Put on those dancing shoes... Kick off those dancing shoes

Carmi in his blog is looking for images of feet so, taken out of context, here are some that immediately suggest the full subject matter...

















... a wedding party... and talking of weddings this bridesmaid had been running around on the grass in bear feet and then had to get to her car along a gravel path so throwing dignity to the wind she sat in a (siblings?) push chair...






And more feet from a wedding...

Abstracted memories

Abstract is the subject for Carmi's Thematic Photopgraphic 80 so here is an abstracted abstract photograph shown in its location ~ old steps by a canal lock

Better to travel than to arrive...

Carmi's theme this week at Written Inc is travel ... so yes I could do the travel brochure images, or the alternative travel brochure images, but this are much more mundane, daily travel to work this month has been by train, only two stops, into Manchester and out again. Commuter travel is often a problem so prefer to arrive and leave later so trains are not so frequent. Waiting is part of train travel ... whether for the commuter train ...





...or crossing Europe







.... while here the train runs so rarely that you walk the tracks.

[Apologies if you have seen some of these previously]

Seeing Red

Seeing red is what Carmi Red urges us to do this week.




I dislike Coca-Cola, the drink... the company... the ethos... the ethics, the commercialism, and what they have done to Christmas. In my mind Coca-Cola stands for all that is bad and I hated their drink machines being placed in schools.... so when I saw one discarded...

... and put to a better use collecting rainwater ...


Come to think of it the rainwater, even Manchester rainwater, may be more drinkable than the original bottled contents!

PS. Apologies to those who like the stuff but before you drink it again check out how good it is at cleaning dirty pavements... ... or maybe that is why people mix it with strong alcohol...

In perspective

Carmi provided the subject of perspective for this week and it makes you stop and think..

Different standpoints on subjects,
....different views of the same subject,
............the traditional infinity perspective
.....................and I suppose the large format camera image that is actually correct optically, but not visually.

So here are two perspectives, first a traditional distance image with converged lines and associated loss of detail at infinity...


By Manchester Town hall lunchtime today ... when it forgot to rain and people were so surprised they stayed in their offices... Really the cobbles should be wet...

While the second ...is an Italian view of security on their border with Slovenia in the divided town of Goriza (Hemmingway's location for a 'Farewell to Arms' ) before Slovenia joined the EU in May 2004 depicted by two images. At this time right wing newspapers were scaremongering that when the former eastern block countries joined the EU millions of their country-folk would cross en-mass to the UK and take all our jobs away...However, long before their threatened destruction of England, Slovenians could cross anytime they wished, legally or through the 'holes', but most of the daily crossing was the other way ~ Italian students living in Slovenia because it was cheaper (and a better standard of living there than in England). The newspaper perspective was simply biased.


... the border fence...Taken from Italy into Slovenia in March 2004 before they joined the EU, the garden fence needs repair...


...and the plaque... on EU day +1, remembering 50 years ago

The border operated with a typical Italian arrangement, so there were many crossings, some for locals and others for tourists, some controlled some of the time and others, well, available to cross over or pass contraband as and when you wanted. The day after Slovenia joined the EU (there was over a month between the photographs) people would come and stand at the commemorative plaque in the now open Plaza for a time, contemplate and then walk away. What the image does not show is that Tito grabbed part of Goriza after the end of WW2, taking the most impressive railway station I have seen and the plaza was, as with the rest of the city was divided by an iron fence / railings.

The final images are for context...


An unofficial disused(?) crossing point March 2004

The station with the open Plaza after joining the EU

The station with the iron fence & wall that ran through the town ~ after joining the EU

Big drips

Carmi's theme for thematic photographic this week is 'Big'. A very subjective subject and something that is smaller than bigger and biggest...

So here is my image of something on a grand scale along with the human figures in the third image (about halfway up and near the right hand edge) as a key to show you what it is.... and a colour image as well as the B&W one...

Summer Promenade

Continuing the Summer theme...


I went to see my father in Worthing and arrived for a couple of 'almost summer' days there, although it was breezy to say the least - as demonstrated in the first image taken with a real lens, overexposed and shot out of focus. The remaining images are from some 100+ I took that afternoon through the Guinness can lens on my digital SLR. On the 'Apple' some 50 of them are now in the form of a slide show with accompanying evocative music from Patsy Klein ~ but I've not found a way to produce this on the blog.

I feel these images are so much more effective than those from our local canal (which I then decided not to post) and probably there is a book in them. Some images will perhaps be too large and are best viewed without opening them up; however they are meant to be soft and dream-like and I have over exposed them all on the computer accordingly.

For those of you who have not tried digital pinhole photography the exposure times were 1 to 10 seconds for a normal contrast image at 100 ISO. Focusing is much harder than with a view camera (the aperture is probably around f150) and you are really looking for bright elements to help frame the image in the viewfinder, then trial and error altering the framing after capture. You will need a sturdy tripod! I think a digital back on a waist level viewing Hassel / Mamiya / Rolliflex would be good for framing here. I still have to my beautiful wooden 5x4 pinhole camera with out of date film...

Experimental work: Guiness photography

I've been wanting to try digital pinhole photography and having found a spare body cap for my SLR a can of Guinness was required to make the 'lens' (for the non Guinness drinkers, the part of the can you use is the black area so one can will make plenty of pinholes). The third attempt produce a reasonable lens with exposures from about 1.5 - 20 seconds at 100 ISO. I'd heard that you could use the priority settings but on the Olympus this did not work except in bright light so manual and test images were required as I forgot my exposure meter to calibrate the aperture.

The images are on my Apple at the moment but will hopefully get them across to the PC to put on the blog.

Summer - What Summner

Carmi's photographic theme this week is 'Summer'. I would just like to have one this year, not just a few sunny days between May and August 20. Last year we had a proper summer and as my memories of an English Summe: sun, wind sometimes, waves, sand, rocks, camping, messing about on the river, and sitting on cliff tops.

So here is some nostalgic summer from Cornwall ~ maybe I will post something later from one of the sunny days this year...








That feels better...

And More...