The Ancestral Pile Revisited

Another image from our visit to Sudley House. This is of a stained glass panel which is in the entrance porch on the North side of the house. Note that there's a chip under the central figure's chin with a radial crack running down and left onto the chest, which adds a nice touch in my view.

A should say that, in addition to the temporary exhibition of Bedford Lemere's photography, there are some very nice family photographs, dating from the early twentieth century, on display in the cafe. So, its a good afternoon out for photographers and entrance to museums is still free in the People's Republic of Liverpool.

The Ancestral Pile

We were in Liverpool during the weekend, trying to finish clearing out my father's house. Despite the fact that we should have been working, I made us visit Sudley House, which is a couple of miles from my father's place.

Sudley was gifted to the City of Liverpool when the last member of the Holt family died in 1946. It's now a museum. However, there is a family story, repeated to me by my father, that we were related to the Holts and that my father, as a young boy, was taken up to Sudley to be presented to "the old man".

Except that "the old man" would have to be Joseph Holt, who died in 1896. So that doesn't work, but the story may have been about my grandfather, although that doesn't work either because he wasn't born until 1905. And my father's memory could be flaky, so he could have been mistaken. 

Whatever, the point of the story is that we were something to do with those at the big house. So I took the wife to see our family seat.

The museum isn't anything to write home about, although it does hold a couple of original works by J M W Turner. Upstairs, there is an exhibition space which is currently hosting a display of architectural photography by Bedford Lemere & Co, which is worth seeing if you can get there before the end of April.

The image above is of the small cupola over the main entrance hall. Below is an exterior shot taken from the drive and looking at the north side of the house. I had my Alpha 77 with 50mm prime fitted, so I couldn't get a shot of the whole facade. 

I've a couple more images that are worth posting, which I'll do over the next few days.

There Where The Snowdrops, So Drop I...

Finally, finally, the Windows version of UFRaw has been updated to version 0.19. But all is not well, still. For some bizarre reason best know to the developer, they've decided to remove the GiMP integration.

Doh! Well done guys, you've managed to remove UFRaw's USP.

It's unclear to me if this odd choice has been inflicted on users of other operating systems, but given that the developers have real issues with Windows, I wouldn't be surprised if this is an MS only affair.

Whatever. At least I have a RAW converter that works on my antediluvian laptop. The image above is one that I converted using the new version of UFRaw and it is so much better than the Sony offering.

This image is intended to be a companion piece to a colourised image of a hyacinth that I posted back in October. This one is of a snowdrop, again from our garden. All the spring flowers - apart from the daffodils - are over now, so on to another subject for my next post, I guess.

Our Broken Workflow - Update

UFRaw has finally been updated to version 0.19! But a Windows build hasn't been posted yet, so my workflow remains broken. Its now a race against time as I'm about to buy myself a new laptop and abandon UFRaw for RAWTherapee.

Its frustrating. So come on guys, give us a Windows distribution!

Spring Has Sprung...(Reprise)

Another image from the same session as the previous post. This is better, I think, and I may not have posted that one if I'd processed this one first. But that's the pressure of front line journalism etc, etc.

Spring Has Sprung...

...and I've managed to take a photograph that's worth posting! 

In my humble opinion anyway.

The spring flowers generally provide a happy hunting ground for my photography. Over the years I've made any of number of images of these purple crocuses. And this is certainly one of them. Given the colours in this image I couldn't bring myself to desaturate it, so here it is in all its glory.

The Sinking Ship

It's amazing how fortunes can change in the music business. A few years ago, Sigur Ros had the world at their feet. A track taken from their fourth album “Takk…” and used in a high profile BBC wildlife documentary brought them widespread public attention, which they capitalised on with a series of releases that welded Jonsi Brigardson's choirboy-on-helium vocals to an increasingly pop-folk oriented backing, eschewing the epic post rock of previous outings.

They went global, despite a general lack of any obvious rock star charisma and without any apparent concessions in their musical approach – they even continued to sing in Icelandic. They had, by all appearances, squared the circle of being successful on their own terms.

Then it all went horribly wrong. The past couple of years have seen plenty of product – live albums, re-recordings of older material, concert DVDs, etc. – but little new music. This seems to have been the outcome of intra-band strife and creative inertia resulting from that “we've conquered the world, so what’s next?” point in a global rock band's career. Jonsi released a solo album, and another record as part of the Jonsi and Alex duo.

Sigur Ros looked over, making the title of their last album (2008's “With a Buzzing in Our Ears, We Play Endlessly”) seem rather ironic.

Now, apparently against the odds, we have “Valtari”.

The sticker on the packaging announces this as “The new studio album…”. The truth is that it’s been pieced together from recordings made over the four years since “With a Buzzing..” was released. Bearing this in mind, the album is surprisingly coherent, perhaps too much so. There are eight tracks, none of which are shorter than five minutes or longer than eight and all proceed at roughly the same mid-tempo.

The whole things clocks in at around fifty-five minutes, which is probably a touch on the long side. By the time that you get to the final track, which is a something-and-nothing piano instrumental stretched wafer-thin across eight minutes, there is a feeling of exhaustion in the air, a sense that the band collapsed over the finishing line, having only just made it before their metaphorical legs gave way.

All that said, I like this record. I like it more, in fact, than “With a Buzzing..”, but I like it as a whole. None of the tracks here stand out– there is no “Festival” for example. But as an album it manages to conjure up a certain sense of something-or-other which is very attractive if you’re in the right frame of mind.

So, what if this was to be the last Sigur Ros album? I think it would be seen as a bit of a footnote, a gathering together of unreleased material – which it is in any case – and something of an anti-climax.

And if it isn't? Then, it's a stop gap, a pause whilst the band regroups.

From the band's website: “There are rumblings from within the band of a “hard left turn” in terms of what these changes might constitute. Suffice to say, for now it's set to be a compelling "watch this space" scenario.”

Quite.

Either way, “Valtari” doesn’t represent a brave new beginning for Sigur Ros. That is what the next album needs to be, if there is one.