Elstro

I really enjoy photography, and am proud to call myself an amateur photographer. Admittedly I can’t see my photos ending up in art galleries any time soon but its still a hell of a lot of fun! Plus, I am only armed with a Samsung L210 (10.2 Mpxls) which is designed for Facebook snaps and my Nokia 6110 Navigator (a paltry 2.0MPXL). For those who regularly consult my Flickr, there is a bit a key theme emerging.

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Old Cars. Cars are my lifeblood and always have been. I love glamorous classics, but I also have a lot of love for the unloved cars, partiuclarly anything pre-M-prefix (1995). Every journey I take I’m on the lookout for anything pre-1995 (unless its interesting or rare) and it’s been amazing what I have found lurking on the roads round my way. MKII Volkswagen Golfs are the most prevalent, perhaps so much so that I wonder whether it’s even worth snapping them! I have a soft spot for what are mostly dismissed as ‘old bangers’ because these 1980s and early 1990s cars are what I grew up with and I guess it saddens me to think of them as rare when I remember them being so common. I have loved meeting fellow Flickrers who also share my passion for the unloved, so if you have time, check out the photostreams of bramm77, Mick Travis, SpottedLaurel and mark.mitchell.brown. Bramm77 (AKA Sam) in particular has found some beautiful examples of old 1980s street scenery round his parts. Of course, there’s all my VSCC race meeting photos up too, but they were the stepping stones towards carving out a Flickr identity.

Buses – I’ve discovered my inner anorak bus spotter. I can’t help but be interested in the big old boxes that we rely on. I know my bus photos aren’t the best, but where I live, there is not offer of a diverse usage of interesting stuff, even after you wade through the sea of Dennis Tridents and MAN 18.220s. I have discovered that my hometown’s bus fleet has an Alexander Dennis/Transbus monopoly. At leasy they are British.

I eagerly took up the challenge of Project 365, mainly because I knew it would be a toughie. One Photo Per Day, Every Day, for one whole year. As I write this, I am up-to-date with 90 taken so far. Project 365 has presented me with such a plethora of challenges, though. For starters, the photos don’t always sum up my day,  some have been taken for the sake of it, whilst several  tend to be the same (you can tell a slow photo day when A] old VSCC photos appear on my photostream and B] the 365 for that day tends to be an item of food or a car!) I have tried to make my Project 365 reasonably diverse as well as being a yearbook of 2010 for me – I guess I fear it shows my life is very boring. There have been times when I’ve fallen behind and uploaded none for as long as 8 days as well. Project 365 is bloody hard!

I have been criticised for a lack of diversity in  my Flickr, so I make sure I capture anything that catches my eye rather than just looking for old 80s cars.  I also love urban decay as a photo subject, so another thing I am striving to endeavour is the side of Cambridge that the tourist brochures gloss over – in other words, taking snaps of the really rough bits of the revered Anglian city (there are loads of rank bits, Cambridge DOES have its own page on chavtowns.co.uk ). One of my snaps has been used in a Schmap online guide to the city, as well

I also realise that many of my pictures on Flickr have been retouched, but that’s only because the L210 sucks colour and soul out of the subject, because I don’t think it is meant to be a professional snapper’s tool. Hence why a lot of ym 365′s look better on Flickr than they do on their dedicated site.