5 Twitter users worth a Follow

Now I thought I’d focus on the beautiful web space of the Twittersphere today.  It’s lovely cool sky blue bird endlessly tweeting news, gossip, chat, catastrophes and utter bullshit into the eyes of us all. I cannot get enough. Especially now as I’m getting live updates from the #NUJadm from Southport, current problems of park rangers in the Mara Triangle and the latest from the Gaza strip through the eyes of Palestinians. It is a fabulous tool that can bring me information on one or many topics to give me a diverse and colourful view of our planet.

I thought I would share some of the people I have found interesting over the last week.

Filed under: conflict photojournalist, Manchester photographer, Morecambe photographer, pete brook, Stephen Sidlo, tim humble, twitter

Echo Of Chernobyl – Paal Audestad

Photo essay by photographer Paal Audestad. The Chernobyl exclusion zone. ‘The Zone of Alienation’, which is variously referred to as The Chernobyl Zone, The 30 Kilometer Zone,The Exclusion Zone, The Fourth Zone, or simply The Zone (Ukrainian official designation: Зона відчуження Чорнобильської АЕС, zona vidchuzhennya Chornobyl’s'koyi AES, colloquially:Чорнобильська зона, Chornobyl’s'ka zona оr Четверта зона, Chetverta zona) is the 30 km/19 mi exclusion zone around the site of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster. 

Geographically, it includes northernmost parts of Kyivs’ka oblast’ and Zhytomyrs’ka oblast‘ of Ukraine, and adjoins the country’s border with Belarus. A separately administered Belarusian zone continues across the border.

Filed under: Chernobyl, Exclusion Zone, humanitarian photojournalist, Manchester photographer, manchester photojournalist, Morecambe photographer, Paul Audestad, Stephen Sidlo, Ukraine, Zone of alienation

Systematically Raped Nation….Thank You George…Spiderman on Acid

Have we lost the plot? Have we descended into a puddle of never knowing beasts? Here we are, wandering around the paddocks of Britain, never ending stomping. A red, blue or yellow Rosette pins itself on every new race, on the brain damaged jockey that rides us, endlessly sat on us like a hungry whore crying with lust. Why does he blindfold us as well, while with the other hand on an iPhone he sends children to war? We public, the stiff lipped liberal persons, who now are being systematically ridden, now base our lives on the whims of the sensationalist stories that drivel from our politically controlled rag newspapers…who in turn take a heavy beating from the lobbyists, businessmen and political PR strategists. Why do we do this? Why do i want to keep buying useless items, things I wouldn’t normally buy. I sit at home bashing on the keyboard telling the world I wont fall for consumerism, but as I walk around a shop I feel a need to buy. Buy until my eyes bleed.

The horrible country we are now immersed in, that promotes doing nothing, doing nothing till we fall asleep. A nation of people who work until depression, brain bubbles and heart attacks.

Filed under: Lancaster, manchester photojournalist, morecambe, Morecambe photographer, piccadilly gardens, Stephen Sidlo, TTV

Wife-Swapping….Undercover Police…..Racist Swine

There comes a time in your life when you meet undercover Police for the first time. Either when they admit it to you in some Hotel bar hiccuping over way too much Oban whiskey or when you are caught in a South London brothel being arrested for sex trafficking. My first encounter came while I was stumbling through a hallway in Swansea’s, Mozart’s Hotel Club. A club where mellow drug users, average income gamblers and retired kick boxers in cream suits and ponytail’s came to ‘hang out‘.

It had its own bloody time zone, two bars, a strange collection of dropout art students as bar staff, 70′s decor and a back room that resembled, not through style or choice, a World War 1 trench. You basically got smashed as you sat on arm chairs talking to gentlemen and ladies around you who were all wife swappers, ex-religious freaks and people who were determined to find their mid-life crisis at 70 years old. As for the undercover Police, they didn’t look that inconspicuous when you saw them up close.

Filed under: Big Brother, mozarts, oban, photography, photojornalism, police, shaun of the dead, Stephen Sidlo, Swansea, swine flu, undercover

By: Proxy

A shoot for a friend at the Pheonix Club in Lancaster.

Filed under: by proxy, by:proxy, DJ, Lancaster, morecambe, music, Pheonix Club, Phoenix Club, photography, Photojournalist, Stephen Sidlo

Crew Training, R.N.L.I – Morecambe, England

So with my eagerness to travel and the impossibility of it is this climate, I shoot the R.N.L.I on their many crew nights, launches and returns. Again with everything I document I find it great that these guys Volunteer to do this.

Most of the crew are Firefighters, Police and Ambulance Services in their day jobs but when they have 5 minutes and there bleeper blares at 3 in the morning they get to the boathouse to suit up and rescue some drunk fool on the rocks, or in the worse scenario a lost child in the sea. Either way it is an honour to be allowed the privilege of documenting an on going project on the men and women of Morecambe Lifeboat Station.

stephensidlo.com

Filed under: 20d, blog, britain, crew, documentary, documenting, freelance, journalism, marine, p, photography, photojournalism, RNLI, Royal National Lifeboat Institute, sea, Stephen Sidlo, Swansea, volunteering

The Optional Depressive

It’s the third time I’ve rang. Still no answer….maybe I should start pestering the White House instead …maybe I should start leafing through the directory ringing Politicians, finding second homes to see if they are in. It was a really good move. The squatters. They have descended on Mr & Mrs Keen’s second home and set up a really good comedy club…’The Benefit Gig’. This has really made them go back into the tortoise shell of shame.

Maybe I should go down there, take a crate of Carling and a bag of tuna and volunteer for the cause. It could be more fun that the sorry debacle of Big Brother XIV. The couple apparently claimed £140,000 in Parliamentary allowances for this designated “second home”, a luxury apartment just nine miles away in Westminster. What a sight the neighbours must see as the new tenants urinate on the front lawn at 6.30am…glorious…and I wish I was there.

In a letter to those same neighbours on the other hand the “Expenses Couple” complained that they feel “violated” by the ten squatters taking over their home in protest at their expenses. Her feelings of being violated by ten men shouldn’t be running through her mind, but rather the blatant disregard to UK taxes and allowances which in my view is a violation. If only I could get there, riding in on a motorbike..taking pictures and documenting “my own home“. Yet I can’t, I must keep ringing the local homeless shelter to get work, ironically. I’ll have another drink and try the phone again.

The piece I am about to start work on directly stems from a charity called Photovoice, a charity that gives less fortunate beneficiaries the means to record their lives. Maybe I should ring Politicians and donate cameras. As I walked around in the sun stretched town of Lancaster, looking for a new tent. One without corridors, compartments and special zips to keep the deadly house fly away, it occurred to me that they weren’t there. Where were all the war veterans? The post traumatized ‘war homeless’ now in the 4-figured numbers swelling Britain’s roads. Day time in the heat wasn’t the place, not when Sally and daughter Jessica are buying new socks.

Gordon Brown maintains his stance that things are being done to alleviate the homeless problem. In his direct letter to Ms Edwards at Homeless.org he ‘welcomes your positive comments about the governments commitment to tackle homelessness‘ and so forth until you lose your temper halfway down, grab a camera and record each individual homeless persons life and post them through the doors of ‘second homes‘ to show the nation a real problem.

I’ll keep trying the phone…

stephensidlo.com

Filed under: BBC, Benefit Gig, Benefits, Big Brother, britain, British, Carling, expenses, government, homeless, journalism, Keen, london, Politicians, second homes, Stephen Sidlo, Westminster, White House

Through The Viewfinder – TTV

Through the Viewfinder photography is a new photography craze that seems to be picking up pace across various forums online. The concept is to design a contraption made of card that snugly fits on top of your Kodak Duoflex camera, I bought mine at http://www.sepiamemories.com in Morecambe, UK. Using these rough sketches I was able to draft up a non-black version of the TTV and thus create the image above. This will go nicely with the portrait work I am hoping to do within the R.N.L.I

Using the sketch above, some card from an old portfolio box, duck tape and compass, I was able to create the TTV. It works by sliding the DSLR over the opening above to read the bubble viewfinder on the Kodak, thus getting a cool old image using the 1970′s obsolete camera. Here is the first one:

And some of my first images…

stephensidlo.com

Filed under: 20d, Duoflex, Kodak Duoflex, RNLI, Royal National Lifeboat Institute, Stephen Sidlo, Through the Viewfinder, TTV