It is with great sadness that I announce the passing of my ‘Soul Mate’, my beloved guide dog Eamon…

17 November 2016

R.I.P Eamon.

The old boys health went down very quickly over the last week. Took him to the vets this morning and did an ultrasound which found cancer on his spleen and lumps on his liver. The decision was made at the vets to put him to rest.

My heart is broken.

Knowing I have done the right thing is truly the best for him.

Eamon has been one awesome epic brilliant dog and i will truely miss him.
He is in doggy heaven now where I know he will be at peace.
Eamon was a remarkable Guide Dog as he gave so much to me as I gave so much back to him.

Sleep well Eamon, my best friend. 

Love you so much.

Andrew xx

 

LOVE FACTOR 10…

Eamon in profile in the setting sun

Handsome Eamon

Love, true love

Eamon and Andrew Follows with Andrew Denton

Eamon’s 12th birthday

The camera love’s me 🙂

Adventures galor!

Together with the Boss in Edinburgh

The eyes have it…

So proud

We had so many laughs together!

I’m so handsome

What a profile

LOVE

Easyrider

What is this white stuff?

Such a gorgeous man

Young Eamon

Who’s the BOSS! Thanks for the fun times and for being my guide in life Eamon, love you always and forever…

Soul Mates exhibition: A fund raising exhibition for Guide Dogs Victoria, part of the 2016 Melbourne Fringe Festival

Dates: 20 – 25 September 2016

Soul Mates is a fund raising exhibition for Guide Dogs Victoria and is part of the 2016 Melbourne Fringe Festival. It is a thank you to Guide Dogs Victoria for giving Andrew “Eamon”, his Soul Mate from the past 10 years.

Eamon has been photographed by Andrew with famous people, such as Merv Hughes, Mike Molloy, Lady Primrose Potter, Denise Scott, Waleed Aly and Justice Michael Kirby – and these photographs make up the exhibition.

View the Melbourne Fringe Festival program web page for this event.

Location

No Vacancy Art Gallery
34-40 Jane Bell Lane, QV, Melbourne
Opening hours: 11am – 5pm

Opening night

Wednesday 21 September 6pm – 9pm

Guest speakers

Creative Director and CEO of Melbourne Fringe Festival Simon Abrahams

CEO Karen Hayes from Guide Dogs Victoria and “Eamon”

Supporters

Andrew Follows
Guide Dogs Victoria
Melbourne Fringe Festival
No Vacancy Art Gallery

Many thanks to Darren and CPL Digital for sponsoring the printing of the photographs. Very much appreciated from the wizards at CPL. For all your photographic printing needs.

Many thanks also go to H2o Hand Carwash in Richmond and MVP Lifestyles for their charity car wash and fundraising. You are absolute legends!

More information

For more information please contact the gallery on 03 9663 3795
or Andrew Follows on Mobile: 0400 862 795
Email: andrew@blinkiephotography.com.au

Sample photographs from the exhibition

Adam Hills

Denise Scott

Lady Primrose Potter

Max Walker

Waleed Aly

MVP Lifestyles Supercar Carwash charity fundraiser

30 August 2016

An eventful weekend at H2o Hand Carwash in Richmond had MVP Lifestyles host a charity event for The Soul Mates Project (Guide Dogs Victoria). Raising funds and getting supercar owners and the community to get together and have an awesome day.

Andrew Follows series ‘Carmania’ features on Art Blart

Thank you to Art Blart for this amazing write up on my car photography. The write up appeared on 4th February 2016.
View the full article with all the images in the series.

This is what Dr Marcus Bunyan had to say:

 

Australian vernacular

Hats off to my photographer friend Andrew Follows for a stunning set of Australian automobile photographs.

These photographs, taken during daylight at the BP station before the West Gate Bridge in Melbourne, and at twilight on the opposite side of the freeway at the corresponding BP station after the cars have returned from their drive to Frankston, are superb.

Andrew and I have an intense passion for cars. Only through this true immersion and engagement can you get photographs that are so evocative of subject matter, that are so atmospheric of place, space and the cars themselves. These are some of the best car photographs I have seen in a very long time… a kind of Australian vehicular vernacular.

I have sequenced these photographs for Andrew so that they tell a story, a modernist story of light, form and design, interspersed with vibrations of energy (punctum) such as Buick 1956 or XA Ford Faclon coupe GT 1974 Faze 4. Look at the crack in the concrete of this image as it leads into the car which both crouches down and seems to float in the air. Then just look at the clean presence of XB Faclon 500 coupe John Goss special 1975 or the space and light in the image VE Valiant sedan with red Ford pick up truck. God I love them…

To then finish the sequence with that classic Aussie car, HDT Holden LH Torana L34 1978, captured in such an eloquent image of movement and light. Just sensational.

Andrew, you could make a living taking photographs of car art!

Marcus

** Please make sure you enlarge these images to see them to best advantage. **

 

 

Andrew Follows
XB Faclon 500 coupe John Goss special 1975
2016
From the series Carmania
Digital photograph

 

 

Andrew Follows
HQ Holden Monaro GTS 1972
2016
From the series Carmania
Digital photograph

 

 

Andrew Follows
XW GT Ford Falcon 1968
2016
From the series Carmania
Digital photograph

 

 

Andrew Follows
Buick 1956
2016
From the series Carmania
Digital photograph

 

 

Andrew Follows
Ford Mustang 2 door hardtop
2016
From the series Carmania
Digital photograph

 

 

Andrew Follows
VF Valiant coupe 1969
2016
From the series Carmania
Digital photograph

 

 

Andrew Follows
HQ Holden Kingswood wagon 1972
2016
From the series Carmania
Digital photograph

 

 

Andrew Follows
HDT Holden LH Torana L34 1978
2016
From the series Carmania
Digital photograph

 

 

New photographs

These new photographs are part of my ongoing journey and investigation into how I see the world.

I am at the beginning of that path, always learning about the world around me, and how my particular vision affects how I record  and feel the world through the images that I take. How shooting into the sun (contre jour), at night, or in glare is totally different for me as a vision impaired person.

What is it that makes my photographs special, uniquely my own?

This is the critical question moving forward.

It is such a privilege going out with a photographer such as Dr Marcus Bunyan, an education on how to place the camera, how to frame the world. New suggestions by him are to link an iPad directly to the camera in the field, so that I can open the images immediately to review them, instead of waiting to get back home and download them to my computer.

This is an exciting concept, one which I will investigate. I will need an attachment to mount the iPad (with hood to stop the glare of sunlight) on the tripod. It will enable me to review images in real time instead of not being able to see the image details until I am home. Stay tuned.

Still awaiting news of my Australia Council grant application. Keeps your fingers crossed!

Andrew

 

 

Andrew Follows
Women in pink and red
2015

 

 

Andrew Follows
Forgotten sleepers
2015

 

 

Andrew Follows
High Rise
2015

 

 

Andrew Follows
Entrance to shelter
2015

 

 

Andrew Follows
Wood stacked for a fire
2015

 

 

Missing You II

Andrew Follows
Missing You II
2015
Digital photograph
[Please click on the image for a larger version]

 

“You know, it is great to see how he is challenging himself. But as soon as I saw the image, I couldn’t help but think that I was interested in how he saw the world – not how well he can compensate for his eyesight issues.

That’s what was great about those first images you curated Marcus [Density 2013]. In some of them, Andrew won against the world in his own way – not every image, but in some of them. But I suppose to actually explore his own presence in a site – the validity of his own perception is a really, really difficult thing – is there a precedence for limitations visually? Grandma Moses? maybe Ralph Eugene Meatyard in terms of his limited lifespan?

To achieve the creation of his own standards against a medium that will record everything – huge challenge.”

Ian Lobb, photographer

 

Liminality

In places

The spatial dimension of liminality can include specific places, larger zones or areas, or entire countries and larger regions. Liminal places can range from borders and frontiers to no man’s lands and disputed territories, to crossroads to perhaps airports or hotels, which people pass through but do not live in: arguably indeed all ‘romantic travel enacts the three stages that characterize liminality: separation, marginalization, and reaggregation’. In mythology and religion or esoteric lore liminality can include such realms as Purgatory or Da’at, which, as well as signifying liminality, some theologians deny actually existing, making them, in some cases, doubly liminal. “Between-ness” defines these spaces. For a hotel worker (an insider) or a person passing by with disinterest (a total outsider), the hotel would have a very different connotation. To a traveller staying there, the hotel would function as a liminal zone, just as ‘doors and windows and hallways and gates frame…the definitively liminal condition’.

More conventionally, springs, caves, shores, rivers, volcanic calderas – ‘a huge crater of an extinct volcano…[as] another symbol of transcendence’ – fords, passes, crossroads, bridges, and marshes are all liminal: ‘”edges”, borders or faultlines between the legitimate and the illegitimate’. Oedipus (an adoptee and therefore liminal) met his father at the crossroads and killed him; the bluesman Robert Johnson met the devil at the crossroads, where he is said to have sold his soul. Major transformations occur at crossroads and other liminal places, at least partly because liminality – being so unstable – can pave the way for access to esoteric knowledge or understanding of both sides. Liminality is sacred, alluring, and dangerous.

Text from the Wikipedia website.

Stories Of You Podcast

A new episode of Stories Of You is here…

Andrew Follows is a professional photographer with a difference. His vision condition, retinitis pigmentosa, renders him legally blind. Andrew’s ability to overcome the hurdles presented to him as a blind photographer makes for an engaging, fascinating and inspirational story.

This podcast was recorded 2012 before I headed to Scotland and went to air on 3CR. Glen who is blind is a great reporter / story teller.
 

Interview With A Photographer – Who Has A Guide Dog

with Glen Morrow

 

June 2015: Launch of new website

Dear friends

It is with great happiness and delight that I launch my new website.

With a fresh look and feel, I hope that the photographs I take of the world around me will delight you even more in this new format. The images are displayed at a larger size and look really splendid in the page layout.

Many thanks to my friend Marcus Bunyan for making me this excellent website based on a WordPress theme. His generosity in making the site will further help promote my work, making my images even more professional and accessible. A big thank you indeed.

Enjoy!

Andrew Follows
June 2015

 

Andrew Follows
City laneway, Melbourne
2015
Digital photograph

Andrew Follows
Sunset, Lakes Entrance
2015
Digital photograph

Andrew Follows
Darkness descends
2015
Digital photograph

Andrew Follows
Untitled
2014
From the series Fire and Ice
Digital photograph