Jonathon Wardman

Wedding

Now I know I haven’t finished with the second half of the stag weekend posts so forgive me, but I wanted to write this now before I go away.

I’m heading back from Scott and Jess’ wedding this weekend. They had a handfasting ceremony and asked me to do their photos for them. While I was, of course, honoured that they would ask me and trust me to shoot such an important event, I was more than a little nervous. While I’m comfortable shooting live events and theatre, I had actually never previously shot a wedding. Wedding photography is not something that I have ever really wanted to get into, but I have known Scott since we were very young and Jess a few years now, so I agreed on the understanding that they know my style and they knew what they were getting.

I travelled up on Friday morning and stayed with my dad for the weekend. (I’m not sure how long I will have that luxuary now my mum has started her new job. Their house is up for sale and I guess it all depends on how long that takes to sell.) [read more]

London Marathon 2011

Sunday 17th April saw the 2011 Virgin London Marathon. As in previous years I ventured out with my kit bag to shoot the event. This year’s plan took me from Charlton to Mudchute on the Isle of Dogs, then to Poplar High Street and Limehouse, and on Westminster bridge. [read more]

ISTA High School Festival, Calderdale, 2010

So that’s it, it’s all over. It’s been hard work, but great fun. I’ve met a great bunch of people, and never seen such a dedicated group of young people working towards a common goal before. If anyone feels the need to do down young people I’d invite them to spend the week at one of the ISTA festivals and then re-evaluate their opinion.

I did discover one thing though – I’m no good at networking. This causes something of a problem in my industry.

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It's a passion

There are a few things I’ve done in my life which I hate while I’m doing it, but keep coming back for more.  One was the sporting results website I ran while at university — for one long weekend every year I’d work 24 hours a day on the site, collating results, piecing things together, and doing some statistical analysis to predict what might happen, as well as being involved with the radio station, and even doing some overnight broadcasts.  I’d finish the weekend and collapse into bed for a few days swearing I’d never do it again.  Yet come the next year there I’d be there to do it all over again.  In the last year or so I thought about it  and came to a conclusion: I must enjoy it, even if I didn’t realise it, because otherwise I wouldn’t keep going back.

And I think sometimes it’s the same with my photography.

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The Year of the Tiger

The following weekend saw the annual Chinese New Year celebrations in London and another day out with my camera.  This one proved to be much more successful and significantly less painful.

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Valentine's Day

I was trying to sneak this in before the end of February so as to have posted something in February, but I failed.  I’ll have to make do with having started it last month, even if I only managed to finish it this month.  I was going to blame my lack of updates on a quiet month, but in actual fact there have been a few things I’ve mean to post about and just never got around to. In fact I’m still a blog post missing from Christmas: I had started writing something about Chrismas in Windows Live Writer — the offline editor I sometimes use when writing on the train — but that seems to have gone missing so I’ll have to start again.  I think I’ll make an effort to write a load of stuff this week. But enough of excuses, let’s write something worthwhile!

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London Marathon

The 2009 London Marathon took place on the 26th April and I decided I’d go for a day out with my cameras (apparently I do the same thing for fun as I do for work).  It’s the second time I’ve been to the Marathon.  After my pretty successful visit last year I decided I’d try to catch it in different places, so on Saturday night I sat down with a map of the route, the estimated runners times, and a bit of paper and planned my own journey for the day. [read more]

Adult photography

I was approached yesterday by one of my clients (for whom I’m shooting this year’s Relentless Boardmasters festival in Cornwall this August) asking if I would be willing to shoot some sets for a new website he is producing.  Now, I’m not totally sure of the details of what he is looking for — the details will be worked out if I choose to accept the job — but basically he’s looking for glamour / softcore erotic photographs.

This obviously throws up a few issues, both morally and technically. [read more]

Press neutrality – the view down the lens

I read an interesting blog post earlier this week – “To read or not to read?” – written by an MA broadcast journalism student.  In it he talks about the ethics surrounding reading other people’s text messages without their consent.  He uses this example to illustrate a point regarding investigative journalism as a whole.  While we agree on the main point in question, I’m not sure I agreed with everything he says.  I’d recommend you go and have a look at his post, and my comments at the end, as I’m not going to repeat them here.

Then, this weekend, I spotted a copy of The Daily Telegraph on the train open on an article titled “The Mandy and Osborne Show had us in stitches”, so I had a look.  The article I had initially seen was, in fact, not very interesting at all (some comments by an actress about The Spectator’s Parliamentarian of the Year awards), but the item above it was.  The section I was reading was the comment section, and the piece above related to the current economic climate.  The article is clearly comment – it’s not hard fact, it’s one writer’s opinion on the way Gordon Brown has handled the slow down in the economy.  As good comment should be it’s a very biased article. [read more]

Turning down work

It doesn’t happen often but last weekend, amongst all the other turbulent events, I got an offer of work which I decided to turn down.  And it seems I made the right choice. [read more]