New Portrait work in Eccles
A new portrait from a recent visit to the Cawdor Road estate in Eccles. I’ll post more examples of recent portrait work in the next few weeks.
Elland Road in Winter
The hulking Elland Road is both reminiscent of my boyhood memories of Maine Road and of stadia in the Eastern Bloc. It was freezing the day I took this and I was hanging grimly onto a rusting chain-link fence. It felt like 1979 with the spectre of Thatcherism. Leeds suffered more than most clubs after their dalliances in the markets, it’s good to see them recovering.
BlackLab’s Inaugural Event
Trawling the Visual Wreckage: A night of screenings, socializing, conversations and chats about issues relating to photography, imagery and film in Manchester’s Northern Quarter. Meet the city’s thriving community of bloggers and image-makers (if they show up) and participate in a thrilling raffle for a prize that’s out of this world.
The fun takes place at An Outlet (77 Dale Street, Manchester, M1 2HG) on Friday 29 January 2010 from 7.30pm.
Dinheiro livre!
Stock Photography
I have 244 images on the stock photography site Alamy (you can see them here). Unfortunately, Alamy has 17.58 million images to choose from reducing your chances of being on the first 20 pages for any given search topic to almost nothing.
I’d almost given up hope of making a sale when I casually checked to find the above image was bought for use as a double-page spread in a German tourist brochure netting me $176.28.
Free money (if you disregard the return flight to Rio de Janiero and the ferry transfer to Niterói).
Connell Brothers demolition of Manchester University Refectory
I was commissioned to take some pictures of Connell Brothers demolition of the Manchester University Refectory on Oxford Road. I like playing with Tonka toys (full size).
Simon Rhatigan
Simon is a hotelier and owner of the Feversham Arms, Helmsley which was recently voted AA Hotel of the Year 2009/2010.
I went up there to take some pictures for Insider magazine and found Simon to be such a game fellow that he was prepared to get nearly naked in North Yorkshire in December and allow [...]
Ryan Giggs – BBC Wales Sports Personality of the Year
Even a die-hard Manchester City fan like me has to acknowledge that Ryan Giggs is a decent footballer. On Monday he was awarded BBC Wales Sports Personality of the Year and I went to Carrington to photograph him being presented with his award by Alex Ferguson. on Sunday he went one better and won the [...]
Brasilian Diary
Cowering under Manchester’s perpetual drizzle while daydreaming of Rio de Janiero inspired me to order some replacement copies of my Brasil book.
Scranton, Pennsylvania – An Homage
In what might become a regular feature to honour this sites far-flung viewers, today’s post pays homage to the town that provided this site with it’s first ever (legitimate) visitor from the USA, Scranton in Pennsylvania.
As many readers won’t be as intimately aware of the workings of the town as I, here is a brief potted history courtesy of a popular online encyclopedia:
Scranton is the largest city in a former anthracite coal mining area including the smaller cities of Wilkes-Barre, Pittston, and Carbondale. The cities growth was precipitated by the Iron and Steel industry, particularly the production of railway lines. America’s first successful, continuously-operating electrified streetcar system was established in the city in 1886, giving it the nickname “The Electric City”
Harry Chapin’s 1974 song “30,000 Pounds of Bananas” dramatises the wreck of a truck carrying bananas on March 26, 1965 just outside downtown Scranton
A 2001 Washington Post Magazine column described Wilkes-Barre as “awful” and Scranton as “awfuler” and named it a contender for the “armpit of America.”
Scranton has more recently been the home of Dunder Mifflin, the fictional paper company in America’s version of The Office and was also briefly home to right-wing nut job and broadcaster Bill O’Reilly.
Avi Shlaim
Last week I met and photographed Avi, who gave this years Tom Hurndall memorial lecture.
Avi is a Baghdad-born professor of International Relations at University of Oxford and a fellow of the British Academy. He is especially well-known as a historian of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is considered one of the leading New Historians, a group of Israeli scholars who put forward critical interpretations of the history of Zionism and Israel.
5th of November
A series of images I took for Manchester City Council this Bonfire Night. They set some pallets on fire in leiu of the Houses of Parliament. Shame.
Francis Bacon
Over the weekend I watched the 1985 Southbank Show on the then ‘world’s greatest living painter’ and remembered I’d posted this video over at the august BlackLab last month.
Including some nice archive footage, a visit to Bacon’s amazing Reece Mews studio and some amusingly belittling comments on Rothko and Pollock. The film follows Bacon to his common haunts of pubs, bars and casinos and is conducted in suitably inebriated style. Bacon’s desire was to live in the moment, be optimistic and to ‘live life in a state of voluptuousness’, Amen to all that.
Andreas Gehlen – ZERO FOLD
I received an invite to Andreas Gehlen’s opening in Cologne this weekend. Unfortunately, I’m not in Cologne this weekend, but judging by the flyer and Andreas’ website. It looks like it’ll be an interesting show.
If you’re there, it’s here:
Birgit Laskowski
Gladbacher Straße 50
50672 Köln
Staff at BBC Accountability Event
Staff at a conference held ahead of the BBC’s move to Salford’s Media City. In my portfolio section I have a shot of the BBC’s new ‘Director of the North’ Peter Salmon standing in front of the then under-construction Media City site. The BBC’s main building in this development is now complete.
Alesha Dixon for the BBC
On Friday I photographed ‘Stricly Come Dancing’ judge Alesha Dixon in the Zion Centre, Manchester. This year Alesha is co-hosting ‘Children in Need’ with Sir Terry Wogan, she was visiting the Arts centre to see the ways in which previous years donations have been used to benefit the lives of young people in the area.
Education, Education, Education
This picture, taken in Salford, didn’t make the cut for my joint exhibition ‘Road’ with Sarah Eyre and Sue Fuller at Manchester Central Library, but it works quite well as a single image.
Welcome to Manchester
Why aren’t postcards any good anymore? I just found this old postcard design via Manchester Modernist Society, someone should reprint these.
Roman antiques
Today’s image is one I shot through the window of an antique’s shop in Rome last year. Why he was working in the middle of the night I don’t know, but it made for a nice picture.
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Welcome to David Oates | Portfolio, the new website will not only have a portfolio of work but will have regularly updated blog posts. So keep checking back for updates on my work, general photography news and other disparate gems.
