2014

Its almost too cliché to bear to say that I am always re-learning my relationship to photography. But it’s true. A year is enough time for the ground to shift significantly for me, but also for the medium. This blog is a good example. In the world of broadcasting images, even a well tended and lovingly updated online diary struggles for traction next to the manifold digital highway. The internet isn’t a slow place anymore. And its permeation day to day makes our lives feel the same, distracted to the point of distraction. And so this place lies dormant, unable to match the speed my mind and my work move at.

But a year has passed nonetheless. So this post is no attempt to explain away the decline of the blog, nor is it a typical review of a year complete with boastful proclamations and grand ambitions. After all, it is about the only time of year we are allowed to think slowly about the past and the future, as we transition into a new year. It remains as ever, just another thankful nod to the camera. The constant change that my eye is always noting. Fastening down faint irregularities and profound expressions beyond the point of memory. As I think about all the activity ahead, there is a deep gratitude for all the little things I see and the stories I begin to tell, the non-moments that stop me. Frames of someone else’s world that build up the small picture, of what it is to be living in 2015.

100 Years of Norman McLaren

A Historic Scotland heritage plaque commemorating Norman McLaren is unveiled at his early home on Albert Road in Stirling.

With the starter pistols cocked, and the games just about to begin it is easy to direct all attention to the sports arenas of the next two weeks. Apart form all the work that has gone into the game’s preparation, there has been a voluminous programme of cultural events that have paved the excitement over the last 6 months until now. One of which is a series of events celebrating the life and career of Norman McLaren.

I have been involved with this programme of events since the start of the year and it is unbelievable and humbling to see just how big the scale of celebration has been. To celebrate Scotland’s most championed animator there has been more than just retrospectives and the dusting off of old reels. I have had the pleasure of attending and learning from specialist panels, world premiers, other animators work, workshops on traditional and contemporary animation methods, live orchestration over screenings, theatrical performances, exhibitions, unveilings and just old fashioned raising a glass. It is a marathon programme that has been a long time in its curation and it has all the hallmarks of commitment and passion that I am glad to have been able to lend my lens to.

An exhibition dedicated to McLaren’s work at Stirling’s Macrobert centre

McLaren programme director, Iain Gardner, at a retrospective of McLaren’s animation at Filmhouse, Edinburgh

An exhibition of McLaren’s work is curated at the Talbot Rice Gallery.

Luigi Allemano hosts a workshop in sound on celluloid at Tolbooth Stirling

Comapny Nathelie Cornille perform A Chairy Tale to open the festival at Macrobert, Stirling

A selection of McLaren’s animation is projected onto the 400 year old wall of Stirling Castle’s Chapel Royal

The Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra perform alongside McLaren’s animation at the GSA

Screen Bandita lead a workshop on hand painted animation for young people using celluloid leader at Stills

Guests at the official reception at Stirling Castle

Don McWilliams toasts the life and work of McLaren

Festival masterminds Sabrina and Iain overlooking McLaren’s original home from the roof of the Tolbooth, Stirling

Check-in! : Glasgow Film Festival

Glasgow sprang out of hibernation a month early in February for the perless jamboree that is Glasgow Film Festival. With a programme of film, food and potholing it had no problem maintaining its notoriety for creative, vivid, unforgettable events. I was really lucky to join the team again this year and I had more excitement and colour than I could point a camera at.

From the Grand Budapest Hotel in the Grand Central, Goodfellas and pizza at the Briggait, Jason Priestly’s socks, to the Glasgow Gospel Choir’s impromptu opening of a screening, all documented below.

Robert Florence at the Festival Opening Gala

Stuart and Marisa Murdoch at the Festival Opening Gala

Guests at the Festival Opening Gala

Street Food Cinema at the Briggait

Alison Gardner introduces the opening night gala

John Sessions in session.

Benedikt Erlingsson in conversation for Of Horses and Men

James Duff in a post show discussion for Hank and Asha

Richard Dreyfus and Jason Priestly on the red carpet for Cas and Dylan

Richard Dreyfus at the GFT

Jason Priestly in a post show Q&A for Cas and Dylan

Agnés b and Lou-Léila Demerliac on the rad carpet for My Name Is Hmmm…

Claudia Lennear with the Glasgow Gospel Choir perform for the premiere of 20 Feet from Stardom

Margaret Tait Award winners Anne-Marie Copestake and Rachel MacLean with festival Producer Corinne Orton

Margaret Tait Award winner Rachel MacLean introduces her new work

Andy Diggle and Jock in conversation with Mark Millar

Ed Atkins, curator of Man of Steel

George Sluizer, Director of Dark Blood, in a post show discussion

Until next year…

2013

A sun and a moon. A blink of an eye again.

In twelve months it is inconceivable where our feet fall. Mine have covered some ground. My shoes, the aged reliquarys of adventure, are always at the frontier of my expeditions. They are retired with grace and ceremony as the months wear them away. Parting with them, in their gait warped state, always brings a tugging reluctance. Twins of stability, accessory to my safe passage. Their silent companionship remains through the rain and frost of another year. They are seldom acknowledged for their service to how I see the world. But whatever I see through my camera, I wait for, on foot and on the street.

Here at the end of a year when so many things have happened, the compulsion to remember the major events often obscures the beautiful phenomenon of three hundred days passing unmarked. On my travels, I have picked up milestones in pictures. An esoteric measurement of the seasons that I search out or capture in passing. I have no way of predicting what the next year has in store, what I do know is that I will keep searching in the street for reminders of life playing out, and that I will probably need new shoes.

Happy new year.