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

Strong Island Sunrises and Sunsets

January 2012 has been a haven for incredible sunrises and sunsets and been captured across the city by many photographers.

A selection below from Tall Thin Guy, John Scriven, Tim Aldworth, Martin Hoy and Andrew Whyte. See more from these photographers by clicking on their images below.

Photography By Stuart Scott

Through the Autumn months Stuart has been as busy as ever and has completed several shoots including press releases for the music industry amongst others.  Stuarts private projects for portfolio building have been a lot of fun he says and sometimes very challenging.  He has been trying to keep his work varied so not to get rooted in one genre but most of all to keep pushing himself on producing new ideas and concepts. Some of these were spur of the moment but others consisted of a much longer drawn out process of development.  However, all have given satisfying results of which some have caught the eye and have lead him on to more shoots commercially.

If you wish to see more from these stories either check out Stuarts page on Facebook ‘Stuart Scott Photography’ to view them in hi-res or contact Stuart go to www.stuartscott.4ormat.com

Laura Jane Photography

Laura Jane is a freelance photographer who’s been living in Portsmouth for the past 2 years. Laura specialise’s in action sports and lifestyle photography. This year she’s photographed events such as Relentless Boardmasters in Newquay, Animal Windfest in Poole and Relentless Freeze in London.

You can see her photographs on Facebook page and Flickr.

Here are some of her photo’s from the Guildhall Boutique Market on 20th November. The market also featured a good friend of Strong Island, miss Ami Lowman.

10 Degrees South Photography Exhibition

The Round Tower in Old Portsmouth will play host to an exhibition of photographic works upon the theme of “Territories”.

A group of Portsmouth University students calling themselves “10 Degrees South”, have come together from around Europe to show their wide-ranging interpretations of this exciting concept – from local landscapes to military campaigns, from nature reserves to wine bars to football supporters.

For a closer look you can join them on Wednesday 7th and Thursday 8th of December 2011.

Mark Parham – The Everyday Olympian

I am in awe of Portsmouth film-maker and photographer Mark Parham’s project called ‘The Everyday Olympian’.

‘The Olympics and Para-Olympics is a global inspirational competition, creating sporting heroes and inspiring people to achieve greatness. With many of the benefits this event creates never being seen, this body of work will serve as a documentary celebrating the everyday person. Long after the hype surrounding the 2012 Olympics has died down and life returns to normal, the facilities that were built as potential training camps for the athletes will remain, benefiting and being used by communities and individuals for years to come, individuals that in their own way are the ‘Everyday Olympians’.’

The output of the project will be 32 short films and 12 prints. All photographs and films were shot at the Mountbatten Centre Swimming Pool, Portsmouth. Mark is currently looking for a suitable venue to exhibit the work in February 2012.

Deakin and Petterd wrote: (Swimming defined)
“When you swim, you feel your body for what it mostly is, water and your body begins to move with the water around it. Swimming is not an activity where the surroundings disappear; it is an activity where the environment is the focus, the corporeal sensations of it all-encompassing. It is also an environment in which swimmers are isolated and alone”.

Mark said about the project ‘On a secondary level I hope the images will open this up exploring themes surrounding the human condition such as perceived physical perfection, isolation and vulnerability.’

To see the project visit the Facebook page at : http://www.facebook.com/theeverydayolympian

Remember – Strong Island Flickr 11|11|11 is today

As mentioned last week we have set up a Flickr group for 11/11/11. Post your pictures, videos and artwork made and taken today to – http://www.flickr.com/groups/111111flickr/
Please tag pics with 11/11/11 and Strong Island. We will choose a selection to show on Strong Island early next week. Would be great to see the variation going on around the city in whatever form that might be.

Anglepoise Competition closes this Friday

The competition to win the Kenneth Grange book ‘Making Britain Modern’ donated by Portsmouth company Anglepoise closes this Friday 11th November. To win a copy just send us a picture of your Anglepoise lamp. Email : claire.sambrook@gmail.com

Further details on the previous post – http://www.strong-island.co.uk/2011/10/25/anglepoise-portsmouth/

This is mine below.

Strong Island Flickr 11|11|11

We have set up a Flickr group for next Friday – the 11/11/11. Post your pictures taken on this day to – http://www.flickr.com/groups/111111flickr/
Please tag pics with 111111 and Strong Island. We will choose a selection to show on Strong Island.

To get you in the mood – shots below from Eugene Noble, Andrew Whyte and Lauren McPeak.

Beautiful Portsmouth – Your Photographs needed

Not two words that people would normally put together but a new website that showcases the city aims to visually document the unusual and often forgotten elements of Portsmouth as told by the people.

Deer Park Alpha have been been busy designing the website with bit of help from myself in supplying the photographs. We now need your help in getting more. So if you feel you have images that best sum up your view of the city please visit the links below.

The website is under development but can currently be viewed at: Beautiful Portsmouth – http://www.beautiful-portsmouth.co.uk/

To add your image to the website you will need to join one of twelve Flickr groups that have been set up. Images need to be landscape, as high a resolution as possible and also have a title that reflects the image. Please do not post images with watermarks on them or credits.

Flickr Groups – Portsmouth – Made in Portsmouth | Portsmouth – Best of | Portsmouth – Sport |  Portsmouth – People | Portsmouth – Wildlife | Portsmouth – Culture | Portsmouth – Retail | Portsmouth – Creative | Portsmouth – Business | Portsmouth – City Views | Portsmouth – Heritage | Portsmouth – Seafront |

We are also on the look out for products made and designed in Portsmouth- please email Carl Leroy-Smith at – carl@dpamail.org

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