Summer Group Exhibitions

I've had a busy summer in 2008, Maja has had a major solo exhibition in Skopje at the cities cultural centre, one of the biggest spaces in the city. It's quite scary to see pictures that elsewhere fill a whole wall disappear into that vast space. After that she just had endless interviews, TV, radio, magazines etc, all very exciting as it always is.

Then we were both off to an art residency, once again we were lucky enough to get a joint place while my mother-in-law 'volunteered' to baby sit for the 10 days.

10 days in sunny (very sunny) Ohrid at the Ramazzoti Art Colony, a truly breathtaking location next to a huge UNESCO protected lake surrounded by limestone mountains. Where of course I was desperately trying to avoid taking all the normal range of tourist shots and achieve something a little more original. Of course I did take lots of sunsets and views over the lake, but I like to think I found a little out of the ordinary stuff as well.

The whole trip ended up with a lot of good luck. We held the normal group exhibition to display the work we had done, but then found out that the very same Cultural Centre in Skopje had had a very last minute cancellation and would be prepared to hold a joint exhibition of the residencies work! So back there again for Maja (different paintings this time) and my first time exhibiting in that space!

Ivan gets his modelling dream break

I'm happy when it all comes together Ivan is a young model I met through one of my usual routes net-model and we did a series of location shoots for his portfolio. Now on the back of that he has landed a place with the top agency in his city!

Skopje Zoo 2008

Back to the lovely Skopje Zoo, lots of changes, sadly not all good for me. Improved fencing is helping to keep the beavers out of their favourite lake with all the wild beaver having been rounded up. The new enclosure building programme is moving on with lots of new pens springin g up, which means close access to animals is just going to get harder as well as preventing them from going on their daily walks. There are still I'm happy to say lots of various herbivores escaping for short strolls around the zoos paths, long may it continue. The baby wolf is now too large to fit through the cage bars so he/she is now confined along with the adults.

The highlight of my all too brief visit, I asked if I might 'jump into' the beaver enclosure to take some better shots. In true 'can do Macedonian style' they said why not and in I jumped. Looking a bit closer at those teeth I'm not sure who was the more nervous out of us.

Macedonian Diaspora Football

There has been a running competition of a team of Macedonian footballers taking on various other European amateur teams. Held mostly in London the matches are fiercely fought by players who travel quite some distances to make it. The series ends in a competition to be played in Ohrid, Macedonia in the summer. While not the official photographer (they don't have one), it has given me an opportunity to practise my sports photography.

Maja at the National Gallery

Maja has had a animation work screened at the National Gallery, the work will remain available to view for the foreseeable future on their website and probably on YouTube.

Photography at Totton College

Well this year sees me teaching at http://www.totton.ac.uk/ as well as my usual shifts at Solent I'm looking forward to it as this will be covering a structured A level and GCSE photography course, not something I've delivered before.

Skopje Zoo 2007

I would recommend that anyone who gets the chance go and visit Skopje Zoo. Unlike a lot of more modern zoos Skopje Zoo has been trapped in a previous era with an obvious lack of modernisation. A design that would have once been considered acceptable and normal throughout the world is now considered to be tortuous and cramped. Bad news for the animals is good news for me. You can quite literally touch most of the animals, including the apes, lynx, bears and if you want to loose a finger, the tigers too.

There are some uniquely strange elements as well. Certain animals can and do escape. Various herbivores simply jump over or under their fences and go parading around. A baby wolf simply squeezed through it's bars and did likewise. It's quite a sight to see a baby wolf trotting across your path.