roryosullivan.co.uk

January is a tough month for a lot of people, budgets have to stretch further for several reasons, the money has to last that little bit longer as people get paid earlier and they forget that with the traditional over indulgence at this time of year that they end up spending more on food, drink and presents for the friends and family you haven’t seen in a while.

Without proper care people find themselves on a very tight budget once the New Year’s celebrations have died down. This is the situation I find myself in.

Photo By Jeff Keen - http://www.flickr.com/photos/spiderpop/

I’ve got a very tight budget for food and travel this month. So I’m trying a few things to make a boring and tight budget more interesting. To start with, I have my own adjustments:

• I’m eschewing drink completely so there’s a considerable cost cut back.
• I’ve switched to smoking roll-ups rather than my normal brand of cigarette. Yes I know I should give up, but I fear that won’t help my appetite or the money situation. I’ve tried going cold turkey before and the cost of nicotine replacements is expensive.
• I’m avoiding as many temptations as possible to stop me spending which essentially means apart from work and home I’m not going anywhere this month.

I was chatting to a @Jemimah_Knight yesterday about the situation I’m in. As well as a kind offer of cooking me dinner she also bought about an idea that I know has been done before but I thought I’d give a try. It’s based a simple premise – “Will Work For Food”. This time though I will swap and trade food for favours, and you can stop sniggering at the back I don’t mean those kind of favours!

Kudos, praise, whatever you want to call it, can be more valuable than cold hard cash to people. In the modern free work environment where movie reviews, news images and various other media are created by an ever expanding social media base, a small thank you, some recognition, can mean even more. This could mean all sorts of things that can be exchanged instead of money online.

Recently, through a work offer, I helped friends get half price Sky+ for a year. I got a note through the message board we frequent that it was all installed and running and they were pleased. I got a thank you for something I had done that whilst It wasn’t a lot of effort to arrange for me, meant a large saving for them.

It was the thank you that made me happy, something that in these days when I get a glare at holding open a door or sidestepping away from the tube doors to allow people off, that really meant something. The bonus was when they extended that thank you to a great gift of some photography books the next time I saw them. The thank you meant a hell of a lot and the books were the cherry on top.

With that in mind I’m experimenting this month to see if I can make the days go by using my skills and friendliness. Simply put – ask me for what you need, knowledge, skills whatever I can do and in return maybe I can get a nice email or better – a nice slap up meal to talk terms and say thanks.

So – what can I offer? You may well ask.

I’m not a master of any particular trade and I’m not a jack of all, just some.

I’ve got some areas of knowledge that might be useful to people, I can code HTML, and order a server and domain name, and install WordPress (well that’s what I did here!), I know my way around the web and I am used to researching and shopping for people online.  I can stitch video together and have published pod casts. I’m also fairly handy with a camera and a little digital processing. So there are some web skills for start.

There not the only things I can do though, whilst I don’t have a car at the moment I do have a clean driving license so maybe you need someone to drive a van with your belongings in it if you are having a reshuffle or moving house and I can help move things around. If you just fancy someone to chat with in the pub with or need a partner for a class to learn with then maybe I can help.

Basicaly, if there is small job you need doing that you think I might be able to help with, advice on online shops or how to find things, if you need some things photographing or just want to ask me some questions and get some advice, then I might be able to help. You never know until you ask and you know what? Neither do I!

In return all I need is a thank you and permission to write it all up here as I go along. It might be quite a journey, depending on what you all think you need.

Hell, if you fancy taking me out for dinner for no reason at all then I probably wouldn’t say no! But no kissing on the first date – i’m not that sort of guy.

I grew up out in the suburbs but London was always about, when my Dad started working in town the appeal of the big city grew on me more and the small trips on the trains and tubes to the tourist spots with my parents excited me. One thing that was always a constant, especially when I began to work in town and live closer towards the centre of town, was that everything I saw of London was from ground level.

The Offices I’ve worked in and flats lived in have all been no more then two or three floors up and whilst some had nice views of the river others had just other buildings and dirty high streets. I’ve been up the London Eye once and took in the view of the main tourist sites you can see from there. The weather wasn’t especially great but you could see quite a few things.

This weekend the impact of London on me changed, I knew London was big, I’ve travelled through most stops on the tubes to nearly all the ends of the lines, and headed further out on the mainline trains but nothing prepared me for the view I got Saturday afternoon.

I’d spent the early afternoon walking through town, I strolled from Bond Street, across Oxford Street and down to Forbidden Planet on Shaftesbury Avenue to look for Christmas presents for friends and family. Whilst the shopping trip wasn’t fruitful for presents it was for me (DMZ vol 1, 100 Bullets Vol 3 and Firefly – Better Days). After leaving the shop I placed a quick call to a friend to see if the arrangements they had said they would be able to sort were still on and they were, and with that I made my way to the junction of Charing Cross Road, Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road.

This is where the fun began. I made my way into Centrepoint and met my friend who spoke to th receptionist who let us through. Standing waiting for the lift nervous excitement was beginning to bubble up and once in the lift a small smile took over my face. We zoomed up missing floor after floro before quickly reaching our destination. I walked out and stepped into Paramount’s bar and dining area taking in the beautiful brass bar and the swish seating, but this wasn’t why I was here. we walked back out and up a short set of stairs. I was here, the viewing gallery. The view took my breath away and the small smile was now a massive grin.

Sunset Over London

The viewing gallery goes round 360 degrees with various armchairs and seating all the way around the middle and it was on one of these chairs I placed my bag and took in the view across West London. The sun was starting to fade and the sky was clear, I’d luckily got good weather and thats whwen I began to get to work. I ended up spending an hour going in circles around the gallery with the light quickly fading to being really quite dark and the city lighting up. Using my tripod and remote I managed to grab plenty of long exposures over the course of the hour trying to fit in the main landmarks and roads.

New Oxford Street

It was great to experience London from a view I had never seen before and my luck with the weather and light made it so much more amazing. To see the rest of the photos from the top of Centrepoint take a look at View From Paramount / Centrepoint – A Flickr Set

I’m writing this as the left side of my jaw is finally getting it’s feeling back after having a tooth removed this afternoon. I’l spare you the gory details of the procedure and how they had to pull the tooth out in bits. but I just want to remind people that yes there are needles involved, yes there can be drilling and all sorts of tools to pull your teeth out. HOWEVER. Thats will only be the case if, like me, you haven’t really looked after your teeth.

I’ve had a phobia/fear about going to the dentist and there was a 10 year period where I didn’t go, mainly due to a bad experience at a previous Dentist. However I was lucky enough to find a good surgery and the two Dentists I’ve had there have been amazing at re-assuring me and keeping me sane whilst I’ve had work done, including root canal work and now an extraction.

Whilst I know i’m to blame for the damage i’ve done so far to my teeth and that they will never be perfect, basically what I’m saying is, Dentists aren’t all that bad, get yourself a bit of trust in a professional and get regular appointments other wise you’ll end up with a big hole in you gum and a list of things you can’t do for ages:

No Alcohol
No Smoking
No really hot food or drinks
No really cold food or drinks
No hard food etc etc

London – Pubs & Bars – Pubs

The Torriano is a superb pub tucked away a short-ish walk from Kentish Town station. The Landlord and Landlady are very welcoming to all and as an independent pub it’s not full of gastro-pub decor and all that nonsense it’s a good honest boozer open to all, you’ll see families with their kids mixing it up with musicians, media folk, builders and everyone in between including the odd friendly dog.

The hidden patio area tucked downstairs out the back makes a nice ares to relax in when the sun is blaring especially when the bbq comes out, and in the winter the comfy sofas make it a good cosy spot to hang out in especially on sundays with the papers.

The Torriano offers the usual range of beers and a good selection of wines. It also offers free wi-fi should you need to check your email.

I’ve been quite a few times there now, for the quiz night a couple of times as well as for parties in the recently refurbished basement which looks like you are in a dive bar with hanging curtains and blood red walls. They also put on regular events including gigs.

The pub has been under threat from property developers but an appeal with the council seems to have been successful in keeping the pub going.
Check out my review of Torriano – I am rawedge – on Qype

As prevously mentined I took part in the photography project Someone Once Told Me which I think is a great idea, whilst at the party where I had my photo taken several of my friends also agreed to take part including my old university friend and former flatmate Al. I’m pleased to say I think the photo of him came out well which you can see here

Al on Someone Once Told Me

I also had the pleasure of meeting Mario again last night as folloing on from my picture another friend signed up to take part and had his picture taken, being a notably shy person when it comes to haveing his photo taken he was quite leased with the results which should hopefully be up on the site in the next few weeks

Has someone once told you something that has stuck with you for a very long time, something of importance that has reflected the way you’ve lived your life, or something simple and fun that it just hangs around in your head. Getting these words out is the premise behind the wonderful photography project Someone Once Told Me.

I’ve been lucky enough to meet Mario who runs the site and had my picture taken for the project whilst out on a mutual friends birthday celebrations, I was more than happy to take part and I wasn’t the first to indulge in the project that evening and helped Mario rope in a few more participants.

The basis of the site is very simple:

“Black and white photographs
A new one every day
Each person writes a message
Of something that someone once told them”

For mine I used a quote from a friend that I had received a couple of months earlier in a birthday card from them. The quote just stuck in my head when I read it and when I found out about this project I knew exactly from the start what I wanted to write. It was also timed nicely as the birthday celebrations I was at when the photograph was taken was for the person who wrote me the quote in the first place.

You can see my quote and my slightly dramatic pose over at the Someone Once Told Me websites archive

My quote on Someone Once Told Me

I think this is great project and as well as an interesting photography project I think it is a great insight into peoples minds and how things people say can influence us.

Last week I had the lucky pleasure of being able to work on a music video. I got a call from a friend who would be directing the video and asked if I could come along and shoot stills, this was the first time I’ve had the opportunity to work on anything like this and I jumped at the chance.

Exit Calm video shoot

After meeting the other people on the shoot en-route to the location we arrived and began setting up. I duly helped out where I could, moving furniture and holding things whilst the Director and irector of Photography sorted out finer details and the lighting. Part of the setup including mounting a dvd player, projector and speakers onto the camera rig, after a bit of tooing and froing we were ready to go.

Camera rig at the Exit Calm video shoot

The band arrived and we made our introductions before lunch arrived and we all took a break. Once the food was wolfed down Annette got to grips with the make-up for the band. I would like to point out for fear of a beating from the band that they didn’t have much make-up.

And so the real work began, working to a recording of the upcoming single and pre recorded visuals we began the shoot, projecting film across the band and capturing their performance. Things went pretty smootly and the takes went quickly, I snuck round the camera and crawled across the floor, i knelt, I ducked, I got pulled out of the way and by the end of the shoot my legs were aching. I had taken over a thousand photos in that time.

For the few hours we worked together I felt drawn to the band, they had a brotherly spirit between them, they were a family. During the post shoot drinks this tie between them was evident in the recalling of stories from the road and how they met. When I met up with them at their gig at the Barfly in Camden this weekend I saw this bond on stage.

I’ve managed to get the number of shots down to around 300 however I’ve uploaded a few already as a sneak peak for any Exit Calm fans that might stumble across this blog

Exit Calm - Video shoot for next single

The rest of the photos can be found here:

Exit Calm – We’re On Our Own – Behind the scenes on the video shoot

I’ll be updating the set with more photos as I process them.

I’m a Shane Meadows newbie, I’d not seen This is England or Dead Mans Shoes so didn’t have any expectations of the film. I knew the basic premiss in advance from the trailers and knew of the Eurostar affiliation but that was it.

The film shows the growing friendship of two young out of town boys bought together through odd circumstances in the Somers Town area of London.

Beautifully filmed in black and white the story of Tommo and Marek flips from farce to farce via affection for a particular female and the gritty London some of us love and hate. With Tommo crashing at Mareks without the knowledge of the laters father and the boys earning cash from a neighbour their friendship expands as the boys get to know each other. Shane Meadows does extremely well to show how differing personalities and cultures form part of the heart of not just friendships, relationships and parental love but the places around us.

The young actors playing the two lead roles are brilliant, the dialogue is delivered beautifully like a real conversation between teenage boys and not an overly scripted attempt to make people think that it is what kids talk like that seems to be in mainstream media

Despite a slightly sentimental ending that doesn’t really take away anything from the film this is definitely worth a watch

rating: 4 stars