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]

Anaesthesia

So I’m heading back from another Grim North production, ‘Anaesthesia’.  This year’s production was earlier than normal, sparking suspicion that there might be another before the end of the year.  I’ll wait and see.

The production came together really well this year for me, with the biggest bonus being the time we were able to get into the theatre.  It’s the third time we have used the Hebden Bridge Little Theatre and clearly they are starting to trust us more than previous years.  In the past we have had to arrange with them to be there to let us in each time we needed to be in the theatre, and to stay until we had finished so that they could lock up again afterwards.  This proved a real restriction on the time we had to do our get in.

For me this is of course a real problem – it takes time to rig and focus the lights, as well to work out a dimmer patch and do any programming I wanted to do.  In fact, in previous years, I haven’t had time to do much programming at all – I’d just run the show of some hastily put together scenes on submasters and busked through each night.  This year I was able to do much more and the difference was noticeable.

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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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West End Live

In the spirit of my previous post, and because I’ve already released a couple of these photos under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence, I’ve decided to post a few of photos I took at the West End Live event last weekend.  I’ll try to do this more often when I take my camera out just for fun.

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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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A Week in the Grim North

It all went off pretty well really, all in all.  And, as I said in a slightly drunken state at the time, “New friends, that’s what it’s all about. There was a play in there somewhere too, but that’s what I’ll come away with in the end.”

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‘Stranded’

I’m currently on a train heading towards Leeds.  We just left Retford.  I’m going to stay with my parents for a couple of weeks, for a number of reasons.  Firstly next weekend sees the first Grim North’s productions for this year, ‘Stranded’, and I hear on the grapevine that there will be more than one this year, possibly some kind of pantomime around Christmas.  Secondly this weekend sees Calderdale Theatre School’s production of Coram Boy and as an ex-member of the school as well as being their webmaster, I said I’d go and see it.

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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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