The Big Picture - West Midlands

The West Midlands has just under two months to go to smash the World Record for the biggest photo mosaic, and organisers of The Big Picture are urging people all around the region to get snappy!

Thursday 8 May marks Big Picture Day, and all images submitted to The Big Picture during that day will be entered into a special competition, with the winning photographs being displayed on a huge billboards in June.

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The BBC and the Arts Council are looking for photos that say “Englishness” to the viewer. They say “It doesn’t have to be a thatched cottage. It doesn’t have to be the village green and duck pond. It doesn’t have to be a rolling landscape.”

Upload your photo to The Big Picture (you must tag the photo ‘madeinengland’), add a short description of what the scene means to you and the picture will be part of a gallery on our site.
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Birmingham Museum and Art gallery has many more items than it can have on display at any one time - the rest are usually hidden from public gaze. But on Saturday 5th April, the Collections Centre will be open to the public, 10.00am - 3.00pm, to explore and photograph all the weird and wonderful objects.

Come and take your own snaps of the amazing objects like cars, motorbikes and fire engines in one of the biggest museum stores in the country. Bring your own camera or mobile phone and have a ball. Professional photographers will be on hand to help and there’s a chance to enter a special competition. Winning photos will be displayed at the centre’s Open Day on 26th May.

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If you’re in Birmingham then the Public Space at BBC Birmingham (in the Mailbox) is worth a visit to see a photo exhibition by Jaskirt Dhaliwal.

Featuring images of Asian musicians it “features artists who go against the stereotypes of what it means to be Asian and a musician”. Neeta (left) is a a singer, songwriter, pianist, selective guitarist and producer.

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Why not celebrate Mother’s Day with a difference this year. We want to hear what makes your Mum so special, so send us a message along with your photo and we’ll display it on our website for all the world to see!

travellinglamberts added this great picture of two people who obviously love their mum - it would be great to see and read about how much you love yours. Mum’s are special all year round, but it’s nice to have one day to let them know.

Add your picture to the Big Picture as normal and make sure you tag it ‘mum’ so it appears in our special gallery automatically.

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What do you love most about the West Midlands? Is it a building, a park or open space? Or is it just because your favourite people and animals are here?

February is all about love - so keep adding photos to The Big Picture and tag them “love” so they’ll appear in our special ‘love’ gallery

Julia Perry added this unusual photo of a cat and dog that love each other!

Don’t forget to tell us what you love - and why the photo shows that - The Big Picture is all about the stories as well as the photos (some are being featured on the BBC, as you might have seen). And remember to include an email address - as we’ll need to talk to you about your story if it’s to feature. (more…)

This week is National Chip Week – so we’d like to see your photos of your favourite chip shop.Does it have a great name (like Le Codfather - added to the Big Picture by “jonnie” ), does it serve the lightest chips in the West Midlands, or are the staff the friendliest around?

If you like to cook your chips at home - why not add a picture of your home-cooked chip supper to The Big Picture? With fish, with eggs, with a pie, red sauce, brown sauce, mushy peas, even gravy (yuck!) - we want to see them all!

Upload a photo - tag it “chipshop” - and we’ll see them all on our “chipshop” tag gallery.

There’s not only one “Codfather” in the West Midlands though - *lizbeth* has spotted one in Walsall too:

The Big Picture tour of the West Midlands this week has been tiring, but loads of fun. Today we were up especially early to meet BBC Coventry and Warwickshire’s breakfast team and Liz Kershaw by the Lady Godiva statue. It was worth it - as we not only took loads of photos ourselves - but got lots of promises from the people of Coventry to add theirs to the Big Picture website over the weekend. Andrew from BBC Coventry and Warwickshire has even been uploading his.

Then to Birmingham it was - to catch people as they arrived to watch the panto - we even caught some dancers from the Dance Xchange and got them to do a pose we couldn’t dream of copying!

Pictured are Laura Cadlow and Celine Alwyn, from Barebones, the touring company of DanceXchange, getting ready for the International Dance Festival Birmingham.

The Big Picture team spent today in Stoke - and the photos we took there, along with the hundreds you have been adding yourselves, have pushed the current total over 3,000! We met loads of great people, and Kerry continued her media stardom stardom by talking to Max from BBC Radio Stoke about how we were getting on.

Moving on from Tontine Square, we spent the afternoon at Trentham Gardens, where passers by - and their furry friends - were happy to pose!

Where: Outside the Hippodrome, Hurst St, Birmingham

When: Friday 25 January at 1pm till 3pm

Who: The Big Picture team and giant oversized photo frames

Come and find out more about The Big Picture. Be in it, by stepping into our giant photo frames and take away goodie bags - including disposable cameras.

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Knights, Queens and Archbishops were in the frame when The Big Picture team joined the cast of the play Edward II at Warwick Castle today - and Ben Sidwell from Midlands Today was seen chatting to a suit of armour (we thought it was empty, but he may have known better!). If you’d like to watch a little of his report you can see it online.

Earlier in the day we were in Worcester, where people were waiting for us with their photos as we arrived! We set our giant photo frames up outside the Guildhall and took loads of photos, like this one:

You may have noticed that the Big Picture website experienced some technical problems yesterday evening - we’re sorry for that, but pleased to say that they’re fixed now.The overwhelming number of visitors to the site, and the huge volume of photos being uploaded since launch on Monday slowed the site right down and in some cases you may not have been able to get to us at all. Our technical gurus worked hard and quickly to sort out these problems and are confident that the site is now much stronger.

Sorry if you experienced these problems but we hope, and are almost certain, that it won’t happen again.

If you have any questions please email us at [email protected] and we’ll do our best to help.

Children from Bridgnorth Endowed school joined The Big Picture team today at Blists Hill Victorian Town in Ironbridge, Shropshire - dressed in costume from their upcoming production of Oliver! - and they sang for BBC Radio Shropshire too.

The Big Picture has already got 1,400 photos in the albums - so keep adding yours and we’ll be on target for that world record. Don’t forget your photos can be of anything that you feel represents your life in the West Midlands – that could be a nice landscape, a building, your family or even your pets - like Tiger here who we met today in Shrewsbury Town Centre:

This afternoon The Big Picture team were at Wolverhampton Racecourse - braving the showers with our giant photo frames and having fun launching the Big Picture.

Jockey Robert Kington got in the frame - and we hope it was good luck for him in the day’s racing.

Kerry was interviewed on BBC WM by Ed Doolan and also by Midlands Today. If you’d like to listen again about The Big Picture you can on the BBC WM website - click on Ed Doolan and then fast forward for exactly 2 hours.

Tune in to Midlands Today on BBC ONE at 6.30pm tonight to see the feature. You can see Midlands Today online too.

Tomorrow it’s Shropshire - Ironbridge and Shrewsbury - do come and see us if you can.

Pictures on this page Rich Eaton / Newsteam.co.uk

The Big Picture launches with an exciting week of events around the West Midlands!

Join us near to you to find out more about the world record breaking attempt to create the largest photo montage in the world, and to learn how you can help create the biggest photo album in the West Midlands.

The Big Picture team will be at Wolverhampton Racecourse on Monday with giant oversized photo frames so you really can be in the picture. We’ll have some fantastic giveaways including disposable cameras. In the following days we’ll be in Shropshire, Stoke, Warwick, Coventry and finally Birmingham.

Where we’ll be and when:

Wolverhampton Racecourse - Monday 21 January - 12- 4.30pm

Ironbridge Blists Hill Victorian Town - Tuesday 22 January - 10am – 12pm

Shrewsbury Town Centre - Tuesday 22 January -2pm – 4pm

Worcester Guildhall - Wednesday 23 January - 11am – 2pm

Warwick Castle - Wednesday 23 January - 5.30pm – 7.30pm

Stoke, Tontine Square - Thursday 24 January - 10am– 12pm

Stoke, Trentham Gardens - Thursday 24 January - 2pm – 4pm

Coventry, Lady Godiva - Friday 25 January - 9am – 11am

Birmingham, Hurst Street - Friday 25 January - 1pm – 3pm