April Photo Scavenger Hunt

Yet another post that's a couple of days late, let's all pretend this is the end of April 'kay?

I failed yet again to get all the photos for this month. But only missed out on two so I'm getting better! God I'm the worst photo scavenger ever.

April shower - You know I actually had a picture all sorted for this? On my birthday there was a real life April shower, it absolutely threw it down and I took a lovely picture of a rainy street with my umbrella in it, but then along came the stitch-a-long with Feeling Stitchy and guess what? It was only called 'April Shower' so I guess it was meant to be.

Something Yellow - I know it should be a picture of fluffy little Easter chicks but instead I went for these lemon cupcakes that I made for a colleague's birthday. This was also the first time that I used the piping bag that Dorothy got me for my birthday. You'll have to excuse the kind of wankness of the icing but I was teaching myself at 10.30pm after a day at work followed by spinning and bodypump and wasn't in the best frame of mind.

A church - This is Holy Trinity Church. Believe it or not, this bad boy is in the city centre of Hull. It's tucked away, and you probably would only come across it by accident, but that's what makes it special. It's very beautiful in that grand old way churches can be - I've been here for all sorts, a wedding, a christening and I've even sung and played the viola in here when I was at school.

A sculpture - This caused me much headache and much debate over the question - what is the difference between a sculpture and a statue? In my head a statue is of a real person whereas a sculpture is more representative of something. This bad boy is in the peace garden in Queen's Gardens. He used to be surrounded by big spikey things because he was representative of political prisoners but these got removed at some point, I've no idea why, I hate to blame H&S but I've a feeling that might be the cause. When I was a wee thing I used to beg my Dad to take me to see this guy but would also be terrified of him at the same time.

A set of keys - These are the bad boys I cart around with me on a daily basis. I don't live in a bank vault, I just seem to go through a lot of doors. There's three for work, 4 for my Mum's and just one measly little one for home. And another key has just joined the party in the form of some keys for Dad's where I'm gong to be house-sitting for the next few months.

Your camera - This is my little bad boy. He feels intimidated by the big beasty 'proper' cameras that everyone else has but he's holding his own and taking photos every day. I would love a big camera but this guy can be slung in my bag and travel everywhere with me.

And he has a cool little screen so you can take photos of yourself and know that you haven't cut your head off.

Eggs - These bad boys were all ready and lined up for some serious baking action for my Royal Wedding tea party. I used over a dozen of the buggers.

Breakfast - Crumpets! A treat. Normally my breakfast is weetabix but hey I was on holiday, so I went mental.

An interesting shop name - This is my very local yarn shop and pretty much the only yarn shop in Hull. It's just round the corner from me and sometimes I go in there just to look at the lovely stuff.

Something to do with St George - Okay okay so I know that it should be a St George's cross rather than the Union Jack but, hey, that makes up part of the Union Jack so it can still count right? You've got to cut me some slack, there were no dragons around and a lack of St George pubs!

So I'm two short, I failed to get a picture of a cross and something to do with Shakespeare. Sorry. Forgive me?

And I've seen the list for next month...cripes. I don't think I'll be making all of those either. And the first one on the list is my biggest fear - how to get around that one?!

Photo Scavenger Hunt - March

I’m a great big failure this month I’m afraid. I did not scavenge hard enough. I did mean to, I swear I did, but the month just got away from me. Are you sure we’ve definitely gone through all of March? No days were missed out or anything? Did I lapse into a coma and miss a week?

I didn’t get 3 out of the 12 up for grabs – I can’t beat myself up too badly though, that means I got 75% of the photos altogether and that’s surely a pass by anyone’s measure isn’t it?

I wasn’t sure about the ‘rules’ of the photo scavenger hunt. Should I even be posting seeing as I didn’t get them all? Am I disqualified? But then I thought about the photos that I did get and felt that would be mean to not give them their chance to shine.

A rainbow – This piece of public artwork is currently residing in Whitefriargate in Hull city centre, I felt that I was allowed to include this because it’s called Rainbow-friargate. Read more about it here.

Something green - I like my nail varnish bright. The brighter the better. I can’t bring myself to wear more traditional colours. I love this green (Barry M if you must know) and wear it all the time but I’ve got to get around to buying a base coat, I wear it without one and then it stains my nails an iffy nicotine-yellow colour which is more than a little unfortunate looking. Good job I always keep my nails painted.

An empty chair – My desk at work. Please note the emergency cardigan which is always there in case I get cold (it rotates, it’s not always that green one) and the super cool Union Jack flag which will be coming home with me when it’s the day of a certain Royal Wedding.

Something sentimental – My Grandma’s clock. I was love with this when I was a little girl, so much so that I would sneak into her bedroom just to look at it. She knew how much I loved it and put in her will that it was to go to me when she died and as an extra precaution, she wrote my name on the bottom of it. It doesn’t work, I haven’t even been to see if it can be fixed, but it’s never worked as long as I’ve known it. I actually did a post about back on the old blog which you can see here.

Peeling paint – This chair resides in the back garden. You’ll be seeing a lot of it because I seem to have put most of the other subjects for my photographs on top of it. I blame it on being excited at finally having natural light.

A collection – Did I mention that I have a thing about nail varnish? Like almost a problem? Here are my Barry M nail varnishes, lined up in a pretty row for you. Please don’t be fooled into thinking they’re my only nail varnishes, I tried to get all of them in a photo but there were kind of too many. Shush.

Something as old as you – God bless my Mum for putting together little boxes for each of us that contain things from our childhood. Mine has my first shoes in it, cards that were sent on my Christening, a print out of Mum’s heartbeat and my heartbeat that she stole when she was in hospital, report cards, and various other knick knacks, including this little bear that was bought to hang from my pram. I have no idea where his nose went. Poor bear.

A ring – The knuckleduster. My sister got me this Venetian glass ring a while ago but I’ve been unable to wear it because it would only fit my little finger, now that I’ve lost weight it fits on my ring finger and I am beyond thrilled about it because I love it. (Yes I seriously lost weight from my fingers, I didn’t even have fat hands to start with!)

A lion – I kept my eyes peeled for lions around Hull but they must be still in hibernation. Instead a flash of inspiration came to me when I was rooting around for change and realised that there’s a lion on the back of a 10p piece. And better than that, there’s a bit of a lion on the 5p and the 20p because it’s part of the Royal Standard. I tried and tried to get a good photo but my focus was, quite frankly, a bit shit. And I gave up.

So I am missing a shadow (I missed my chance when the sun briefly appeared this month), a lamb and a fancy gate. I did get excited when we drove through Bishop Burton on Sunday and saw that it was lambing day but apparently going to your nephew’s 3rd birthday party is more important than a photo scavenger hunt on the internet. Fancy gate? I guess you’d need a fancy house first and there aint many of those round my way I’m afraid.

Please don’t beat me with sticks for failing.

Check out the group on Flickr for more photos.

Cultural Desert?

I know that some people (who are awful) wouldn’t necessarily associate the city of Hull with the word culture.

In fact we did make a bid to become Europe’s City of Culture a couple of years ago, but failed miserably. Whilst I admired the hopefulness of this effort, I think we’re a few years away from that kind of accolade.

But things are slowly improving. We had the Larkin 25 celebrations which included the Larkin with Toads installation and I think that the desert is beginning to get a few more water holes.

Whitefriargate is in the centre of Hull and is one of the main shopping parades. At least it was. St Stephen’s shopping centre was open on the other side of town and this led to a migration of people away from the area. Lots of shops closed down and it was starting to look a little depressed.

However some clever, bright people decided to turn this depression into an opportunity and commissioned artists to exhibit installations inside the empty shop units. Unfortunately I think some of these have gone unnoticed, but the latest, and final exhibition is most definitely on a mission to be seen.

Whitefriargate is playing host to an exhibition by two artists called Hsiao-Chi Tsai and Kimiya Yoshikawa who have put in place 3 installations in a piece called Rainbow-Friargate (see what they did there?!).

Whilst a lot of people walking with their heads down might miss some of the pieces inside the shop units, one of the pieces is pretty much unmissable. Mainly because it’s up two freaking trees in the middle of the street.

This piece is called Rainbow-Friargate Float and is made from bits of foam which have been strung up and tied to the branches of the trees. From a distance it’s absolutely beautiful, it’s like a tree on acid and is one of the cheeriest things I’ve seen in a long time, especially given the dismal weather we’ve been having (all of you with blue skies can do one, there hasn’t been blue sky in Hull for over 2 weeks now!).

I felt like quite the twerp in a busy street taking photos of foam up a tree but I am trying to steel my nerves and not let it bother me. Especially as I’m taking part in Kathy’s photo scavenger hunt (PS One of the items we had to collect this month is ‘a rainbow’ – I think this fits the bill.) and need to get braver about looking like a bit of a twat.

Apparently the other two pieces incorporate UV lights and paint so will change according to the time of day. I’m thinking I might have to stay in town late one night to check this out. So far I’ve only seen one of the other pieces called Blooming Propeller which is as beautiful as the Float piece, but I haven’t had a chance to photograph it yet.

I love that Hull is doing stuff like that but I hate that my first reaction is to go “Uh-oh that’s going to get vandalised.” Unfortunately it’s a thought borne out of experience. The toads lasted less than a week before they were vandalised and I have serious fears for this piece as it’s only made of foam and you can reach up on to your tippy toes and touch it quite easily. I have my fingers crossed however that the citizens of Hull will do me proud and not do their best to ruin a great piece of culture.

I will (obviously) keep you updated and try and get some photos of the other pieces before the rainbow shimmers and disappears into thin air.

The installation is running until May 13th and I think I’m already going to miss it.

You can go here to read more about the installation and artists.

Photo Scavenger Hunt - February

So I heard through Jill that Kathy was doing this thing called a Photo Scavenger Hunt. And given that I’m already trying to take a photograph every day to fulfil Project 365 I thought that I might as well give this a go. Apart from anything it could provide me with a photograph on those days when nothing else was doing.

The list for February contained the following 12 items:

A big lorry/truck
A big round clock face
A bridge
A musical instrument
A newspaper headline
A park bench
A postbox
Eyes
Something heartshaped
Something red
Something with stripes
Your shoes

And it was bloody harder than I thought. I didn’t want to go too obvious on all of them but my creativity is unfortunately limited, not to mention it’s hard to scavenge when you walk the same route and sit in the same office 5 days a week (I kept waiting for a bridge to appear at my desk but it never happened).

However it was hard in a fun way if you catch my drift and there were a few of the categories where I ended up with more than one photo that I wanted to submit.

To see them in all their glory you can go here and to see everyone else’s entries then have a wee look see at the group photos.

1. Big round clock face
2. A park bench
3. Something red
4. Newspaper headline

The clock face I wanted to picture immediately because it’s been there as long as I can remember and, like myself unfortunately, it’s starting to look its age. I hesitate to use the over-used word “retro” but I think this is coming close to falling into that category.

I walk through a park every day so this one was a case of the proverbial walk through the park. I was hoping and hoping for a brighter day but it never happened so this picture looks particularly bleak.

This sign is on the building that I work in and was put up to stop people having to run a rather smokey gauntlet as they tried to get into the building. It looks fierce. But fails spectacularly.

I couldn’t think of anything to do but just photograph a newspaper for this one. But I did choose an important day and I cracked out an arty angle to make it a bit special.

5. Something with stripes
6. Something heartshaped
7. A postbox
8. Eyes

Credit for this photo goes to Dorothy who suggested a subject outside the box for this one. Maud’s rather splendid tabby stripes. Maud willingly acted as model for me as I spent a morning trying to get the best of her stripes captured.

Some cross stitched hearts on a Valentine’s Day card I made the Other Person. Predictable I know but what could I do?!

I had done another ‘arty’ shot of a post box down my street for this one when what should I spot but a freakin’ blue postbox near the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. Cue much excited jumping up and down. Anyone know why it’s blue? Nope me neither.

The last one on the list to get. I was panicky. February was drawing to a close. I was sat at my desk pondering what I photo I could take. And then I glanced down and saw the bright beady black eyes of my little monkey, who sits on my computer. His black eyes were shining out at me and I felt that it was probably a sign so I grabbed a quick shot.

9. A bridge
10. A big lorry/truck
11. A musical instrument
12. Your shoes

I was spoiled for choice when on my recent trip to Manchester - these are couple of bridges just outside the train station at Deansgate.

One thing this challenge has been useful for is in dealing with my embarrassment levels when on my own and taking photos in public. I can tell you you don’t half feel like a complete bloody twat sometimes. Case in point my photo of a big truck. This bad boy has been parked in Queen’s Gardens in the city centre of Hull for weeks. They’re draining the ponds and this guy has been on hand to get rid of all the nastiness that has been lurking beneath the depths for goodness knows how long. I saw him and knew he’d be brilliant for the challenge but I was so mortified at the prospect of taking a photo of it and having people look at me going “Great. Just what Hull needs. Another mentalcase.” In the end I kind of snapped and ran, without actually coming to a standstill. Must be self conscious next time.

I was worried about this one because I don’t play a musical instrument anymore and was debating the horror of going into a music shop and asking if I could take a photo of an instrument there when suddenly this guy popped up. It’s a sign on an old building that doesn’t appear to be in use in Lancaster and I spotted it as I scurried past after my (unsuccessful) interview.

I love these shoes. They make me happy. They might be too loud for some and a lot of the time I don’t have the nerve to wear them outdoors but they make me smile all the time. I need to start wearing them more.

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Bring on March!