The Big Picture - West Midlands

A great mosaic building workshop today at BBC Birmingham’s Public Space at the Mailbox, where members of the public and staff helped put together one of the panels that will make up the final mosaic.

BBC WM’s Tony Butler (pictured) was one of the first to add a photo and hopefully take his place as a World Record holder.

There will be another panel to help fill at the Public Space tomorrow (8 August) and plenty of other opportunities to help out across the West Midlands region. Find the workshop nearest to you here.

The mosaic workshop originally scheduled for 8th August at the Potteries Shopping Centre is now going to take place at the nearby Potteries Museum and Art Gallery (still from 10am — 4pm). The Big Picture team hope to see you there.

The long process of constructing the World Record attempt mosaic for the unveiling on the 23rd August has started this week, both at Millennium Point and at workshops across the region. The Big Picture team and volunteers have 110,000 plus photos to stick to 288 panels at the rate of about fifteen a day — and we’ve got to get every one in exactly the right place.

Student Jack Prior (pictured) was helping out at Millennium Point on Monday, and it took him just under two hours to complete a panel (that’s 392 photos). Jack, who’s from Halesowen but studies in London, saw a poster for The Big Picture on a bus and volunteered to help with the mosaic build.

You can help too, and be part of breaking a World Record — either at Thinktank, at Millennium Point, almost every day, or at a workshop hear you. Check here for full details.

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Happy April posed in front of a poster showing the photos shortlisted for the World Record attempt, pointing out her picture, and then uploaded the photo to Flickr.

The poster is near Thinktank at Millenium Point in Birmingham where the final mosaic will be unveiled. From Monday 4th August there a lot of the mosaic will be being put together at Thinktank - as well as at workshops around the West Midlands.

If you would like to help, there are more details and a list of venues here.

It’s a difficult job, but we’re going to try to do it.  Now the dust has settled on the rush to collect all of the photos that were needed to make the World Record Mosaic, there’s time to take a closer look through all of the pictures and pick out some that we think everybody will like.

We’re going to collect them together in galleries that show some of the common themes of the 110,000 plus photos. First up, is a small selection of some of the oldest photos that have been added.

If you’d like to put together your own galley of “picks” on a theme, or just your favourites, email us at [email protected] and well put it together with you.

The Internet is a great place to find advice and inspiration for your photography. Here are some links we think you might enjoy:

• 21 Ways to Shoot Better Photographs — mostly simple things to think about when composing your shot.
• Photoshop, Corel, Xara, Painter and PSP Tutorials —
  using your computer to tweak your photos can produce great results.
• Life in the Pyrénées, circa 1900 — A brilliant library of old photos.

Diane Fellows’ photo of her at school is on of those on the shortlist to become the World Record mosaic. She’s decided to let us she how she looks now, by posing with the photo — I think we can tell it’s the same person!

Why not share your old school photos with us. Pose with them like Diane and let us see how you now compares with you then.

Although we can’t squeeze any more photos into the mosaic, we’d still like to see them. Email us a link to the photos if you already have them online, or the photos themselves to [email protected] if you’d like us to put them online for you.

The team at BBC Midlands Today have been wonderfully supportive of the Big Picture all the way through the project, and have done a number of great features on photos that people have added.

On Tuesday they visited Millennium Point, venue for the World Record attempt and some of the mosaic workshops, and also featured the shortlisted photos.

You can still watch the programme online:

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Abigail Corfan is Projects and Events Officer at Audiences Central (who are running the Big Picture) and is one of the team busy planning the logistics for the world’s largest photo mosaic. This immense task requires a lot of planning and even more man power!

This week I’m busy trying to recruit volunteers to help build the individual panels that make up the final mosaic. The way it will work is that all 112,896 photos are being printed onto self adhesive vinyl, and at the same time grids are being printed onto 288 plywood panels. The photos will be numbered to match the grid so that its just a process of sticking every photo in the right place. As you can imagine this is going to be time consuming so we are looking for keen Big Picture volunteers to assist with this record breaking task!

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Helen Marshall is the artist that has got to take all of your photos and turn them into a World Record breaking mosaic. It’s a huge and complicated process, and we’re glad that she’s agreed to blog about it for the Big Picture site. 

Once we had all the images, they were downloaded from the website and sent to Helen. From then on, it’s (almost!) all up to her…

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Creative Alliance are running a course for photographers who would like to know more about studio lighting. It will help with various studio and flash lighting techniques and be run by Richard Battye. It costs £180.

For more details  call Anna or Zara on 0121 224 7308 or email [email protected]

From Monday 4 August until Thursday 21 August production of the individual panels that make up the mosaic will be taking place in Thinkspace, in Thinktank, Millennium Point, Birmingham. Every day (including weekends) the Big Picture team will be sticking photos onto the plywood panels that will create the final mosaic, using a simple grid system. There are 288 panels to be completed, so we need lots of volunteers to help us break that record!

If you would like to help with constructing the mosaic panels please email us at [email protected] and let us know which day you can attend at Thinktank. All the panel building workshops will be running from 10am - 4pm, and we require a minimum commitment of 3 hours (either 10am -1pm or 1pm - 4pm). If you would like to volunteer please let us know by Friday 1 August, as you must be registered to volunteer.

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Kyolo is a super easy way to add cartoon-style speech or thought bubbles to your photos.

Just upload them, place the bubble (adjust size and type if you want) and type away.

You can save the photos or share them by sending the link to your friends — why not leave a link to yours in the comments here?

Steve Gerrard has photographed some of the World’s biggest bands, but he’s also a wedding photographer. He blogs about his work and how he goes about it, which could be a useful read if you’ve been inspired by the Big Picture to become a professional photographer. He’s also involved with Birmingham Live! which attempts to help aspiring music photographers and writers across the region get access to gigs and gives them somewhere to show off their work.

We asked Steve a few questions about how he came to do what he does…

Tim Caddick is a professional photographer working in the West Midlands, who has been enjoying The Big Picture and has been uploading some of the pictures he’s taken over the last couple of years.

One of the things Tim enjoys doing most is taking photos for Comic Relief, and Sport Relief too, you can see some of his most recent ones in this gallery.

We talked to Tim and he agreed to share some of his experience with people, helping those who’ve got more into taking photos because of The Big Picture or who would like to improve.

So, have you got any questions you’d like to ask? Maybe you’d like to know about what to look for when buying a new camera, or you’d like to know what a term like “exposure” really means, or perhaps when to use flash. You can ask Tim anything, anything polite(!), just comment here and he’ll try his best to answer your questions.

We’ve been overwhelmed by the number of people that sent us a photo by post, or dropped into their local art galleries, Jessops shops or other Big Picture places.

While we’ve counted them all and they will be part of the World Record mosaic, we’ve not had time to scan each and upload and every one – so please bear with us while we do that. They will appear in the galleries on this site in the next weeks.

The site is also taking a long time (due to heavy use) to pick photos up from flickr — but they’ll all get here eventually and are part of the World Record, thanks for your support!

You may be bored of seeing our faces on Midland Today and in the papers, but did you know that your achievement has made the national news?

Reporters from the BBC News Channel (you may know it as News 24) came to the Big Picture office this week after hearing about the World Record target being reached, and wanted to share the good news.

You can see the report this weekend at around 3.30pm on Saturday, and at10.30am and 11.30pm Sunday on digital TV, or on the internet.

110,000 photos will take a lot of putting together!

There are drop-in workshops across the region, you can pop-in and help for 10 minutes or a couple of hours. Find out more here.

There are other chances to help create the mosaic for our World Record attempt, either by yourself or as part of a group like a team or club. If you’d like to get involved, please email us at [email protected]. We’ll get in touch personally with more details as soon as the wheres and whens can be decided.

We’ve done some investigation of all the photos that are part of The Big Picture, and here are some facts we’ve found out:

• Birmingham featured in the most photos, followed by the Black Country, then Stoke and Staffordshire.
• Stoke was home to the biggest single contributors, with one Big Picture supporter sending in 5,000 images
• The most photographed places in the Big Picture include Ironbridge and the Shropshire Hills.
• There are over twice as many cats than dogs in the Big Picture
• There are four times as many photos tagged ‘work’ than ‘home’
• The most photographed activities on the Big Picture include holidays and sport

We’ll keep looking and bring you more facts over the coming weeks.

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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