Malden Fortnight; Funday Sunday.

Here goes my last official post for Malden Fortnight. I'm currently uploading the hi-res files onto CDs for both Village Voice and one of the organisers of Funday Sunday. I was supposed to deliver them this morning but things have taken a lot longer than I had initially planned, you never really realise how little space a CD has, I'm definitely taking for granted the 250GB on my external hardrive.

Yesterday I covered the family event, Funday Sunday, from which all proceeds are to be donated to The Lunchbowl Network, a charity set up to aid orphaned children in the Kibera slum in Nairobi. I must comment that it was very akin to the sports days that used to be held at my primary school and seemed overall very 'British' to me, if you get what I mean. It kind of reminded me of this advert for Churchill.
As with all the Malden Fortnight events I have shot, it was all good fun, and it was nice to go along as an observer.
Throughout the afternoon food and drink was served and later on their were different kinds of races, including skipping and 'space-hopping' and after that, Tug of War. The Tug of War was taken particularly seriously by the men, but I won't make any further comment on that.
A set of images can be found on Flickr. These are my personal favourites from the day.














It is strange to have now completed a second run of Malden Fortnight for the Village Voice, I encountered more 'professional' photographers this time than last year though, which was odd and slightly intimidating at times. I would hope to continue pursuing work like this in the future, only perhaps more in terms of a career than work experience.

In case you were thinking about asking, I didn't go to my interview this morning, I was too exhausted from this weekend's events as well as the cons that came up when thinking long term. I would be unfulfilled in terms of the pay, or lack there of and the commute, it was unrealistic to pick somewhere so far away, especially considering it was unpaid and there was no room to adjust and move closer. I'm not greedy but there is a need to afford things such as travel whether it's in relation to expenses or not, it just wasn't the right job for me at this point. I just hope these aren't my famous last words and I actually do end up finding a job that I like that uses my degree...

Current plans now that I've finished everything for Malden Fortnight involve finishing off this Glastonbury film and getting started on re-vamping my website...

Malden Fortnight; Flower Festival

Here are my favourites from the images I took today of the Flower Festival event held at the New Malden Methodist Church. I thought that the standard of the displays was much higher than last years, not only in terms of the flower arranging and creativity but also in the quality of the flowers. I also believe that my images this year are of a much better standard, the lighting is just better and I think I've shot them better too, but you can be the judge.






The full set can be viewed on Flickr here.

In personal news, I have a job interview on Monday, I'm a little bit intimidated because it's in Shoreditch, but I'm sure that I'll be ok, I've been further away places to meet, greet and impress people. I've compiled a small portfolio onto a CD, I hope it's both the correct format and the correct content, the job is working with local Shoreditch businesses. Eeep!

Radio Jackie follow up.

So, I didn't hear anything back from Radio Jackie for a couple of days and couldn't find where they had used my photos and they didn't email me back to confirm that they had even used them at all.

I got a reply and was pointed in the right direction to look for images as well as being offered to continue providing Radio Jackie with images. They couldn't pay me and I can't work for free anymore, but as a radio station there is very little call for photographs/photographers anyway, obviously. So, although the lady I corresponded with confirmed that once Malden Fortnight is over they will use more of my images to showcase the event, unless further events with the Village Voice come up, it's unlikely that I'll be working for them until I'm earning and can afford to.

Anyway, the website has only used one of my images so far and the article can be found here or under the 'local news' section of the Radio Jackie website.

I felt that I may as well add it to this post, once I have edited my Glastonbury film I'm going to be making a move towards creating my own online portfolio from scratch using Photoshop and Dreamweaver. I have the knowledge to do this I've just never had the time and I have recently found most other portfolio-creating methods to be unsatisfactory. I would gather that it will be quite a long process but hopefully it will be worth it because I'll be able to have everything done the way that I want it. Watch this space, realistically I'm hoping that I'll get a job first, in the mean time my current portfolio can still be found here

E-mail.

I thought I would share this nice email with you, it does feel nice to be appreciated, it's also pretty good to see that the years that I've spent training myself visually haven't gone to waste.

To: photog_ruth@hotmail.com & others
From: Jenny Stuart (Village Voice & WP Life)
Subject: Photos
Date: 03 July 2011
"We had a great day out yesterday and the feedback I’ve had has been fantastic, congrats Jenny on a flawless parade (apart from Where’s Wally nearly mowing down some Kung Fu fighters!) – of particular note people I talked to were saying how great it was to see the increased number of floats this year. How can we feed this back to Quadron and encourage same/more next year…? Can we make sure our contact is invited to the presentation evening do you think?

Completely by chance at around 3.15pm I stopped a couple of ladies dressed as dalmations and asked if they’d heard the result of the vote – turns out one of them was Kate who organised the Burlington effort – she was SO astonished and thrilled, it was such a pleasure being able to pass on the news.

Ruth has emailed me her terrific photos from yesterday’s events – thanks very much to Ruth, they are FAR superior to my efforts and I’ve uploaded them to the gallery on the website
http://www.maldenfortnight.com/photo-gallery.html

Jenny Stuart - editor & publisher
New Malden's Village Voice & Worcester Park Life"

So please keep an eye out on the Malden Fortnight Photo Gallery as my images from next weekend are going to be on there too.

Malden Fortnight - Take 2.

So I'm finally posting something that isn't about Glastonbury! Instead, I'm going to witter on about this job that I'm doing that is quite nice, but I do really wish I was getting some kind of money for it. Everyone is whispering in my ear and it's really annoying, how do I go about approaching this lady about even a free advertisement as payment? It's all a bit stressful, I'm happy to do it, because if I wasn't doing it, I would be doing nothing.

I was asked to return to work for the Village Voice to cover Malden Fortnight for the second year in a row, I suspect it's because I am cheap (free) The street festival, which is spread over 3 weekends, kicked off this afternoon. Despite the parade seeming slightly smaller than it was last year, the effort that went into the costumes was much greater. It has become much more apparent to me that the events surrounding Malden Fortnight are distinctly local, but naturally it adds to their charm, and like I mentioned earlier, I'm happy to be kept busy for a few days in the wind-down after finishing University for good and before I officially graduate.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed for some press to pick up the images, but there were so many photographers out in force today, even family members of those taking part in the parade were set up with their entry-level DSLRs.

The events that I covered today included the Grand Parade, which signals the opening of Malden Fortnight, the New Malden Horticultural Society Summer Show, Summer Breeze and a charity cream-tea event. Like most of the events last year and other events I have covered it did take a while to get into my stride, but it was good fun once I found my feet.

Here are some of my favourite shots from the day:
A full set of images can be found on my Flickr.














I think it would be quite fun to do this kind of work on a permanent basis, so I'm opening myself up to offers.

More Malden Fortnight;

Here are my favourite images from Malden fortnight that I took today, it was pretty tiring. I decided to only put the ones I really liked on here, everything else is on my website

© Ruth Johnston 2010.

I'm photographing Jacqueline Wilson at the Charity Cream Tea, but not until 3, it's nice - even after only two days of waking up early - to get a lie-in.

Day 1; Weekend 1; Malden Fortnight.

My first day went off without a hitch, apart from the spelling mistake on my press pass, I really enjoyed it and it got me quite excited. Here are some of my favourites from today, the rest can already be seen on my website. I'm looking forward to shooting some more next weekend.

© Ruth Johnston 2010.

I hope there are more opportunities to take photographs of children, it was so much fun this afternoon and it might help with another job that I hope to get in August for a company I found through studentgems.com. They said they would definitely be in touch, but I've learnt you definitely can't take someone's word when they say that.

Tomorrow is O2 Wireless and probably the last opportunity I'll have to see Lily Allen live in a while, if her threats to leave music are true. It makes me a bit sad but I completely understand it, I sure do hope she goes out with a bang and performs with Jay-Z. I really hope I get even more tanned tomorrow.
Currently hating how sticky it is by the way, causes me a lot of "post-Glastonbury stress", even though I was filthy there at least I wasn't sticky, eugh.