Shrouds of the Somme

We visited the Shrouds of the Somme display in Bristol yesterday.It was the most moving things we  have seen since our visit to Kanchanaburi War Cemetery in Bangkok in 2008.  Which   contains the remains of 6982 young Allied Prisoners who died building the jungle railway.

 

One Shroud for each of the 19240 soldiers who died in the first day of the battle of the Somme.   

This is artist Rob Heard who wrapped and bound each figure in a hand-stitched shroud, crossing the name of every soldier who fell on that fateful first day off a list sourced from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

A young soldier reads out the names of the dead.

 

There are photographs everywhere

Went into town  to look at a  photography exhibition. Stopped to photograph a scaffolding lorry still parked the wrong way up Cheap Street.

When a police car came through on Blues and two's stopping in Westgate street to arrest someone in the flats where the old Chronicle was,

 Then the Bubble man was in Union Street.

Free Bath Screen Saver

Some may remember that I spent many hours in the Summer of 2007 shooting a Bath from the air supplement for the Chronicle, the paper saw a 4.5 per cent sales increase on the day the supplement was published, and took £2,000 in photo sales in the first two weeks.
I made a screen saver from some of the pictures it's a very large file and has been Virus checked.
Just click the file and it will install in the correct directory http://bit.ly/BathSaver. PC only

High-flying adventure gives Chronicle a boost
by HoldTheFrontPage Staff Published 25 Jun 2007

A fun assignment for a Bath Chronicle photographer, 500ft above the city, has given the paper a boost in circulation and revenue.
Staff photographer Sam Farr took to the skies in a hot air balloon to capture more than a 1,000 birds eye views of the area for a special ‘Bath From the Air’ supplement.
And the stunning pictures proved so popular that the paper saw a 4.5 per cent sales increase on the day the supplement was published, and took £2,000 in photosales in the first two weeks.
For Sam, producing the supplement meant four trips in a balloon with pilot Ray Shortall, in a bid to cover the whole of the city.
Sam said: “I managed to get pictures of about 80 per cent of Bath, and ended up with about 1,000 pictures which had to be edited down to 250 for the supplement.
“You have no control over where you fly, so we had to take off from different places, depending on the wind direction and where you wanted to go.

“The balloon was slow and gentle and gave me chance to get my bearings – the hardest part was doing the captions as you have to know Bath really well.”
The assignment also earned Sam the Chronicle’s monthly newsroom award for ‘most useful person’ (his third this year!) and a bottle of champagne.
Sam said: “I did all the flying in my own time, but I’m more of a cider drinker so I gave the champagne to the sub who had the job of putting the supplement together!”
Readers are also being given the chance to order prints of the photos, or have them printed onto mugs, T-shirts or mouse mats.
Circulation director Mark Stroud said: “Photosales have been extremely good, and have created a lot of interest from people who have spotted their house, or their parents house, workplace or school.
“We’ve also been printing 25 per cent off coupons which readers have to collect, which has been boosting.
“We’ve done similar supplements such as first day in class and Christmas nativity, but this has been our best yet and orders are still coming in.”

Terry Waite returns

Probably the most memorable assignment of my career was 25 years ago when Terry Waite was released as a hostage after 1760 days and returned to RAF Lyneham.

There were hundreds of photographers waiting on a very cold wet day, all after the same picture.

As soon as he landed they took him to a hanger and as you can imagine when a couple of hundred photographers run into a warm hanger everything mists up, I have never seen so many Chamois leather wielding photographers trying to demist their cameras at the same time.