my Ceredigion and my Cardigan Bay » Paul Williams

Paul Williams Photo Gallery; Portraits

Paul Williams — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 22:57:49 +0000

I was asked this week to provide some examples of my photography portraiture.

Here’s what I posted in a bit of a hurry.

Photo: River Teifi in flood at Llechryd

Paul Williams — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 09:29:18 +0000

Another wet and windy day here in Cardigan. Clearly not as wet and windy as Cockermouth where hundreds are destined to be in temporary accomodation for months. So thanking my lucky stars, my journey home from viewing Stephen Jones’ Henllan Salerooms, allowed me time to stop on photograph the River Teifi. The broad winding stretch underneath the not so new castle at Newcastle Emlyn was happily colonised by sea gulls foraging for who knows what. At Cenarth Falls the spate was so great that the falls seemed to have disappeared; and down stream below the indomitable bridge the water was surging, twisting and doing its best to be thoroughly frightening. Towards Llechryd (home of my former band, the Llechryd Light Orchestra) the river course had spilled its banks and then some. The road was clear but the bridge was under though cars could splash across.

Anyway it was dusk and the skies were clearing enough to show a rosy glow and a skein of geese like me, driving themselves home.

The Longest Crawl Christmas Promotion

Paul Williams — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:16:39 +0000

As far as I’m aware I appear in three books pseudonymously. In Mr Ian Marchant’s The Longest Crawl and Parallel Lines: Or, Journeys on the Railway of Dreams I appear under my ‘punk’ name, as photographer Perry Venus (a not very funny spoonerism) and in Real Aberystwyth I get to be the even less imaginative ‘Steve’.

For the Longest Crawl we were privileged to be guided around Lampeter’s Pubs by the then Mayor, Mr Hag Harris; and although this is not a picture of himself it does remind me of a rather jolly evening.

Mythologised, if not immortalised, in print, and now digitalised by Whole Story Audio Books on the CD reading of The Longest Crawl.

As their Press Release so succinctly puts it;

Whole Story Audio Books – publishers of unabridged audio books – are offering The Longest Crawl for under £20 as part of their special Christmas promotion. Visit www.wholestoryaudio.co.uk for details.

Photos: Cardigan Studts Fair Night

Paul Williams — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:05:14 +0000

You know it’s Fair Night when you can hear Hi Ho Silver Lining from the other side of town. If I live to be a 151 it’ll still be blasting out over every fair in the country.

Anyway..

I little later than I’d hoped but here are my digital photos from the night.

I used my Nikon D90 with 18-200mm lens and I opted to shoot at ISO 3200 and pretty much got everything as sharp as I wanted. I think having a VR lens helped a lot and I’m surprised at how little ‘noise’ there is in the images. I used Lightroom for black and white conversion and applied a custom preset to give a strong contrasty look.

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Photos November 2009; Remembrance Sunday Cardigan

Paul Williams — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 16:55:21 +0000

It’s our second November at Umsinga and Remembrance Sunday has become already a strong presence in our lives.

As we live so close to the cenotaph (the final shot in this gallery is from our bedroom window) we are politely asked to move our car from the street the night before and we are awakened by the Environmental Services Team from Ceredigion County as they announce their early morning street clean with orange flashing lights.

I say this not with any sense of resentment but to illustrate how the Remembrance Sunday experience for me has been transformed. The bland, stuffy and hide-bound BBC coverage is nothing compared to seeing your own community paying its respects to dead and the living service men and women. The young, the old, the VERY old, the great and the good, the Ex-service and the serving; the crunching tramp of boots, the brass band, the chill, and the nervously wavering Last Post. You can not do anything BUT remember.

Photographing this event has its difficulties. The local press photographer, after years of covering it, doubtless has reconciled some of these difficulties; he knows where to stand, when it is appropriate to ‘shoot’ (with his ‘Canon’) and I guess even what NOT to shoot.

But because it is demonstrably an emotional occasion, a complex mix of personal and public grieving, I could not escape feelings of intrusion. I stepped back and the result is a set of photographs that I feel lack engagement.

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