New Podcast

In August 2024, I spoke to Savannah Dodd about collaborations and sustainability. You can listen to our podcast on the Photography Ethics Centre podcast.

On Leaning Into Collaboration

Exhibition

Lumen Studios will be presenting astronomy themed projections at St Georges Church, Ramsgate from 5-8pm on Sunday 24th November 2024.

Confirmed Artists 

Melanie King
Louise Beer & John Hooper
Rebecca Huxley
Johnny Goddard
Kristian Baughurst (Visual Subversion)
Jude Greenaway

Find out more on the Lumen Studios website, more information coming soon.

Presentations

Myself and Dr Claudia Mignone (INAF - Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica, Rome) will be presenting our collaborative research project - In Praise Of Raw Data at the 6th Shaw-IAU Workshop on Astronomy for Education conference, organised by the International Astronomical Union.

In this project, we are looking at the construction of astronomical images and finding out more about artefacts that are removed from astronomical images. Astronomical images are highly mediated, for example - colours are added to represent chemicals present in a galaxy or nebula. In this project we are looking at raw images from the James Webb Telescope, and have been speaking to Alyssa Pagan and Joseph Depasquale at NASA to learn more about their image editing processes. We also spoke to Mark McCaughrean (Former Senior Advisor for Science & Exploration at the European Space Agency) about his work with astronomical imaging.

This project comprises of several colour printing processes and sustainable printing techniques, which mimic the digital imaging processing techniques. It draws attention to the artefacts resulting from astronomical telescopes and from the printing processes themselves.

This project comes out of my PhD research “Ancient Light: Rematerialising The Astronomical Image”. This project is currently supported with research funding from Canterbury Christ Church University, and previous works have been commissioned by the Waterman’s Art Centre and Central Saint Martins.

Enter The Equinox

In September, super/collider (myself and artist Louise Beer) led a moon gazing and microscope polaroid workshop with In Situ Pendle at Harwes Farm, Colne. This workshop has been featured on the Corridor 8 Blog by Sam Pickett. 

Here’s are some excerpts from the text;

‘On my arrival at Harwes Farm I was met by a blast of fresh air and uninterrupted views of the open moors”

…”Just as our wildlife cannot thrive in an overly cultivated landscape, similarly our sense of wonder withers when confined to an overly rationalistic, hyper-technological way of life separated from the rural” 

Visit to the Institute Of Astronomy, Cambridge.

Last week I visited the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge and had a tour from Dr Robin Catchpole. I was particularly interested in Robins analogue spectrographs, and his spectrograph set up. My PhD was focused on analogue astronomical images, and I was not able to spend much time on spectrographs due to the focus of my research. However, I intend to look further into spectroscopy and think about possible creative collaborations using the observatory equipment.

You can see more images from the visit on my Patreon page.

 Support Me

- Patreon  (£10 Subscription includes: Monthly postcard and regular tutorials and videos.)
- Ko-Fi

This month I am offering this postcard of my UCLO Moon Photograph produced in 2017. I re-scanned this image for an upcoming exhibition and decided to keep the sprocket holes in the image.

The postcards are produced on recycled paper stock. All proceeds from Patreon from November 2024 to January 2025 will go towards my upcoming residency at Mawddach in Wales, where I plan to further my research into sustainable photographic processes.