News Updates

Redbubble Store hits 300 images

By |2020-10-11T12:11:03+01:00October 12th, 2020|Categories: News|Tags: , , , , , , |

In late September the Richard Flint Photography Redbubble page passed a small, but significant milestone with over 300 images – from Norfolk, Edinburgh, Glencoe, Islay, North Wales and many more – now available to buy as wall art, clothing, phone cases etc via the online shop.

This year has been a tough one, for obvious reasons. The COVID pandemic has strayed into all aspects of our lives in ways that we’d have thought unthinkable until recently. With restrictions in place, the opportunities to gather new images for Redbubble etc have been rather thin on the ground so to pass the 300 mark shows a least a little progress. It’s definitely been a year for safely getting whatever small victories you can.

A week-long trip up to the Highlands of Scotland in September managed to gather some images to further boost the Redbubble submissions for this year. A new Ben Nevis collection of images has been started on the store containing images from a climb to the summit made on September 17th 2020. Definitely my high point :) in an otherwise unpleasant year. More images will be added to the collection over the coming weeks.

The Richard Flint Photography Redbubble Store can be visited at https://www.redbubble.com/people/richflintphoto/shop

Family History Archive Website

By |2020-08-09T12:04:39+01:00August 9th, 2020|Categories: News|Tags: , , , , , , |

Family history research has become very popular in recent years, encouraged by a wide variety of ancestry research websites available online and TV shows such as the BBC’s popular series Who Do You Think You Are?

Recently I was asked to build a website that could serve as an extensive online family history archive for the Dudziński family. The completed website launched recently and contains detailed family histories, documents archive, photographs and even a collection of favourite family recipes. Sensitive information such as contact details, birthdays etc has been hidden behind secure password protection on specific pages. A PDF viewer has been used to provide an easy way to view the family tree document with an option to download the file if required.

The Dudziński Family Website can be found at https://www.dudzinskifamily.org/

More details about the website design service can be found at https://www.richardflintphoto.com/website-design/

Holding on to History

By |2020-06-04T11:32:07+01:00June 4th, 2020|Categories: News|Tags: , , , |

Over the years many fantastic family photographs have been copied using the photograph copying service. The value is, of course, priceless to the family. It’s a historical document that helps connect to to the past and to understand where we come from. It can often be the case that the photograph is the only visual record of an individual or group of people. Families, servicemen and even the occasional villain have been through the scanner and digital archived.

Documenting Family

Sadly though there is a tendency to disregard family history as not that important. David Bailey in his foreword to Linda McCartney’s 1992 book ‘Sixties: Portrait of an era‘ mentioned that he told Linda to take fewer photographs of her family, including Paul MacCartney, and concentrate on other subjects. Bailey wrote on to say ‘I think I was wrong. The more pictures I take of my family confirms this’. Over the last decade, I’ve also come to realise the hugely important value of family photographs as grandparents, aunts, uncles and my mother passed away. The significance and importance of those family photographs change as soon as the person dies.

Even more important are the old images. Vintage images are part of our social and family history that are valuable visual documentation that we tend to take for granted. The photographs are in that old box full of old photographs and always have been, that is until the years start to take there toll. Many images though can reach very old age and remain in as good condition as the day they were printed. I recently came across an image that was nearly a hundred years old but was still in great condition.

The 20×16 photograph was taken in 1925 and beautifully colour hand-tinted to create a pseudocolour image. In the years before colour photography became mainstream, it was a popular technique used on various types of images from portraits to landscape postcards.

Keeping the History

Often the task of copying a photograph includes removing the damage that can mount up over a long history. With the 20×16 image, the main photograph was in excellent condition. What had taken the brunt of the wear and tear was the mount that was still firmly in place. I was never going to be able to separate the photograph from the mount so decided that I could offer the client two choices – a cleaned up mount via Photoshop OR keep the wear and tear as part of the character of the whole image. Fortunately the client like the idea of keeping the copy as near to the original as possible.

Details regarding the photograph copying service can be found at https://www.richardflintphoto.com/photography-services/photograph-copying/

The Glencoe Path

By |2020-05-04T16:21:59+01:00May 4th, 2020|Categories: Blog, The Test Strip Photoblog|Tags: , , , , , , |

looking down Glencoe, Highlands of Scotland
Glencoe, 2015

The importance of staying at home is critical during this COVID-19 situation. You can’t help but think that mother nature has got a slightly cruel sense of humour though. Often Spring in the UK can be cold, wet and rather horrible, but at a time when we all have to stay in, it has so far been wonderfully bright and warm. So be it. Maybe the bright days are better than grey depressing ones during this pandemic. The outdoors can come to me,

Recent events have given me a little time to have a think about my favourite locations and the photographs produced during visits over the past few years. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting some of my favourite landscape images. I’ll delve into the roots of the photograph, how it was taken and the why the location appealed so much.

The Planned Picture

The A82 curves through Glencoe, Highlands of Scotland
Glencoe photographed in 2014

I start with my 2015 photograph of Glencoe, a landscape image that I’d wanted to make for a long time. Driving along the A82, that runs through Glencoe in the Highlands of Scotland for the first time in 2012, the scenery quite literally blew me away. It’s probably one of the best roads to drive in the UK and the mountain scenery is just stunning.

I really needed a good location for the photograph and some decent weather. Finding the place to shoot the image was relatively easy to find. I eventually came across the location by accident while stretching my legs after a long drive. The weather was always going to be the deciding factor.

Watching the patches of light and darkness quickly dancing across the mountains as the shadows from clouds wept over the mountain tops was just magical. Almost spiritual. I felt at home amongst those mountains. All I needed to do was to do some justice to the landscape with a camera.

Mention Glencoe and the story of the massacre soon comes into the conversation. Over the years the story of billeted British troops killing their hosts the MacDonalds in 1692 have equally horrified and fascinated people. History and myth can, however, become entwined so tightly that fact and fiction start to blur. Part of the fun of reading Scottish history is trying to untangle the actual history from myth. Glencoe continues to feed the imagination of visitors and the massacre just adds to the atmosphere.

An excellent overview of the events can be found via the BBC’s ‘In Our Time’ podcast from 2010 where the massacre was discussed in some detail by a panel of historians. The podcast can be downloaded at https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00pxrr7

Along the Path

The path seen in the photograph heads up the side of the mountain and is a route I’d like to explore further in future. I liked the idea of having some depth to the image and the pathway was perfect. The viewer feels like they are on the path, walking the route. It also guides the viewer through the picture.

The path is located not far from the main Glencoe ‘viewpoint’ car park but doesn’t seem to attract the anywhere near the numbers of people you’d expect. The reason may be the walk involved rather than getting the easy view from a car. In previous years the visit to Glencoe was just a brief rest stop on the way to Skye so my time was limited as I needed to carry on driving for a further two or three hours.

In 2015 I was staying just down the road for a night in an effort to break the journey up to Skye. I’d found that driving the whole distance up to Skye from Newcastle was perfectly doable but you ended up being worn out for the first couple of days after arrival. An overnight stay along the route made all the difference!

A Gap in the Clouds

The weather was always going to be a factor for getting the photograph. Ironically the day the image was taken the weather on the journey up through the highlands was very wet and dull. The chance to photograph Glencoe looked highly unlikely. However, while crossing Rannoch Moor things initially looked bleak but then started to brighten upl. A gap in the clouds suddenly appeared, the rain stopped and by the time the car had reached the parking place the day was significantly brighter.

iPhone cover available from RedBubble

The picture didn’t need blue skies and fluffy clouds, in fact, I prefer the more dramatic sweep of clouds. There is still a threat of rain in those clouds. A hint of menace. Maybe some of that Glencoe appeal comes from the sense of menace in the landscape. The massacre history just adds an extra layer to that dramatic landscape. There is also an impression that not much has changed in the landscape as the years have gone by. The place is almost timeless – once you get away from the road. Sometimes you do expect to see a party of Redcoats come along the mountain path pursuing MacDonalds through the Glen.

The Glencoe Print

There have been two versions of the print. The current version is a brighter image with better colour saturation than the first print. While the first print did look great, I came to realise that the image was too subdued. It was also too dark in tone. The lush green landscape of Glencoe was being stifled.

One surprising success for the photo is as a phone case. Many people seem to love the depth to the image and the central area of the photograph fitting in neatly on the back of an iPhone or Android phone case. For phone and iPad cases and 63 other Glencoe items including t-shirts, mugs, postcards, throw pillows and framed prints CLICK HERE

Check out the RedBubble store for more prints and items at https://www.redbubble.com/people/richflintphoto/shop

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