MONEY FOR YOUR MONEY PLEASE

Is it me or is having to pay to withdraw your own money like the cheekiest thing you've ever heard? Well it's the cheekiest thing i've ever heard; and it's becoming a more and more common pain in my wallet. The first time i saw one of these cash machines warn of a withdrawal charge the pain and anger almost flipped me out. I had become a fully fledged member of the 'this country is going to the dogs' brigade. Whilst these machines were quite uncommon in charging for their supposed service of convenience, i just knew we would see more and more of them being introduced. Unfortunately i was right, and now, in the 'poor student' area of Shelton where i live there are 5 'rip off' machines to 1 'free' to withdraw machine. This 'free' machine is situated on Staffordshire university campus, and as you can see from the pictures below it is often 'out of order' presumably due to access use. To wrap this shambolic situation up you can expect to be charged £1.50 - £1.85 for the privilege of your own money and if like me you normally take out a tenner that's a minimum of 15% charge on your money. For this reason, when i have to use these demonic machines i instead withdraw £3o-£40 to shorten the service charge to the lowest percentage possible. This is bad for me as in the morning not only do i have to carry around a banging headache but also the knowledge and guilt of spending £40 on a night out i would usually only spend a tenner, because let's face it, in today's world you aint bringing home change regardless of how much you go out with.

His name is Rio but he don't care

After having a week of seemingly endless bad luck i took to my cousins house in preparation to finally shooting my local story brief tomorrow. After being let down time again i'm going to shoot Hanley Town F.C Saturday afternoon as The Sentinel cover lot's of local sport especially football and Hanley Town seem to get more exposure than most. This will help me as it will be good to show in my research just how the Sentinel report on local sport and hopefully how i have tried to emulate local sports stories. These shots are of my cousin Gema, her boyfriend Gav and their cat Rio.

A vs S

These photograph's show how with different aperture settings (f-stop's) and different points of focus, different shots can be produced. The f-stop number or aperture relates to how open the camera's aperture is set too. The higher the f-stop number the smaller the aperture will be in the camera and vice versa. With an open aperture (small f-stop) the depth of field becomes 'shallow' and as seen in the above photo and those below the point of focus remains sharp but detail front and back of the focus becomes blurry. Higher f-stops (smaller aperture) 'deepens' the depth of field and more detail within the frame becomes sharp. Sports photographers use wide apertures (small f-stops) and fast shutter speeds to achieve crisp in-focus shots. Wide apertures also help in low light situations as more light is being allowed into the camera.

THE CITY AT NIGHT

I've always been interested in life after dark. I find it very strange how everybody goes about their day to day life working, studying or whatever people do. What's interesting is that we tend to do these daily activities on our own; even at work or in a library studying there maybe lots of our peers present but we still work, within our minds; alone.

When darkness hits we become socialites. We go to restaurants, to shows perhaps, then we may go to a pub and wind up in a club. Some may be intoxicated others may not, but we share our time collectively, we laugh and joke and dance (not me) and have fun together.

What i enjoy most about the dark is the places people don't go, lakes and canals and bridges and parks and quiet streets and empty roads. I find it kind of special when these quiet and natural places can co exist with the commercial and concrete towns we are used to. I used this brief as an opportunity to see just how closely my two subject matter could indeed co exist. The pictures above are of a student night out taken around 2 a.m wednesday 4th November '09. The intimacy of the shots amplifies the notion of social togetherness the city brings after dark. The pictures below were taken not even 400 meters away from the venue of the above pictures, taken 2 a.m wednesday 11th November '09. Although the shots were hard to grab with poor light and long exposure times, i always feel so at home at how peaceful and beautiful nature looks at night, even tho chaos is kicking of only two stones throws away.

Stoke Angling for Everyone

or 'SAFE' as it is more commonly known as, is an organisation set up to bring fishing into the community. The study came to my attention when i called the council, believing that the lake within Hanley park was their responsibility, however i was directed to 'SAFE'. Having spoke to project co-ordinator Desiree Elliot, it's clear that 'SAFE's ambitions are not only to get youngsters fishing but to demonstrate the social, healthy and economic values that fishing brings into the community. 'SAFE' have introduced 15 coaching pegs and have notably developed pegs that are safe for disabled anglers (pic below). It is worth stating that 'SAFE' do have first choice on these pegs in particular; Desiree wanted it known that they are free to the public when not in use by 'SAFE'. They also work to improve the wildlife in Hanley park, planting lilies in the smaller pond; hoping to bring dragonflies and butterflies, and have also installed bird boxes within the wildlife area of the park. They have also recently taken responsibility of the stretch of canal running through the park with the intention again of improving the awareness of angling to the community, and i for one think that it's just terrific.