Following on from its appearance at the FlatPack Film Festival in Birmingham this year ‘Terminal’ has just been selected as the winning film in the Zealous Digital Art 21 prize. My interview has been posted to the Zealous community and here is a link to the page on their site
Thanks for a great tutorial on video photography. One of the best online events I have attended during lockdown. Yvonne Rogers, RAC, London
I have taught smartphone photography to hundreds of groups both online and face to face. These workshops are practical and fun and cover all of the main controls of a smartphone camera and reveal some of the hidden features that can improve the quality of your pictures or video. I also cover editing images or video on your smartphone using free or very cheap smartphone apps. I encourage a friendly and supportive learning environment where students can share their work and learn from each other.
Workshop – photograph, video and audio recording with smartphones
I am normally hired by organisations to deliver this course to their employees or members but I recognise that there is a demand from individuals. To run a group session all I need to run a six hour workshop is 10 attendees paying £30 per person.
The two workshops I am currently offering to individuals is smartphone photography and editing and Smartphone videography and editing.
The smartphone photography and editing workshop is 3 x 2 hour sessions at £30 for the whole course
The smartphone videography and editing workshop is 1 x 3 hour workshop at £20 for the session
This is an online workshop and open to attendees from anywhere.
Payment is via Paypal and I try to plan sessions at a time that is convenient to all. If you are interested in attending a smartphone photography or videography course with me, please email me telling me which course you are interested in, what time or day is most convenient? If and when I have enough attendees to run a course, I will notify those on the list and request payment.
If you would like to register your interest please complete form below
Please complete the form below if you are interested in either of these workshops (please indicate which workshop in subject field) 07973 631185 or mail@nigelgoldsmith.co.uk
You can also contact me directly by completing the form below
Still image from short film ‘Terminal’ shortlisted for the Flatpack Film Festival
Somehow, between the 1st and 2nd national Lockdown, I managed to film and edit a new art video entitled Terminal. Extracts of the film can be seen on my Instagram account @nigelgoldsmith and the Video Art page on this site. It can be seen in its full length this summer as it has just been selected for the Flatpack Film Festival 2021 in Birmingham. To see Terminal along with other shortlisted films you can book a festival pass here
This is part of a new project exploring consumer culture. As the project develops, I plan to look at consumption on the high street and online, the people and machinery that transport these goods to us and what happens when we have finished with them.
My interest in international trade and shipping grew from two commercial commissions that I had at around the same time. The first was for a large marine insurance company where I took a series of images on a brand new Maersk container ship. At the time, in 1998 it was state of the art and the largest ship of its type in the world. By modern standards, the same ship would be a baby compared to the current monsters. Many of today’s ships can carry over 20,000 shipping containers.
In the same year I had a commission in Bangladesh and I had the opportunity to take pictures of the Ship Breakers of Chittagong. On one of the longest beaches in the world, gangs of workers dismantle huge ships often with little more than hand tools and with little understanding of health and safety. These ships had reached the end of their working lives, they contained toxic harmful products and dismantling in The West would be unsafe and uneconomic so this work is ‘shipped out’ to the developing world. I saw numerous workers carrying bales of asbestos from the engine rooms of a ship they were working on.
Ship breakers, Chittagong, Bangladesh
Ship breakers, Bangladesh
As a species, the human race currently consumes 50% more resources than the planet can provide.
Consumer spending (consumption) is often used as a measure of the strength of an economy. Advertising companies assign status to the products they promote and we the consumers acquire this status along with the items we purchase. Today’s must have item is tomorrow’s landfill. Unless we can find a way to increase the life of the products we buy or find a way to recycle them completely, consumer culture in its current form is unsustainable.
MSC Anna being unloaded at Felixtowe
As a post-industrial state, 90% of what we use is imported. To make this possible, a fleet of giant container ships circle the world.
Some of these ships can transport over 20,000 containers. If all of these containers were loaded onto lorries and parked in a line, the queue would be around 330KM in length, longer than the M4 motorway.
MSC Anna about to set sail, Felixtowe
Occasionally, we might see a distant shadow on the horizon but most of the time these monsters occupy a world out of our sight. This part of the project aims to link the shadows that pass in the distance to our unstoppable appetite for ‘stuff’.
Dali bound for Bremerhaven
Bore Bay bound for Zeebrugge
Maersk Mc Kinney Moller bound for Hamburg
OOCL Scandinavia bound for Port Said
OOCL Scandinavia in port
There are 6 OOCL ships including the Scandinavia which all currently share the title of the largest container ships currently at sea. Each of these ships can carry 21413 containers.
OOCL Scandinavia
Maersk Mc Kinney Moller in port, Felixtowe
MSV Anna can carry over 19,300 containers
The ships that bring their bounty from where most goods are manufactured in China and South East Asia have little of value to ship back. In the past, our waste products were crammed into containers where they were disposed of in the developing world. The developing world no longer wants our waste and so often containers return empty or don’t return at all. They serve a new life as glamping pods, pop-up coffee shops, stables or site offices.
Refuse centre next to container port
‘Recycling Centre’ next to container port (the site office is an recycled container)
As ‘good’ consumers, we need to continually buy new items and obey the advertisers who tell us that we will be better, be more popular, have greater status and be more attractive if we buy the latest gadget. Often goods fail shortly after the warranty expires, repair is expensive and difficult, replacement is cheap and easy. The failed item is discarded and often finds its way into landfill. Despite major developments in material science (lightbulbs that can last a lifetime) we have learnt to accept that items will fail and need replacing.
2 month old faulty picture frame showing MV Autosun passing boating lake at Portishead with a cargo of up to 2000 cars from Bilbao to Portbury
The Brough Superior is one of the most iconic motorcycles ever made. In their time, these bikes were record breakers and even by today’s standards are fast. These machines are highly sought after but are often only seen in static displays at museums. A neighbour of mine is lucky enough to own one, his bike was bought directly from the factory by his grandfather in the 1920s. While the bike is normally displayed in a museum, he does take it out from time to time and I had the opportunity to see the bike after it had been out on a 100 mile trip in the rain so needed a bit of a wipe down before it was returned to the display. I am a keen motorcyclist so I jumped at the chance to see a Brough in ‘the flesh’ and take some pictures.
The Brough Superior was known as the ‘Rolls Royce of motorcycles’ and for good reason. The craftsmanship is amazing and these were staggeringly fast machines when they were manufactured. Famous owners include Lawrence of Arabia who owned eight.
I now want to be a vintage motorcycle photographer.
1924 Brough Superior SS80
Leather bags – Brough Superior SS80
SS80 – right handlebar showing choke (top) and throttle (bottom)
SS80 – left handlebar
SS80 petrol tank-sight glass for total loss oil system