City of Lancaster Gymnastics & Trampolining Club receive cheque

Mr. Barrie Wells of Wells Sports Foundation presents club choreographer and coach, Ms. Melissa Gardner, with a cheque for £2,000. The club, until now known as SmartAc, will become The City of Lancaster Gymnastics & Trampolining Club from September. EWM Photography was delighted to capture the moment when financial sponsorship was symbolically enacted!

Summer Light, Lancaster

Went looking for an image today as the light was so good. Didn't imagine I'd capture such an interesting light.

Lancastrians transformed into blog headers

Don't know if you remember Nygel Harrot and friends from a previous post on this blog?  For me, there is something compelling about unsmiling people staring directly at you. It's why I've used this image of them as the header for the new ewm blog.

Incidentally, building that ewm blog yesterday has opened the way for me to resurrect the original purpose of this one. Lancaster images will return to Lancaster Today tomorrow or the day after. "Lancaster today tomorrow or the day after." Hmm... I like that. If only Nygel would stop staring at me, I could it enjoy it more.

p.s. critiques of that new blog are welcomed. Although this blog is sloppy and spontaneous by nature, ultimately that one needs to be more considered.

Football Photography

There is an art to football photography, and an art to playing football. Anticipating action before it happens: is this the art shared by footballer and football photographer..?

An impression of Jon Culshaw

I did get a chance to share a few words with Mr C at the very end of the evening as he slipped out ahead of other guests. A gentle soul, polite and respectful. Just wish I'd had more than 90 seconds to capture that. 

Lancashire black tie photography

I had the great pleasure of photographing guests at a charity dinner on Saturday evening, at the University of Central Lancashire's inaugural Harris Bursary Ball. Hard work made easy when you meet so many varied and interesting Lancastrians in one evening.

Having set up the background and lights, my first task was to capture two or three shots of each person / couple / group as they arrived. With only a couple of minutes to spend with each of them, I was humbled by their collective good-naturedness, and pleasantly surprised at how much personality can be captured through the eye of a fast lens.

It's hard to choose one image, but this young couple appeared to me thoroughly comfortable in their own skins as well as with each other; that's good enough for me! :-)

Gordon Brown: Judgement Day

May 6th 2010. The UK votes. Prime Minister Gordon Brown insists this is not a beauty contest, despite what Simon Cowell would have us believe. I'd like to believe this portrait is a sympathetic one.

Good Ship Scarecrow, Wray Village

On the Good Ship Scarecrow in Wray Village. These little men were about 3 inches tall. Great attention to detail on a wonderfully wacky remote control pirate ship.

Scarecrow from Wray Village, Lancashire

Along the picture-postcard streets of Wray village yesterday were dozens - perhaps hundreds, we lost count - of not so scary scarecrows.

No, that isn't a Labour Party candidate's rosette. It's a 1st place prize of some description. Couldn't quite work out how the results were organised as there appeared to be a few first prizes on show (more in later posts). Presumably, there were different categories, but what they were wasn't obvious. There was definitely a detective theme going on though...

Wray Village Scarecrow Festival 2010

Taken at the Wray Village Scarecrow Festival today, May 3 2010. Wray is a several miles from Lancaster, but was stuffed full of Lancastrians today.

More images from the scarecrow festival over the next few days, including some scarecrows of course, but also a portrait of Gordon Brown. It's election week, and politics is everywhere. The conservative village of Wray couldn't help but show its colours today, with several of the displays lampooning the Prime Minister. Rather disappointing if you ask me...

Lancaster DIY

Lancaster B&Q, perhaps an interesting contrast to some of Lancaster's older buildings?

Lancaster Lunatic Asylum 2

Derelict building, obsolete term. Here is the building commonly known as 'Lancaster Lunatic Asylum' since its completion in 1816.

In the background is Morecambe Bay. The town of Morecambe is Lancaster's neighbouring seaside resort (click on the photo to enlarge).

Lancaster Lunatic Asylum

Islamic school, Lancaster (The Royal Albert aka Jamea Al Kauthar)

The Royal Albert building on Ashton Road, Lancaster. This impressive structure currently houses an Islamic girls' madressah and boarding school, Jamea Al Kauthar. The school caters for 440 girls who study:

"the traditional sciences concurrently with secondary and further education, offer[ing] the 'Tahfeez Ul Quraan' programme (committing the whole quran to memory) and a two year abridged version of the Islamic Teaching programme in the English medium."

I know little about the school beyond what can be found on their website, although it's a building I'd dearly like to visit. I'll contact them and ask for a tour at some point when school is out, perhaps during the summer.

The Queen is Dead: RIP Lancaster Odeon

In a previous post I snapped a shot of the old Regal Cinema (later the Odeon) lying derelict on the main thoroughfare around Lancaster city centre.

Her Majesty has gone completely now, just a crane left standing among a few remaining pieces of rubble. A big, gaping hole in the skyline, soon to be replaced by a block of luxury apartments - or so we've been told.

I managed to capture this last section of the old gal left standing on a dark January evening (24/01/10), the light thrown by my flash and accompanied by more spilling out from the Weatherspoons pub next door. Not sure whether the wreckers ran out of time at the end of the day or if they deliberately preserved this temporary monument. Either way, the Regal's last gasp was captured.