Thursday 18 August 2011

In the footsteps of Iain Sinclair

A few weeks ago I was once again in London for my yearly Photographing London workshop with participants from Morley College. This is the 7th time I have organised the workshop and it was by far the most intriguing. Every year I try and come up with a surprise location to which the participants respond. As a long term fan of Iain Sinclair, I knew I had found it when rediscovering his fantastic Thames River Walk, only a short trip away from the Metropolis. A worthy link to the map and podcast here.

The day was also used as a challenge to get out of our comfort zone. Participants were: Saron, Rob Crane, Jenny Eccles, Paul Street and Carol Jones. Find their images on our flickr page.

Here I try to sum up the experience in a sound slide show. This is one of my very first attempts to bring images and sound recordings together. The voice over was caught on Jenny Eccle's Blackberry and the water sound on Rob Crane's iPhone. Thanks to both of them for taking part in my experiment. I converted the files in Audicity in order to work with Soundslides. Soundslides can be downloaded for a free trial (ad version) and bought for very little online. It is far less complex then using Final Cut Pro but of course less advanced.

The sound is by no means perfect and you may have to turn up your volume. In any case I learned quite a lot about sound conversion and am pleased with the result. Enjoy!