I’m working on a community art project at the moment called the Oxford Photographic Grid. The aim is to photograph Oxford in a systematic way rather than focusing only on the tourist attractions. The basic idea is that a grid is overlaid on a map of Oxford, and then a single photo is taken at each node location on that grid. If you’re interested in finding out about this project, please visit the project website.

We are currently looking for Oxford-based photographers (both amateur and professional) to take part. If that’s you, please sign up on the project website.

Thanks to Matt Durber for creating the banner & logos for this project.

My grandfather died last night. While the photo above might not be the greatest photo ever, it matters to me. It has me, my grandfather and my children. My grandfather suffered dementia for the final few years of his life. I don’t know it he knew who the tiny baby he was holding was, but having his great-grandchildren around seemed to cheer him up. Like at his 90th birthday.

About 5 years ago, when my grandparents conceeded that they were starting to get old (at about 85), they spent a lot of time telling Emily and me about their lives. It was a previledge that they wanted to share that with us while they could still remember and articulate it. I hope that memory doesn’t fade either. My grandfather went to France for a week during the war, before the British troops pulled out of Dunkirk. He drove lorries in the army. His most poignant memory was that the lorry in front of his needed to go further up the road to turn around (the didn’t have reversing lights and it was too dark to reverse it back to the turning point he used) when the order to retreat came through. He didn’t see any of them again. He often wondered what had happened to them, but never found out.

My wife and our kids saw him this weekend. He mostly slept. I didn’t go, because I didn’t want to remember him as a frail old man without a mind. What I want to remember is my grandfather 20 years ago, making stuff in his shed, and gardening, and ruffling my nanny’s ears.The first of those things should be easy enough to remember since my house is full of things he made; a chess table, a cabin bed, my toy castle and toy garage.

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I read this post yesterday about photographing those you love. I’d recommend it to you, but don’t worry about the quality of the photos. The one above means so much to me, it doesn’t matter that I didn’t set everything up perfectly.

A while back my wife, Emily, and I went away for the weekend, leaving the one child that we had then with her grandparents. As part of the weekend away, a friend, Rin Simpson, had arranged for Emily to have a pregnancy spa treatment “on the house” at the St. David’s Hotel in Cardiff so that she could review it for the local paper’s women’s supplement. Since I was married to the willing volunteer, I offered to do a few photos to illustrate the article – particularly as this would stop me getting bored while Emily had the 85 minute treatment.

The review is still waiting in the wings for it’s big moment, but Rin managed to make use of one of my pictures  anyway  (highlighted by the red ring) in the build up to Christmas. It’s  ashame the credit line got forgotten by the designers.

My little son, John Benjamin was born on 10th October 2008. (8lb 10oz). He’s wonderful and I’m tired. Joanna is adapting well to her new little brother, but at the moment doesn’t quite understand why he doesn’t want to play with toys.

My friend Graeme at Studio Stratford invited my family up for one of his portrait sessions. The shot above and below are from that shoot. It was a fun day out for all of the family. Emily and Joanna both really enjoyed it. John tolerated it as much as a new born does. If you are considering a shoot with a newborn, from experience I’d suggest waiting until your baby has an established routine, and can sit up. Graeme dealt with a 11 day old amazingly well and I’d highly recommend his studio to anyone living near Stratford-upon-Avon. He also offer makeover sessions with a professional make-up artist/hair stylist. Pets are welcome too!

If you live more locally (Oxford) and would like a similar portrait session, please contact me!

But until then, one more piece of feedback:

Many many thanks to you!! You did an awesome job with the pictures– we really enjoyed looking at them. Above all, thank you for capturing the happiness of the day. - Rachel and Andreas

In addition to Rob and Lenka’s wedding blessing, this weekend was also my grandfather’s 90th Birthday. I took my studio kit along to get some photos of the family, especially of Jack with his 3 great-grandchildren. Two of the little ones were grotty for much of the time as they were busy fighting over the dolly and pushchair, but having the studio up for most of the day enabled me to get at least one decent shot of each of them. Once I’ve finished editing Rob&Lenka’s photos (60ish to go) and other work for customers, I’ll edit the rest of these and put them up on this site. Whilst I don’t really count family as clients, using this site is the easiest way for them to choose their prints too.

My wife is pregnant with our second child! Hurray! She had an ultrasound scan this morning and all is well with the little blob. So now the news is public, I added her pregnancy blog (Emily++) to my blogroll – my details about her pregnancy that anyone should really want to know!