Tees Valley Arts hosted an Art Auction on Wednesday in partnership with the Northern School of Arts and the Endeavour Partnership in which work from the students at Northern School of Arts were auctioned off , with the proceeds going to support the charity and NSA students.
As one of the Alumni for the NSA I was happy to be asked to donate a photograph for the auction, of which 30% goes to the charity.
I chose the final photograph from my project The Road
In 2030 Middlesbrough will be 200 years old, to celebrate this I have started work on a series of portraits of people from the town. This long term project will be a photographic social document representing a wide selection of people from Middlesbrough.
If are from Middlesbrough or regard Middlesbrough as your hometown then I’d love to have you involved in the project.
All I need is a little of your time and a handwritten note about your personal recollections of life in the town.
Below are a few examples of recent portraits for the project, if you want to be involved email me at jason@hynesphotography.co.uk
On Saturday I held a lighting workshop at The Auxiliary, a creative warehouse space for art practices located in Middlesbrough, it Includes studios, 2 galleries and workshop space.
The premise of the workshop was that participants would have the opportunity to hang their work in a gallery space (assisted by The Auxiliary artistic director, Liam Slevin) and then be guided through exhibition photography by me, using simple, effective camera and lighting techniques. Each participant left the workshop with a digital set of high quality photographic files which can be used for their websites, commissions, etc.
A few images from the day are below, a big shout out to The Auxiliary and all the artists who came along, you made it a great way to spend a Saturday.
As part of the Hometown project I photographed artist William Tillyer in his studio. While we were talking William mentioned a photographer called Forrest Wompra who was a studio portrait photographer in Middlesbrough. He photographed William when he was a child and according to William, Wompra must have photographed hundreds if not thousands of portraits in his Middlesbrough based studio, before, during and after the 1940’s.
I had never heard of Wompra but will look further into his history. Who know’s were it might lead. 
Still working on the Hometown project, finally got some spare time to devote to it over the next four months so expect more portrait’s soon.
These things we know