Pay attention, this is important and I'm tired.

This weekend the Sketchbook Project finally rolls into London. It's there for a few days so me and Kelly are going down to see the sketchbooks that me and Bambi did for it a whoooole year ago. Dead Phez fest. Shame Bam can't make it but we're planing on mega fun nonetheless. It's been a while since they were posted so if you click on these words here you will see my sketchbook and if you click on these words here you will see Bambi's.

THEN

Next weekend the second Carefully Planned festival takes over Manchester. Six venues, including 2022NQ, where an exhibtion will be simultaneously taking place which I have been helping out to curate. The brains behind the outfit is the lovely Amy Tidmarsh who has done all the posters and stuff for Carefully Planned. She's got mad skillz so it's going to be great. Like really, really great. Come along.

I've also done a drawing for Hayley Flynn of Skyliner fame for a theatre company called Northern Spirit's project A Wondrous Place. It's a pretty nice idea about creating a theatre show based around contributions from bloggers from northern cities, namely Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield and Tyne and Wear. Keep your eyes peeled for my small contribution anyway, this week is her week to take over their website. Hopefully very soon we can announce some more exciting stuff to do with them too.

And last but by no means least, the back cover for the Haiku Salut/Hopeless Local Marching Band split single on Wild Combination Recordings is done and looks like this:

It comes out on the 2nd of November and they're having a party in Nottingham for it. Top one.

Oh, and I know this post is basically just a load of links but there's not one here that doesn't warrant clicking on, not one.

From Pet Shops to Porn

Last month Andy Vine and I put our creative minds together and submitted a photograph for an exhibition at Cord called From Pet Shops to Porn. Whilst we submitted and subsequently exhibited just the one photograph we did actually shoot a few which we plan to make into a zine eventually. In the meantime though here's the complete series.

^^ The exhibition shot ^^

The general idea behind the exhibition was to represent the change of a particular area in Manchester from a place full of pet shops to a place of sex shops. Between us we had a few ideas and were originally going to submit separately. But as discussions went on I came up with an idea that would require Andy's help so we decided to collaborate. See all the cards in the shots? They're all Andy's work. Clever chap. I just took the shots then edited them afterwards.

If I'd known we could have submitted more than one shot then I would have liked to have gotten a few up in the exhibition. Can't say I was too pleased with how the exhibition itself was handled. We were told pretty last minute that we'd been accepted so didn't have long to get a print done. Not to mention that they put our rather dark piece in the darkest corner. But still, an exhibition is an exhibition and it's the first one I've been involved with which is something in itself. Here we are with our shot at the exhibition.

So there we have it. A rare bit of digital project work from myself and Andy Vine. My first ever exhibited piece. Here's hoping this is the beginning of great things to come.

As always any and all feedback is welcome and appreciated.

Laters,

P x

Introducing...

Hello.

I told Andy Vine I would do a brief introduction before posting anything more so here it is.

I'm Kelly Ward however I blog as Panda. Newest member of Dead Pheasant I guess? I've mostly been roped in by Andy. This is me if you should be interested. Blurry as usual.

I do photography I suppose. Pure amateur. It began as a kid and has been on/off ever since. Re-discovered it at 17 though at that time it was what I did to capture the life I was living. Couple years of go I finally found it within myself to try studying it properly. That didn't quite work out as planned. I hope to return to studying it at some point but for now I make do with just enjoying shooting. Mostly I just shoot whatever takes my fancy. There's projects in the pipeline though and distant dreams.

I've been known to shoot digitally though my real love is for my analogue photography. I use various cameras and film. Here's some of my personal favourites.

From my Diana F+

From my LC-A+

From my Olympus OM-10

From my Pentax K1000

So there you have a small selection of my many photographs. I hope you like them. I hope you'll enjoy the stuff I'll be posting in future as well. If you want you can also follow my main blog, a Panda with a Camera, where I'll post not just my photos but all kinds of other stuffs.

Laters,

P x

From Pet Shops To Porn

This blog post finds me in a jubilant mood, eating a celebratory late night bacon butty and drinking a celebratory late night cup of tea (although the late night cup of tea is far from unusual) as I have just received an email informing me that the photograph Kelly Ward and I submitted for the From Pet Shops To Porn exhibition at Cord has been successful. It begins on Thursday night, the 12th of July and runs for 8 weeks. The following piece of filth is our submission, to be printed, framed and delivered to Cord by the seat of our collective pants tomorrow.

I'm pretty pleased with it to say the least. I can't take much of the credit, it was Kelly's idea. I designed the calling cards and she took the photo. Obviously that's my chin and hand as well. We're planning on using some of the other photos we took (along with some extras we're taking tomorrow) to put together a little zine. More information on that as and when we have it. In the meantime, come along on Thursday night and let's have a drink and glamorise/satirise bestiality together!