The Big Picture - West Midlands

Big Picture Day is Thursday 8 May – every photo added on that day will be in with a chance of appearing on giant billboards around the region. Due to overwhelming numbers of photos we’re extending this to cover photos uploaded on Friday 9 May too.

Add your photo of the West Midlands to the Big Picture on Big Picture Day and it’ll automatically be entered in a competition — eight winners will be selected to get the full billboard treatment. There’s sure to be one in a town near you!

Upload to the web or text from your mobile — it’s up to you. To add a photo by MMS send it with BIGPIC first in the text of your message to 60300*.

The competition is now closed - look out for the winners here and on a billboard near you soon.

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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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The New Art Gallery Walsall is delighted to present a free event for all the family on Saturday 19 April from 11am – 4pm to celebrate Vaisakhi. The celebrations will include a day packed full with fun and exciting activities including Sikh Martial arts displays, traditional story telling, yoga workshops and demonstrations, mendhi hand patterns, north Indian dances bhangra and gidha, school displays and drop –in family friendly workshops. There will also have a selection of free delicious Indian food - and plenty of great photo opportunities.
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Very soon The Big Picture will be launching an attempt to create a huge album of photos of the music scene in the West Midlands.

Bands will be able to get a widget for their myspace page or website that will showcase photos taken by their fans – and there are special competitions for both bands and photographers too. Stay tuned for more information as it launches.

Ditch the digital camera this Saturday 26th April 12pm - 4pm and make your own Pinhole camera as part of World Pinhole Camera Day, at the The Potteries Museum and Art Gallery.

Artists will be holding free drop in workshops, showing visitors how to make cameras and take images with their pin-hole camera.

The event is free and open for all ages to join in. The workshops will show how you can make a camera from pretty much anything, as pinhole photographs are taken through a small hole about the size of a full stop, rather than a lens. Pinhole camera’s can be made from every day items such as shoeboxes, tin cans or any sealable container providing a cheap and fun activity. You don’t need to bring anything, all materials will be provided.

We’ve just added a new guide to The Big Picture, it may help you if you’ve been confused about finding photos, commenting on photos or even tagging.

It’s called Make the Most of the Big Picture. Don’t forget there’s also our extensive list of questions answered, and email support.

Calling all budding artists and photographers, you could design a new library card for Herefordshire.

Any age – Any style!
Any photographs, pictures or drawings based on reading, libraries or Herefordshire images
are welcome. See your design in print! Winning images will also receive a prize.

An applcication form with  full rules is available to download here (as a PDF)  or from Herefordshire libraries.

All designs must be submitted or handed into a Herefordshire Library by June 31st.

The internet is full of guides, advice and tools for you to get more out of photos. From tips on taking better photos, editing photos like the pros do, or even just sharing them with friends.

How to shoot “light trails” is a fun tutorial. Showing you how to capture movement, like this wonderful Big Picture example by Michael JH.

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Top Midlands photographer Pogus Caesar has a new exhibition at Wolverhampton Art Gallery, and it proves that you don’t have to use expensive cameras or equipment to get wonderful results.

In the centre of the exhibition room are Pogus’ cameras (shown left) and they aren’t expensive or flash — proving that if you’re a good enough photographer you can take great pictures with anything!

That Beautiful Thing by Pogus Caesar runs from 26 April to 12 July and shows images captured in the UK and abroad, offer a fascinating view of this artist’s varied photographic career of more than 20 years.

Snow hit the West Midlands overnight - making everyone’s garden look the same, or did it?

Let’s see your snow photos!

Tag the photos “weather” and “snow” so we can all find them.

Dave Chesters from Talke Pits in Stoke has submitted nearly 5,000 photos to The Big Picture, nearly every digital picture that he’s ever taken. You can read why on the BBC Local website for Stoke and Staffordshire.

He did it by posting us a DVD of his collection, just one of the ways you can add your photos to The Big Picture. While we don’t expect everyone to have thousands, you can add as many or as few as you like – by the web, by email or by post.

See some of Dave’s photos here.

Could photography have been invented in north Staffordshire?

“A photogenic drawing of a leaf that is currently attributed to British photography pioneer William Henry Fox Talbot in 1839 may instead have been produced more than 30 years earlier by Thomas Wedgwood, according to photo historian Dr Larry J Schaaf. … Sotheby’s UK office has confirmed to Amateur Photographer that this story is not an April Fool.”

More info at D’log.

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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Have some fun with your digital photos – put your face on a celebrity!

Face in Hole is a website that allows you to pick a celebrity, movie scene, landscape or sports star, and then put your face in the picture. You pick a photo from your computer and use the tools to rotate, size and colour yourself until you fit the hole.

I’m sure you can do it a lot better than me!

Why not upload your best efforts to The Big Picture?

Andy Warhol said that in the future, everyone would be famous for 15 minutes. Claim yours every Saturday in March at Wolverhampton Art Gallery.

You can visit the Pop Art gallery, slip into some cool 60’s fashions and step into the viewfinder to have your moment in the limelight. See photos from this event.

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Dogs may have been in the spotlight over the weekend, but on The Big Picture at least cats are ahead – 225 to 196.

You can see all the cats and dogs in our albums, but to check what’s in the lead you can try our ‘Big Picture Flickr Fight‘.

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Don’t forget to add all your Easter photos to The Big Picture – let’s see how you enjoyed the weekend.

Photos of rabbits, eggs, chocolate or otherwise – and anything else you got up to – they all form part of The Big Picture.

You’re invited to make a Big Picture of yourself this Saturday at The Potteries Museum and Art Gallery.

The team will be giving out disposable cameras to the first 50 people who come and put a picture in the special Potteries Big Picture frame. Come along and bring your own photos in to put in the frame or you can work with the photographic artists who will be in the museum to take and print a picture.

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Are you taking part in a Sport Relief mile this weekend? There are ‘miles’ in Birmingham and Coventry, as well as across the region.

It might not be as tough as the Potters Half Marathon (pictured here by Big Picture contributor Graham Allbutt), you can walk, hop, skip, as well as run the distance.

If you’re taking part – or even just going along to support – why not take some photos and add them the The Big Picture’s Sport gallery?

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