Urban Village:

I decided to make some personal life changes and took the opportunity to enrol at Hereford College of Arts as a part time photography student. As a mature student completing my first year of study I can honestly say it has been a lot of fun exploring the great artists who forged the path to where we are today. Their work opened up so many doors for us to be as expressive as we want through our art. So a big thanks to Alex and the rest of the team for their guidance through it all.

I have been taking photographs off and on as a hobby photographer since my children were young and Minolta were bringing out the first autofocus slr. I stayed with Minolta up to when they produced their DSLR the 6 mb Dynax 7d. I actually loved that camera but they had faulty diodes in so the thing stopped focussing every 6 months and needed a repair. Embarrassingly I actually still have the camera and get it out to play with the dials every now and again. I should get it fixed again just for the hell of it!!

So to the images I have submitted… I stumbled across a small industrial unit complex in Birmingham and was immediately struck by the range of blues used to paint the units. The complex was empty of cars and people due to COVID-19. Taking advantage of that and the open gate! I was able to take several shots using colour, shadows and angles to compose my pictures. I really liked this set of images for the strong colour and contrast. I particularly like the image of the blue door with the red square and the the plant is a ‘Herb Robert named after Pope Robert’, sneaking its way into the shot. Blue, Red and Yellow are primary colours so it seemed to work really well together.