This Sunday sees the fourth and final session (for me) of Photographing the City – Matt and Pete’s sociable, how-to photography course set on the streets of Birmingham and featuring a pleasant mix of arty/techy teaching, walking, socialising, photographing stuff (more egs below) and peer review.

The rain is due to clear up with both BBC and Wunderground (16 day forecast!) showing sun/clouds for this weekend. So if you’re twiddling your thumbs, why not book a slot? No need for a fancy camera. Even better, it’s a Photo School in a pub! (At the Victoria pub, which does a mean happy hour cocktail).

The rotating four-week sessions work as standalone lessons or as a whole course, depending on what you want to get out of it, and have gone from street photography to epic landscapes to abstract details. This week, it’s practical documentary photography.

I may be a bit biased but I have found each one to be a brilliant learning experience. And I’ve been taking photos for quite a few years, albeit stuck on P/programme mode ( the equivalent of auto).

I’ve blogged them all so far on behalf of Matt & Pete’s Photo School. But I was particularly happy with my Week 3 abstract detail photowalk. I played a lot with in-camera processing (see the lamppost trio up top) as colour theory was part of the teaching bit at the start, and then moved onto looking for details in the environment that would make interesting photographs in their own right.

Three favourites I took on the day:

1. Blue and orange – opposites on the colour wheel. Impact. Interesting shapes randomised by changing canal reflections.

2. Vertical and horizontal multicoloured stripes are splashes of colour in the grey-brown environment. Meets street photography. Meets Fibonacci spiral composition.

3. A colourful detail of Gas St Basin. With orange that pops.

There are also collaborations to be made between the images. I particularly like these three together, for example.

The critique at the end of the session is interesting and a chance to see what others in the group took on the same walk – different angles, missed details, new images. Here are three I really liked from the others in the Photo School Flickr group:

1. A thin blue line at New St signal box.

2. A beautiful detail.

3. What is the story? A win for freedom as no go zone bollards are caged and woman walks free. Or is it the woman who is in the cage caught by ominous no entry signs? Much to read into this one. Makes me ask: ‘why?’ Interesting.

What will this Sunday bring? To be blogg-ed.

So today was week two (of four) of Matt & Pete’s Photo School. Last month, we played with finding the decisive moment in street photography, this time it was landscapes and creating huge panoramic vistas using the iconic buildings of Birmingham.

One line I liked in Matt’s teaching bit was the idea of finding God in the landscape. I’m not religious but this encapsulated the concept of structuring a photograph to make people (last month’s topic of interest) seem small in the magnificence of the wide, sweeping landscape. To create a sense of the sublime, of epic beauty in the architecture and skyscapes.

I struggled. With the tripod – although I got to grips with its endless fiddly functions. And with finding a three-dimensional composition of good foreground, middle and background – I often only got two out of the three. But I think I did achieve a sense of the smallness of humans versus the built environment in at least some of the shots.

I also learnt that when restricted to a set (wide) angle, I’m no Ansel Adams. My photos were mediocre out of the camera but some have been made in the ‘dark room’.

My job as an editor may be a factor here. I don’t necessarily take good shots at the time but instead see the crop and how to make the photo afterwards, back in the studio in Lightroom. (Although now that I think about it, Ansel Adams was also all about The Print, and his work in the darkroom.)

Anyway, I enjoyed the day. Particularly the social angle of taking photos with others – one of the main pluses of Photo School. There are some shots of Photo School in action on my Flickr set for anyone interested in joining the next course.

As well as the top favourite pic, which combines looming archictecture with the decisive moment of street photography, here are the rest of my favourites from the day.

Holloway Circus subway – all angles and lead-in curves

Pagoda and cherry blossom – could be Japan?

Digbeth – nice colour palette and strong lines

Beetham Tower – Rad!

And this people-y one of tripod testing…

This is a monthly course being run in central Birmingham. If you want to know more or to sign up for the next one, here are the deets of Matt & Pete’s Photo School.

It’s a disco but it’s on wheels. It’s roller disco! Back from the 70s/80s and currently going strong in 2012 at the old-school neon pink glitz of the Tower Ballroom by Edgbaston Reservoir in Birmingham. Tonight featured a very mixed crowd (from 18 to 70+), a punter being stretchered off to hospital by paramedics, the Cupid Shuffle line dance on skates, slamming into the bar, skating back from the bar with pint in hand, and lots of wibbly-wobbly laps. 10 out of 10. Go. Meanwhile here is some lo-fi vid featuring power ballads and Whitney-pop to whet the appetite…

Just found this much better vid of Birmingham Roller Disco:

One day…

Also here is Pete’s top summary of our fine night out (I’d forgotten it was my birthday request): Disco in Boots that Roll

I don’t often write diary posts but sometimes a weekend is so full on, it’s a way to offload stuff and think about them later. So here’s the rather strange collection of activities and oddities that Birmingham presented this weekend.

FRIDAY: Trampolines and New Romantics

1. The 28th Trampoline and Tumbling World Championship, NIA
I’ve never paid to go to a sporting event before but I was fascinated to see what the world’s best offered in terms of sports that basically involved jumping, bouncing and general boinging.

I’d completed a 12-week beginners trampoline course last year in which someone was stretchered off by paramedics in week 1 so I knew it would be nerve-wracking. It was also a challenge on the photographic front with fast-moving athletes against the busy background of a crowd. Suffice it to say, the athletes were incredible, the vibe slightly strange – more on that in Pete’s post – and my snaps quite blurry. Here are a couple of the ones that worked and also some lo-fi phone video of two trampoline routines. Just look at how high they jump!

2. Only After Dark, Air
I go to nightclubs about as often as I go to sporting events. Amusingly, as the trampoline event above finished as 9pm, I had to go to the NIA dressed up (something like this lot) ready to go straight on to ‘ONLY AFTER DARK – a monthly club at Air Nightclub, Birmingham night based on the Bowie nights of the late 70s/early 80s’. The DJ line-up featured Rusty Egan from the famous Blitz Club in London, and DJ Dick from the Rum Runner, where Duran Duran first kicked into life. I was happy because my chum came up from London and because they played four hours of music I recognised and wanted to dance to – including my favourite B-side: Hard Times by The Human League. Spot the DJ in this phone snap…

And here I am courtesy of birthday girl Bev Hislop:

SATURDAY: Vampires and glitches

3. Breaking Dawn Part 2, The Electric Cinema
The final (sort of) movie instalment of the Twilight series, described by various friends as romantic crack for teenage girls up to middle-aged woman. The films are becoming more fun to watch as they take themselves less seriously and deliver the lines with more camp. How else can you deal with a love triangle between a schoolgirl, vampire and werewolf? This one featured rather grim scenes – pregnant women are advised to avoid. Being able to drink wine at The Electric, our lovely indie cinema in central Brum, helped.

4. GLI.TC/H 20111, Vivid
Popped in to a festival celebrating something I’m not sure I can articulate. But then that’s what Wikipedia is for:

“A glitch is a short-lived fault in a system. It is often used to describe a transient fault that corrects itself, and is therefore difficult to troubleshoot. The term is particularly common in the computing and electronics industries, and in circuit bending, as well as among players of video games, although it is applied to all types of systems including human organizations and nature.”

I have friends who do this stuff and make art/sound/visuals out of it. I do not pretend to understand but I do enjoy, and was amused when a Brazilian glitch artist at the festival told his audience how his film was switched off by the projectionist after a minute because he thought it was just that – a glitch.

SUNDAY: Opera and doom tuba

5. Birmingham Opera Company open day, AE Harris factory
Having joined the amazing Birmingham Opera Co’s last two productions (and blogged about the experience: Othello and The Wedding), I was interested to see what their next brand new opera production was all about. Life Is A Dream begins rehearsing in January for performance in March. It’s a newly commissioned opera by Jonathan Dove to celebrate artistic director Graham Vick’s 25 years of working with the company in Birmingham. It’ll be performed back in the industrial warehouse where Othello was performed (see below) and will apparently feature a dream-like maze for the audience to walk about in. Expect the extraordinary.

6. The Sound of Birmingham, Ikon Gallery
I’m not going to make this (after a loooong weekend) but at the Ikon Gallery tonight will be the sound of Birmingham’s industrial metal heritage – in the form of Lash Frenzy, Ore and SoundKitchen. Lash Frenzy blew me away last time I saw them – featuring a 40-minute sonic storm and lightshow assault akin to standing in front of a jet engine and during which I had the emotion wrung from me in the form of tears. This time they will perform a work based around the first three notes only of the song ‘Black Sabbath’. Ore, meanwhile, feature a friend Sam Underwood who took up the tuba earlier this year for the first time to play in a ‘drone doom tuba group’. Doomba? It’s noise as an artform. Here’s a taster. See how long you last…

Coda: Sam, together with Ms Hypnotique, also provided the soundtrack for Hackybeanpouffe – a rather fun game Pete and I invented for those bored people with a floor cushion and no dust allergies.

After donating my teenage memory of ‘being flashed’ to the Secret Stirchley crew at the pop-up arts tearoom, this weekend my embarrassing memory became the stuff of a Stirchley promenade street theatre narrative.

Performed by three actors as part of the Inhabit programme of pop-up tearooms, the stories they had collected from Stirchley residents over the past five weeks were woven into a narrative, relived and professionally delivered by actors as we wandered around the local streets. In this environment, it was hard to tell who was part of the show and who was incidental.

We listened in on the story of a grandmother and her grand-daughter, as well as other characters who overlapped with their lives, from the ghost of a father who went to war and came back shellshocked…

to the grunge boyfriend met in the British Oak…

to a street mugger re-enacting a bag-snatching…

– and to a young girl who was once flashed by a man standing in the reeds of the River Rea, followed by the ensuing police visit asking for rather intimate details and distinguishing marks.

While I enjoyed the show, however, I’m not sure Stirchley is quite ready for such artiness – a feeling which was underlined by two events ahead of the opening Friday performance.

1. The neighbouring solicitor had apparently thrown quite a wobbly about a bit of chalk saying ‘Sweet shop’ on the pavement outside his shop (which was, you’ve guessed it, formerly a sweet shop).

He told them he was trying to conduct a ‘proper business’ and was insistent that they remove it, which they did despite this being a public pavement. His uncompromising reaction seemed unwarranted – especially since the passing promenade didn’t even raise the two front-room workers’ heads as we passed by. And yet his over-reaction forms another B30 tale as I had been to see them the day before and now feel quite disinclined to do business there. Stirchley may be strong in community spirit, but at the same time it has always had its bullies, though maybe that is too strong a word – perhaps he was just having a bad day.

2. The second incident happened when a passing young mum with a pushchair had to be reassured that the mugging wasn’t real, just in case she didn’t spot the unconcerned crowd and phoned the police.

But the show must go and after 40 minutes or so it circled back to the tearoom for the final scene, followed by tea and delicious cakes…

Personally, I think the show would have worked better for me as a direct documentary of Stirchley memories, flowing between characters but without the narrative hook. I suppose I wanted to focus on Stirchley and wanted to hear other people’s memories. I don’t think they needed the plot device, or perhaps I was slightly distracted by the fictionalised performance, which made the memories seem less real somehow.

Still, I have very much enjoyed the tearoom over the past few weeks and I think it will be missed in Stirchley, which is a high street of diverse businesses but none of which offer a particularly sociable stop-off or gathering place (unless you like to go to the pub in the daytime or the ‘Society Cafe’ in the Coop, that is).

The tea-room now moves to Hodge Hill. Lucky things. But I hope that it – or someone else with community spirit – moves into our empty shops soon.

If you want to catch a performance of Secret Stirchley, there is one day left to see it – at 1pm and 4pm tomorrow (Sunday 13th March). Performances are free and start at the shop, on the corner of Ivy Road and Pershore Road.

One of the great things I did last year was join Daz Wright’s Moselele group, aka ‘the second best ukelele group in Moseley’.

Sometimes it ain’t pretty, sometimes you need to sing songs by Spandau Ballet or Bonnie Tyler, but it is always entertaining.

Occasional extras include bongos, saxazoo, bass acoustic, sleigh bells and shakers, but tonight it was just us, the music, a single kazoo and the lowest fi mobile phone video known to man. It had to be done…

PS. The Moselele Facebook group is here!

Today was one of those chilled blue Sunday afternoons, perfect for going walkabout with cameras: destination, the concrete jungle of central Birmingham. Scenes from Black Swan, which we saw yesterday at the Electric, must have embedded themselves inside my mind but when I uploaded the images I found out just how much I had focused on windows, reflections, shadows and mirror images.

Here’s the full set of photos from today’s photowalk on my Flickr. Pete was on an FM2 so will have to await processing in the good old-fashioned way.

I took a photowalk down my local Stirchley High Street on Friday to log the growing diversity of shops I’d been noticing there of late, including a new pop-up tearoom…

There are lots of independents in Stirchley Village (as it now seems to be have been renamed), such as: P Browell Tobacconist, Wards greengrocers, Pandora’s Music Box, Skinnys Ink tattoo parlour, Music Exchange, Maginnis Opticians, Wolseley Sausage Company, The British Oak pub and others.

This is NOT a homogenous high street – and all the more interesting for it. For example, how many other Birmingham high streets can boast a European consulate?

There are quite a few clusters of businesses, too: hairdressers, hydroponics shops, carpet stores, junk shops, nail bars, balti restaurants, Chinese takeaways and a growing number of estate and letting agents – a sign that things are changing for Stirchley.

But the most interesting shop for me was the pop-up tearoom on the corner of Ivy Road. It’s only open for another month or so before it moves on like a magical moveable feast to Hodge Hill – but it’s a lovely little place to go and hangout for a bit.

There is free tea served in bone china cups, free biscuits, art, craft and storytelling projects, community conversation and someone to reminisce about Stirchley with – in my case a former lollipop lady, who summed up Stirchley as having it all – except for parking spaces.

The tearoom events progamme is here. Some evening events are also in the pipeline, possibly a film screening and more tea-tasting sessions with Karen (pictured top).

I intend to revisit Stirchley’s high street evolution in more detail in a future post, namely because I wrote my first ever published article on the breakdown of shops here. But for now here’s the slideshow, or see the full set on Flickr.

Last night Karen Strunks introduced me to the world of hula hooping for fitness, taking place in a church hall in Moselely and taught by possibly the smiliest person I’ve ever met, Julia Higgins, who runs Birmingham Hula Hoopers.

As you can see from the awkward jump through the hoop, it flexes the parts other exercises don’t ordinarily reach. But we learnt lots of tricks in just one hour and I was quite chuffed to even be able to do this.

Also much fun was Hula Hoop tig (tag?). Being ‘It’ was hard work but picking up dropped hulas every minute gave both the heart and the gluteus maximus a very good workout indeed!

Original video source: Twitvid/Karen Strunks

Sessions every Wednesday in Moseley St Columba’s Hall on Chantry Road, £3, followed by Julia’s ace zumba class (£5 for both). You’ll probably have to register you’re going on the Facebook group, though, as space is limited.

These are some of the handmade Christmas tree decs I bought from the We Are Birmingham shop last week (while attending KTB’s acoustic gig). Only £2 each. Ain’t they lovely?

Go do your Christmas shopping – it’s only a few mins walk from the Bullring and full of unique and unusual gifts!

For a shop and a gig, I think the last Friday of the month is going to be a regular music night showcasing local talent.