The Big Picture - West Midlands

Look out for the Big One: The world’s largest photo mosaic is on the way…

Thousands you from across the West Midlands are set to become joint-world record holders in August, after taking part in an ambitious arts project to create the largest photo mosaic in the world.

Between January and June, we’ve received  110,000 photos submitted from people across the region, and uploaded this site.

The pictures will be used to create a huge, record-breaking photo mosaic, the size of three tennis courts, to be unveiled at Birmingham’s Thinktank at Millennium Point on Saturday 23 August. Big Picture organisers have also confirmed that the mosaic will create the image of one of the thousands of photos sent in by the public, but the special picture will be kept under wraps until the big day!

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There are only a few hours left to make sure that your photos are part of The Big Picture and our World Record Attempt. By then we hope to have got enough photographs collected to break the record for the largest photo mosaic, using all of your photos and showing a brilliant snapshot of the West Midlands.

The deadline for you to add photos is midnight tonight, 30th of June, so if you want to “be in it” please add as many photos as you can by then.

We’ve had a huge response from all around the region and have thousands and thousands of photos in our office that we’re furiously scanning and uploading (as well as uploading those sent in on CDs and DVDs),  enough that we’re almost sure of getting to the 100,000. But it’s only almost! Every photo does count, and we want to break the record by as many as we can.

Are you between the ages of 11 - 19 years old?  Do you enjoy taking pictures?  If so, here’s a competition for you:

Subject matter could be photographing a friend, illustrating a feeling or emotion, covering an event, time or a place – anything, there is no particular theme – and, anyone can enter providing they fall into the two age categories; category 1 is ages 11-15 years / category 2 is ages 16-19 years.

Deadline for entries: 26 September 2008

Prize winners and selected entries will be part of an exhibition at Hereford College of Arts in the autumn.  The overall winner will also be given the opportunity to exhibit as part of Hereford Photography Festival 2009.  All details about the Young Photographer Competition can be found on the College website at www.hca.ac.uk

With the summer holidays coming up there will plenty of photo opportunities coming up – so get snapping!

People around Birmingham are being urged to Get into Digital in June — and enter the ‘Birmingham Snaps’ competition. There are fantastic prizes of digital cameras for the best photo from each of the 10 constituencies across Birmingham as well as a community prize to the constituency that sends in the most photos and you can add your photos to The Big Picture as you enter.

Find out all about it, and enter here.

You don’t need an expensive camera to take great pictures or capture the moment — in a fact you don’t even need a camera, in most cases your mobile phone can work too!

Photos added to The Big Picture by MMS get added to our galleries and to the World Record attempt just like any others, but now you can see them framed and hung - in as special “virtual” art gallery.

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Yesterday saw the Big Picture visit the famous Birmingham Rag Market taking a stall near the Market Customer Centre in the indoor market. Artist Faye Claridge was on hand to give out lots of photo tips and take pictures with with and off anyone who came to visit.

Some people brought along favourite photographs, or had interesting stories to tell, others just had fun.

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You’re invited to drop in to a Big Picture workshop near you and take photos that will add to the world’s biggest photo mosaic, which will be created here in the West Midlands.

Artist Faye Claridge will be available to give you lots of photo tips and take pictures with you — or of you! You might be filmed talking about what pictures mean to you, as well, all for a reward of a free badge to say you’re part of a world record attempt.

Empty the mantelpiece and bring along your favourite photographs for your best chance of being in a video, which may even be shown on the BBC.

These are all FREE events, just turn up! More details:

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As part of Big Picture Day, eight photos were picked to be blown up and shown on huge billboards around the region. This week they go on display, helping to encourage everyone to keep adding as many photos as they can over the last month of the Big Picture.

Kerry our project manager is really happy with the results “The images capture a special or memorable moment in time for each of our winners. They include everything from Stoke City’s promotion to Hereford’s skyline at dusk, from enjoying a day out with a grandchild in Telford to collapsing in a deck-chair in a Birmingham garden! They really sum up what the Big Picture is all about, creating a unique snapshot of the region through the eyes of the people that live here.”

In case you don’t see the photos on your travels, we’ve put them all up here, and there are links to stories on local BBC websites:

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You’re invited to drop in to the famous Birmingham Rag Market and take photos that will add to the world’s biggest photo collage, which will be created here in the West Midlands.

Artists Faye Claridge and Helen Berrow will have a stall near the Market Customer Centre in the indoor market, on Tuesday 17th June to give you lots of photo tips and take pictures with you — or of you! You might be filmed talking about what pictures mean to you, as well, all for a reward of a free badge to say you’re part of a world record attempt.

Empty the mantelpiece and bring along your favourite photographs for your best chance of being in a video, which may even be shown on the BBC.

This is a FREE event, turn up on Tuesday 17th June between 12.30 and 3.30 to take part.

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You’ve got all your digital photographs, and you’ve added them to the Big Picture, but apart from sharing the what else can you do? How about making your own comic strips?

Comiqs.com lets you do just that - you can either upload photos, select from your Flickr account or use the supplied bank of pictures, then add speech bubbles, captions and put the photos together to tell any story you like. The finished comic can be shared or printed off, it’s great fun.

In late June and during the preparation for the World Record attempt Audiences Central (who are running The Big Picture) are looking for a volunteer to help with the many thousands of photos they’re receiving by post and handed in at art galleries.

Find out how to apply:
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The New Generation Arts Festival runs from 5th June to 20th June and they’re having a photography competition.

“Join in with the festival’s huge mobile phone ‘Portrait of the City’ competition. Upload your instant photos of you and your friends in city settings through the New Generation Arts website. Daily selections of the funniest, saddest, beautiful and interesting faces of Birmingham will appear on the Big Screen and online.”
You can find out more and enter here.

At the Big Picture we’ve enjoyed seening some of the older photos that people have added to our galleries. The history of the West Midlands is a big part of the region and it’s really interesting to see how it has changed.

We’re working on some special galleries where you’ll be encouraged to show how the region has changed over the years — by uploading photos that are in some way related to the older pictures we show.

We’ve got some great old photos, but would like more — so if you have any of your area please send them in with as many details as you have to editor@inthegpicture.co.uk.

You don’t need to have a mobile phone, or digital camera to join in with The Big Picture — if you’ve got prints of photos there are a number of ways you can get them to us.

You can post them to our freepost address: The Big Picture, FREEPOST BM2782, Birmingham, B18 6BR. Or drop them in at our partner galleries — there should be one near you:

• Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery
• Ikon
• New Art Gallery Walsall
• Wolverhampton Art Gallery
• The Potteries Museum and Art Gallery
• The Herbert
• Hereford Museum & Art Gallery
• The Old House, Hereford
• Market House Heritage Centre, Ross on Wye
• Hereford Museum Resource & Learning Centre, Friar Street, Hereford

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Artist Jane Clowes made lots of elephant shaped cut-outs — which are now hiding around Leek in Staffordshire, in shop windows and other venues, plus local arts group Borderland Voices have made their own elephant, which can be found at their venue in Haregate.

If you would like to be entered in to the SPOT THE ELEPHANTS prize draw competition you need to try and find the elephants in Leek and capture them in a photograph! Try and find all 16 if you can - the smallest size of is 50cm wide the largest is 1.5m wide. The elephants are around to the end of May.
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Soi Project, a collective of artists from Thailand and Japan, bring their popular fruit stand to Brindleyplace on 24,25 and 26 May as part of Big Picture Weekend. Similar in style to those commonly found on street corners around Bangkok, visitors to the stand will be invited to make paper fruit from specially designed template cut-outs which are then added to the display, and in return, will be given real fruit to take away.

Soi Project’s fruitstand will also take up residence in Erdington’s busy High Street for one day only on 29 May, 11am - 3pm.

Hundreds of people joined Kylie, Will Smith and David Beckham in Victoria Square in Birmingham to celebrate Big Picture Day and learn about our great competition. People lined up to have their photos taken with our lookalikes, who braved the risk of sunburn to chat and pose with for four hours!

There are nearly a thousand photos, which are coming through to our Big Picture Roadshow gallery now (since there are so many it’s taking a while - see the Big Picture pages on Flickr here for every single one!)

There’s even some video of the fun:
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We’re happy to say that photo uploading and logining in to The Big Picture site is now back to normal. We’re still experiencing some delay on new photos being available in the galleries on site, but we’re getting each and hope to remedy this asap.

If you met ‘David Beckham’ in Stoke today, don’t worry you aren’t going mad — he was there to promote Big Picture day.

Don’t forget you can meet Dave, Will Smith and Kylie in Victoria Square, Birmingham tomorrow!

See the photos of today:
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‘Will Smith’ was in Walsall today with The Big Picture team - posing in front of our special ‘Big Picture Red Carpet’.

If you’re in Stoke tomorrow you can meet ‘David Beckham’ and both Will and David will be in Birmingham on Thursday.

They’re promoting Big Picture Day on May 8th, don’t forget to join in.

Here’s a slideshow of the photos:
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