Somewhere Down the Crazy River

A final(?) image from the SS Great Britain set, probably the most successful of the lot, in terms of composition, anyway. 

I suspect that I'll return to this subject before the winter is out.

Reaching for Composure

Looking at the previous image, its noticeable that an idea of composition went out of the window whilst I was concentrating on getting a reasonably well exposed image. This one is a bit better, I think.

A New Departure

My training routine has taken a bit of a hit recently. The karate club at which I train has lost one of its venues, which has reduced them down to one ninety minute session a week.

There has been a unexpected benefit, which is that a bit of my time has been freed up, although it took me a while to appreciate that it could be used for photography. The penny finally dropped whilst I was sat in traffic on Hotwell Road, looking across the river at the SS Great Britain.

So, long story short, a couple of weeks later, I was back with my camera and tripod. The evening was perfect (I assume - I'm new to this nocturnal photography lark) being very still, with a low overcast and I made a number of images.

One thing that I didn't expect - because I hadn't thought the process through, really - was how long it would take to make each exposure. I set the shutter speed to 30 seconds and then varied the aperture to control exposure, which meant that with post processing, each one took a whole minute, which is a long time when you're stood around in the cold. Then there were a couple of occasions when I released the shutter accidentally whilst trying to get the camera to autofocus - I was wearing gloves, to be fair - and during one exposure I made the beginners mistake of kicking the tripod.

Anyway, the image above is the first decent shot that I produced during the session. There are a few more to come, which I'll post over the next few days.

Cheddar Cheese

I know that I wrote that I wouldn't post any more images from Cheddar reservoir. But this is a rather different image from those I've posted recently and I rather like it, even if sunsets are a trifle cheesy.

The End of the Lake

I made a fair few of these images during the visit to Cheddar Reservoir, but this really is the last one that I'm going to post. This one is probably nearest to the image that had in my head.

Hurry on Sundown

Another image from the trip to Cheddar Reservoir. 

I like the contrail in this one. They always remind me of my childhood, watching the aircraft flying out of Liverpool airport and wondering where they were going. They represented the possibilities of life, tinged with a melancholy that I couldn't quite place.

Smoke on the Water...

...but no fire in the sky.

Its an almost vanishingly rare occurrence that I go somewhere to make images - I generally fit photography around the demands of family life. Recently however, I took the opportunity to catch the sunset at Cheddar Reservoir.

I also took the opportunity to make some long exposure images. This is a bit of a departure for me, but one that I've been following up on recently - the results will appear here shortly.

Struck by Lightning

Recently, I attended a conference at the RAF Museum at Cosford. The actual conference facilities aren't great, but you do get to wander around the museum during the breaks. One of the halls has aircraft hanging from the roof, like Airfix models from a bedroom ceiling.

There was lots of stuff to interest an aircraft geek, but the one exhibit that stood out for me was the English Electric Lightning pictured above.

The design of this aircraft is so simple. Its basically two jet engines - mounted vertically, rather than horizontally - with a cockpit at the front. The wings and tail are swept in such a way that the result resembles a flying fish, of all things. 

This arrangement was so successful that the Lightning was the main interdiction fighter of the RAF for thirty years, finally being replaced by the Tornado - an aircraft which has never been considered adequate in that role.

The Lightning had a party piece which was often to been at airshows during the sixties and seventies - this was a vertical climb from rotation, followed by a "tail stand" before transition to level flight. 

Someone that I worked with many years ago told me how he had witnessed this display go badly wrong. The story went that the aircraft in question took off and climbed vertically into low cloud, then re-emerged a few seconds later travelling tail first. The pilot ejected - too late - as the aircraft hit the ground and exploded, killing him outright. What made this incident particularly memorable for my colleague - who was in the RAF at the time - was the fact that he was standing next to the pilot's wife.

Anyway, the images here were made with my Nokia 1020, with some post-processing in GiMP.

Poppycock II

Another image of a California poppy, growing in our garden.

Poppycock

We're at the fag end of the summer's haul of photos - there are a couple more to come, but here's one of a California Poppy growing in our garden to be going on with. 

The Trees Outside the Academy

This is one of those images - I like it, but I really don't know if its a good image or not.

We were walking back down from the island when I saw this shot - I say saw, but it was at the extremity of my zoom lens, I've had to crop it still further and I still think that it could do with a bit more in that respect. And I can't decide if I should've cloned out the seagull or not.

Sculpture Vulture

A couple more images from the Barbara Hepworth Sculpture Garden visit. The one on the right was taken whilst seeking a brief respite from the rain. I think that the slight 'glow' from the sculpture is probably caused by condensation forming on the front elements of the lens.

Culture Vacuum

What sort of image does the term "sculpture garden" conjure up in your mind?

Perhaps rolling parkland with a few Greco-Roman figures scattered about? Or how about something roughly the size of your own back garden with modernist abstracts poking out from amongst the rhododendrons?

Well, the former is what I was expecting and the latter is what I actually got when we visited the Barbara Hepworth Sculpture Garden in St Ives. We were there recently as part of our Cornish trip. It was actually bucketing down at time, although you can't tell from the image above.

Site News

I've decided to suspend  the Shapwick Heath and Roses pages of this blog on the basis that they weren't adding anything. There's tags if you really want to look at specific categories of stuff and a comments field if anyone thinks the change is a bad idea.

Arthur's Seat

We took a trip to St Ives recently. On the way down there, we stopped off at Tintagel, were I made this image. 

Time For Tea

Yet another image of a rose. This one is a tea rose, which we rescued from the garden of my father's house and is now hanging on in there in our garden.

Thistle Slay Ya

A few weeks ago we went out on a rather unlikely expedition - to find somewhere in Cheddar Gorge to fly my son's model aeroplane and helicopter.

Surprisingly enough, we succeeded and at the end of the afternoon, once the batteries on the model aircraft had expired, I made this image of a thistle.

This Year's Model

There seems to be an emergent tradition that I post at least one marigold image a year. So, here it is for 2014.

As Seen Through Windows

Moving on from Wells to Cleeve Abbey, another view through a window - this time from one of the rooms in the range, looking out into the cloister. I've gone for a sepia tint for no good reason other than it seemed appropriate.

Window Shopping

This is probably the final image from our outing to the Bishop's Palace, which shows the cathedral framed through one of the windows of the ruined great hall. 

Episcopal Purple

During our recent visit to the Bishop's Palace, we spent some time in the gardens where I made this image of a flower of some sort or other.

Cathedral City

Another image made during the recent medieval day, this time of the Cathedral. The place was snewwing with people, but you wouldn't know it from this shot.

Monk-ey Business

A few weeks ago we found ourselves back at the Bishop's Palace in Wells for a medieval day , and I made this image of a statue of a monk which stands in the grounds.

Still Life, But Not As We Know It

I see a lot of still life images like this in photography magazines, although I'm not entirely sure why.

The white pebbles came from an old electric fire that went to the tip sometime over the summer. The background was provided by my father’s workbench, which is currently sitting in our back garden exposed to the elements, much to my chagrin.

The arrangement was arrived at intuitively, which is to say that I didn't think about it too much, I just pushed the pebbles into some sort of order. I made the image hand held as I’d put my tripod away and couldn't be bothered to get it out again. This wasn't an issue, with the intrinsically slow depth of field helping me out.

All of this is my way of saying that I didn't expend too much effort – from initial idea to captured image took a couple of minutes. I flatter myself that I could print and frame the result and stick it on the wall and no-one would give it a second glance, assuming that it was something that I’d picked up in Ikea or wherever.

Obviously, a lot of the photography that I do involves inanimate objects and would therefore seem to fit the definition of still life, but I would reject that label.

For me, photography is about – amongst other things* - imposing order on the world by the transposition of three dimensions into two and all the associated creative choices that implies. So the key thing here is that it should be the act of photographing that imposes order, rather than order being imposed before the shutter is released.

Someone who selects and arranges a bunch of objects and then photographs them is an interior designer or a flower arranger, not a photographer, in my view. This is one of the reasons why I tend not to photograph cut flowers. Even though many of my images explore the sculptural properties of a single flower or leaf, there is still a fundamental interaction between the spontaneous form occurring in its natural** setting, my creative choices and the apparatus*** used to capture them which meets the criterion set out above.

Now, I am aware that still life has a long and venerable tradition in photography, starting with Fox-Talbot, and of course originates in fine art painting, where it has an even longer and more venerable tradition which I'm not disputing. But in my view there is nothing intrinsically photographic about the discipline, and in the 21^st century, the use of a photographic image to capture a still life seems to me an entirely arbitrary choice, more likely driven by the artist’s inability to paint or draw than the properties of the medium****.

Anyway, next up is my scathing critique of street photography, in which I point out that simply photographing a bunch of random people milling about isn't art, although not getting beaten up and/or arrested in the process is no mean feat in these paranoid times.

*

* One of those other things being the way that, by freezing an instant of time, photography accentuates its passing and thereby the transience of that which is captured – something that flowers are particularly well suited to.

**  Natural, as in cultivated in a garden, which is a definition you may or may not accept, depending on your politics.

*** In the sense used by Flusser, obviously.

**** It certainly is in my case, and it is claimed, in WHFT’s.

Ready For My Close-up

Another image of a cosmos, with a rather different treatment this time.

Cosmic!

Another image of a cosmos flower. Not sure if I'm happy with this one, but my wife seems to like it.

Across the Cosmos

We've had a whole load of these flowers - I believe that they're called cosmos - growing in troughs this year. This is an image of one of them.

The Black Dahlia

Generally, the images made using dark backgrounds  - usually paper - in direct sunlight have been pretty unsuccessful, and I haven't been able to post any that I've made.

However, you may remember that the dahlia images that I've been posting were made using a cut flower in my light tent and I decided to have a go with the black backing. This image is the result, and I'm fairly happy with it.

Twice Dahlia, After Meals

Yet another image from the red dahlia set. This completes the set of profile views.

The Dahlia Mail

Another image from the red dahlia set.

The Blue Dahlia

Actually, it was red. 

I've been pursuing my flower photography throughout the summer, but I've only got round to processing the results recently. This is another cut flower, shot in the light tent and one of a series that I'll post over the next few days.

Axbridge Afternoon

Another image from our afternoon in Axbridge, made with the Nokia 1020. The mono conversion was done in post using GIMP.

A Grave Mistake

More than two tears on, we're still trying to get rid of stuff from my father's house. This led, last Saturday to an unsuccessful attempt to attend a car boot sale. I won't bore you with the details, but the upshot was that, in the late afternoon, we found ourselves mooching round Axbridge.

This image was made with my camera phone, from a vantage point near the Sea Cadet centre which is in the old station. The body of water in the distance is Cheddar Reservoir and the feature on the horizon just to the right of centre is Nyland Hill.

Scrapheap Challenge

The holidays are over and I had to take my car in the get the water pump replaced. This image was made whilst I was waiting for my lift, having dropped the car off first thing in the morning.

I'm really pleased with the 1020 as a camera, somewhat less so as a phone. I'm having a bit of a hard time getting Tu GO working at the moment - I suspect that there will be a post about this in due course.

Jekyll and Hide

Another image of Lindisfarne Castle, this time viewed from the Gertrude Jekyll Garden. 

I have a very vague memory that the last time we visited, which would have been in nineteen ninety-two or thereabouts, the garden was derelict and overgrown. In any case, it isn't now and we spent a very pleasant few minutes there as the sun went down.

The Gospel Truth

Having decided to holiday in Whitby, we thought that we could fit in a trip to Lindisfarne, which I visited with my wife on our first holiday as a couple err-hum years ago. On that occasion, it was November and everything was closed.

Anyway, a week before our holiday, I actually decided to look at a map of the region and discovered that Lindisfarne is 130 miles north of Whitby. Oops. We also had to factor in the tidal causeway which links the island to the mainland. Around the time of our visit, it was impassible between midday and six pm, which made a day trip from our base near Whitby difficult to organise.

So, we canned the idea of a day trip and decided to drive up on the Saturday at the end of our holiday and stay over in a nearby hotel. As long as we left our accommodation around eight am, we could get onto the island before the causeway closed and spend the day there. No problem.

On the day, we were still packing the car at eight thirty and finally got away about nine am. Still, we agreed that we could make it. Apart from the fact the A1 was one long series of minor accidents, which held us up just long enough to prevent that.

So, we had to replan. Go to the hotel, check in and then find something to do with the afternoon and go onto Lindisfarne in the evening. In Alnmouth, we raided the hotel's supply of tourist leaflets and discovered that boat trips to Lindisfarne were available from Seahouses. Back into the car and off to see if we could get onto the island that way.

After nearly an hour hacking about on country lanes, we got to the harbour to discover that no boat trips were running that day - apparently the "convenient" causeway opening times meant that there was no current demand. 

So, we had to replan, again. Back in the car we decided to go to Bamburgh Castle, which we finally reached about three pm.

And so, at six pm, we finally made it onto Lindisfarne, were we spent  a few hours before the sun set. We walked out the the castle (pictured above), strolled round the village and peered at the priory through the locked gates.

As we drove back down the causeway about nine pm, my wife said "Next time, we'll come when the place is actually open..." and I thought to myself, "What next time?"

Harbouring Strange Desires

Another image from the Whitby trip and a further attempt at making images of people. This one was taken at Whitby harbour - the couple are sitting on the breakwater and I was on the beach behind, on the Old Town side of the river. That's the East Lighthouse beyond.

The place was absolutely heaving, so I was amazed that I managed to isolate them, although I have to admit to cloning out a woman who was sitting to the right of the lighthouse. Even so, I'm not sure that the image works as it stands - maybe if the couple had been looking at the lighthouse rather than the seagulls something.

Phoning Around

Another image made with my Nokia 1020. This one is of Scarborough Castle, taken from the promenade, near the Sea Life Centre. The mono conversion was done in post, with GIMP. Nice cloudscape.

For Arguments Sake

Another image from the Whitby trip. This one was made in the Old Town with my Nokia 1020 - the name appealed to me and it was easier to get my phone out in the dense crowd on Church Street than wrestle my DSLR out of my camera bag. Yet again, the phone made a good job of some difficult lighting conditions, in my view.

The Amateur View

So, in this post, I'm going for the big reveal of this year's holiday destination. And it was...ta-da...Whitby, spiritual home of the UK's goths. Not that that's of any interest to us, of course. We were there for the sun and sea, which we got in good measure, considering.

Naturally enough, we found our way to the abbey, where I made quite a few images, of which this is the best.

On the wall in the on-site cafe, there is a large format print of an image taken from just this vantage point, which looks to have been made about 150 years ago, judging by the cowherd featured in the foreground. I've gone for a sepia treatment here as a bit of an homage.

On the day there were a number of other photographers using this viewpoint - one chap with an entry level Canon on a tripod, who gave me a look when I sauntered up, made this image hand held and then sauntered off again. I don't know what I'd done apart from failing to pay the subject enough respect by taking my time over it. Such are the pitfalls of making images on a family outing.

Anyway, I have a few more images from our trip, which I'll post over the next few days.

Apologia

Another image that I'd been saving for a rainy day. Apologies for posting yet another image of a rose.

Love In the Light Tent

We've been on holiday, hence the recent hiatus in posts. There are a few images from our trip that I'll post, but I haven't processed them yet. So, in the meantime, here is a an image that I made a few weeks ago.

Usually, I photograph flowers in situ, outdoors using available light. However, a few weeks ago, there were some cut flowers - love in the mist, I believe - in the house, so I got my light tent out and made a fair few images, most of them unsuccessful. This is probably the best of the set.

Broken Symmetry

Another image from the Margam Park visit. For reasons that are too boring and convoluted to go into, I didn't have a DSLR with me, so it seemed like a good opportunity to try out the Nokia 1020 that I've recently upgraded to.

I think that it coped rather well with the difficult lighting conditions. The main problem I find with it is trying to get the framing right whilst holding the thing at arms length - I haven't quite got it right here, the image could have done with being somewhat more symmetrical.

I, Phone

I've recently upgraded my phone. Having lived with a Nokia Lumia 800 for two years, I've now bought a Lumia 1020 – the one with the 42 mega-pixel camera. I used it to make the above image during a recent visit to Margam Park in South Wales. I've done a bit of post processing, but I think that the camera has done a great job in difficult lighting conditions.

Anyway, I can sense some of you shaking your heads at my bizarre decision to buy another Lumia, but I've enjoyed owning the 800 – I've certainly stood out from the zombie hoards of the Android/iOS duopoly.

In any case, I actually like Windows Phone. It’s very simple and intuitive to use and it compares well with Android in that the phone comes with the latest version installed and will get regular updates for the rest of its life. And the desktop sync on my wife’s Sammie SIII is appallingly bad, whereas the 800 has always worked like a charm.

Then there’s the iPhone. Some of my friends and acquaintances think that I'm a Microsoft zealot, railing against Apple in the face of all the available evidence. This is not true – I own an iPod Touch, for God’s sake, the 64Gb top of the range model no less, which I really like and use every day.

My beef isn't with Apple in general or any of their products in particular. It’s with their fanbois, who insist on berating me and everyone else about the superiority of Apple products, both in person and through the media. And I'm afraid that they’re just plain wrong.

So, let’s get one thing straight. The fundamental difference between Microsoft and Apple isn't about one of them being being design led, or having superior corporate ethics, or anything so intangible. It’s all about business models – pure and simple.

Apple provide cheap or free software on over-priced hardware. Microsoft make over-priced software to run on commodity hardware. That’s it in a nutshell. The rest is all marketing.

I suspect that the TCO of either company’s comparable products over, say, five years is about the same, although my 1020 is a damn site cheaper than an iPhone. [Let’s quietly draw a veil over the Surface and the long forgotten and unloved Zune, shall we?]

And that neatly brings us back to Windows Phone and its one main downside, which is the lack of native apps. A couple of years down the line from the first real tranche of Windows Phones, very few businesses have ported their apps over or are looking likely to. But then, I mainly use my phone as a communications device – text, email, voice (remember that?) – which it’s really very good at.

As to the future, I think that the continued dominance of Android and iOS is less certain than some might imagine.

The installed Android base is fragmented and that will only get worse as newer versions are released and manufacturers continue to ignore the need to update older handsets. It remains to be seen at what point developers will find it impossible to make apps that will run across enough of the installed base to make it worth their while.

Add to that the fact that the market for Android handsets is a manufacturer’s bloodbath. Only Samsung are able to make a profit off the back of a mind-boggling marketing spend required to shore up their position as an aspirational brand running an OS more associated with the budget end of the market. The likes of Sony have to scrabble with the other also-rans attempting to differentiate their product, which drives further fragmentation of the OS.

Android may eventually turn out to be the real life example of the Tragedy of the Commons that economists have been looking for.

As for the iPhone, it may be huge in Europe and the States, but not elsewhere – Apple have completely failed to crack China, for example. Like many other innovators, Apple may well see its lead eroded and finally overhauled by commodity manufacturers offering a Good Enough^tm product at a fraction of the price. Its only way out of that bind is to innovate some more, something that it still has to prove it can do without Steve Jobs.

It also amazes me that we haven’t seen an OS developed in China or Africa on the world stage yet.

[Mobile phones are a big deal in Africa, where landline networks are generally lacking. However, the smart-phone has yet to really penetrate that market, which is still dominated by cheap and robust feature phones. Whilst the major players are still focusing on Western and Asian markets, Africa is likely to make or break them in the next few years.]

That might just be a matter of time. In any case, I wouldn't bet against Windows Phone finally emerging from all of this as the dominant mobile platform, not just yet anyway.

Park End

The last image from the Singleton Park set. Probably.

Shane's Shed

My wife's cousin Shane Rees has decide to relaunch his blog, "Shane's Shed", so I've added a link in "Other places to visit" - check it out.

Singleton Class II

Another image from the SIngleton Park set.

Rational Rose

Another image from the Singleton Park set and another software developer's pun.

Singleton Class

Recently, we spent an afternoon in Singleton Park in Swansea. The park has a botanical garden, and much like the Tyntesfield visit, the day was bright with an overcast that made it idea for macro photography. 

This time however, I had my Alpha 77 and 50mm macro lens with me. What the results go to show is, that in these circumstances - which is to say that of making images of flowers which are planted in deep borders whilst supporting the camera by hand - the zoom lens wins hands down.

Anyway, you can judge for yourselves as I post the results over the next week or so. The above image is probably the best of the set.

BTW: The title of this post is a C++ pun - don't mock, there's only one other C++ joke that I know and that's not repeatable in front of a family audience.

I Broke My Promise

I'm afraid that I've another image to post from the Brean Down set. Sorry.

This one is another in the occasional "People" series. This family is actually a fair way out on Brean Sands, which is not the safest place in the world to be.

Brean and Gone

The final image from the Brean Down set.

Up On The Down

Another image from the Brean Down outing.