Digital Photographer Interview
Digital Photographer Feature, November 2007
I got back from a very interesting weekend away to discover that an interview I did with Digital Photographer Magazine has just gone to print. I was kind of expecting it to be a little box on the side of a page and was rather pleased to discover that I've got the inside front cover, a double page feature spread and a two page interview.
I'm very grateful to the magazine's staff writer Josie Reavely for tracking me down and including me in the feature.
My work featured in the magazine:
Harter Fell
Frosted Flake Wood I
Low Garden Bridge
Dark Waters
created on 2007-11-12 by tommym.
Selected by the Tate
Stay on the Path
Tommy at the Tate
I just discovered that Stay on the Path has been selected for inclusion in the Tate's How We Are Now exhibition. Which is, to say the least, quite an honour and a very nice way to start the week.
created on 2007-08-06 by tommym.
Moving on Up
An English Rain Forest
GD2D1263 copyLast week I'm very happy to have acquired a Kodak DCS Pro SLR/n to replace my aging Nikon... High resolution goodness coming this way very soon...
created on 2007-07-15 by tommym.
Continuing to Test the LX2
Nameless Tarn
There's nothing quite like hiking up a mountain to make you realise how much your camera kit weighs. The very idea of replacing an SLR, a bunch of lenses and associated essential bits with a couple of hundred grams of compact camera is such an appealing idea. I really want this camera to work for me.
created on 2007-05-27 by tommym.
Testing the LX2
Spring's Gloaming
I hate getting new kit. I mean to say, I actually love getting new toys to play with, but I hate the time it takes to learn how to make the damn things work. There's nothing quite as a nice as a camera that you've had so long that you don't have to think about it. My Nikon SLR just works. My fingers have a muscle memory for most of the controls, it always does what I expect and I've learned what is and isn't reasonable to expect from it. It's safe to say we've reached an understanding.
created on 2007-05-11 by tommym.
Winter's End
Winter's End
Given the bright, sunny and generally spring-like weather we've got now it's hard to believe that I took this just a week ago...
It's looking very much like this was probably shot on the last day of proper winter. This being Cumbria, I'm not counting on it.
Brooding, atmospheric prints are available for your wall-hanging pleasure...
created on 2007-03-28 by tommym.
Desolate
Desolate
In fairly typical Cumbrian fashion, a week or so after you start to be become convinced that spring is definitely on its way, winter makes a return visit. A weekend of gale-force, freezing winds and blizzards. A perfect day for a walk on the moors. I had intended to head up Arthur's Pike to see what the views across Ullswater were like. The weather had other ideas.
This is the first of the very few shots that I managed to take in the brief moments that the sun broke through some of the darkest and most ominous clouds I've ever seen.
You can buy prints of Desolate from this very site, right now...
created on 2007-03-21 by tommym.
Chiaroscuro Series
Chiaroscuro I
I've just finished working on a series of three shots taken on one very cold and misty February morning in the woods outside Askham.
Very well received by the Flickr community, with two out of three making onto the Explore pages so far...
Prints of each of the series are available.
Chiaroscuro II
Chiaroscuro IIIChiaroscuro of the title comes from the Italian for lightdark, used to describe high contrast paintings of the renaissance... it seemed to fit.
created on 2007-03-07 by tommym.
There Are Worse Jobs...
johnswannell.com
OK, this isn't related to my photography, but I'm pretty excited about it: I recently had the honour of designing a website for that legendary photographer John Swannell.
I've been a fan of Swannell's work for a long while, ever since a photographer I used to work for loaned me one of his books. His portraits are probably some of the best known and most original images you could hope to find and his nudes are simply outstanding. What's been really great for me is the chance to see some of his lesser known landscape work. And, of course, the chance to meet and talk with the man himself and work with his excellent assistant Robert Mackintosh. Being self-employed is so cool. Having the opportunity to work with such great clients is just the icing on the cake.
If you don't know John Swannell's work I really recommend you check it out:
John Swannell's site is now online at johnswannell.com
created on 2007-02-16 by tommym.
feeling slightly published...
Photoart magazine feature on Tommy Martin
September 2006 some of my landscape work was published in a Czech magazine called PhotoArt. As far as I can tell the editor came across me/my work somewhere out there on the web. The bigger this interweb-thing gets, the more random-chance events seem to be happening to me. Cool.
Not speaking a single word of Czech, and the language itself featuring far too diacritic marks to make on-line translators in any way useful, I have no idea what they said about me. I wonder if it's maybe better that way. If they said very complementary things then it saves the whole laborious ego-trip. And of course if it turned out that only published pictures as a shining example of how not to take pictures, I remain blissfully ignorant. It's a win-win.
You can find the magazine's site at www.photoart.cz.
created on 2006-09-19 by tommym.