New works up on Etsy

I've slowly been adding new images to my Etsy shop, and there are 4 new listings that I am particularly proud of. They feature some architectural details of London that caught my eye when I visited earlier this spring.

Take a look, and while you're at it visit my etsy shop to see some of the other new photos that have been posted.

I am alive, I really am!

Just a quick post to say that one of my photos has been featured on a really great blog:

http://jessicarogersphotography.blogspot.com

Jessica Rogers is a very talented photographer (as you can see by the images she has up on her etsy shop as well as her blog), so I am very flattered that she selected my photo to be listed among this week's Photos of the Week.

Thanks Jessica!

So behind in the photo department

Summer (even though it's only just arrived weather-wise in Boston) has me distracted from photography. I even have a new lens to play with and I have had zero time to get out and shoot. I need to dedicate a few hours one weekend to make it happen.

So this is my "I am still alive just not posting" post.

you'd think that with all the nasty weather I'd have plenty of indoors time to process photos, but nope - I've been distracted.

London: Day One

Tub, originally uploaded by mattallenphotography.

London was, as I think I said before, amazing.

We stayed at a hotel called the Rookery, in an area of London called The City (near Farringdon station on the Circle line, and also near Smithfield Market). The hotel was beautiful. Very old world feeling.

Our first day took us through the east end of London past St. Paul's Cathedral, over the millenium bridge to the Tate Modern museum, east along the Thames to the Design Museum then across the Tower Bridge and back to our hotel to get ready to see a show in the west end.

More pictures to follow, or if you like just head over to my London flickr set to see what I've posted there so far.

Long time no post

Been a bit busy lately, which is why I haven't posted in a while. For one thing I took a brief vacation over to London to celebrate my 5th year wedding anniversary (with my wife, of course). I shot a bunch while over there and I am still going through all the images.

I freaking loved London. Just wandering around the side streets could've entertained me for weeks. It's just a beautiful place to stroll around.

Here's a quick shot I took from within our hotel room, it serves as a bit of a foreward to the whole set of images.



Over the next few weeks I'll put up more images from the trip.

The mystery continues...

Awesome and exciting news arrived in my inbox yesterday. If you'll remember about a month and a half ago, maybe two months ago, I picked up a Kodak Duaflex camera on eBay to try out some TTV photography.

Well, when the camera arrived it had a roll of spent film sitting in it. Here's the original post I made on it: Unknown treasures lurk on this spent roll of 620

Since the roll was an older Kodak film that required special processing (C-22 vs. the more standard C-41 process used today) I had to find a film lab that would handle it. After going by my local lab and finding out it would cost $50 with no guarantee of results I started looking on the web and came across Film Rescue International - an outfit in North Dakota that specializes in restoring and processing old film.

The way it works is you send them whatever film you have that you want either restored or developed, they do their best to get workable images off the negatives (and in my case they process the negatives too) and they create a lightbox on the web where you can preview the images that are deemed printable. Even though my film was a color emulsion they scan the negatives in a way that produces a black and white positive image. This ends up with a more reliable print in the end.

So here's a sample of one of the images that they put up for me to preview.





By next week I should have the negatives and the scanned images to me on CD. I'll put up a gallery on the web in a new blog dedicated to reuniting these images with their family, and with any luck we'll end up with one of those feel-good stories about the power of the interweb.

keep your fingers crossed!

I've been featured!!

You might remember a spotlight I did on Michelle from Urban Junkies Photography a couple weeks back. If you missed it, just click here to read it.

Well, Michelle asked me if I'd take part in her ongoing Studio Chat series, and she just posted the article yesterday.

Head on over to her blog to take a look: Studio Chat with me on Urban Junkies Artist Lounge.