenny Steer photo exhibition features Boat Building Academy launch photos

Boat Launch December 2011

bba 12 bba 20

An exhibition of Exeter-based photographer Jenny Steer’s work featuring Lyme’s Boat Building Academy and its boats and people is to be held in the town at The Malthouse in Lyme Regis from the 25th to the 30th May, from 10 to 5 o’clock each day.

Jenny’s title for the show is ‘Shot Across the Bows’.

Here’s my slightly edited version of the press release:

BBA principal Yvonne Green said ‘Launches are a very important part of the Academy’s calendar, celebrating the end of our ‘long’ 38-week courses and the beginning of students’ new careers as boat builders. Students’ families and friends, well wishers and the town come down to the Cobb to cheer as each boat, testament to the students’ new skills, goes into the water for the first time.

‘Launches are very happy occasions, but we are all very conscious that after them people who have worked closely together for nine months go their separate ways. Jenny originally came to a launch as the friend of one of our instructors, but when we saw how her photographs captured the beauty of the boats and the spirit of the occasion we asked her to be our ‘official’ launch photographer.’

The launches are now attended by hundreds of people, and Jenny’s photographs have illustrated articles on the launches in Yachting World, Classic Boat and Water Craft in addition to other magazines.

‘I absolutely love photographing the boat launches at the Boat Building Academy,’ said Jenny. ‘There are so many interesting and diverse boat designs from quirky to more conventional. The atmosphere is extraordinary and I feel privileged to be involved in such an important and special day.’

To complement the photographs two of the traditional clinker boats Jenny has photographed will be on loan from their owners for the exhibition. Witch of Weymouth is a replica of a 1902 Dorset crab and lobster boat, Witch of Worbarrow and was exhibited at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall following the December 2010 launch. Rubee is a very pretty little pram dinghy planked in sweet chestnut on oak, an was launched in December 2012.

Photos from a few days sailing on the North Kent coast

  

 

My daughter Ella and I took these photos last week during a sailing trip from Oare Creek where we keep our little plastic Hunter. Most of the time the wind kept us pretty busy as we slipped from creek to creek, and the weather wasn’t exactly camera-friendly.

But a few days in the weather suddenly improved and so we slipped out to have a close look at a local landmark, Guy Maunsell’s Red Sands Fort. (Read about them here and here, and see a Pathé newsreel here.)

The light that afternoon was fascinating, as it so often is on the sea, and so it was time to take out the Fuji Finepix s200. See the shot above of a fishing boat stuck on the spit off Shellness (above), and below the moment when a cloud came over to shade us in our boat just as a sneaky breeze kicked up a rash of ripples on the face of the water (below).

That breeze carried us down to the Isle of Harty.