A series from a few months after I got back from being stranded in India and several weeks before I ended up in hospital for five weeks....shot over two days, mostly on Romney and Gibbets Marshes, which surround the town of Rye in East Sussex UK.
Adam Regan Photography
Demented ramblings of a photographer specialising in travel, documentation and portraiture.
Wednesday 18 September 2024
Wednesday 27 March 2024
The Antient Towne and Cinq Port of Rye
I recently won a prize for architectural photography, and the awards organisation didn't tell me. It was last year, so I've already forgotten what it was - something about 'best historical exteriors series' I think. I have a feeling I might have entered into other competitions who also might not have told me so it would only be a teensy white lie if I called this series MULTI AWARD WINNING.
Anyway, I've been photographing my current home town on and off for about a decade - the town itself is pretty much unchanged since the 17th Century and has preservation orders slapped on just about everything (except my humble dwelling and me). If we get a sea mist, and I'm awake very early, I grab a camera and take some snaps. It's getting increasingly difficult to get a feeling of how the town must have been as it gets more popular as a tourist destination. People park their cars all over the place and there are always bunches of tourists walking around, quite often in the middle of the road as if the place was a theme park. Anyway - here's a part of the series.
Wednesday 20 December 2023
Where does the time go?
My last entry was in 2020. The year of the pandemic, and an interesting time for me - at the beginning of March that year I'd travelled back to India for a mixture of a months worth of work and pleasure and two weeks in, lockdown and the international travel ban came into effect. I ended up being stranded there for six months, though in fairly comfortable circumstances as I was staying in my chum Simon's house, whilst he in turn was stranded in Sandwich in Sussex having travelled back to visit his mother. When lockdown eased and we could venture out without fear of having the shit beaten out of us by police with lahtes I started walking on the beach with Charlotte - Simon's sister, co owner of Vivenda dos Palhacos and my next door neighbour. Naturally I took a camera as often as possible.
This is what I wrote when I eventually got back to the UK that September and the accompanying photos:
The international travel ban and swift nationwide lockdown left me stranded in India from March to mid August. Heavy policing - beatings and fines, made the streets unsafe except for in an emergency, so for exercise I started walking on the beach either at first light or just before dusk. The first thing I noticed was how much the beach dogs had suffered - they rely on tourists, beach shacks and fishermen for food and affection, and all had disappeared overnight. I started taking a box of biscuits everyday for the dogs. Initially suspicious of something that wasn't either rice or fish, they soon came to understand biscuits were also food. This made me quite a lot of new friends who would accompany me on my walks, usually in the hope that there was a forgotten biscuit in my camera bag. These images are a small part of a photographic journal I kept during the six months I was marooned.
Tuesday 22 September 2020
Miss India Bikini
Anyway, Nikki turned up in Goa and stayed a week. We shot pretty much every day in-between her eating more than someone that size should be able to. We produced images for her social media accounts, images for various websites, images for her sponsors, portraits, fashion, swimwear, lingerie and nudes.
After that I found myself shooting with her every few months. She saw a waterfall I'd shot for a homestay 'where's that?' she asked. 'In the middle of a tiger reserve, two miles from the nearest road and only accessible by paddling the last two hundred meters upstream' I replied. 'Ok, we shoot there'.
I haven't had a proper shoot with Nikki for about three years, but she and her husband come and stay when they're in the UK. Here are a few of the more modest snaps I've taken of her over the years with a D700 or D800e and various lenses.
Friday 31 January 2020
Entering Awards.....
Most of the competitions these days are looking for 'a body of work', or a series of related or thematically similar images. A decade ago this generally meant three images, but these days can be anything up to 50 (Magnum portfolio prize) but is generally 5-10 images. This puts me in a dilemma. I usually have around three or four photos that I'm ok with across everything I shoot in a year, so my chances of pulling 5-10 images out of my butt in time for awards deadlines is pretty minimal. Hence no entry to Sony World.
Anyway, here's some of what I might have entered and a couple that I might still enter in the remaining contests. I'm stylistically so far away from the current concept of cool, it might just be a huge waste of drinking vouchers.