James D. Kelly

first shots from using my leica m6 and 35mm summlilux lens

makes me hot!

wondering what this photo looks like…

night before the smoking ban in the uk…

surely no one would notice if just one went missing?

think total recall right around the moment the pressure drops

saw interpol at the astoria, and then made this photo of paul banks, truly one of my biggest inspirations in life… got the focus all wrong because of nerves I guess.. kinda like how it came out though..

hot weather making everyone sleepy…

some dont get the choice :(

trying to capture this moment with the picture frame on the left in the composition, from the hip, with guessed exposure makes me super proud of this…

bored in the rain, leads to making shapes in the sludge

aerosmith f’n rock !

its been a strange week of my life this week…

love seems to surround me everywhere I look, in every song, every moment, everything I read…

biggest weapon, makes you the worst hunter…

long walk to hawaii…

betty boo!

maybe not so far to hawii after all?

you are just one small part of a much bigger picture…

I hope whoever wrote this, had the feeling of ‘gong endir’ by sigur ros in their heart.. passed this spot two hours later, and its already painted over… sometimes the most simple words and graffiti can look so beautiful to me.. I find it special to know that someone somewhere loves someone so much, they cant resist sharing it with the world… just hope that love isnt erased so quickly…

met with the beautiful michael (mi4) for a few hours in london… got the feeling he’s really a special guy…

and optical-flare from da… another great photographer…

 last shots from my slr, shots from now on my new rangefinder (present to myself, must be how it feels for a girl to own chanel)

found some rolls in the back of my cupboard that I missed developing, all exposed incorrectly because my light meter was off, like the contrast that came out in the images though. decided to develop slightly longer on my next rolls.

this guy fell asleep in the photography section of borders, the cheek…

an early days sweeney todd visual effects lunchtime meeting, such talented guys…

my university graduation, the snow got really slippy and slushy, but made for a beautiful day…

two great video artists in focus, miss these guys!

and being a student…

apologies for the lack of updates here recently, if there was one thing I wished to have more of in this world it would be time…

stopped by portobello market, mmmmmmmmm cameras!

imogen makes my portrait… feels like summer now!

thought I was hallucinating at first, apparantly not.

if I had an enlarger, this would definatly be a print… just in an alley behind my work.

met another photographer on my travels….

have absolutely no idea what this expression was about, but this time it didnt involve mcdonalds.

my muse…

this guy was taking photos of me. two can play at that game. hah.

dont ask…

party celebrations now…

imogen makes a cake for ewan…

some random guy invades…

and my little sisters 12th birthday…

ow.

yeah! slamming kids with pies.

cutest little face…

saw one of my cousins for the first time in many years… grown so fast.

turned into dance routines…

a cup of tea solves all the worlds problems… drink too much though, and you’ll get a teapot head.

going to a friends bar for some celebration drinks after harry potters wrap party.

love this bar so much, the black gardenia in soho.

managed to convince david to eat a mcdonalds, his face explains our stomachs.

and in contrast…

met with my nanna for the first time in almost a year since I moved to london, we visited one of her friends who told me she took a photo in her garden with an angel in the frame… I tried…. feels quite supernatural, but think its really nothing.

vince noir in camden! absolute legend. he told me he’s quite hung over from the night before, so put his shades on before i made this frame.

so last night after drinks I lost my mobile phone… feels like I lost a best friend… and just want those numbers back! its funny though, because only a few days ago I only had this thought about how screwed I would be to lose my phone, and now it has happened… should have taken the sign!

speaking of signs… love this irony… some guy has painted this next to many big landmarks in london. I like how it points out in some way that thousands of images are taken of the same thing ever day… and really for not much reason other than to say ‘look I was here’… you and everyone else. 

on that note… went to visit highgate cemetary with aidan, you pay for a private tour around what is so beautiful it looks like a movie set.. we hung out for a while with thomas sayers… bare knuckle boxer!

apparantly sometime ago, long before the days of digital and photoshop… a man took a photo of this tree.. and a girl stood wearing a white dress appeared on his negative… amazing thought.. didnt get squat on mine though.. just a bit of dust.

paying respects to karl marx and his big old head.

friend at work showing me this song called ‘james kelly’s dead’ and old punk song… after hanging out in cemetary’s I hope its not some sign… he then showed me some punk guy who shits on stage and then covers himself in it… nice.

if you see this expression on this man… dont trust a thing he says!

jemima buys her first camera… a black OM1. made me super happy, but a bit jealous that it was in mint condition and only cost 65pounds… especially after just paying 100 to get mine serviced… explained the concepts of traditional photography over a coffee, and then spent some time appreciating everything still anologue in the world. just love this frame.

taking over this guys bike… focus here shows my state of mind pretty nicely.. but not so terrible for 1/15th… think he was pretty scared, and loving the attention of three girls also.

and then motorbikes…

one of best friends finding love… beautiful to witness.

feeling tired early in the morning, but hungry enough to keep going.

when im old, if I just have a dog this loyal… i’ll die happy.

found a moment to make a new blog entry! hate being useless at things like this… I think I need to get a larger development tank, so the processing can becomes less of a time-consuming thing, and I can then dedicate more to scannning! It seems funny now how initially I was scared to develop too many films at once in fear something is going to go wrong… now that thought seems stupid.. good to notice a progression like that.

love moments like this, when you can predict someone is going to look at you just because you are doing something out of the norm, made eye-contact together through the mirror, but never in person… somehow that feels strange.

went home over easter to visit my parents, here is my step-father as we head out to catch up and play pool. I get progressively worse at this as I drink more… on the other hand he seems to get better.

at least I can still lift the cue…

experimenting with some different pieces of glass that came with my holga.. makes some fun results that you cant make the same in multiple exposures.

feeling some tension in the room here… dont know that anyone else noticed…

crazy how sometimes you feel like you know people from the streets as a friend because you see them around so often…

using toilet on my birthday drinks, these random guys asked for a portrait together.. dont think they know each other before hand.. one of those male toilet bonding things.

my techno cat

loving chocolate ice cream on such hot days…

again loving this feeling of being able to manipulate someones reaction to a moment in time, just because you are holding a camera to something.. such a powerful method once you realize the possibilites of doing this..

lonnnnnng train ride to take work related photos…

met some cool kids who drink cider outside my work often, and this guy came to play guitar for them because they are street also in a different way…

I’m wondering often in my life if people who don’t have an artistic mind/eye notice things like this?

met this makeup artist from the north with crazy cat… turned out we were strangely connected… it really is a small world sometimes.

this guys expression really didn’t change for about twenty minutes.. I began to wonder if he was a waxwork model, girl looking into camera was laughing about it also.

big party going on… and she is mostly deep in thought staring from the window.. wonder whats on her mind… this is one of the few moments she turned from the window all night.. almost as if her intuition told her I’m about to make this photograph…

wishing I could enjoy sunshine in the park like this…

Just ordered polaroid sx70 camera from ebay, such beautiful camera I got excited and accidently bid on two. Going to modify one to take polaroid 600 for snaps of friends, and leave the other for sx70/time-zero. found packets of film in some shops, and others on ebay, suspect some will have dead battery now which will need the film transfering to new container.

first polaroid (almost)

35mm out of service now, 100pounds to fix some light leaks, and meter/re-calibration. worth it for an extra twenty years I suppose.

decided to make a pinhole camera from a matchbox I had lying around, and a tutorial I found somewhere on the internet, I can tell you, in my experience there is no more satisfying feeling you can have then making the camera yourself, taking photographs, and developing the film in your own bathroom. It kind of showed me how it must feel in the early days to make the first ever images. estimated that at 0.2mm the fstop was around f90, and metered with handheld meter accordingly. saying that, most of exposures are still guess work, and the negatives were for most part over-exposed. There is some kind of beauty in the following images, that no other camera can re-create.

Dont even know what this was in heinsight, though I think in higher resolution scan, its my favourite on the roll. it feels industrial to me, with small black shape representing some kind of worker who is driving the emotion.

subway shot waiting for train

portrait made by aidan, hanging out with dead people, and karl marx. who of course for the time being lives on.

this is the camera I made, cut the frame at 24mm into back of the matchbox with sloppy edges. makes 50 frames on every 36 exposure roll. thats some good value. had custom sliding shutter, and then used end of a lighter to wind the film. sure you can appreciate irony of all this when you have 16.7mp camera in your possession.

shopping for new shoes with aidan… Its impossible to ever find anything I like with such big boat feet, so I give up and just keep wearing my converse.

posing for coffee downtown oxford street, being poser!

mcthorpe, mchungry, mcbeautifulmusic, mclatenight, mcheartattack…

moment after this kiss, she looks at him with some of the most true love I have ever seen in her eyes… this to me is the worlds most powerful magic

each person reading information in free london paper, something about celebrity life, or some useles fact, that is forgotten as quickly as it is read

‘how to be kylie minogue’ hah! the irony…

went to a celebrity musician fancy dress party at the weekend, and decided to go as kurt cobain, for some reason in my drunken state it seemed like a really good idea to stop at any pub on the way and play nirvana on the jukebox. looking back on these photos its practically suicide… local pub for local people. I sat there with my half a pint for about five minutes, and left somewhere in the middle of smells like teen spirit solo.

asked the barmaid to make my photo in here, it did make me laugh to see the negative (which I accidently cut in half because of being so tired) these kind of people in the UK are really something else.

food anyone?

made this shot on the way to get more cocktail, straight after she said I must ask permission to take photograph in a joking way, so I did… and it wasn’t as interesting.

this guy brought huge cardboard cut-out boombox and some friends looking beasty boy.

1/15th - barely any light in this room.. some funky late night pulp fiction style dancing… like right before uma thurman over doses on heroin and they stick a needle in her heart.

production co-ordinator on sweeney todd, also become really good friend to me, cant remember taking this, but usually his portraits seem to involve cigarettes and alcohol.

shes makes me want to pick up a camera, and celebrate the myriad ways that I love her.