At My Feet

I've been collecting pictures of stuff I've found on the floor. I seem to be settling more on images of industrial detritus. It's the sort of stuff that doesn't seem to matter, but I'm finding myself drawn to looking for it.

These objects are probably produced in their thousands, employing hundreds of people to make them, shipped worldwide to fulfil a single and utterly disposable purpose. These things are the Mayflies of manufacturing. They consume huge amounts of energy and time to come into being, only to be discarded without a thought.

I don't think that these things epitomise waste. They perform a purpose, usually one of protecting something of greater value from damage and, by their design, cost the very least they can to manufacture. It's actually a fantastic example of efficiency. Their disposal troubles me, but the disposal of everything troubles me. Ideally, I'd like to see everything we consume find its way back to the bottom of the food chain.

However banal these objects could be considered, I have found a intriguing beauty in them. Something designed to be purely functional inherently lends itself to the purity of form. They're principally designed to solve a problem, so aesthetics are the first things to be lost in their production.

By putting all these images together, I've realised they've started to look slightly hieroglyphic. Their shapes are so basic, they being to resemble characters with distinct meaning, but not just a letter in a language. They're more like symbols for something universally understood.

You can see more on my Flickr stream (link at the top of the page), on the Backspaces app and on Instagram on this hashtag - #i_found_pauljames

Hipstamatic Portraits

I've been messing around with some ideas for portraiture on Instagram. I've been taking using the Tinto 1884 lens and D-Type Plate film on Hipstamatic, sticking the results through Snapseed and publishing on Instagram in sets of three so it looks nice in the grid view. I also published these on the brilliant App Backspaces - find it here - and the pictures have since been featured on the AMPt Community website.

The Backspaces App is way of publishing stories via your iPhone. I've been waiting for this and didn't realise. I like to shoot in a collecting sort of way. I'll often take pictures which I intend to put together as a set and it takes time to get enough. If I've got pictures I want to publish in between, I either have to wait or break up the set.

Backspaces allows you to do what you can't on Instagram; put your pictures in order before you publish. You also have the option of adding titles, text and captions.

The community on Backspaces also seems lively and feedback is not limited to comments like 'Awesome!' and 'Cool shot!' which, admittedly, is kind of nice but not very useful. I've found it a place where you can be honestly critical on peoples work without being considered a hater.

The subjects above are Neil Atkinson, a dude I met outside The Queen of Hoxton and Chris Perkins, lead singer of Sheffield band Section 60.

I've no plans for these pictures as yet. I want to find a way of standardising them so Im getting the best results out of each subject. I am liking the russian doll triptych effect though. I think it might have some mileage.

Find more on Instagram and Backspaces. My user name is @i_am_pauljames on both.