Gertsamtkunstwerk

Twenty-five years of angst

In 1984 I did something very stupid. I got my photos back from the developers and wrote neatly the details on the back of them - using a pink felt-tip pen. As  I finished writing, I neatly put the photo to the bottom of the stack, before the felt tip had dried, thus ruinign several photos from our hols in Devon and the Liverpool Garden Festival.

A typical result is this:

I have desaturated on purple and magenta, but the stains remain. How would you get rid of them. Cloning's a possibility especially in the sky and sea; not so sure about the promontory.

(It's not a bad picture considering it was shot on a 126 Instamatic).

I suppose I could search for the negative and re-scan.

Photographs

I haven't been writing much on the blog because I have been focusing quite a lot on editing photos. When I am at the PC, every hour or so I add a photo to my collections of Paris and London

I feel quite pleased, especially at the Paris set. Photography gives me so much pleasure. What you see the is the end of a journey, sometimes literally.

Why I take photos, I don't really know. Perhaps a silly question, just about everybody does. I suppose for most of us, it's to tell a story. Photography is an artform, but I see myself as a craftswoman rather than an artist. I don't like artifice. (But nor do I believe the camera never lies). What you see is what you get. All of those photos have benefited from crafts, such as zooming in, and cropping out; the stained glass window is a triumph of colour management in the editing software. But anyone could take any one of the last three photos by being in the same place (in the same weather conditions for the bollards in particular); the Arc de Trimphe could be easily replicated but for a different configuration of traffic (I suspect there will be a lime green open top bus, though!).

It's only in the past couple of months that I have been using my camera properly. I bought it six years ago and have been using it as a glorified point-and-shoot. I have finally been taking photos in RAW, which meant splashing out on an editor which can handle RAW photos. I had baulked at the cost, but I've been using my 'entry level' software for so many years. If I get the same service out of the new one I'm using, it will have cost me a penny a photo, nothing compared to the cost of film-based photography! The combination of the two factors have left me feeling a bit warm inside.

Talking of old-fashioned photography, last year I combined watching the Olympics with scanning my old photographs into digital form. Having saved them as jpegs, I am wondering whether I should repeat the process but save them in a different form (Advice please).

I am going through them slowly editing them and selecting the best to publish, here or on Facebook, depending on the subject matter. A normal person would have started in 1984 and got stuck at about 1991, but I'm not normal, so I do a few from each year before moving onto the next year!

             
USA and Canada 99                        1990                            1989                        Me myself I

1996

I feel that the best photos have lost something in the scanning process. However, it's been nice to give some new life to a few by fiddling with the lighting, or colour, or cropping out extraneous rubbish.

Favourite photos

On the right, at the top is an album of my choice of my 98 favourite photos taken by me (or with my camera in my presence). I rotate them from time to time to highlight a different photo as 'top' - ie the most easily accessible.

Today I changed it from

Cottage Garden

to

Waterloo

Experimenting

The single biggest advantage of Digital photography is the minuscule marginal costs involved, which allows for a high attrition rate on 'important' occasions, and for plenty of 'messing around', perhaps just in the house or garden.

I am beginning to learn to have multiple  attempts at the same photo. What am I less good at is being brutal at deleting them. I have a a mindset which says - if I just play around in the editing software, it will be all right. Obviously, if there is a photo that's badly exposed or composed but captures an unrepeatable fleeting moment, it can be worth the effort.

I have a silly way of going through editing my photos. I find if I do them in strict chronological order boredom quickly sets in, especially when there are great similarities between the photos.

The special place on the autistic spectrum which enables me to be an accountant/auditor dictates that I do them in a particular order, using the unique reference number.  I know it's silly, I know it's trainspottery, I know it leads to severe delays while I wait for a set to be complete.

However, the advantage is that when I have similar shots, I approach them differently on different occasions, rather than slavishly following the 'inspiration' of the edit done two weeks ago.

A few weeks ago I took a few snaps in the back garden; as it happens of some wallflowers. I set the camera to Focus bracket, so basically took the same photo three times with near, middle and far exposure. I edited them on different days.

A few days later I read in a photography book that it's a good learning exercise to pick a colour and take photos of anything you see in that colour. So I rushed round the house taking indifferent  pictures of orange things.

I am not yet sure what I am supposed to learn from this, and in the meantime I have, and will be, distracted by other things photographic. Nevertheless, it is an exercise I may repeat in the future with another colour. And I did manage to get one more orange thing the next day on a lunchtime perambulation.

 

 

Overexposed

I decided, after all these years, it's about time I learned to use my camera.

I took the following photo, deliberately over-exposed, in RAW format (although saved as jpeg for web publishing. Obviously)

I edited the jpeg in my usual photo editing software, MGI Photosuite

Separately, I also converted it to an 8 bit TIFF and edited that in Photoshop (although Photosuite also handles TIFFs). Obviously,I had to then convert it to jpeg for uploading

An apology

I think I owe this couple an apology. There I was on Tooting Common yesterday afternoon, relearning how to use my camera. I thought I would have an attempt at hi-speed continuous shooting. To test this out one needs something that moves. Just their luck that they happened to walk into shot just at the "right" moment. I took fifteen shots of them. I think they had noticed by shot ten.

Sorry, it wasn't anything personal. I wasn't attempting to do good photos or even use you in any sort of documentary or
commentary way. You were just there, at that time! And I certainly didn't do close-ups, although I could have done.

Guess what

Can anyone guess where and when this photo was taken - ie what is it of?

No prizes for guessing, just a feeling of smug satisfaction at being right

Snow photos

I have published a bundle, more than doubling the size of my 'Winter' Album. Obviously, this album would have been bigger if I had got out my camera when taking a horse-drawn carriage ride round a snow-covered Central Park, NY last winter. But I didn't.

Perfumery - studies in small objects of desire

It's funny, I was never that much into perfume. Nevertheless a few years ago I was very grateful for a 'travel set' of four perfumes received as a present. Ideal for me, because I just waste big bottles - they evaporate or go off.

Going through Heathrow just over a year ago, I happened to notice that they had some of these travel sets on display, and I bought a Yves St Laurent one; then, again at Heathrow, en route to Barcelona, I spotted a Christian Dior set. Bought. At Valencia, heading home, I found a Givenchy set. Sold to the woman who suddenly has a collection of mini perfumes.

I decided to mess around with my camera. My initial objective was to photograph them as some sort of easy documentary. Then I realised it was silly using a red background - although I didn't grasp the silliness until I put them through the PC.

So I re-shot them again, rigging up a more neutral background and using the (fading) daylight coming through the bedroom window. Then I messed around with the editing software and came up with something...interesting. I am very very poor at capturing tiny images at close distance, so these sorts of things are ideal to practice with.

There are several more that simply haven't photographed well and I might revisit, but below is just a snapshot of "The Collection"

Photo update

I have now finished uploading my photos from Valencia, both the touristy ones and those from the curtain call of Iphigénie. All I can say is that they are what they are.

Having thought aloud in a previous post about whether to buy a DSLR camera, I have decided not. I currently own a Canon G3 which I bought nearly six years ago. Canon have updated the series several times since and I was nearly tempted to get a G10, which has more advanced technology that the G3. I have decided instead to learn actually how to  use the camera I have. This includes finding out about functions such as Exposure Compensation, ND filter and manual focus, and also understanding more about what techniques to use in what conditions, and shooting more in RAW format. I am disappointed in the quality of the photos from Iphigénie, especially if compared to Tamerlano. Some of that is down to the fact that for Tamerlano I was in the second row, centre, and for Iphigénie I wasn't, and that the set for Tamerlano was brightly lit and Iphigénie's wasn't,but a large part of it is down to my inability to get the max from my camera.

I have also discovered that models such as the G9 or G10 have a fixed screen, whereas the G3 has a screen that can be unfolded from the camera and rotated to face backwards or forwards or any angle in between. That is such a brilliant feature, and I don't really understand why it was discontinued.

My photos

I have made some updates to the Photo Galleries to the right.

I have added a new album called Valencia, but this is not yet complete.

 I have added to the Performance album with some photos from Les Contes D'Hoffmann and Iphigénie en Tauride. Again, this is not complete. And also, neither collection is anything like as good as they should be: the best curtain call photos happen when they take place on an open stage with good back lighting. Being very near also helps but isn't decisive.  Most significantly, there are no photos from June 2007 to October 2008. This will be remedied in the fullness of time. I am also going to do an album called Stage Door.

Some of the 'Old Photos' album especially including my trips to USA and Canada in1989 and 1999 are far from complete. Some other albums will be updated from time-to-time indefinitely.

Some of the albums, notably Summer, Boring, Me Myself I, Boats and Ships, Other People's Homes, Naked Statues, Steam, Winter, Autumn, Himself, Spring, and Water Fowl, comprise mainly of duplicates from various other albums.

Most significantly, I have added an album called Favourites. The order is a bit random, reflecting the order in which the photos were originally added to this site, which barely reflects chronology. If I remember, I will occasionally edit it to change the photo that appears by default in the sidebar. It currently stands at 98 photos, and I think I am going to be strict in not letting it get above 100. I  tried to avoid it being some sort of proportional representation of all the albums, but selected photos that, for some reason or other, have a 'wow' factor.

These aren't necessarily my favourite all-time photos, many of which are portraits of people, or indeed other photos that have a special meaning or memory for me. There are very few 'Performance' shots because what I take generally are low quality shots from a distance in poor light. Just for fun; like snaps of friends and family the greatest value is who is in them rather than any intrinsic photographic value.

I also realise that quite a high number of my photos are standard tourist snaps of well-known tourist landmarks. With the best will in the world, my attempts are never going to emulate the professional and highly skilled versions that proliferate on the net. Where I have included standard tourist subjects, it may be because there was an unusually good light quality or maybe I got an interesting viewpoint. 

I also realise that many of the photos don't amount to much as 'standalone' but as part of a set or sequence, they start to tell a story. Indeed, perfectly conscious of my inadequacies of ability, equipment and time, I never set out to create photographs of any artistic merit. I originally got a digital camera in 2001. Initially my use of it was no different from how I had used film cameras - an occasional arty insight* - but mainly people and uninspired tourist snaps. When I started blogging, I began to get inspired by other bloggers, and go for slightly more quirky viewpoints or seemingly mundane details. I am still very poor at capturing the smaller details, but I welcome the 'development opportunity'.  Nevertheless, the fundamental principle is to tell a story - my life.

*eg Aberystwyth 1974 I saw a sailing dinghy heading out to sea and saw the potential for a great photo, which I insisted on taking. I later copied it for an Art lesson at school and that was probably the best picture I ever drew. One of these days I shall get hold of it and scan it! It was bloody good for a six year old and 'not bad' by any standards, IIRC. Similarly a great shot of Lincoln Cathedral 1977.

Composition: so near, and yet, so very far

Another object lesson on the need to concentrate more when taking a snapshot.

I was so lucky with the light. This was about a half an hour after it had gone dark. But look at that sky! A sky to die for.

I actually did take care in the camera settings. Shutter speed of 1/15; with f2.5. That speed is quite slow, and not being the sort to carry a tripod around on the off-chance, I knew I had to improvise. I strolled round the square using various street furniture. Best was when I could actually rest the camera on a wall or somesuch. Failing that, just getting a lamp post  to brace myself against would just about do it.

I was trying to get the light dancing off the fountain, maybe get a sense of individual streams or even drops of water. I also had my eyes on the varied skyline: the wedding cake building, the rococo dome and the structure that probably isn't a cable car tower, but could be. The palm trees add an exotic flavour, and although I have mostly cropped them out, the Christmas decorations were an extra element.

I timed it perfectly, watching the traffic lights to catch a pause in passing traffic. I regretted the presence of parked cars, but knew that as I was aiming high, they would not intrude too much. So, I actually gave some thought to this cityscape of the Plaza de Ayuntamiento, Valencia, especially of how to combine the various eye-catching elements.

And I forgot one thing. Or failed to notice. I think the the auto-correct function of brain processes it out, like cars, to some extent.

So ladies and gentleman, this is how I ended up taking a photo of a telegraph poll and angle-poise light.

How not to take a photo

I took this in Valencia, about three quarters of an hour before sunset. I benefited from the extraordinary blue sky - I am not sure I have previously had the pleasure of such gorgeous light, ever.

At that time of day, and so close to Solstice, it was inevitable I was going to get shadows. If I were a very keen photographer and this was local to me, I would choose my time carefully, both the time of day and the time of year. Obviously, this isn't practical for a tourist snap.

I think I can see what I was trying to do, at least subconsciously,  and indeed, looking through the internet, it is clear that I was hardly being original in the (attempted) framing of the shot. I didn't even think of it, but obviously my eye was drawn through the gateway and to the building on the other side of the road - a church I think. With a bit more care in positioning and focus, this could have been a memorable photo of the church, using the towers as an unusual frame, surrounded by that gorgeous blue sky.

The advantages of digital photography are instant review and attrition rate. I could have taken 10 or 50 or 100 attempts at this photograph until it was as good as I could make it. It seems that I didn't even bother to review, another drawback of tourist snapshots, because I wasn't just there to take photos, I was also guided tour of a two-person walk around historic Valencia.

The other problem is one of technology: the way a tall building appears to be leaning away from me, highlighting how short I am in comparison. That isn't remediable except with a wide-angle lens. I have a liking for leaning-away buildings, probably other people don't. but I think what really comes over is the flatness of the scene. I should have used a narrower aperture than 3.2. I think I got the speed right for the light.

I am thinking of taking the plunge to an SLR, although the thought of doing so is a bit daunting. I know from observation of other people that one cannot survive on an SLR alone. I suppose I would then supplement it with a small basic compact, but wouldn't want to ditch my Canon G3 because it really is an excellent versatile point-and-shoot. Add the ubiquitous phone-camera, which is no good for anything but instant photos for purely documentary purposes in good light, and I would end up with four cameras, which would be a bit silly!

I am also thinking of doing a photography course, maybe, but I'm not sure what I want to learn. I don't think I want to do a course in editing, because I much prefer verisimilitude. For example, a lot of people would edit out the car that's visible through the gateway, but I feel uncomfortable doing so. In this case it wouldn't be unethical, but in many cases it would be giving a dishonest  impression. I suppose I want to learn more about actually taking photos, but how does one know if a course is any good? I don't suppose they come cheap.

Self-portrait?

I was messing around with my camera the other night and took this picture. I don't think it looks very much like me, but it must be, because there was no one else in the room. Although I have often wondered whether that room is haunted...

Mr ILoveMyself

A very showy-off swan on Tooting Common

I suppose if I spent all day beside the pond I could get a perfect shot of the full span of a swan's wings. Sometimes, life is too short...

Old and new photos

I have added some photos to my various photo albums, all accessible from the middle-bar.

Mainly Yorkshire Brockwell Park Tooting Common and Summer (although mainly duplicates of what is posted elsewhere). Also Water Fowl and Autumn which are, I think, exclusively clones. I have also dropped in a few 'Old Photos' - pictures that I took on film before I went digital, and have recently scanned with varying results.

Some of my most preferred...

 

What I have been doing when I haven't been blogging

Mainly photos. Lots and lots of photos. Just about my entire photo collection from 1984-2000 is now scanned into the PC. I have added a few new albums to the Middle Bar. I really want to draw your attention to the one called 'Boring'.

Some years ago, on a whim, I bought a book called Boring Postcards. It's a splendid book, definitely the thing to bring out at Dinner Parties. Indeed, every good home should have a copy. It has the most eloquent reviews on Amazon and even an animated review on YouTube. Naturally, my favourite is Sale Leisure Centre, which also appears on Flickr looking uncharacteristically interesting.

All the photos posted thus far on 'Boring' pre-date my acquisition of the book, and were taken in earnest attempts to document my life. Sadly, Basingstoke Railway station has not made the final cut; the thumb over the lens lent it an undeserving aura of interest.

I am sure that as I edit more of my photos, I will find many more that are engagingly Boring (rather than editing my old photos in strict chronological order I am systematically doing a handful from each month of each year).

Having been inspired to publish this set of Boring Photos I shall be tempted to take deliberately boring photos. I shall have to resist the temptation because it might end up contrived....

Some photos

The other day I was messing round with my camera, taking photos of myself. Just because I can, really. I was mainly taking photos not suitable for showing on the www*. Inadvertently I took some that I just found interesting. Not in a 'ooh, look at me way' but just curious at the random way that portraits turn out, especially when one is trying not to pose in portrait like way...

* maybe...

Chopper ride

Just trying to get my photos up to date. I have just finished loading the pictures I took of our helicopter ride in April.

Find them here

As I published the photos, it struck me that while I always knew vaguely where we were, outside of Westminster Village I was very hazy on specific details. So I would be really interested if readers could fill me in where my details are vague. Or just say 'that's my house...' or whatever.

Some of the photos are wonky and I kept them like that, because we weren't always perpendicular to earth. Others have interrupting corners, which in some cases I kept, as being a lesser evil than chopping something interesting off.

7000 photos

I got my camera almost exactly five years ago. Yesterday I took photo 7000. When I first got the camera I had the counter set to restart, and I had taken a hundred or so before I changed that to continual. then I dropped the camera and it needed fixing, so I borrowed for our holiday in Scotland.

Photo 1000 was taken at my brother's wedding, in September 2003,  a picture of his former housemates Mark and Tim, who might not like their images being published here. The children present at that wedding were impeccably behaved.

2000 occurred in July 2004, not one of the best I took when we went to Dungeness, where all the children were well-behaved and took a real interest in the miniature steam railway.

The 3000th photo was taken at a Classic Spectacular at the Royal Albert Hall in March 2005. The child present repeated her impeccable behaviour she had previously displayed at her uncle's wedding .

4000 came in Goa, in December 2005. The problem with Goa was a group of loud drunken violent Adults, who inspired numerous complaints from the other guests and led to this loud violent group receiving numerous warnings "if you're not careful, you'll get another warning...". An afternoon in a beach shack was an excellent way to relax.

The 5000th was a picture of Bryn Terfel, at Kenwood in July 2006. The problem there was having to sit behind halfwits who alternatively talked through and sung along with the music. And the ducks that squawked while Bryn was singing!

Photo 6000 no longer resides on my computer. By context, it was taken in May 2007 while I was cooking, and presumably was dark or fuzzy, hence its deletion.

And without further ado, I bring you, photo 7000, quite possibly one of the most boring photos ever taken, of the lake at Hever Castle. Supposedly a boating lake, but no boats were out, presumably because of the wind. Drum roll, tada...

Which all goes to show, that with intervals between the 1000 markers of 3 months - 10 months - 8 months - 9 months - 7 months - 10 months - 12 months, I am definitely slacking off in my photo taking and must do better...

Chalk and cheese

A few weeks ago Jimmy and I were sitting in the pub messing around with my camera. The resulting photos really illustrate how very different we are...

Photography and arse-crack woman

Nowadays, I rarely carry my darling camera with me when I'm on everyday business - it can double the weight of my rucksack on an ordinary workday.

In any case, if I were to carry it, it is too unwieldy for taking discrete photos of everyday subjects. I am torn between buying a decentish small camera or buying a phone with a decentish camera built in. I would of course retain my G3 and use it for holidays, days out, visits etc.

My phone is okayish for snapshots outdoors or in brightly-lit indoor conditions, and lighting aside, would be ideal for sneaky surreptitious photos like the one I took this evening.

This was the view throughout my entire three course meal. Someone else's arse-crack. She was wearing leather trousers and obviously aware of their non-fitting nature, because she put her hand down her arse to hitch up her grey nylon knickers; later after she had gone outside to take a call she pulled up leather trousers, but as soon as she sat down they rode down her bum again.

It's a conundrum, of course. On one level, she was doing no active harm, so I ought to be more tolerant. On the other hand, my eyes kept being drawn to this sight. I'm no prude and have no issues with nakedness in the right context. But there comes a point where gratuitous arse-cleavage and revealing of an half-naked arse is not ideal for the enjoyment of a meal.

Of course, one can't go up to her and ask, or instruct a waitperson to ask, her to put her bum away. Nor would I like some technical legalistic statement of public indecency blah-de-blah. But, she made it clear that she was aware of it, she wasn't flaunting it like some delusional middle-aged 'D'ya think I'm sexy'. I'm trying to be understanding and tolerant, but bottom line, so to speak, she was not dressed appropriately for a decent , civilised restaurant.

It's one of those situations - do I have the right to feel offended? I think I do, because it isn't normal in civilised society, away from beach/swimming pool to be confronted with naked arse-cleavage. It wasn't a passing sight - this was for three courses and two hours. I don't know the answer. As I say, it was pretty disgusting,  especially when she put her hand down there. I'm not suggesting she did she me any harm, yet it did rather mar my enjoyment. And I think the woman on the next table to me had a similar reaction.

Blue Light

We went to the park yesterday. It was quite busy, not surprisingly, considering what a lovely day it was. Bright blue skies, not especially cold. Days you yearn for sometimes in August, let alone February. (While I was there I had a big chocolate chip cookie. Speaking to my niece this morning, she and my mother went to the park also yesterday, and my niece had a giant cookie!)

I took quite a lot of photos, of varying quality (varying from not at all good to really quite bad). What has struck me is how much blueness there is in the light. I am not sure if it's a calibration problem with my camera, simple user error - I tend to use the Automatic White Balance setting, or something inherent in the light - maybe something to do with the time of year, low sun, or whatever.

I would be interested to know what causes it...

Digitizing the 70s

I've spent a fair part of the day scanning in slides from my childhood. I actually thought there were more. I haven't yet done the boxes from before I was born - but I will!

Having barely skimmed the surface, I now want to get my grubby mitts  on the various photos that are also at my mother's, including the Summer of 69 when I was going through my blonde phase.  Difficult to believe if you see me at 4. Dead good I was at tennis back then. Admittedly, my grip is rubbish.

I am trying to remember the name for that dress...yes, I gave names to dresses, I think I was probably an exceptionally weird child. I do remember that I decided it reminded me of the different flavours of fizzy pop. There must be a photo of my coat called "Furry Henry". Yes, I gave names to coats, too.

The bedraggled scruffy look is absolutely inherent as a personality trait, not as an attitude I have cultivated in adulthood!

I am reliably told by My Sister that this was taken at Haddon Hall

Digitizing the 60s

When I was very very little, my parents took photos and got them developed as slides. This means that, unlike most of my contemporaries, my baby photos are in colour. However, they are not very accessible.

The other day I met up with my sister, nephew and niece. They brought with them, at my request, The Slides!

I have been struggling all morning to get the scanner to work, until finally figuring it out that all I had to do was turn it off and on again.

Here is a photo of my older sister and me with our grandparents. I was just a few weeks old.

Fotos

A few weeks ago I gave you a few links to my photoblog. I've published quite a few photos since then, indeed the front page has completely changed. The first photo I published after I previously linked is here

In a protracted 'moment' of madness lasting 48 hours I decided to take photographs of stuff I was cooking in a weekend. Photographically, the results are mixed, culinarily they were successful. The first is here and they go forward chronologically to here.

There's quite a lot of different pictures that have been lurking on my hard drive for some years, hopefully something for everyone.  Perhaps my favourite is:

Just a photo

Taken from a riverside park in Gravesend looking over to Tilbury about 18 months ago. Gravesend and Tilbury are on the southern and northern side respectively of the Thames Estuary east of London. Pocohontas is buried in Gravesend;  Tilbury used to be a very major port - Queen Elizabeth I made her most famous speech there.

Random photograph and the benefits of blogging

I've always liked photography but it was never an interest I particularly pursued beyond holiday snaps and pictures of friends and family. I was one of the first people I knew to get a digital camera, for Christmas/birthday in early 2001. I can't exactly recall my reasoning, but it was along the lines of having the freedom to explore photography without worrying about the escalating marginal cost.

About a year later, I began blogging; as much about reading other people's blogs as maintaining my own. Two very early influences were Stuart and Meg, who taught me that the best photos are often of what is very close to you. Coincidentally, they were the very first two people I met off t'internet.

A lot of people think blogging is an solitary indoors activity, involving many hours at the computer. Well, yes, it is. But a girl has to go out and find material to blog. I had just got a new camera following my burglary (in retrospect a really rather fortuitous event!) and it needed testing. It was a gloriously hot summer day. At the time I was based just behind Victoria Station (this was the second of four locations in my current job), and I walked up to St James's Park, and I snapped away at whatever, not really knowing what I was doing.

I have never been an animal person, bored by 'Nature'/Biology throughout my school days, and never succeeding in sitting through an entire David Attenborough TV programme. Yet, from that day in 2003 I have begun to be interested in waterfowl. Not in any deep kind of way, and not in a way that involves knowledge,  but enough to have a category devoted to them on UnderDeveloped

Another great advantage of blogging is finding lovely little gems of applications, one being John's Background Switcher, which randomly changes your PC wallpaper from among a predetermined selection of photos on your hard drive. It also works with Flickr (but I don't!). When I got home this evening, I fired up the PC and as I waited and waited for Firefox and Thunderbird to load, I stared at this picture. It's definitely one of my favourites. I also have random photos as my screensaver*.

So, did you spot the duck?

* Jimmy moans "It's that man, staring at me again..."

Duck and tree

Another in the occasional series of photos dredged up from the archives

An unseasonably warm March day in 2003.  Brockwell Park, Brixton. Old camera. A bit over-exposed.

Camera test

I was a bit pissed off with my camera when I went to Essex the other week. I thought I had charged both batteries up fully but they both died on me pretty quickly. In consequence, I didn't take many photographs; what I did take were pretty dreadful; the few I took in the City weren't much better.

I came to the conclusion that my camera needs servicing, which is hardly surprising considering that I have had it nearly three years. But right now is not the best time to be without it for a period of time.

Today I decided that I would take it for a walk round the block, on the basis that if the battery died or the photos were crap, it wouldn't matter because I could always repeat the walk at another lunchtime. I am not especially chuffed at the pictures I took; to be honest I think it is over-exposing. But at least I know how to deal with that.

But I also decided that the main part of the problem is me. I do like things that are effortless and easy, and it's a disappointment when that breeds complacency and then laziness.

All photographers will say that you cannot expect every photo to turn out a masterpiece, nor even the majority to be especially good, so you have to take a lot and select only the cream. To get good photos you have to take risks, sometimes with dreadful results. So it was nice to walk round Westminster snapping away. Apart from anything else, it's not exactly an area where you attract attention with a camera.

So note to self, keep camera round neck/in hand more often. And don't be afraid to shoot the mundane scene. It's often surprising what you can do even with an old rust bucket

Only problem will be finding the time to edit the photos I take.  But I managed in 2003, so what's so different in 2006?