Jo Belfield Photography featured in PC Plus!

Jo Belfield Photography is delighted to have been featured in the latest issue of PC Plus Magazine (issue 296, July 2010) in a feature by Jon Thompson on how photographers and other creatives use the internet to boost their businesses.

http://pcplus.techradar.com/latestissue/

If you arte a photographer or other creative and you want to know how to use the internet to boost sales and to make managing your business easier watch this space as I am hoping to put together some workshops focussed on helping you to harness the power of the internet!

Jo

Pretty House

I took this photograph as I knew the owner was interested in seeing any photos I came up with, but I hadn't been happy with previous attempts. I like this faux watercolour version. I am also going to do a black and white version on another one of the photos - I just haven't quite got round to it yet! I hope the owner likes it!

Jo

Maternity Shoot

I was honoured to be asked to do a maternity shoot for my friend Jacqui. I went on Tuesday to do a consultation on it, but she looked so good that I took some shots there and then.



She really was blooming and I got some beautiful head and shoulder shots as well as pregnancy ones. We are doing a further shoot next week with different clothes and a bit more bump on show!

Both she and her husband love the shots - I am overjoyed and and I can't wait to meet their new baby!

20 Photographs & 20 Stories

20 Photographs & 20 Stories
Originally uploaded by eastofnorth

Katherine Elizabeth Lewis and Nik Perring have been collaborating on a compilation of 20 photographs and stories they'e inspired. The book is being sold to raise money for the Alzheimer's society and is to be launched at the Waterside Cafe, Bollington on Sunday May 24th, 7 pm, with authors doing readings, signed framed images for sale, and, of course, the book! The Alzheimer's Society will have a representative there with information about their activities. Canalside Radio is recording the readings, etc., to brobe adcast later. All profits from book and image sales are going to the Alzheimer's Society. More information at www.eastofnorth.com.

Share: Threading the Needle

Added to the Shutter Sisters One Word project: Share. This was a sharing experience - it is rare we have a ceilidh in the village (I think the last one was 4 years ago at the last festival!) It was an event tremendously enjoyed by the people that attended, we shared dancing, music, laughs and most of all a sense of Community which is what it's creator, the late Dr John Coope, wanted the Festival (and his other arts organisations in our little village) to foster.

Love Thursday / Love Becky Waite

I was trying to think of an image for Love Thursday , so I was thinking of things that I have loved recently. One thing that thought of was the amazing sculptures by Becky Waite. They are beautiful colourful concoctions made from discarded plastic bottles and bright, stunning embroidery. I stumbled across them at the truly magical Secret Garden at The White Gallery and grinned with pleasure as my youngest interacted with the shimmering dingle dangles. So I suppose this Thursday's "Love" for me is two-fold....love making art out of what would otherwise be rubbish and love the interaction between kids and art!

The End of the Fair

The recent fair at the Bollington Festival provided me with an unexpected treasure trove of photos. But perhaps the most valuable treasures were the subjects themselves. As it happened I was there as the fair was quietening down, the queues pretty much gone and the stalls starting to pack up. Suddenly I found myself with a handful of willing models who moonlighted as fairground staff.

The images this impromptu photoshoot produced - candid, down to earth, unexpected, slightly skewed by the transformation of gaudy colours to grainy black and white - are some of my recent favourites and I hope to revisit theme sometime in the future to explore it further.

From the ordinary to the extraordinary......

It took me 33 years to discover that I was a photographer. A happy accident that arose out of a chance encounter with some awesome amateur photography on www.flickr.com and the rescuing of my used-for-holidays-only point and shoot from under 2 years worth of clutter in the dresser drawer. I went outside to have a play and take a few creative photos and started on a journey that has absorbed me for the last 10 months. I haven't travelled alone by any means. I have met many fantastic photographers allong the way - some virtually and some in person - some in my village and the surrounding area and some on completely different continents. I am grateful for how talented, supportive, enthusiatic, nurturing and generous with their advice, praise and criticism these people are. I am also grateful for the support of my hubby and kids - who only occasionally get crabby that I take twice as long to walk anywhere now that I am constantly stopping to take a photo or complain about their portraits being taken every five minutes.

I am continually gobsmacked by how the lens can transform the mundane in our world - the buildings we ignore because we're not going there we're going HERE and the flowers, weeds, debris and tiny details that we'd miss if we weren't looking for them. At the minute I am generally quite limited in the geographical area I shoot in. I don't drive and I have to be back home for nursery andd school runs so there isn't a wide area for me to shoot in. So my Canon D450 has become my constant companion. My everyday haunts are then photographed and then photographed some more, and finally when the obvious angles have been done and dusted there is the looking for something else, the looking for the tiny too-easily-missed details, the looking for something extraordinary in the ordinary. I am surprised the little things I find, the things that I would never have noticed if I hadn't been looking for something beyond the bricks and mortar and tarmacadam we pass everyday. Constantly amazed, constantly challenged, sometimes thrilled, sometimes disappointed and certainly always learning.

Jo Belfield http://www.flickr.com/photos/29171103@N05/