OPEN

This week I got two very unusual family portraits – one expected, one a delightful surprise. One very digital-age, the other a kind of analogue throwback.

Portrait #1: Lomokev street-style

The first was by the brilliant Brighton photographer Kevin Meredith (a.k.a. Lomokev), of whom I’m a big admirer. I own one of his prints and when Brilliant Noise started up a couple of years ago he did the portraits of the founders for our website. Last year I did one of his excellent weekend Hot Shots courses and tried my own hand at Lomography, the old Russian film cameras which Kev has long championed, and from which he gets his nickname.

When I saw he was doing family portraits using the photo-montage technique he uses for his street style photography, I knew I had to get one done of my lot.

And here it is. The final version will be four separate framed photos, but this digital version has us all side-by-side. I really like it…

Portrait #2: Us on holiday two years ago

The second portrait I stumbled across on the internet. A couple of years ago we were on holiday in Mallorca. On our way out for the day we stopped down the road from our villa to put our rubbish and recycling in the communal bins and we saw a Google Maps car go past. Knowing that it was heading for a dead-end, we stood and waited for about five minutes and it came back.

Of course, I checked the map a couple of months later, but the road we were on wasn’t available on streetview on Google Maps. I assumed that perhaps it was a private road and Google wasn’t allowed to post images of it. Ho hum, I thought, and forgot about it…

…until this week when I was booking a holiday to Mallorca again and trying to see a villa on streetview and I thought, why not check and see if that photo is there now. It took some clicking around (I couldn’t remember which backroad outside Pollensa it was) and then… bingo.

Funny little moment of serendipity, eh?