The Ring of fire.

Oooooh, A roadside pasty looked enticing on my long working day, a content of chicken and mushroom afternoon freelance delight held no warning of the week ahead. No Psychic indication in the pastries rippling, or the arrangement of the internal peppery contents to tell me it had a guest that would overstay its welcome.

I first woke from the confectionary desecration crying in my sleep, pounding headache and the belief that Col Gadaffi was shouting in my bedroom, I'm not making this 'shit' up.

Walls were laid bare nothing stayed inside for a week, nothing, even water appeared to be the enemy expelled at force like a councils surveyor report.

My headache was so great that I thought I could feel that half my skull was empty of water and that little electrodes would fire across the top of the surface of my brain, and in doing so I could illuminate a 3D outline in my mind. When i would turn over in bed i'd be able to feel my brain slide and knock against the opposing wall like an old school game of computer tennis but with my brain as the ball.

But the shits, oooooh, those, cramps, feirce, in, their, intent, in, th, ei, r, speedatwhichthey'dsuddenlyexpel anything without little warning.

I wasooo dizzzxy, onmyyy way to thebathroooom, crisps behind myeyeballs, a dressing gown doused in funky smell. "Don't fart Tim whatever you do", I'd say to myself on the way.

When the illness slowly faded and the pasty had finished its business meeting with my body, I remember the joys of food again, eating without fear is such a wonderful feeling that you want to congratulate your own body with winning. Buy it a pint

When I finally took a real shit after the week, I nearly saluted it on its way out of the building and my own.



http://www.timothyfoster.co.uk

Albert Edwards- Societe Generale

Sometimes photographing businessmen you get surprised by a personality, as a "creative" you assume it's only media types that can create and subvert the narrative.

http://www.timothyfoster.co.uk

Welcome to Romford

Wow,

I just saw the edit of channel 4's, "Welcome to Romford" documentary that I've been filming with director Simon Smith for over 8 months of 2010, it's Vunderbar! Amazing what a good team can do rather than the solo photographer ive been for so many years. The edit is immaculate, the sound is really clever and picks out all the right moments, the colouring which i watched live was insanely good. I had no idea that you can burn and dodge just like a photograph and to such an effect. Wow all over, and I don't mind saying the cinematography is pretty tidy too!

The screening is open to the public:
Feb 4th - 7pm - Cafe 1001 - Brick lane, London.



Welcome to Romford

Simon Smith's First Cut film provides a fascinating insight into a night in the life of Romford minicab firm A1 Taxis.

The life of a cabbie is never dull. On a Friday night, the drivers of A1 Taxis get all sorts of people in the back of their cabs, from a young couple on the way back from their 'wedding on the cheap' to a man found lying in the middle of the road. A couple who have just met on the internet, jealous couples, reunited couples and couples who can't wait to get home. Plus desperate young men, lonely old men and everyone else between.

The film explores relationships, friendships, and love and loneliness in Romford using a two-camera split-screen technique and featuring the simultaneous, real-time reactions of the cabbies and their passengers.

First Cut showcases the best in bold, bright and original documentaries by up-and-coming filmmakers.

Shackletons ship

The house renovation is now a year on from when I first moved in and the place is looking good. All I have to do is fit the wood burning stove and its surrounding victorian tiles bought of Ebay, fit a carpet and stair rods to the stairs and Bobs your bloomin unckle.

Great, however, in this cold snowy weather the floorboards that I dutifully filed the gaps between with PVA and sawdust have started to move in the night. When the temperature drops really low Im awoken by large cracking sounds of the floorboards tearing themselves in half as they contract and the PVA holds.

Some nights I wake with a startle and still half asleep, thinking I'm asleep on Shackeltons ship caught in the ice of the southern polar cap. Crrrrrack! "get off the ship, the ice is taking her"! Only to wake and realize I'm in London, Walthamstow, innit.


http://www.timothyfoster.co.uk

happy birthday

...HAPPY BIRTHDAY ....the sun shone on the morning of your birth and I waited in one of Billinge Hospital's reception areas reading an article in the Geographical magazine on Concord's restricted flightpaths over the Bristol Channel. Then the nurses called me in and asked me to wait at your Mum's bedside...they said you would be ages...but then you came, unexpectedly and with little prior notice...and then you were in the world.

I love you.

Dad

3 to 9 months

When I get into bed at night I keep thinking I've been eating biscuits in it until I remember I'm just rolling in the grit, or the plaster, or well just whatever the hell it is that I've been knocking shit out of the house this week.

At the moment the bed isn't a bed, its a camping foam mattress on dirty floorboards covered in a duvet and to be honest, I've got quite used to it. The house is painful at the moment as its two floors completely plastered with bare floorboards with my bare ass lying on them. It was meant to be a 3 month project buts it's taken me 9 hard but worthy months to get this far.

Its amazing what you can do when you want to. At the moment im working the hardest ive ever worked, 7 days a week sometimes two stills shoots in day followed by the doc in the evening taking me into the very early hours.

Argh, sometimes I wish I'd worked this harder in my 20s instead of trying to find myself, why didn't I just look under the couch and get over what I found then buy a house at 25 and work hard instead of languishing and lacking confidence.

the times they are a changing

http://www.timothyfoster.co.uk

Tales of a Taxi driver

One of the Taxi drivers on the documentary I'm shooting for ch4, Dave, told me a story that I told to a group of undergraduates I was photographing for Bath University:

One day Dave picked up a client from a mental institution. He thought nothing unusual of the client as he dressed impeccably wearing a full suit and talked like a doctor.

The fare went normally until a few miles slipped by on the way to the destination of Romford hospital, whereupon the man began to scream and flail his arms about. Dave, began press his foot harder on the accelerator the louder the man became and they soon arrived at the hospital where the man calmed to a still.

Dave applied the hand-break and turned to the man and said, "Im sorry but the fare is still £8", where upon the man reached into his pressed waist-coat and produced a picked onion and placed it in Daves' outstretched palm. Flabbergasted and a little frightened he accepted and the man exited.

When Dave drove back to the cab office he relayed the story to its contents with much amusement and then went home scratching his head and £8 lighter.

The next day he arrived at the office to find on the desk a jar of picked Gurkins with his name written on the label.

"Whats this?", Dave exclaimed.

"Just in case next time you need to give change" came the reply.