The first portrait photograph of me was honest, I thought, no frills, just me as I was that day. sitting in front of the Georgian fireplace in my Lewes home. It was as true an image as photography can deliver. The idea to replicate the photograph only occurred when Facebook reminded me that it had been taken exactly ten years ago. Facebook, for all its faults, acts as a useful diary of our lives. Earlier this month, I had just recovered from an annoying cold which had lowered my spirits and made me feel like I had one foot in the grave. It was then that my photographer friend David Stacey, who had taken the original photograph, suggested making a new portrait to match. I hesitated thinking hang on a minute, it’s bad enough feeling old let alone advertising the fact. We had lunch, our regular monthly meet up, and I was persuaded – what the heck! We arranged my living room to match how it had looked ten years earlier and I sat down in that chair. I’m glad we did it not just because time hasn’t been that cruel to me so far – well not as much as I’d imagined, and also because it was an interesting project in itself – letting the camera record a life. Dave threatens to take another one in ten years time – let’s see about that.

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I’ve had a lot of fun with the new technologies that have revolutionised our lives over the last twenty years or so. I’ve recently been marking anniversaries (big ones) celebrating early online networking platforms and the strange virtual realities of so-called games like Second Life. Actually I was also celebrating good friendships formed over the years with folk I first met in a weirdly improbable coming together through the ether.

It has had its frustrations too, this modern technology. OK, I admit it, I’ve often learnt the hard way, crashing, deleting and sometimes offending by my self-taught gallop into the 21st century.

Last February, I discovered the wonderful world of Instagram where you can take photographs with your phone, write something, hopefully, pithy, and post/publish your thoughts instantly. I’ve loved it and posted almost every day onto the site where I could also see other people’s attempts at instant creativity. I’ve enjoyed the experience and have been inspired by the idea of photographing something everyday – some observation from around the house, in the garden, down the road or whatever. It has taught me that you can always come up with a new thought even if you, like me, often spend time alone in a little room with a computer.  Well, my joy in Instagram came to a bumpy end yesterday – a temporary one, I hope.

It was early morning, my phone was by my bed, I know, don’t tell me, I fumbled for it to find out the time and then noticed a message from Instagram to verify my password because I needed the extra security, apparently. I know it would have been wiser to have reacted to this after breakfast, or at least when I was more awake. Sadly, I’m not that kind of guy. No, it was straight in – click, click, whoops, click click, whoops. Then my Instagram account changed in front of my eyes. I was now the proud owner of a new account and, yes, I’m sure everyone else out there will know this, yes, my old account had been deleted.

I don’t think we humans  ever had this very specific kind of frustration until the invention of the computer. You know what I mean. It’s the utter helplessness of total and permanent deletion. It’s like death but there are no cyber gods to pray to for deliverance. I went to the Instagram site and convinced myself by reading their attempts at calming words that there was absolutely nothing that I could do to retrieve all those photographs and, by then, my 200 followers who appeared to like them. We know it’s frustrating, Instagram says on its site. You’re not wrong there, mate. It’s important to guard accounts against hackers. Well, yes, we humans are great at inventing new wonders and then moving on to invent ways of turning them into ways of stealing from other human beings. I suspect the invention of the wheel soon led to more sophisticated robberies. Anyway, knowing that I was totally helpless was its own therapy.

I was now no longer user name colinbellwolfiewolfgang and where I had been was now silence. I made a radical change of name and became wolfiewolfgangcolinbell. I know, it all sounds so trivial. There it was my new account. A new name, no photographs and no followers. Tabula rasa. The sad thing was that I was excited by the possibilities.

Then I remembered, in a flash of genius, that I had customarily shared my Instagram posts with those other networking sites Facebook and Twitter and then, after breakfast now, starting to retrieve my old posts. I worked at this all day long, like a man obsessed.  Surely you could have done something more useful, I hear you say, You are right, I know, but I just didn’t want to let go.

After reposting 115 of my photographs with their original texts, I felt terrific – I was winning. Then Instagram stopped me posting anything else. There is a limit apparently to how many photographs you can post in 24 hours – I’m assuming it’s 115. this is to stop unscrupulous people swamping the site with spam. Well, that’s human nature as well. So I will have to carry on with the process more gradually. Less obsessively too which is a good thing.

I was touched when I looked at my profile page last night and found that already 59 people, either old followers or new ones, had visited the site along with a whole lot more just casual visitors. It felt good again – a small victory against the night.

So I’m back and when I have restored the site to the best of my abilities, I shall return to the hugely enjoyable habit of trying to come up with a new photograph every day no matter where I am or how unpromising the situation. I’d love it if you shared this with me and came to visit me there. I’m now wolfiewolfgangcolinbell and here’s the link:

https://www.instagram.com/wolfiewolfgangcolinbell/

Oh yes, I’m back on there – look:

The post Instagram and I have had our first row. (We still love each other really.) appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

I have lived long enough now to have seen a transformation in the art of photography. Not that I’d call myself a photographer, but I been taking photographs since I was a child and I’ve always been entranced by the possibilities of even the simplest of cameras. As a schoolboy, I won a photographic competition once but that was a long time ago. Since then, I’ve just been using my various cameras for my own pleasure, mostly as a record of my family and friends but when that amazing digital revolution got to me, in 2007,  I found new excitement with a great digital camera, the Cannon EOS 400D, bought in Hong Kong and loved ever since.  Since living in Lewes, UK, I’ve been friends with a real photographer, David Stacey http://www.davidstaceyphoto.com/ who has not only inspired me with his own work but encouraged me to experiment more with my own camera.

Dave even turned his camera on me a few times and this portrait  now hangs on a wall at home – like it or not, I think it captures the spirit of my life here in Lewes.

I spent a day with Dave recently when we went to an exhibition as the excellent Pallant House Gallery in Chichester and, over a boys’ pub lunch, we discussed cameras and photography as we often do. It was there that Dave inspired me to give Instagram a go. He said he thought I’d really like this the most  creatively challenging and excitingly instant of all of today’s social networking sites. I said I’d have a go and, a month later, I’m still doing it and, yes, loving it too. I’ve been taking at least one photograph a day for the site and I’m gradually learning how to master the various editing options. You can see how I’ve been getting on by following the link below.

The other revolution in my on-line world is that those photographs taken for Instagram can be linked to various other sites – so I’m now an enthusiastic member of the photography site Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/16199705@N05/

I’m enjoying the way my photographs can be sent round the internet with just a couple of clicks and love the way my Instagram photos are also automatically linked to  that other photography site Pinterest: https://uk.pinterest.com/colinbell/photographs-by-colin-bell-wolfiewolfgang/

Needless to say, these pictures also go directly to my Facebook and Twitter pages so after a relative silence here on my website, I’m suddenly all over the wonderful world-wide web and having lots of fun all of which I owe to my good friend David Stacey. Thanks Dave.

I haven’t posted many blogs on here this year. Forgive me, regular readers, I’ve been busy finishing a novel for publication later this year  and now I’m getting on with a new one so I’ve been heads down all year but plan to get back to blogging again very soon.

In the meanwhile you can follow me on all of the above sites as well as on Facebook and Twitter – I hope to see you around in cyberspace and, of course, here on this site.

The post Photography – at first it was just taking pictures, then I went digital and now I discover Instagram. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

It might be a touch sentimental to have framed family photos scattered around the house but I can understand how people could like having a memento of their loved ones. There’s nothing like family, as they say, but, in all honesty, family members can be some of the weirdest folk you’re ever likely to meet. After-all, we don’t choose our relatives. These photographs make me think we’re sometimes better off without some of them.

In case you’re lucky enough not to be related to any of the charming people in these photos, I suggest you should stay strangers. I mean, who thinks he’s the head of this particular household.

And, I know we’re supposed to be unembarrassed by our pets’ private parts but do you really want to look at this one on your mantelpiece?

I wouldn’t even answer the door to these two even if they were my long lost cousins. I can imagine what words pretty polly comes out with.

And what’s the joke here, I wonder? I know, I’m a middle child too, and we’re always put upon. Nice.

I know these are just knitted onesies but, come on guys, why bother covering up at all?

No such coyness with this happy couple – more’s the pity. That child will be a monk when he grows up.

I despair! What are they trying to do to their kids? This is just plain creepy. Someone ring President Obama, goddammit.  Call me old-fashioned but what was wrong with the good old traditional family photograph?

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My novel, Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love, was published  on 31 October 2013. It is the story of a young fogey living in Brighton in 1967 who has a lot to learn when the flowering hippie counter culture changes him and the world around him.

The post Family photos sure ain’t what they used to be – too much naked knitting! appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

Believe it or not these are photographs not fantasy paintings.  The lighthouses in these pictures are by photographers Thomas Zakowski and Tom Gill and they’ve stopped me from ever complaining about the cold here in Lewes, UK. 

These ice-covered lighthouses are at the St. Joseph North Pier on the coast of Lake Michigan, USA and prove that good old Mother Nature has a real eye for art. Here in Britain, we don’t know just how cold cold can be.

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STEPHEN DEARSLEY’S SUMMER OF LOVE BY COLIN BELL

My novel, Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love, was published  on 31 October 2013. It is the story of a young fogey living in Brighton in 1967 who has a lot to learn when the flowering hippie counter culture changes him and the world around him.

It is now available as a paperback or on Kindle (go to your region’s Amazon site for Kindle orders)

You can order the book from the publishers, Ward Wood Publishing:

http://wardwoodpublishing.co.uk/titles-fiction-colin-bell-stephen-dearsleys-summer-of-love.htm 

…or from Book Depository:

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/Stephen-Dearsleys-Summer-Love-Colin-Bell/9781908742070

…or from Amazon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Stephen%20Dearsley’s%20Summer%20Of%20love

The post Wonderful photographs of Lake Michigan lighthouses remind us that cold can be very cold indeed. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

This ‘self-portrait’ photograph was taken by the young Portuguese photographer Luis Alvarenga,  who likes to record his travels around the World with images of his feet, the part of the body designed to allow us to travel. Here he is on a rock in the Algarve, Portugal. Feet also ‘plant’ us on the earth and, if we focus on them, let us feel the spirit of ‘place’. Hippie jargon, you might think,  but I believe in it, mostly practising my martial arts barefoot at home in my garden or wherever I am on my travels.

 In the 1960s, bare feet became a symbol of liberation and freedom from society’s restraints. It was for all of this that Luis’ photograph became the cover shot for my just published novel, Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love.

I love the image and especially, the colours of Luis’ photograph which makes a handsome cover for my novel, stylishly designed by my publishers, Ward Wood Publishing.  I can feel the heat of that rock but also a certain vulnerability in the feet exposed on such a rough surface. The image is perfect, in my opinion, for Stephen Dearsley’s gradual and difficult liberation. Another of Luis’  ‘self-portraits’ shows him standing on an inviting stretch of sandy Portuguese beach at Montegordo. Lovely shot though it is, for me, it is the rock photograph that better expresses the feeling of my novel because, the beach has always been one of the few places feet have always been allowed to go bare.

Here is Luis again, this time in Weston-Super-Mare, Somerset, England, where he first discovered that British beaches can be considerably colder than Portuguese ones.

Here he is in Antigua against a very green lake.

Having spent some time discussing the cover photograph with Ward Wood Publishing, I got to know the picture and, I guess, Luis’ feet very well so it was good to finally discover who Luis Santos is and what he looks like above foot level.

He is currently living in Reading, in the UK where he makes his living as a professional photographer most recently specialising in travel and live music photography.

This is one of his favourite music shots taken when he feel in love with this guitar seen at the 2013 Oxjam Reading Festival. I love the colour co-ordination here.

This is Patrick Wolf, the young London singer-songwriter, a musician much admired by Luis. The photograph taken with a vintage 80-200 lens that he had just bought for the occasion marked his debut as a fully accredited music gig job. He tells me that he was nervous when he first had to go on stage at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall “but in the end everything turned out great, even the pictures!”

Here are two of his favourite travel photographs, above, the Monument To The Discoveries, Lisbon, the city where he was at university, and, below, this beautifully textured image of a beach in Maldives.

It was good to see his other work and to say hello to Luis because there is, I’ve just discovered,  a special relationship between a writer and the creator of his book’s cover. It was also good to share some of Luis’ enthusiasm for his chosen artform – he is obviously a young man with the World, quite literally, at his feet.

If you want to see more of Luis Alvarenga’s (sometimes also known as Luis Santos) work or to contact him, here is a link to his websites:
http://www.thelivephotographer.com/
http://1-luis-santos.artistwebsites.com/

STEPHEN DEARSLEY’S SUMMER OF LOVE BY COLIN BELL

My novel, Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love, was published  on 31 October 2013. It is the story of a young fogey living in Brighton in 1967 who has a lot to learn when the flowering hippie counter culture changes him and the world around him.

It is now available as a paperback or on Kindle (go to your region’s Amazon site for Kindle orders)

You can order the book from the publishers, Ward Wood Publishing:

http://wardwoodpublishing.co.uk/titles-fiction-colin-bell-stephen-dearsleys-summer-of-love.htm 

…or from Book Depository:

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/Stephen-Dearsleys-Summer-Love-Colin-Bell/9781908742070

…or from Amazon:

The post Bare feet, Luis Alvarenga and my novel cover appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

I’ve had a posh new photograph portrait taken now that I’m only a month away from the publication of my novel. Even though I’m not known to be shy and retiring, I actually dreaded having to sit for this because I always get embarrassed and highly self-conscious in front of the camera. Anyway, my publisher, Ward Wood Publishing, approved it and I just went for it in the spirit of going to the dentist. Actually, I didn’t have to go anywhere, the photographer, Brighton-based David Myers came to my house here in Lewes, UK, on a dark wet Monday morning just as I was recovering from the lurgey and quietly turned the place into a photographic studio. My fear disappeared immediately. I think Mr Myers has a genius for these things. Actually it was fun even though the whole process took about  three hours.

I was very pleased with the results and would recommend him to anyone even the most camera-shy.

I like him even more now, of course, because he’s written about the experience from his point of view on his blog. Thanks again David, great job. Here’s the link:

http://www.davidmyersphotography.com/blog/

The post Having my photograph taken and loving it. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

Some seagulls came to suss me out the other day when I was on the seafront. It was nice to see them especially as I was idly playing with the Hipstamatic app on my iPhone. They flew just low enough for me to take this shot. Hipstamatic enabled me to look all arty too. I’m sorry, gulls, that I didn’t have any herring heads or shark’s fins to offer you but thanks for being such good models.

The post Sometimes seagulls fly just where you want them. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

I’ve been humbled by my exposure to the portrait photography of the great Man Ray after that exhibition at London’s National Portrait Gallery (until 27th May) and also a little inspired too. I bought the excellent exhibition catalogue which has full page plates of all the exhibits. Looking at them I wondered if I could learn a thing or two from Man Ray. The problem was finding glamourous enough subjects for my own portraits.

What about Teddy, I wondered.

I think I have expressed his disdain with that fine profile but there is also a hint of his melancholy nature and maybe the threat of a poisonous bite.

An essential portrait for my own exhibition is, of course, Wolfie.

Looking at the monochrome images of my closest friends, I had to admit that Man Ray was on to something but then I remembered that most of his pictures were taken before the days of colour photography and then I looked out of my window at my cherry tree that has just burst into glorious blossom. Sorry, Man, I thought, but I can’t possibly photograph that, or my new tulips, in black and white.

One final portrait for my gallery: my trusty Canon camera, the Canon EOS 400D, that I bought in Hong Kong in 2008 when my life turned digital . What would I have done without you, old friend.

The post Wolfie’s inspired by your photographs, Man. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

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