Bread
September 2009
I’ve been living in Ho Chi Minh City, for just over a year. And lately, I’ve been from the wet to the dry season – and back again, enjoying daily drenchings, but the thing I miss most from home – is bread. The good stuff that is.
This loaf as it happens – was ok.
Green Park
London, January 2008
I was waiting for a meeting at one of the hotels in this part of town. I’d been living abroad and forgotten what a bright winter morning can be like.
I’m not a great fan of camera phones – but I took this with my Nokia N70 (which has a rather inconvienient charger).
I like the curving velvety shadows on the right-hand side.
Paint on the Pavement
Stamford Book – London, 2003
This is another example of something I happened to be passing as I walked home from work. The “Heart” or “Bottom” if you look at it the other way up is from from stray road marking paint.
When I think back on it, I seemed to walk everywhere when I used to live in London.
String Arrow
August 2009 – Singapore
I am a very inquisitive person. And I’m a romantic, seeing far too much in far too little. My favourite photographs tend to be about things, which I found or passed and made me wonder what had happened there.
I found this picture as I passed Dhoby Ghaut MRT station on my way for morning coffee.
Night Dive on Lake Ilopango
El Salvador, 2007
I was just about to go on a night dive into Lake Ilogano. It was, pretty much how it looked. I remember losing sight of the person in front of me’s fins in all the algae and then suddenly, it was absolutely clear – and I could see all the way to the bottom (well, as far as my torch beam would reach). Later on I sat on a warm rcok on the bottom, while the others did some drills. I remember sitting watching them and my bubbles racing upwards and thinking,”This is pretty amazing”.
Alice's
This is one of my favourite photos.
I was living in London at the time – and in love with place. I suppose it is about being a particular age in a particular place. My memory of the place is forever locked into the Summer of 2001, which was HOT. People used words like “Mediteranean” and it didn’t feel ironic or make me think of Peter Maile. I suppose in times past, we would have refered to it as an “Indian Summer”. But mostly people quietly sagged in the shade.
I used Bronica SQA with an 80mm S lens and RDP 100 on a tripod (I might write about that too sometime).
I'm Sure I Could Carry More
Motorbikes are very much part of everyday life in Ho Chi Minh City. They carry families on holiday, goods from shops to people’s houses and serve as a boyfriend-girlfriend platform in the evening. Sometimes the determination to carry everything in “one go”, can seem a bit bit extreme (see photo above). Not really a photo – about 2 seconds earlier would have been so much better. But you get the idea.
Marshall Griffin - Actor
I took this photograph for a friend of mine, the actor Marshall Griffin. It makes me think of a time when I used to do quite a bit of this sort of photography. It was for an actors’ directory called “Spotlight”.
It also reminds me of the love-hate relationship I have with technology and photography. My first “real” camera was a Canon EOS 100 almost 20 years ago. In lots of ways it was great, it pretty much made sure that results would be atleast “ok”. But as I read more and learned more, I tended to get frustrated by the way it would interfere when I dared to disagree with its recomendations (how its lights would flash, warning of catastrophe!).
In the end I swiched to a Nikkormatt, which didn’t back-chat. But to be honest it was rather crude. The shutter and aperture controls were only in full stops. You could make it work, but it always felt like a sledgehammer. But it did mean that I could use some rather nice prime Nikkor lenses. The Nikkormatt uses the early non-ai lenses which at the time were quite a bit cheaper than the later ai and ais. And some of the early lenses were really rather good (I might write a few articles about them later, if I think the internet needs more praises for the Nikkor 35mm F2 – O).
I took this picture with a non-ai 85mm f1.8 Nikkor and probably Fuji Neopan 400 at 1/30 @ f2.8.
Walking Man (in a hat)
Summer 2006
When I went to university I learned to look up (I studied architecture). When I moved to London, I learned to look down. I took this with what is probably the worst camera I’ve ever owned – a KM X1. I struggle to describe how spectacularly unsuited it was to taking photographs. Despite this I managed to take a few picture with it. But I’m sure if this “Walking Man” was really walking, it would have been out of focus!
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