I am a photographer (they tell me)

I love taking photos, and despite only having the most basic of material, I do occasionally get some shots that I like. Friends sometimes say that I have a good eye for colour and framing, but when I look at the great stuff on Flickr and don't feel that I'm doing anything that special.

Anyway, this month I am part of the Hôtels Paris Rive Gauche photo project called A Hotel Photo, An Artist's View. The project allows one photographer a month to spend one night in one of the chain's hotels and submit one photo and one piece of text. At the end of the year, all the photos form the previous year are exposed in Paris and in the running for a €3,000 prize (although I won't be eligible because I know, er, certain people at the company).

I didn't have any spectacular ideas for my photo, but I thought the end result (above) was quite fun. A lot of other photographers seem to have women draped over beds. No surprise I didn't go down that road I suppose. Here's the test shot that convinced my that the idea would work. Love the combination of army trousers and Totoro slippers!

I only know basic Photoshop, so for compositing the proper photo I got help from pal Manu and his new venture altstudio.be

If you go to the page presenting the photo on the hotels' website, you can read my text and ridiculous CV ("born in 19blah") and see a mini online gallery of 12 other photos that each photographer is asked to select to represent his/her work. It was actually quite tough making the selection, and I thought you might like to see the other 14 that just didn't get in. The gallery is here.

P.S. The above two photos both contain cat sick