My colleague Andy O’Brien (Vice Principal of Accrington Academy) introduced me to Pano, a new app for iPhone. He is complete gadget boy, and has more apps than you can shake a (virtual) stick at. It enables you to take panoramic photos using the iPhone. Have only just started experimenting, but it could be a really interesting other starting point for my current photography project. The photo here is the first place that I had in mind when making these self / portrait / landscapes. A section of Seymour Park, Old Trafford, where I walk the dog and go running. Somewhere that I see pretty much every day, but which somehow has a really specific attraction for me.

I’ve been reading Michael Atavar’s book: “How to be an Artist” which has proved to be a useful tool for enabling my own creative processes. As he says: “The only way to start is to start”. Its interesting for me to start to uncover how I start to make work as a single individual, rather than, as I’m more accustomed to making work either as part of a team, or as more recently working as a producer or agent in an educational context. Progress is happening with the pinhole project, which is becoming almost ‘performed portraits’ which are about connecting ME to a sense of place, and connection to that place, whilst looking at the idea of using mapping co – ordinates and place names, tying into something I heard Jeanette Winterson talking about on the radio: “Finding who you are through a series of co – ordinates”. Hopefully tomorrow I can take some trial shots, and start to look at what results I can expect from the pinhole camera.

This idea has been swirling around for some time, so, rather than continue to procrastinate, fanny about on Facebook, or waste time worrying about why I’m not making work on my own, time to get on with it. I bought this panoramic pinhole camera in kit form, and finally assembled it last week. I’m planning a series of self / portrait / landscapes using this camera. I’m unsure about the instructions which inform me how to get panoramic photos from 35mm, or indeed where to get the film processed. So, off to experiment. Hopefully I don’t get handed an envelope of black pieces of photo paper when I collect them.