Jonathon Wardman

The daily photo plan

I’ve been thinking: as a photographer I don’t take enough photos.  I don’t mean that in reference to work — when I’m working at an event I shoot hundreds of pictures — but rather in my day-to-day life.  I never leave the house without a camera, either one of my work cameras, my general compact, or my phone (which has a better CCD built in than my first digital camera had (although the lens leaves plenty to be desired)), but I just don’t stop to take pictures when I’m out and about of the things which make up my every day life.

So I’ve decided to change this.  My plan is to take a picture every day.  The pictures might be anything — something I did, something which interested me, just something I saw — but whatever the pictures end up being, the hope is that they will build up a montage of my life.

I can’t promise I’ll upload the images every day and, I can’t even promise I’ll manage to get an image every day, but I will do my best and I’ll let you know how I get on.  You can follow the images on my daily photo gallery.

When it snows…

This was the view from my window at 7.35am on the 2nd of February 2009 following what they say was the heaviest snow fall in the UK for nearly 20 years.

I’m not sure that’s true though.  I’ve lived in the north for most of my life, and it’s not unknown to get pretty heavy snow up there.  I remember one winter not long after we had moved to Halifax there was a heavy snowfall.  It came on very quickly and people weren’t prepared.  The council opened the town hall up to look after people stranded in the town centre for the night and schools were closed.  But the council did their thing and next day everything was back to normal.

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My week off, part 2

It’s about time I wrote this, given it was last year and all.

So I’d arrived in Lancaster.  The railway station is in the city centre and the university, and so my guest room, is a mile or so south of the city.  In the day there are plenty of busses running between town and campus (In fact there are at night now, too.  There is a night bus service which runs hourly through the night between the city and campus.  This wasn’t there while I was a student which is a shame – there would have been a few times I would have liked to use it!), and normally I would catch one of these, but I had both my camera bag and my large clothes bag with me so I opted to find myself a taxi.

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Woolworths' real closing down sale

According to this BBC News article I was right, if a little premature, about the Woolworths sale.  It’s turned into a closing down sale after all.  While Deloitte had previously said that the stores would stay open until after Christmas, they are now saying that some shops could close by the end of the year.

Personally I doubt that even those which remain open will have anything worth buying after this weekend.  It didn’t look to me like they were re-stocking in my local store last weekend and I have no doubt this weekend will be even worse.

We're all growing up

It struck me today when I added an old acquaintance to Facebook just now: we’re all growing up.  We’re all becoming real adults.  All the people I’ve know for years — since school, through college, university and now work — we’re all standing on our own two feet.  We’re all real grown ups now.  And we kind of look it.

I don’t think you really realise you’ve changed all that much (not counting if you change your look on purpose), but seeing pictures of this friend again, having not seen her since secondary school, made me realise that we all have done really.  You can tell who she is, but now she’s a gorgeous young woman. [read more]

This is not a closing down sale

Deloitte, the administrators called in to deal with the collapse of Woolworths, are claiming it’s not a closing down sale but to me it looked pretty terminal.  Like most people calling in to one of the chain’s 815 stores today, I was greeted by empty shelves and long queues.

While Deloitte are promising that the stores will all remain open until after Christmas, I’m not sure there will be much left to sell following the weekend.  Given that Woolworths’ problems began when they were unable to obtain credit insurance and so their suppliers were unwilling to give them credit, I don’t see how they will be able to re-stock.  Unless the Woolworths’ four distribution centres are very well stocked, or the intention is that this sale will provide a cash injection to allow the chain to get their delivery chain up and running again, I doubt they’ll find any suppliers willing to work with them.

One thing is certain – the sale has made people flood back into their stores.  I can’t help feel that if they had managed to get this many people in each shop before now they wouldn’t be in the mess they are in.

My week off, part 1

It’s been an interesting week.  Good by most counts, despite the odd complication.  Up and down would be the best description, I think.  I’ll deal with it in a few posts to stop them being too long…

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How old is old enough?

How old is old enough to let your daughter have a boyfriend? I mean a real boyfriend, not just a silly little thing but a proper relationship. [read more]

Inflation beating prices

That’s what Argos were advertising today.  I was wondering how long this campaign would last – based on what I’ve heard on the radio in the last few weeks it won’t be long before we’re facing deflation.  What will they say then?

I did my bit for the economy this weekend.  I finally gave in to the fact I needed some new clothes. [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]