Matt Sills shoots Mark Pain – Sports Photographer of the year 2011

Photographer Matt Sills took over Portsmouth Indoor Tennis club last week for a photo shoot with Mark Pain the British Sports Photographer of the year. I popped along with my Strong Island hat on to take some photos behind the scenes. The shoot was part of an ad campaign for Focus on Imaging at Birmingham in March 2012. There is also an app available for download which was developed in Portsmouth – keeping it local again!

Photographers Robert Dowling and Perou  have also been featured as part of this campaign. Behind the scenes footage can be seen on Matt’s website.

Mark Pain spoke to me about the incredible shot he took of Tiger Woods with the golf ball heading straight for his camera. Luckily for him it only damaged the camera hood and filter and earned him a lot of PR attention on live US TV. A well deserved award for a great photographer. Thanks to Matt for the invite – always good to see Portsmouth being used for shoots like this.

Below: Mark Pain’s shot of Tiger Woods.

Below: Final image by Matt Sills

Behind the scenes footage from Portsmouth Tennis Centre below

New Matt Sills Website

Wallspace Gallery owner and amazing local photographer Matt Sills has recently updated his website, check it to see lots of new work from Matt and some behind the scenes videos too.

www.mattsills.co.uk

Matt Sills – New Website

Portsmouth photographer Matt Sills has a new website up and running packed with some incredible content. Loving his tilt-shift work and impressive range of clients. He also has a blog with behind the scenes images from his photo shoots.

Matt Sills at Goodwood Revival

Local photographer Matt Sills was over at the Goodwood Revival all weekend capturing the event and the people with his camera. Below are a few photos taken from Matt’s blog, be sure to check it to see loads more and also to keep an eye with what’s going on with his photography.

Wallspace Gallery

I was lucky enough to be asked by Matt Sills and James Porter to help design a new sign for The Wallspace Gallery on Albert Road. After working through various designs and meetings with everyone the sign evolved into something I think none of us expected. Based on James’s original 3D idea the sign morphed into multiple angles and finishes. The outcome looks amazing I’m sure you’ll agree, but don’t let the images fool you. It has to be seen in person to really appreciate all the angles, curves and reflections.

Thanks to Matt for the opportunity and to James and his Crew for building and installing the next level of Albert Road signage. Those boys really know what their doing when it comes to bespoke design.

Wallspace Gallery can be found at 2C Albert Road, Southsea.

Created Local – Mikey Ayling

Good friend of Strong Island and many Southsea locals, Mikey is quite the talent. He’s always been into art, design, photography, fashion, skateboarding, music and well, let’s just say all the cool stuff. He recently began his second year in Graphic Design (Communication Design) at Portsmouth University and he’s killing it.

Matt Sills from the Wallspace Gallery has helped Mikey produce 3 prints, on sale now, of which the ants ‘Tower Block’ is a limited run of 100 Giclee print and the others, ‘Do You Dream’ and ‘Love Life’ are open edition screen prints.

Get down Albert Road and grab yourself one of Mikeys prints. Seriously, these are like hotcakes I’m sure of it. Oh, and pop past The Little Johnny Russells Market on your way and grab some bargains.

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Local Photographer – Diana Goss

A familiar and friendly face around Albert Road, Diana Goss is a freelance creative portrait photographer with her own studio and whilst based in Southsea is often found all over Portsmouth as well as Bournemouth and Brighton too. Specialising in both Fashion and Boudoir work (see www.laboudoir.co.uk), and going by her website (www.notmagnum.co.uk) and Flickr obviously enjoys any type of people portraiture both in the studio and outside at such events as Goodwood Revival, music shows, weddings and even equine work. Not only that but you most likely have seen a few of her common props around town, a 1960′s Bentley, a 1955 Oldsmobile in red with red leather seats and a 1960′s red Pontiac!

Some of Diana’s work is available in Albert Road in Matt Sills’s Wallspace gallery (you may have also picked up a few free prints during the last Albert Road day) and if you’re interested in any commission work such as model shoots and portfolios, event photography or are interested in modelling for one of Diana’s photography projects give Diana a shout via email.

This is a cross processed film shot Diana took of the Wallspace Gallery with her namesake camera, a Lomo Diana and below that are a few more examples of her work:

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PRIMARY – Extended & Improved

We have some great news about our PRIMARY phonography exhibition (find out all the details here) that we can now announce:

- The deadline for submissions has now been extended to Sunday 4th March. We have had some incredible submissions but want to set aside more time to make the exhibition something really special.

- The competition is now open to up to 10 submissions from each individual. With the ability to capture many photos on your phone over the next two months we we want you to not feel restricted to just three. The same rules apply about the photos conforming to compositions using the primary colours though. If you have already submitted feel free to send more photos over as and when you please.

- The exhibition will be hosted by Albert Road’s own Bonzo Studio who are also partnering up with us in the creation of the exhibition space. More news on this soon!

- Finally, we will be running a competition as part of the exhibition where the best three photos submitted will win some incredible prizes. We will be announcing the prizes available very soon but got to say, these will be the best prize haul we have ever offered.

- We will be putting together a poster for the exhibition that will be on sale on the opening night. The poster will feature some of the best submissions and all profits from the sales will go to a local charity (details to follow soon). Due to this we need to say that any photos submitted to PRIMARY will involve you giving us permission to use them for commercial purposes, if you do not want your photo used in this way simply let us know via email.

Well, that is it for now! We really hope to drum up as much coverage locally for PRIMARY in the next couple of months so if you could Facebook/Tweet/+1 about the exhibition we would really appreciate it. We would love this exhibition to be a real reflection of the whole population of Portsmouth with everyone taking part and feeling involved.

It’s going to be a Strong Movember – Closed at £725

Righto chaps, it’s time to clean shave your boat race and get that mighty moustache on the grow in support of Movember for The Prostate Cancer Charity and the Institute of Cancer Research. For 30 days of November you can help support and raise awareness through selflessly parading your top lip for charity.

You can sign up yourself, as I’m sure many of you already have, or you can join the Strong Island team and seek out sponsorship as a team. Through the Strong Island Movember page you can ask people to join the group, make donations, upload photos and post updates via the MoSpace page, Facebook and Twitter.

Head over to www.mobro.co/StrongIsland if you would like to get involved and grow a Strong Moustache to help raise awareness, or simply head over to www.uk.movember.com and sign up to personally raise money.

The funds raised in the UK support the number one and two male specific cancers – prostate and testicular cancer. The funds raised are directed to programmes run directly by Movember and our men’s health partners, The Prostate Cancer Charity and the Institute of Cancer Research. Together, these channels work together to ensure that Movember funds are supporting a broad range of innovative, world-class programmes in line with our strategic goals in the areas of awareness and education, survivorship and research.

Poster: Tristan Savage