Not sure why this came into my head, but all of a sudden me oul’ segotia became forefront in the medulla, fortwithly and decided-like. I think I remember my father using it, although he wasn’t a Dubliner by birth or demeanour. The phrase means something close to me oul’ pal, a term of endearment. Sounds O’Casey to me.
red
st anthony syndrome chilled blood tennis redhead paraplegic retired why do you want to know?
Philip Owens: new shoes
Shoe images found under this date.
photo: new kit
Pictured above is Sophie Merry, dancer, model, mover extraordinaire, subject to a bit of experimentation with the new Bowens kit I picked up the other day. Used above is a single 500 head at about 1/16th or thereabouts into a 60cm square softbox. Need to learn this kit.
photo: new shoes
So I decided to go off and do a course in advanced photography, never having done much in the way of formal training in this career other than just going out and doing it. Early days in the course but it’s looking promising. I think the challenge of having to do assignments is, erm, interesting and what you’re looking at above is the fruit of my first assignment – to go out and shoot a portrait-style image which conforms to certain criteria. This may be a little too wide to conform to portraiture, but I like it on a few levels. First, it looks like Ben is enjoying himself, second, I like the proportions of the tiny people/lighthouse/giant child landing from the sky and third I like the perspective.
I’ll update here how the assignment was received.
photo: 28,000 items
I’ve been doing this beauty gig for over a year now, since April 09 or thereabouts on and off, and it looks like I’ve shot or post produced just about 28,000 items, one of which is Anouska above. Not your typical beauty shot maybe, but I like it. I hasten to add that the beauty stuff I do doesn’t generally have a manky frame posted all over it, but I thought I’d take a bit of artistic license in this case. Anouska is a wonderful model but she’s also a great photographer, her stuff can be seen here on flickr. I wish I had her youth and talent.
Anyway, yeah, 28,000 items is a lot, I suppose about a half of them are technically usable and of that? Maybe 10 percent artistically usable.
Got to work on that ratio …
misc: fantod
… and this is especially for the Jobbing Doctor who gave out to me for being so lax at blogging and being a kept man (which I’m not, incidentally) …
–noun
1.
Usually, fantods. a state of extreme nervousness or restlessness; the willies; the fidgets (usually prec. by the ): We all developed the fantods when the plane was late in arriving.
2.
Sometimes, fantods. a sudden outpouring of anger, outrage, or a similar intense emotion.
I wonder are Jobbing’s fantods analogous to golfers’ yips?
Answers on a postcard please. One lucky winner will receive a used copy of Gardening Weakly, March 1974.
Lower extremities
So there I was, waiting, waiting, waiting on the border between Togo and Ghana, some trifling piece of paperwork was not quite right and we were waiting in our vehicles in the 42°C heat. No joke I tell you when the tempers are a bit short anyway. So I decide to get out and have a bit of diary time under a tree, a bit down off the road and away from the confines of the car. This involved hopping down from the road, a drop of about a metre onto a slight incline. Down I went, landed a little awkwardly because the landing surface was a little inclined, but no problems. No pain. Sat under my tree and curmudgeoned away while the sun beat down and petty officials finnicked* over a scrap of officialdom. Continue reading “Lower extremities”
video: Vodafone World of Difference
photo: dichotomy
Hell’s Bells! I’m not sure if what I’m about to try to articulate is a dichotomy or not but here goes …
Here I was last night, taking a few snaps of the very tall & beautiful Alyson above when I thought to myself: actually I’ve very little to do with this image, here’s the girl and her makeup artist, she’s doing her thing, they’re doing their thing and I’m just an observer, recording the event. Now the quality of that recording might be interpreted as artistic endeavour, but I’m not sure. Maybe I’m just good at working the camera and positioning it the right place at the right time with the right amount of light, maybe it’s because the clumsy schtick I babble to cover my nerves mollycoddles them into a sense of avuncular comfort and therefore a decent performance. Or maybe I have something indefinable called an Eye and know how and when to press the buttons to get a good looking picture? So many questions, so few answers. Why do I resort to Yiddish and me a Goy?
So is photography art or a science or both? Are they overlapping qualities?
I think there’s no distinct answer. A bit of both in reality. Although I have no particular training in photography other than my sister lending me her camera when I was about 15, teaching me what shutter speed meant and trusting me with it to the extent that I went off to some festival or other in England and took a load of photos. The camera returned intact. I figured out aperture myself. The technical side comes easy to me, I have that sort of brain for the most part, but also I have the confidence now to convince people I know what I’m doing. This amuses me (and others) no end.
The development of Eye comes with time, it’s not something you can book learn. There are guidelines I suppose but if you stick to them all the time your stuff becomes sterile and dull. I’m still searching for the Eye, maybe I have part of it but it’s an evolving thing, an evolution mirrored in the zeitgeist except I’m probably twenty years after the fact. So far after the fact that it has probably come back into fashion again. Lucky me!