Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

Many thanks to all of you who sent in pictures for this week's gallery on the theme of autumn. We had over 800 entries.

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I hope you enjoy looking at them and if you have any thoughts on the pictures you can leave us a comment below.

If your picture didn't make this week's selection, why not send us something for next week?

The new theme is "seven". Interpret this in any way you see fit and send your pictures to us at yourpics@bbc.co.uk or .

Please include the word "seven" in the subject line of your message.

The deadline is midnight GMT Tuesday 3 November, and remember to add your name and a caption: who, what, where and when should be enough, though the more details you give, the better your chance of being selected.

We will publish a selection of your photos this time next week.

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Files should be sent as JPEGs. They shouldn't be larger than 10Mb and ideally much smaller: around 1Mb is fine, or you can resize your pictures to 1,000 pixels across.

Please see our terms and conditions, but remember that the copyright remains with you. The pictures will only be used by the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ for the purposes of this project. Finally, when taking photos, please do not endanger yourself or others, take unnecessary risks or infringe any laws.

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Its three weeks now since I began publishing my photo a day project shot on Kodachrome 64. The latest picture (above) is a farewell to summer as the toys get packed away and the grey wet days of autumn start to take hold.

One of the main drivers for the project is to be part of a community of online photographers that are brought together by self-set long term projects, and as I've said before, to take pictures for my own pleasure, in my own way, not to fit in with a certain style or format.

One photographer who has completed a fascinating project is David Kivlin, who whilst living in London, .

It's a well executed project and one he has continued since moving to Italy, where he is now working on a set . David said: "it's a way of helping me learn the language, as well as a focus for my photography."

The pictures are a real mix of styles and ideas, from the obvious "" through to a more abstract view, "".

Setting yourself a project gives you boundaries, something to aim for and a framework to work within, otherwise you flit from subject to subject without nailing down your own style.

Another series worth a look is one by Kevin Button who has been photographing , and . All very abstract but lots of fun.

As before I'd love to hear from anyone who is shooting their own project, whatever the subject or format, digital or film, and I'll mention some of them as we go along. So if you'd like to be featured send me an e-mail.

My next picture will be published here next Wednesday, in the meantime .

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I'm back in the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ News photo archive (You can read the background to this series in my first post here) and this week, in line with my colleagues in the Magazine section who are running a series on food, I have decided to delve into the "F" drawer.

The Food section is fairly large so I'm concentrating on the pictures simply filed as generic pictures of food, rather than any sub-heading, of which there are 108.

The first picture is an absolute delight and is catalogued as "a tray layed [sic] for lunch", there is no date given but it's probably 1970. A slightly odd collection of food items and I'm still trying to work out what the tomato sauce is for, assuming that's what it is.

The second picture on file is this simple shot of a bowl of porridge, taken in September 1970. There's not much to say on this one, I like the simplicity of the background but it doesn't look very appetising, and the crockery certainly dates it. Anyone know of any news stories about porridge?

Sandwiches have come a long way since this shot was taken in 1973 by Felix Borg, who used to work in the News Stills Laboratory, processing film and shooting the occasional stock image and portraits of presenters and staff for accreditation.

This is a picture you can see being used, a simple collection of items in a supermarket trolley and the till receipt. If this was a print it would have a transmission date stamped on the reverse, but no record was kept that would allow usage to be tracked back from a colour slide.

Having sat through more hours than I can remember of the recent series of Masterchef I'd also say that food presentation is not what it used to be. And that's something to be thankful for.

Initially this struck me as just a rather poor picture but the card entry reads as follows: "Examples of food quantities served to Blackburn school children, compared to 1930s workhouse meals, according to MP Jack Straw" and is dated 1981. that provides some of the detail of the story this picture was shot to illustrate.

That's it for this week, you can see previous posts in this series here:

• Motors/Factories/BLMC/Longbridge
• Press Photographers
• Labour Disputes/Post Office
• A is for Army

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Many thanks to all of you who sent in pictures for this week's themed gallery, the title was "minimal".

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Lots of variety too, including a fun shot from Raj Mannick and a beautiful black and white by Miles Storey.

I hope you enjoy looking at them and if you have any thoughts on the pictures you can leave us a comment below.

If your picture didn't make this week's selection, why not send us something for next week?

The new theme is "autumn". Interpret this in any way you see fit and send your pictures to us at yourpics@bbc.co.uk or .

Please include the word "Autumn" in the subject line of your message.

The deadline is midnight BST Tuesday 27 October, and remember to add your name and a caption: who, what, where and when should be enough, though the more details you give, the better your chance of being selected.

We will publish a selection of your photos this time next week.

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Files should be sent as JPEGs. They shouldn't be larger than 10Mb and ideally much smaller: around 1Mb is fine, or you can resize your pictures to 1,000 pixels across.

Please see our terms and conditions, but remember that the copyright remains with you. The pictures will only be used by the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ for the purposes of this project. Finally, when taking photos, please do not endanger yourself or others, take unnecessary risks or infringe any laws.

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I'm just over a week into publishing my project that involves taking a photo-a-day on Kodachrome 64 for 64 weeks. To allow for the delay between taking the photographs and publishing them, I began shooting a while back, you can find further details of the project in last week's post here.

So far I've had a wonderful response and have been inundated with e-mails and contacts from photographers who are undertaking a similar challenge and I'll be featuring some of these in the coming weeks and months.

The majority of the photo-a-day projects are being shot digitally and, as you'd expect, photographing and publishing on the same day, though there are a small number working as I am on film, with the delays that brings.

Each of these routes provides a different experience, the digital shoot and publish gives you an immediacy you don't get on film and some reassurance that you have the shot.

Film means that you have a limited number of frames each day and there is always the danger of an error creeping in to one of the key areas: manual focus, manual exposure, manual loading, plus, of course, the added complication in this case of having to post the film to the US each time. So far so good, but I'm sure there will be problems that arise in the coming months.

This week has been a challenge as the days are getting shorter and I've been stuck in the office. I did manage a couple of lunchtime trips out and about to shoot some pictures, but I'd forgotten how slow 64ASA is on the gloomy streets of London on a cloudy day. Anyway, the film is in the post; hope to see it in a month or so!

One person who contacted me is . He summed up the experience for me when he said that his 365 project has meant he:

"always carries a camera and has to take a photo when not in the mood or is too busy. It's like having a dog - The rain may be chucking down but you still have to take it for a walk and therefore get your exercise."

Finally this week, I'd like to mention Sarah Mackenzie who tells me she:

"has been taking a photo-a-day since the start of 2000 at 11:47am precisely (well, as precisely as I can). The time itself has a nice random feel to it and so I don't even have to think about composition. When I first started, I took a photo of exactly what I was looking at - be it the ground or a wall. I have changed that as I also want it to be something that I can look back on and remember where and what I was doing at the time. So now I look up from my feet and take a picture of my surroundings. It did start out as film but I have yet to put those on my blog. Sometimes they are interesting - and ."

I think this is a lovely idea, well-executed and yes, some are not that exciting, but then nor are mine, or indeed anyone's, the beauty is in the sum of the parts and the occasional great shot that makes it worthwhile.

As before, I'd love to hear from anyone who is shooting their own project, whatever the subject or format, digital or film, and I'll mention some of them as we go along. So if you'd like to be featured, send me an e-mail.

My next picture will be published here next Wednesday. In the meantime, .

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Once again it's time to look at a selection of photographs drawn from the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ News stills archive. This time I've started at the beginning, and selected a number of pictures from the first cabinet, A is for Army.

There's more than a few thousand pictures under this heading, but in keeping with earlier posts I'm looking at the oldest pictures held as colour slides, those that date back to the late 1960s, '70s and early '80s.

We start with a fairly simple shot taken at a Ministry of Defence media event at Aldershot. The entry on the index card reads: Camouflaged Royal Engineer on training exercise at Aldershot, 19 July 1981 by photographer Gerry Hawkins.

This is one of a number from the same event where the photographer has shot a range of pictures that capture the soldier in number of poses, placed in various parts of the frame.

This was done to allow it to be used behind the news presenter in the days when some programmes used stills as a full frame backdrop. It's also a very dirty slide, one I haven't had time to clean up yet.

The next one interested me in that it's a well composed, striking image of Army helicopters, again I assume at a media event. The index card provides few details, there is no date or photographer mentioned at all, the only clue is the silver glass 35mm slide mount it is held in. These are only found on the earliest photos in the collection, so I'd guess it's from sometime pre 1970.

These two soldiers seem to have been caught in a blast of flash at Alexander Barracks in Pirbright, again there are no further details given, though it is in the same silver mount as the shot above.

The next two pictures are filed under the Army Catering section of the index, two very different views yet both taken at the same time. They are both recorded as picturing an Army catering competition at Aldershot Barracks in May 1978.

There are very few details recorded for the next picture of an Army ambulance, except to say it was taken during a military exercise by Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ photographer Willie Smith, there is no date. The "wounded" chap doesn't seem to have settled into his role very well.

The last picture is from an Army recruitment selection centre at Corsham.

That's it for this week, if you experienced any of these events, or recognize any one in the pictures, then please comment below.

You can see previous posts in this series here:

• Motors/Factories/BLMC/Longbridge
• Press Photographers
• Labour Disputes/Post Office

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Capturing a picture of a treasured view is often the reason many of us buy a camera. The photograph is there to remind us of an event, holiday or just a moment that we hold dear.

Yet I'm sure everyone can relate to the feeling that on viewing the picture it just doesn't capture the emotion, or depth, that the original landscape inspired.

Well, if you need further inspiration to get out there and try again then maybe the winning pictures from the will do just that.

The winner (reproduced above) was taken on the Isle of Skye by Emmanuel Coupe and is titled: Sunrise over the Old Man of Storr, Isle of Skye, Scotland. It's a picture that has both beauty and drama, and you can see why the judges picked it out of the pack.

An exhibition of the work can be seen at the Lyttelton Foyer, National Theatre, London from 5 December 2009 until 24 January 2010.

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Thanks to everyone who sent in pictures for this week's themed gallery on the subject of Glass.

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I hope you enjoy looking at them and if you have any thoughts on the pictures you can leave us a comment below.

If your picture didn't make this weeks' selection why not send us something for next week?

The new theme is "Minimal". Interpret this in any way you see fit and send your pictures to us at yourpics@bbc.co.uk or .

Please include the word "Minimal" in the subject line of your message.

The deadline is midnight BST Tuesday 20 October, and remember to add your name and a caption: who, what, where and when should be enough, though the more details you give, the better your chance of being selected.

We will publish a selection of your photos this time next week.

.

Files should be sent as JPEGs. They shouldn't be larger than 10Mb and ideally much smaller: around 1Mb is fine, or you can resize your pictures to 1,000 pixels across.

Please see our terms and conditions, but remember that the copyright remains with you. The pictures will only be used by the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ for the purposes of this project. Finally, when taking photos, please do not endanger yourself or others, take unnecessary risks or infringe any laws.

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This is the first picture drawn from a personal project that will run until the end of 2010. Let me explain.

The internet has created a fascinating playground for photographers. Personal projects that at one time would only be seen by a select group of friends, or maybe at your local photographic club or group, can now be seen by anyone who has the inclination to click on your website, assuming they can find it amidst the thousands available.

Some intrepid photographers took the decision to take a picture every day, a 365 project as it has become known, and post them to the web.

There are some wonderful examples of this, some that make me gasp each time as I wonder how they find the time and indeed raw creative energy to produce interesting pictures day after day. More on these later.

Anyway, I love digital photography, but I also love film, and indeed as many photographers do (or is it just a male thing?), I have a favourite film camera tucked away that gets far too little use, and with the I have decided to take the plunge.

Recently I began shooting on Kodachrome 64, and allowing for the delay between finishing a roll, sending it to the US for processing, and then scanning, I'm now ready to start publishing them.

My aim is to publish one picture a day on Flickr and pull out 64 of the more interesting frames for publication on this blog over the next 64 weeks. This will take us to the end of 2010, a date that marks the death of Kodachrome, 75 years after its introduction, as the last processing laboratory handling the film will no longer offer the service.

There is no set theme to the pictures, they will be of everyday unspectacular moments, the strangeness of things overlooked. I suppose it's about taking pictures for their own sake, enjoying the moment, the click of the shutter and the challenge of finding the best vantage point, coupled with a limited supply of film.

I must also state that I am not publishing the pictures in the order they were taken, but instead trying to ensure they work as a series.

Inspiration, well in addition to the 365 projects mentioned above then it comes from the great , where everything is worthy of a picture, mixed with a dash of nostalgia for colour slides. And if you don't get that, .

I'd love to hear from anyone who is shooting their own project, whatever the subject or format, digital or film, and I'll mention some of them as we go along. So if you'd like to be featured send me an e-mail.

My next picture will be published here next Wednesday, in the meantime . As the project progresses there will be an edited collection of 64 pictures (a sort of 64x646x64, that is: 64 shots x 64 weeks on Kodachrome 64) that will also be grouped together in a set.

Comments are welcome, and I look forward to hearing about some of your projects. Enjoy the light.

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It's Tuesday, so it must be time to post another selection of photographs drawn from the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ News stills archive.

Following the news last week that Royal Mail workers have voted three-to-one in favour of national strike action, I thought I'd dig through the archive pictures under the heading: Labour Disputes/Post Offices.

There are 86 colour slides held in the archives under this heading, but the most interesting are the pictures from the late 1960s and the early 70s.

The first picture on file is simply titled "Strikers and notices (1968)". There is no further information regarding location or the photographer, though the poster in the picture states "two-and-a-half years without a pay rise".

This was also the year that saw the introduction of a new two-tier postal system whereby the .

The next picture shown here was taken a year later and is catalogued as "General Post Office (GPO) girls marching, 30 January 1969". No further details are offered, but by October of that year, the Post Office Act signalled the end of the GPO and the office of Postmaster General, followed by the establishment of the Post Office as a publicly owned corporation.

On 27 November 1970, workers gathered outside Waterloo Bridge House to protest at the sacking of Lord Hall who had been removed from his post by the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Secretary Lord Windlesham.

Hansard records an exchange in the House of Commons in which Windlesham said:

"Having concluded that it is in the best interests of the Post Office and public, I have asked Lord Hall to relinquish his post as Chairman of the Corporation. He has agreed to do so."

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On 20 January 1971, postal workers went on strike; a few days later on the 23rd, they held a rally in Hyde Park, London, and the scene was captured by a Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ photographer, who is only credited by his surname, Asher. .

The last picture I have pulled from the files this week is from the strike in 1971. There are no details about the picture, but it's such a great shot I just had to include it.

If you experienced any of these events, or recognize any one in the pictures, then please comment below.

You can see previous posts in this series here:

• Motors/Factories/BLMC/Longbridge
• Press Photographers

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This week's photography task was on the theme of pink.

If you have any thoughts on the images you can send us a comment in the box below.

If your picture didn't make this weeks' selection why not send us something for next week?

The new theme is "glass". Interpret this in any way you see fit and send your pictures to us at yourpics@bbc.co.uk or .

Please include the word "Glass" in the subject line of your message.

The deadline is midnight BST Tuesday 13 October, and remember to add your name and a caption: who, what, where and when should be enough, though the more details you give, the better your chance of being selected.

We will publish a selection of your photos this time next week.

Files should be sent as JPEGs. They shouldn't be larger than 10Mb and ideally much smaller: around 1Mb is fine, or you can resize your pictures to 1,000 pixels across.

Please see our terms and conditions, but remember that the copyright remains with you. The pictures will only be used by the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ for the purposes of this project. Finally, when taking photos, please do not endanger yourself or others, take unnecessary risks or infringe any laws.

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It's time for another rummage in the photographic files held in the basement of Television Centre in West London. The News Stills Archive began life in the late 1960s and each week I pull a few pictures from the files on a particular subject, this week I have been looking at those filed under press photographers.

Picture archives have their own lifecycle. Photographs that are more than 30-years-old are seen as important records of life at that time, and anything under five-years-old is current. The problem period is the in-between years, a time when pictures are out of date and yet not old enough to have nostalgia value. It's these pictures that should be safeguarded, for their time will come.

Getting back to the task in hand, there are 155 slides held on file under the heading Press: Photographers. Most of the pictures seem to have been snapped by the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ staff photographers whilst on other assignments, possibly to fill the time and most likely as a record of their colleagues in the press pack.

As with many photographers I find an interest in the old photographic equipment on view, but it's the poses of photographers waiting that I also find fascinating. Anyone who has door-stepped someone or just waited for a press conference to begin will know that once you've claimed your spot you just have to wait for something to happen. Then you get a sudden burst of activity at 1/250th of a second and it's off to file your pictures.

So, let's look at a few of the images.

This picture below is one of the earliest on file and shows a group of photographers peering over a wall? The card index simply states: Hunting. The photographer is not listed and the date is also missing but must be around 1969.

The next two pictures were taken at the wedding of actor on 24 August 1970. The index does not list the name of his wife to be, but given the date it's easy to check and was in fact his marriage to Miranda Quarry, an Australian model. The couple divorced in 1974.

The event looks like a real "bun fight" as photographers jostle to get a shot. No digital spray and hope techniques here, many are photographers are without even a motor-drive. The photographer is just listed by his, or maybe her, surname, Woodgate. You can see Peter Sellers clearly in the centre of the frame so they did a good job.

This next photo shows a regular event on the photographers' calendar, the Windsor Horse Trials, which offered photographers a chance to get up close to Her Majesty. An interesting photo this one and I like the way it seems all the photographers are ignoring the Queen. This was taken in 1975 by Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ photographer Willie Smith who I remember well.

Here the photographers take a break between events at Windsor.

The poses of these photographers are hard to ignore and the TV cameraman seems out of place in his light jacket. Yet this simple picture leads to a big news story as they are outside Bow Street Court on 18 July 1975 waiting for the arrival of Labour MP John Stonehouse and his former secretary, Sheila Buckley. .

Another annual event is of course the Budget and in the past the chancellor would invite photographers into his office and then go on a walk about with his family. Here Labour chancellor poses in April 1978.

The last picture of interest was taken in 1979 and shows actress facing a pack of photographers who all seem to have found a different angle, as none are pointing their lenses the same way. Lalla is best known for her role as Romana in Dr Who where she played alongside Tom Baker, who she later married, and divorced. The picture was taken by Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ staff photographer Gerry Hawkins.

Do you recognise any of the photographers? If so, please leave a comment.

If you have a subject you'd like me to dig around in the stills collection for then do let me know.

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Many photographers feel that in order to take good pictures they need to travel - to work in societies other than their own. British photographer has been there and done that - very successfully, I might add. He spent the best part of 2005 travelling across Russia with his wife, a trip that resulted in the highly-acclaimed book Motherland, .

Looking around for his next project, he fell upon the idea that many have had before him: to picture his home turf. And so he set out on what has become his latest book, We English.

Any project, no matter what size, needs boundaries, rules, and a framework. Without this, it's hard to focus on the subject and often the result will fail to form a cohesive body of work. Simon says:

"I was acutely aware that there had been a long and rich history of documentary surveys by British photographers that had captured the social, political and cultural landscape of England and Britain. Work by the likes of , , , and to name but a few.
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"However, I was surprised by the lack of contemporary studies that had been made over the past decade. So it seemed like an appropriate opportunity to try and extend this important legacy, to explore themes of identity, memory, history and attachment to place - of belonging."

Simon decided right from the start to interact with his audience: and we ran a series of his early pictures on this site, asking readers to suggest places he could photograph. This was again within a set framework, he explains:

"The title of the project derives from the suggestion that photographer and subjects - we 'English' - are complicit in the act of representation.
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"The key was to find my own unique visual language that wasn't derivative of the work that had gone before. I decided that I would move away from photographing the individual, which had played a major role in Motherland, and engage instead with the idea of the collective, of groups of people populating the landscape.
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"It became my intention to produce a series of detailed colour landscape photographs, tableaux if you like, which recorded places where groups of people congregated for a common purpose and shared experience. And since landscape has long been used as a commodity to be consumed, I decided to focus on leisure activities as a way of looking at England's shifting cultural and national identity.
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"I was interested in the fact that leisure is something we do very self-consciously, given that we have relatively little 'leisure time'. It therefore seems to say much more about us than our work, which for many is done out of necessity rather than choice."

Following a few early research trips, Simon bought an old motor home and together with his wife and young daughter began a six-month journey around England.

Simon used an old 5x4 , which he says "was quite laborious and often very public. I had anticipated that there might be problems in situations where there were lots of people close to the camera - like photographing on beaches - but by the time I'd finished setting up, any curious onlookers had lost interest and turned away, thereby allowing me to achieve very spontaneous images."

A project of this size can often take an unexpected turn and the final edit is sometimes the most challenging part. It's tough to step back from the creation of the photographs, allowing yourself to see the pictures in the way a viewer will, and not as you remember them.

Simon noted that he didn't set out to "produce a pastoral set of photographs", but during his travels he found that "even in the centre of towns and cities, people were often drawn to the green spaces, where there's a definite sense of going out into nature. The photographs often reflect that idea of a rural idyll, although they stop short of being outright romantic interpretations of a scene and - like the figures that populate them - they are conscious that this idyll is a construct: an allusion to an imagined way of life."

From my point of view, then, I think Simon has achieved all he set out to, and much more. The pictures are in themselves undeniably beautiful, but their real power comes from the collection as a whole.

To remove from the stream of time a series of moments that are instantly recognisable as being part of life in England is a real achievement, and one that will ensure this collection will become the defining study of life in England at the end of this decade. .

We English is published by and Simon Roberts will be discussing his work at on Wednesday 14 October 2009, 6.30pm.

All images courtesy: Β©Simon Roberts / Chris Boot Ltd

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