TEDxBrum Competition Time #DIY

So it’s 8 days until TEDxBrum and you don’t have a ticket. First off, naughty you. You’re missing out and now you’ve had that dawning realisation that it’s only a few days away and the tickets are sold out you’re feeling a little bit sick in your stomach. I’m sure you had your reasons, it’s probably one of the following.

1) Your lazy and you kept putting it off and off because you couldn’t be bothered to get your card out of your bag.

2) You haven’t got any where to stay in Birmingham.

3) You were waiting around hoping that there would be a magical competition that allowed you to come along for free and even provided you with a hotel for the night.

Well the good news is the number three dream has come true! Thanks to BLOC hotels and PACKT Publishing we have two tickets to TEDxBrum and a night in their hotel in the Jewellery Quarter up for grabs. I tried to grab the hotel myself but I was told by the almighty TEDxBrum powers that be that I couldn’t have it so we’re throwing a competition instead.

So what do you have to do to get your hands on this tasty treat? Well it’s pretty simple, we want you to create and capture something that really encapsulates what DIY means to you. It can be a photo, a video, an illustration, a Vine, a poem or a tasty meal that you can deliver to my house in order to bribe me (send me a message if you would like my address for bribing purposes). 

What’s important is that it really hits the theme and looks awesome. 

Below are a few example of what some of the TEDxBrum team have created over the past few months. Soak in all that inspirational goodness and then get out there, get creating and get sharing.

My effort.

My effort.

TEDxBrum Performer and team member David Austin Grey put together this video.

TEDxBrum Outreach bossman Gav Chahal got creative with his son.

TEDxBrum Outreach bossman Gav Chahal got creative with his son.

And finally Banana Seeds put together this ace kite making instructional video.

Once you’ve made your thingymabob share it on either Twitter, Instagram or Facebook (Publicly of course) with the hashtag #TEDxBrumDIY in order to be in the running. 

My fellow photography team Arran White, Verity Milligan and Jamie Davis Morgan and I will be judging the entries, although I’m sure the whole TEDxBrum team will poke their noses in and have something to say about the result as well. The competition will closes on Monday at midday and the winner will be announced soon after so get cracking.

I’m looking forward to checking out all the entries.

Good luck!

Thom @ThomBartley

Charcoal Blur

While trying out my new lighting rig by shooting Hannah the other day I thought I'd try something a bit different.

I ended up with these handheld deliberately blurred shots which reminds me of how it looked when I used to blur charcoal with my thumb back in year 9 English.


Mollowollo

Trying out some editing techniques on some shots from a shoot with Molly Owen last year. Photographers spend thousands of pounds on gear and then use filters to make a shot look like it was took with a £10 camera. We're a strange bunch.

Catalyst

A few months ago I was commissioned by Immy Kaur, series director at Catalyst to take some photos to use in their new branding. Catalyst is an interfaith programme for Birmingham based people aged between 20-30. 

The brief was to grab some vibrant colourful shots of the Catalyst community shot around and about in Birmingham city centre.

After grabbing the shots they were passed on to the excellent Birmingham based graphic designer Claire Hartley who worked her magic and turned them into the final product you can see below.

You can read about the process from Claire's perspective by checking out her blog here.