Gangnam Style at Bexhill McDonalds!!!

Just watched my daughter Joanne and her good friend Amber doing the Gangnam Style dance in the car park of the Ravenside (Bexhill, East Sussex) McDonalds!!! Video proof filmed and posted by Stephen! lol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc-Xq-NKXDk

Darkness Poem by Dean Thorpe

Darkness by Dean Thorpe

Some say that darkness is nothing

Empty space where there is no light

I feel warmth inside that darkness

I feel safety in the night

Maybe evil lurks in the dark

Things hiding and ready to bite

Thats not what scares me in this life

Its what you do see you must fight

The darkness can wrap around you

Hide you away from others sight

Its energy flowing through me

Like lightning striking down a kite

In the dark we all are equal

There is no need for black and white

We are all the same in the dark

To me the darkness feels so right

Loads more of my poems

Infrared Bexhill Photos

I had some free time yesterday and had to go to Bexhill in East Sussex anyway, so decided to take my old Fuji S100FS camera and my infrared filter so I could do some infrared photography.

They are all Infrared HDR (High Dynamic Range image from a single RAW file) images that were then Tone mapped and colour corrected! Constructive comments are always very welcome!!!

Click here to see the full infrared photo set of Bexhill

Hastings Zombie Walk!

Yesterday I had the pleasure of not only photographing, but also taking part (Follow the link below to see my make-up and costume) in the first annual Hastings Zombie Walk! This was the first time this event has ever happened in Hastings, East Sussex and there were only about 100 zombies (great for a first attempt!), but it was still great fun to be a part of it! The atmosphere was really nice and we did all get some funny looks!

"When Hell gets full, the dead shall walk the streets of Hastings!!!"

Many more photos of Hastings Zombie Walk

Oops, I kind of forgot to blog for a little while! Really must try harder!!!

Been up to lots of things recently, latest was exploring Speckled Wood in Hastings, East Sussex. A really beautiful place that I had never been to before. The sad thing is that I only found out about it because there is a campaign to save it as developers want to bulldoze it and turn it into houses, which sounds stupid to me! I know there does need to be expansion, but its really hilly, full of tress and has streams running through it, there must be easier places to develop instead of somewhere as beautiful as Speckled Wood!

Follow this link for the rest of my Photos of Speckled Wood in Hastings

My first cover photo!

I have had one of my photos on the cover of a magazine (The Rother Homes update magazine) before, but it was just a small part of the cover. This months (July issue) Hastings Town magazine uses one of my pictures for the whole cover! A pretty big achievement for me. There is also another four photos of mine inside, three on an article about the Alexandra Park War Memorial restoration project and another in an article about Lesley Carver's life as she was growing up in Hastings. Its a new magazine (only up to issue 6), but a very interesting one with many stories of Hastings past. I moved to Hastings for the first time in the early 90's and I have learnt a lot about the history of Hastings from every issue I read. It does also feature many things about today's life and events in Hastings and even the future plans for the town. Aspex Design (i.e. Me!) is a non profit organisation, so my payment for the photos was nothing, but its a great bit of publicity!

Hello Jim and Gemma (The people behind the magazine) if you read this.

Getting experience without experience.

A friend of mine is training to be a counsellor and has been trying to get a work placement somewhere in the local (Hastings to Brighton) mental health field, I know a lot of people working in mental health and I really thought I would be able to find something for her, but people don't seem to like people without experience. Without experience you can't get experience, with experience you can get experience, so how do you get the experience without having the experience! (My head hurts!)

A step too far?

A bit of advice, if you are already disabled and on crutches, then go for some minor surgery and barely leave your home for a fortnight, don't decide it might be fun to then go and walk along the Cuckmere River down to Cuckmere Haven taking photos! Been there, done that, spent most of the next two days in bed! I only decided to go as my daughters school were going there that day and as I had never been I thought it would be somewhere different to go. The weather was incredible and the views were great, so it was worth it (not sure I would have said that the morning after!). Hopefully I will get the chance to get back down there for some more when I am feeling better. I value any constructive comments on the photos. My Cuckmere river photos. For those who do not know it, the Cuckmere River ends at Cuckmere Haven between Seaford and Eastbourne in East Sussex

VIP visit and Music events

So what's new in the world of Aspex Design?

I had two events to photograph last Friday (4^th of July).

In the morning we had local MP's and Councillor's from around the Hastings area coming into Activ8 to help out and we actually got them doing real work! Some of them were outside working very hard scrubbing down the outside of the building (it kind of needed it!), others doing various jobs inside. I got a chance to have a nice chat with Councillor Philip Scott while he was cleaning the outside of the doors and he seemed like a good down to earth person who was not afraid to get his hands dirty.

In the afternoon I was over at Centre Stage in Bexhill at a small music event. Free food and live music, what more could you want! The event went well, not exactly a sell out, even when it was free, but everybody seemed to have a good time. Music was provided by local musician Jamie Harris and then a new band called the Referrals.

Photographs of both events are on my photography site.

My new blogs resolution

I used the blog on myspace for a while and also another place that I can't even remember, but stopped doing them both. Now I really want to do a better blog and hopefully remember to add things to it. I am a web designer, running my own graphic design and photography sites and a few for other people, I am also a photographer, not professional, but I have won a few competitions and had my pictures in a few magazines! Everything I do is non profit, even my "day job" is working for a few local charities as a voluntary worker, doing everything from web design, event photography and even teaching computer graphics and more. Due to being hit by a car a few years back I am permanently disabled, plus I have a few other health problems that mean doing a "proper job" is out of the question for the foreseeable future. I am a very open person and happy to try to answer any questions.