Follow Friday - Or - Lots Of Twitter Love

Follow Friday - Or - Lots Of Twitter Love

Okay! As I said in my last post, it's time to give credit where credit is due! If you're on Twitter, then you should be following these people. They epitomise wonderfulness! If you're not on Twitter, well, this list should tell you that you're missing out on a lot!

#FF

@ImmortalRStar - It's scary how well I know this guy. Some might think we were the same person!

@amandarecker - Amazing photographer. Amazing person. Amazing friend. Stalking her is a must!

@LaurenIntegra - Because she's all sorts of pleasant wonderfulness and one hell of a model!

@kittiwakekate - Tis' Kate. The very first victim of my tattoo project and many many other times shooting her in the facepalms! Seriously, the world just wouldn't be complete without her!

@tamaramarie89 - The multi-talented, hugely versatile and utterly lovely Tamara-Marie. Model, Stylist, Photographer! She rox0rs!

@raychelperks – Creative Genius. Amazing friend, cohort, mentor, co conspirator!


@piratephoto - After meeting her in person, I can certainly say she's as lovely as she comes across! Fabulous photographer! Do not miss! Ever!

@violaceouslatex - This brand new latex designer is utterly amazing! I've already had the pleasure of collaborating with her several times and can only hope there's much more to come! This woman is going places!

@tattoo_23 – He’s the one the only! Joyously insane!

@HeleneAtsuko - I had the pleasure of working witht his incredible model for the first time the other week! Incredibly lovely and extremely talented!

@BlackLotu5 – Amazing alternative model with whom I can only hope the future allows for many more collaborations! She also single-handedly keeps several tea plantations in business!

@Panda_Face - The Brain to my Pinky. We will take over the world one day! But in the meantime, alt model and photographer goodness not to be missed!

@Rudigo - Because she’s awesome and lovely and prettyful and nice!

@Misscobweb - Another amazing model! Definitely one of the best around!


@misslilystark - Had the pleasure of working with her for my tattoo project recently! Great poser, lovely person! :D

@Cottonarts – Great friend, brilliant designer, genius artist and an immensely talented photographer!

@ASYLUMseventy7 -  No one person should be allowed this much creative genius! 

@zivity – Zivity = blissful interwebs. What, you’re not a member yet? For shame. For shame.

@nicesmilesir- Nice Smile Sir is a 365 project that I'm currently taking part in.

@thejeangenie10  - A charity event with a difference! Get creative and revamp/recycle/mutilate an old pair of jeans for charity and possibly win a prize! What could be more fun?!

Of course, if you're not following me, please do!! @macjw2

There it is for now. I'm utterly positive it's not complete, but the beauty is, this will be an evolving process. This list is certain to grow over time and I'll likely be expanding on why these wonderful persons should have a place in your "follow" list

Follow Friday Chaos - What to Do?

Follow Friday - Or - Lots of Twitter Love

The Problem!

For those of you who use Twitter (that should be everyone) you all to well know the concept of "Follow Friday".  In it's bare simplicity, it is nothing more than a tool to recommend other Twitter users you "follow" to your "followers". It's a brilliant concept and as such, it has been a mainstay of the networking site on every Friday since it's inception.

Now, everything isn't without complication. There's one huge problem with "Follow Friday". It's messy. Every Friday, hundreds if not thousands of random screen names come flying through my feed. It's difficult, if not impossible, to separate the wheat from the chaff.

I also don't like putting random names out there without any inclination as to why I recommend whom I do. That means, when I have the time or remember to do my #FF recommendations, I'm suddenly quick-firing 20-30 tweets into the Twitterverse. That, of course, doesn't help the chaos either. As I hinted, that is also time consuming, which means often I forget and that's no good either. It's hard to give credit where credit is due when you're not actually giving the credit.

The Solution

I've noticed a few small trends recently of different ways people are trying to clean up the "system". To me, this one, in all it's simplicity and brevity, makes the most sense. Quite basically, I'm going to put all my "Follow Friday" recommendations into the next post on this blog. I'll then tweet that every Friday, once in the morning or afternoon for the UK crowd and once in the evening for the US crowd. I'll update it everytime I have new recommendations and most of all, my favouritest of Twitterers will never be forgotten!

I do hope this works the way I see it in my head! Anyways, off to go make my recommendations! 

It Feels Like Starting Again

It Feels Like Starting Again

Though starting over isn't quite what I'm doing. For a long while now I've been considering ways of separating my alternative work from my more mainstream work. Obviously these two don't exactly go together like peas and carrots and even the most die hard of the non-rocket scientists out there can confirm that mixing two such genres can turn people off.

At first this wasn't an issue, but in recent months with a bit of press coverage and a huge increase in web traffic, such naysayers have started to become a bit vocal. Add to that, I refuse to put and NSFW content on my main site, a lot of my work has just not been shared.

The main reason why I haven't acted on anything yet is simply because I've had a serious block for the past year and a half coming up with a pseudonym to group it all under. I could have gone for some obscure fantasy references with some dark, huge words that would require a scholar to decipher, let alone spell correctly. Obviously, that wouldn't do at all and I needed something, catchy, kitschy, simple and memorable. Not an easy task I tell you. Not an easy task.

The other week, Raychel of Raynbow Studio approached me with the concept of marketing material focusing around the word "immortalised". It was love at first incantation! However, that didn't solve the pseudonym problem. 

Transfer back to two nights ago and I really began to get desperate. With some of the proposals I've had for work, including Zivity, I really needed to move this stuff away from "John McIntire Photography" so I frantically started churning random words out. Eventually, I uttered something I really liked. A quick google check told me I shouldn't though. Though there were no photography related results, there were a lot of music entities and a fashion designer using very similar monikers. No good.

Then, something slightly miraculous happened when I woke up the next day. Raychel's "Immortalised" popped back into my head and the concept of kitschy and catchy with it. 

Epiphany!

After two hours and several hardcore Google searches it became apparent enough that after so long, my revelatory moment had given birth to my new pseudonym for my Alternative Fashion and Glamour work!

So, with a quick visit to my web-hosting platform, I quickly secured the domain, threw up a splash page and with that, we have the birth of:

Immortal Rockstar: Alternative Imagery

Check out the teaser page here: 

Personally, I love it. A bit cliche, yet catchy and kitschy and it should easily stick in a few minds!

Now I have the enormous task of building a brand around it. Not the least daunting of tasks, but it should be fun and it is quite an exciting prospect. It does kind of feel like starting over, but it's bringing back all the nervous thrills that starting out brought up in the first place and I will tell you, the blood is flowing and I feel more excited and creative than ever!

T-Shirted Merl

T-Shirted Merl

Apart from piecing together a fabulous outfit that merged Victorian, steampunk and geisha styles, for our last shoot Merl brought along a selection of T-Shirts from "Cute Culture"! 

The concept we came up with couldn't be simpler. A clean white background and some cute, quaint poses to match the wardrobe! Add her blue wig (her hair was green) and there we had it. She even managed a few smiles to top it all off! Simple but effective! 

As always, thanks for reading!

A Small Tearsheet

A Small Tearsheet

There won't be many words in this post. There doesn't need to be.  All I can say really, is that I have been waiting for the this tearsheet for a while. I can only hope it's the start of a fair few from this particular project!

Without further ado:

Click For Bigger

Just in case the article isn't as self-explanatory as I think (of course I am overly familiar with the situation): This is the first piece of publicity about an exhibition of Vivienne Westwood shoes at the Barnsley Civic beginning in May! 

I am far too excited myself!

Shifting Focus

Shifting Focus

 

I started this blog, last year, as I was beginning my foray into turning photography in to my full-time profession. The idea was that I was going to post about the trial and tribulations, the successes and the failures I had along the way. To in some way, pass on information and lessons that I learned in the process. I would still love to be able to do this, but I learned one very valuable lesson along the way.

There are no instant lessons. The learning process for each and every piece of information doesn't happen overnight and as expected, there have been more failures and setbacks than successes. The lack of posts along the vein of running a photography business is simple due to that. Whilst I have learned an extraordinary amount, I cannot pass on what I've learned with the risk that it is mostly unproven and potentially dangerous to whomever might read it. That would just be plain irresponsible and quite the antithesis of the ideals of sharing.

Because I do want to maintain this blog and I don't want to inadvertantly sabotage someone elses career choices and therefore their life in even the smallest of ways, I will be shifting focus of this blog a bit. Instead of trying to write about the runnings of a photography business, which I am unqualified to do, I am going to return to the much simpler format of writing about photography. My photography, the photography of those around me that I admire and respect, the goings on behind the images and occasionally, I might still be able to brush on the topic of photography as a business.

So in the coming weeks, I will be sharing with you some of the fabulous times I've had over the past several moths and I will also be sharing with you the people that I admire, the friends I have made and the one's to look out for as they, like myself, set out on their quest to conquer the world!

As these changes are taking place, I've changed the title of the blog and I have also changed the URL. Please, make sure you update any bookmarks or feed readers to ensure you still recieve your subscriptions! The new address is http://johnmcintirephotography.blogspot.com/

The goal of this change is to enable me to provide interesting content on regular basis, so I do hope you'll be sure to keep an eye out for my posts as they start rolling out very soon!