I’ve back in the UK and it has been cold and wet – pretty much usual for this time of year. The hidden blessing in this is that people don’t start talking about an “early Spring”. It’s not going to happen – ok?
Right now, other than packing for my flight back to Vietnam, I’m thinking about New Year’s Resolutions. What should they be?
I want to be published.
I should get to grips with another language (non-specific).
I should sort out my freestyle.
Apartment Block - Singapore
I have mixed feelings about apartment blocks. In an idealised world, they are a low-cost way of living in the city, giving you lots of interesting neighbours (have I watched “Friends” too many times?) and a compact, functional living space. One of my university lecturers had a large apartment which over looked Hampstead Heath – it was super cool (you know who you are Ken). And then there is the reality of noisy neighbours and endless flights of stairs – and not really being very inexpensive.
I wonder how many people live here in this building. I think I written before about Singapore – and I have the feeling that this is where the “lucky” people live. I’m intregued by their clothes lines, which break up the uniformity of the building (are all the curtains the same?). This is actually about 4 photographs which I joined in Auto Pano Pro. I love “joiners” – I wish I was better at them.
Adrenaline Model and Sunkissed Bombshell in the Park
Think this will be my last picture of this couple (that I post here). The reason I set up this blog was to encourage myself to keep moving forward, looking for new things – and posting most of the same goes against that.
I had a curious coversation with a colleague of mine yesterday, along similar lines. She wanted to know how I found new music – what were my sources? Mostly films and TV, which seems a rather limited (from here). It all fits into that whole on-going conversation of “How do you keep developing?”.
From the Curb
I don’t think I’ve posted this picture before.
I took it a little while ago. I had been in Ho Chi Minh City a little while and was trying to work out how I would take the pictures I wanted. All of my cameras seemed too large and conspicuous – they are a pretty sharp lot here and not easily fooled. Here I had my Fuji F30masked by my hand with just the lens poking between my fingers – my hand was by my waist – and still the guy with the trike is looking into the lens (well I think so).
I’m not really into trying to break someone else’s space. I hate it when people try to sneak pictures of me. Especially if I think they are trying to make some judgement about me. For me this picture is about work and sweat – which the developing world has in abundance. But they get on with it.
Shadows
This is one of those pictures which you take when you are in the middle of doing something else. I liked the patterns the reflection and shadows from the bottle made on the wall. Looking at it now I also like the little ghosts made by the second hand on the clock (it was a 5 second exposure).
I don’t take many pictures around my apartment, which I think shows a lack of imagination on my part. Andrew Sanderson wrote a great book about photographing things around us, called “Home Photography” – which I really enjoyed when it came out a few years ago.
http://www.amazon.com/Home-Photography-Inspiration-Your-Doorstep/dp/0817439897/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_2
Candel in Power Cut
I’ve just been emptying a memory card and found this from last week. There was a power cut – so to save battery power, I lit some candles around my apartment and had them as background lighting. If you are one of those tiresome people who ask, “Why did you take a picture of that?” – the answer is that I liked how the light came through the wax of the candle and made it glow (which is why I focused on the candle not the flame). Although the implicit judgement in the question makes me want to curl my lip.
Power-cuts happen quite often here, usually for a few hours. The problem is that quite often this is enough to make you fridge and freezer defrost and leak everywhere. It makes me think back to the 1970s, when they were quite common in the UK.
Sunkissed Bombshell - Model
A quick post – I’m supposed to be editing photos for someone.
This is from my shoot last month in the park – the one where I swore I would never photograph in public again. And I rather like it.
"Hey! Take my picture!"
Athens, Georgia 2001
I think this is the only time anyone has ever asked me to take their photo!
My flatmate Manuella had suggested we drive to Athens for a University of Georgia football game. So we drove up. And by a number of serendipidous turns, we ran into all sort of interesting people. And Athens, like many university towns turned out to be an interesting place, which I visited quite a few times afterwards.
I was using a Holga – hence the strange look.
Marshall Griffin - Actor - Kensington 2008
This is a picture of a friend of mine – Marshall Griffin – he is an actor. When I lived in London, I used to take his picture quite a lot. This is a much later picture – we’ve all moved on from there. I was living and working abroad and had just dropped by for the day.
I took this photo with a very worn 85mm F1.8 Nikkor (the huge non-ai version). I was using Fuji 400 colour print film. And I just love the look of it. I sold all my old Nikon film gear – and bought a load of digital Pentax lenses – and I could never get the same look as this. The way the background blurs and it rolls from sharp to out of focus. So I ended up buying some more Nikon kit again.
I still have the Nikons – but now have bought a Canon 50D. It doesn’t have “that” look either – but it is more versitile. And it doesn’t get wrecked by rotten processing. Or need (as much) spotting.
