The above photograph has now been place in to the Crowded Gallery.  It is from Normandy, and shows a little girl playing in the window of a French chateau.

….as opposed to ‘leaving Las Vegas’.  This was taken the actual moment I entered Vegas - a strange and ridiculously hot venue for a town.  Nevertheless, a great place to go, even just to see the diversity of people.  This was one of the first places I visited on a road trip a few years back - eventually finishing in San Francisco.

The trip was made up of commercial commissions and ‘my photography’, and I remember getting literally thousands of transparencies back from the lab.  I guess I have the same problem now with digital photos.

This image is in the Crowded Gallery.

The last week or so has been spent photographing in Normandy - everything from the streets of small rural villages, to emotional visits at the American War Memorial there.  As yet, the photos are unsorted, but I will upload some shortly.

Sometimes a print just doesn’t make it to the Crowded Gallery, no matter how much I like it.  Sometimes, I just like a print because I liked being there at that point in time.  Irrespective of what the final image comes out like, I will always like it.  That is the case with this photograph.

I guess I liked it because it was taken on my thirtieth birthday a few years back (ok, 6 years ago).  I had been on a short visit of about four days, and had just spent the morning of my 30th getting lost in the back streets of the capital, Vilnius.  I stopped off at a cafe (mainly serving either coffee or vodka) and took this photo of a woman deep in prayer.  It literally was taken by candle light using a rangefinder camera - and the final print is very grainy.

 A few years ago I had a commission to photograph Las Vegas from the air for Virgin.  Usually I am terrified of flying in planes and helicopters, but Virgin actually operated a blimp (maybe still do) that flew at dusk over the city, and the main strip (I might post a photo soon).

For photography, the blimp was great, it moved very slowly, allowing me to get night shots while hand holding the camera.  Anyway, the day after the commission I took a trip out to the Grand Canyon, where I took this photo at sunset.

This photo can be purchased from the Crowded Gallery.

It is my birthday tomorrow and I’ll be working, to liven the day up I am going to do a free print competition.

The person who either emails (craig[at]craigholmes.com) or leaves a comment on the blog with the nearest time to my ‘birth time’ will get a free 12×8″ print of their choosing from the Crowded Gallery. 

So, if you think I was born at 3.30pm - just send me an email or comment saying so, along with the name of your preferred print - I don’t need the actual email to arrive at 3.30pm by the way….

Answers tomorrow night….closing time is 6pm….I hope nobody wins from Afghanistan, postage to there will be extortionate.

UPDATE:

Family members are barred.

UPDATED UPDATE:

Thanks to everyone who entered.  It was 9.10am…the winner is a Mr Bounds of Birmingham who had the closest time and gets Winter Walk.

The Crowded Gallery has undergone a few changes in the last few days.  The main change being a reduction in prices, which came about due to a decision not to supply mounts with the photographs any more.

The mounts made the photographs more expensive, in that the packaging became a huge concern.  A lot of people were asking for the photos without mounts, as they had their own framing arranged, or simply didn’t want one.

Out of that decision comes a reduction in costs for me. So, it is only fair to pass that on.  Hence, the prices of the photographs have reduced to the following:

12 x 8″ inch (approx A4 size) is now £30 + postage (approx US $60)

16x 12″ inch (approx A3 size) is now £45 + postage (approx US $90)

22 x 17″ inch (approx A2 size) is now £65 + postage (approx US $130)

Postage costs will vary depending on where you are in the World.  Prints are still limited to editions of 50, signed, and posted within five days.

Go on…you know you need one for a birthday present…..

I was approached by a college today to help out on their lecturing course.  I would have loved to help out, but I just don’t have the time at the moment for a long term commitment.  Saying that, I did say I would do ‘one off’ talks with the students.  Now I am wondering what I could tell the students that would really help them….how honest should I be when a student asks me to review their portfolio?…. we’ll see I guess.

Here is a PDF of the City Living Fashion Spread from March 2008, that I took a short while ago.

The past few months have seen more and more enquiries for stock photography from the Russian Federation.  This week alone has included the subjects of Essaoira for a travel magazine, and London, for a newspaper.

Apart from having to negotiate ‘VAT’ with Customs & Excise (apparently, there is no VAT to be paid when sending digital images abroad - just in case you were wondering), supplying images abroad and being paid online is a whole new market, which every photographer should try and work with.  There seems to be a definite trend for picture buyers to source images from small ’boutique stock agencies’ and less so from the ’supermarket agencies’.  Saying that, I’m also going to stick with the large agencies for a while.