After last year's ambitious photo-a-day project I'd shied from too onerous a commitment. I met PD on the Pluckley Wood workshop and on the train journey home she encouraged me to sign up for the Bleeding London photography project. I did some research and thought I'd would be great to get involved in. The name of the project sounds rather alarming but it makes more sense when it's explained that in the name of a book by Geoff Nicholson. One of his main characters is determined to check off every page in the London A-Z and that's the crux of the project. Our mission is to photograph all of London's 73,000 streets between now and October. It's not supposed to be a Google Street Map exercise, with an obvious representation of the you can snap absolutely anything that takes your fancy, with any camera.
My first thought is I need a hook. What would tie all my images together? I liked the idea of incorporating the weather in my images, especially rain but would that be too restrictive? I then started thinking pink but I could struggle to find something in every road and street with a rosy hue unless I brought something with me. Hmm that makes me think of my beloved penguins, they've had a quiet year so far. But after considering the teeny, tininess of them and their fellow miniatures, and how they don't always want to stand up (grrr), I opted to upscale to Lego minifigs for this project.
I'd ended up with a minifig man in a bunny suit for an Easter picture. I'd wanted one quickly so ended up with a job lot of pretty random minifigs. The cogs started whirling and I decided to add a few more to the eclectic collection and make them my theme. I thought it might be fun to find a kind of minifig mini-me to represent my efforts. I discovered you can actually have a minifig customised to a photo, if you desire, but that seemed a tad extreme so I ended up with this. She is a bit (actually a lot) more urban than me but favours black, pink and a skull motif which is promising. Though I don't possess anything resembling a hoodie and she's a bit light on the bling for my liking! She is, of course, armed with a camera (note the red dot!) and tripod, sunglasses, vibrant lipstick, an assortment of penguins and of course never without her iPad. So she might be my doppelganger! With her and the mixed assortment of other minifigs, I am ready to hit the streets.
I am hoping more of the photographers I know in London will also join in as I'm intrigued as to what their themes would be. To find out more about the project, check out http://www.bleedinglondon.co.uk/ and to sign up, email them at london@rps.org. Come on, let's tick off those London streets, roads, avenues, lanes and cul-de-sacs.
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