Here you'll find details of my current assignment, trips, anecdotes and just random rants about things I find interesting and/or annoying! Enjoy.
21st November 2007
Now winter is upon us, I miss the long, hazy summer days where I could sit out in the garden and take life easy with a nice cool beer. Now we're onto cold, gloomy nights and I have to forego my beer and replace it with Horlicks, which, being honest, isn't as much fun. Nevertheless, I was stuck today with nothing to do, so my friend and I took the 70-odd mile trip to the much publicised Gigrin Farm near Rhyader in Wales. A famous feeding site for hundreds of wild Red Kites. Despite getting hopelessly lost - to those who know me this will come as no suprise, we arrived 10 minutes late, paid our entrance fee -it's best as a photographer to pay the extra few pounds and go into the nicer hides where you're not so restricted to movement and getting good shots is easier. Looking up into the sky, we were greeted with the sight of a hundred or so of these gorgeous birds, all battling for air and dinner supremacy. Crows, Magpies and Kites are all after a quick snack, and the Kites tend to win (probably because they're twice the size of everything else). Sticking with a 500mm lens, I fired off a few frames, well, held the shutter down until the memory card begged for mercy! Getting frame-filling shots of these amazing creatures has always been a great wish of mine. However, on this occasion, the light was appauling, with no sunlight to speak of and a dull, grey washed out background. Kind of deflating when you see all you're getting is a bunch of silhouettes. After an hour or so, it was obvious what little there was of the sun had gone behind the hills and it was starting to darken and we packed up and headed home. Today, I realised a dream, only to realise that because the light was so utterly terrible, I'm going to have to go back again. Life is tough sometimes eh?!
Keith
1st January 2008
I couldn't not write an entry on the first day of a new year could I? Been a bit quiet as of late, spent Crimbo getting fat(ter) and lazing around. Haven't really had chance to get out and do any shooting in December. Not only that I never did get the opportunity to go back to Gigrin Farm but I did manage to squeeze a few hours in to go to the National Birds of Prey Centre in Gloucester. Fabulous place with some gorgeous birds. Gigrin will have to wait, but I'll get chance soon hopefully. Got Venice to look forward to in four weeks and then one of my favourite haunts, Northumberland in seven weeks. Not quite sure what to expect in Venice - never been anywhere quite like it before - and it's Carnivalé too - should be a steep learning curve. Right, new years resolutions. Hmm, I'll forego the usual 'get fit' 'join a gym 'drop 10lbs' malarkey - I never keep those anyway. My new years resolution is to suprise myself - to do something I didn't think I could do. I don't know what that means at the moment but I guess I'll know when it happens. Anyway, can't think of anything else for now so I'll write again soon.
Keith
21st January 2008
Spent the last week moving into a new office so have been up to my eyeballs in paint, furniture, cleaning and not to mention stress. Progress is steady but slow. I'm sitting here late in the evening desperate to get to bed, but I can't because I'm quite literally pinned in by all the furniture and Ikea boxes between me and the door. Just been trying to assemble a bookcase only I can't finish it because I need a hammer and it's too late to start hammering! The instructions don't say anything about needing a hammer, but I know best! Nothing to report on the photography front at the moment. Was intending to go shooting today but I got distracted with the decorating and didn't go. I did however get a few minutes to zip into Birmingham to pick up some new printer paper. Still, only seven short days now until Venice - really looking forward to it as it'll give me chance to catch up with some old friends and experience Carnivalé. Anyway, nothing really to add so I'll write when I'm back from Venice.
Keith
5th February 2008
Bonjourno! Quattro sie uno, vino favore, grazie, ciao. Good eh? After four days in Venice I've learned 8 words! Who knows, if I were to spend about twenty years there I might become fluent! Carnivalé was fantastic and a totally worthwhile experience to see and be a part of. The hotel we stayed in, the Best Western Ala was great - courteous and attentive staff - plus the added bonus that they also employed Manuel as a porter (not sure whether that was his name but he certainly had Manuel's mannerisms!). To a die-hard Fawlty Towers fan like me it gave me hours of amusement. Only criticism I have about the hotel is the fact the beds were that hard, it was only marginally more comfy than sleeping on the pavement. Fine if you like hard beds, but I don't so on the rare occasions I did manage to sleep, waking up in appauling agony got a bit tedious. Days were long and tiring, we were up every day for half six and out shooting by seven. We'd return about 9am-ish to get fed and compile a plan of action for the day and then we'd be out by 10am and get back to the hotel for around 6pm in time for a quick shower and out for dinner and a night out. With the best intentions in the world we never did go to any of the parties that were suggested because we were all knackered by 10pm! On the plus side, food was simply fabulous and hospitality exemplary. On the third night I just couldn't sleep at all, and at about 2.30am I gave up, grabbed my coat, tripod and camera and went out shooting for 3 hours. It was nice - atmospheric and misty. Bumped into a few revellers on their way home and I just stayed where I knew and took some pictures and soaked up the atmosphere. I went back at about 5.30 and decided to skip that morning's 7am start and have a couple of hours sleep and head out after breakfast. It's amazing that even on a short holiday just how much difference it makes taking a morning off shooting - it replenishes the huge amounts of energy you lose every other day and makes you feel refreshed and raring to go. We went to loads of places in Venice, I can't remember them all but they included Rialto, Murano, Burano, Piazza San Marco, the Ghetto and so on. Most of our time was taken up photographing the famous 'masks' - which ended up more often than not as getting pushed and shoved by French and German photographers who basically had no manners. I hate rude people. The weather was dull and miserable for most of the trip but in a way that worked because it gives a nice diffuse light rather than the harsh contrasty glare of the sun. My main problem was that it was cold - very cold. I used the trip to experiment with some new ideas - I spent a lot of time shooting from obscure angles, deliberately overexposed for the 'high key' effect. Had one calamity, my Jobo Giga One died and after the first day and having filled all of my memory cards, I was in a blind panic. Fortunately, one of the group had a Macbook that I borrowed and after spending half the next day trapsing round Venice looking for a computer shop to buy DVD's, I managed to back up my cards after each days' shooting. When I got home, it turned out not to be a fault with the drive, just a Windows Vista incompatibility. Only other problem was the fact that my hands were permanenlty freezing so I ended up trading a pack of AA batteries for some womens gloves. I didn't care about looking a plank, at least I was warmer. We returned on the Saturday to East Midlands and apart from driving 10 miles in the wrong direction out of the airport, I got home and am now fully inspired to go and take more pictures. Next stop, Northumberland in three weeks. Bring it on. Ciao for now.
Keith
29th February 2008
I write this feeling deflated and like I've let myself down. I've broked one of my all time golden rules - don't go back to a location when you've been there and things were perfect the first time. I've just come back from 4 days shooting on the Northumberland coast - a location I visited at this time last year and had simply perfect weather. This time however, conditions were far from perfect. From dull, dismal light to 84mph gales which sent some of my equipment (and nearly me) to an early grave. I'm sure I was not alone in having lost or damaged equipment however so I take some comfort from that. Photographing in harsh weather conditions can result in awesome pictures - thunderous clouds and big crashing waves. However the gales that I encountered were accompanied by bright skies and not big waves, just little ones that blew off spray everywhere. Quite possibly the least fun I've ever had trying to get good pictures - not that I did because it took everything I had just to stand up - and didn't manage that a few times! I remember why I've always said never go back twice because you'll only be disappointed. That's not to say I didn't enjoy my trip - I love getting away from the rigors of day to day life as much as I can and this trip was no different. If nothing else, if I only get one useable picture from the trip, I saw something more important - something that will stay with me forever - sitting at the roadside some 12 feet watching a gorgeous owl hovering for food. I love owls - they're my favourite birds and to see one in the wild so close hunting is an amazing experience. After having a month where pretty much everything has gone wrong, I'm in search of fresh ideas and inspiration. I'm of the belief that when something has gone wrong, take a step back, a little rest and then you'll return in a much stronger position. A little landscape sabbatical followed by a trip to Tuscany in 9 weeks should work nicely. Of course there is the little matter of my sister's wedding to shoot in three weeks (exaggerated grimace of horror). Got a load of studio stuff to keep me busy in the meantime too so I won't be straying too far! I'll write soon.
Keith
7th March 2008
Just a quick rant about the new disease I've found that I call 'Digitalism' or 'Fast Finger Syndrome'. A quick history lesson for those people who don't even know what a slide is. When film cameras were the only weapon of choice for amateur and professional photographers there was a little thing that used to make you stop and think before you pressed the shutter and that little thing was 'money'. You knew that by pressing the release button you'd use up a frame of your valuable film and it would cost you money to get that developed. This forced you to think twice before you pressed the button because in the days where image manipulation was very basic you had to get it right 'in camera' first. Anyone with an ounce of sense of what they were doing would shoot a scene at one exposure, and take two bracket shots - one typically 1 stop under exposed and one 1 stop over exposed. This would mean your chances of getting the shot right were trebled. And, it worked. Your success rate was pretty good - typically getting 33% of a roll of film as perfect exposures. Now it's my opinion that digital has ruined this. How many of you see a scene and just keep your finger on the release button and take 10, 20 or even 30 shots of the same scene? I've done it and I'm sure you have too. Yes I can see why people do it, but it's a false economy. Whereas with three shots you have to choose which is the best of three which is easy. Trying to choose the best from 20 though is a lot harder and increases your workload by a huge margin. Of course you don't think about it at the time because it's 'free to shoot' whereas film costs about £10 to buy, process and mount a 36-slide roll, but it's not free in terms of time. If I have to choose the best of three, it takes about 5 minutes. If I have to examine 20 almost identical shots that can take 30 mins, an hour, who knows? Digital just forces people to not think about the settings and just shoot willy nilly. I lose count of the amount of time I've heard the words 'I'll adjust it in Photoshop' and that annoys me. Photoshop tweaking takes a long time. Spending an extra 5 minutes at the location and just thinking twice before you press the shutter can make your lives so much easier. With digital you don't even have to bracket if you see what you want the first time. So please, don't become a victim of 'Digitalism', you're only causing yourself more problems than you solve.
Keith
9th March 2008
Sunday morning, freshness in the air, birds singing and what I should be doing at this time is being outside washing the car, visiting a garden centre or something equally 'Sunday-ish'. Instead what I'm doing is sitting in front a computer screen knowing I've got hours worth of work to do which has to be done today. When I started getting interested in photography all those years ago, I thought it would be fun, being out all day shooting and then looking at slides of masterpieces over a bottle of wine. The reality, as any die hard photographer will tell you is different. You spend one day shooting and then a couple of days cooped up in a darkened office and the only contact you manage to have with the outside world is waving to your smug neighbour out the window as they're in the garden enjoying themselves. Life's not fair, I should have been a model instead. I've got the body for it (cough, splutter!). Still, I've had a good (but knackering) week, two studio sessions, one location shoot and all that in a week where I worked 49.5 hours in my daytime job. I'm getting too old to maintain the pace! My friend and I took a trip to Formby yesterday to see the red squirrels. After realising yet again that my route planning software (I know, I'm not in the 21st century with sat nav yet) was designed by a bunch of monkeys and basically has no idea where it's sending you, I ended up having to abandon the car at a level crossing telling my friend to swap over and drive it to the other side when the barriers finally came up as I had drunk my own body weight in water that morning and needed to find the local facilities, pronto! That's another story though. For anyone that's ever been to Formby will know it's a bizzare place, not what I expected at all. We started off going to the sand dunes and I found an amazingly photogenic tree which I shot a couple of frames of. On going down to the beach, we abandoned the idea quickly because the wind was very strong and we just ended up with faces full of sand and salt water - excellent exfoliator though! We spent the next couple of hours walking round the red squirrel walk trying to find them, eventually finding about 4 in total. Tried to get some shots but light was low and it meant an exposure of 1/30 sec at f5.6 ISO3200 at 200mm. Way too slow to handhold and too high ISO to get a clean image. Could have gone to f2.8 but DOF was way too shallow. Not only that but it was also tipping it down with rain which meant any time I elevated my camera the lens it got rain splashes all over it. After a couple of hours, getting wet, cold and no decent shots really began to grate so we packed up and headed into Liverpool to entertain ourselves for a couple of hours. Having never been to Liverpool before, I was somewhat less than impressed with what we found. It looked dingy, drab and generally not very inviting. I'm sure people will say exactly the same thing about Birmingham if they don't know it. Not only that it seemed to have more traffic lights than people and the council seemed to have a fetish for digging roads up. We did suggest parking up but I really couldn't see the point, why wander round aimlessly in a city I've decided I don't like? We eventually came up with the idea of heading out to Liverpool Airport and seeing if there was any photography possible of landing aircraft. On the way we found a nice little retail park which held one of my favourite stores - Borders. More importantly inside Borders there's a Starbucks!!! I love Starbucks and if there was one anywhere close to where I work, I'd constantly be high on caffeine and I'd spend most of my salary in there. At this point, I cut Liverpool some slack thinking it may not be as bad as I thought. We eventually found the airport, found a fabulous spot to stand to get close-ups of incoming planes - I've never been to another airport where you can stand within 100m of the start of the runway - you could stand right in between all the approach lights. We stuck around for 20 mins, saw one plane take off - in the wrong direction to what we wanted, and then gave up and came home. We got a bit of hassle from some of the local ASBO ambassadors as we were driving off - nothing that couldn't be handled with a bit of maturity, (and the fact I'm twice their size), and my original opinion of Liverpool came back. That was a once in a lifetime day, because I can see no reason that I would ever go back there - certainly not out of choice. Suddenly my little office overlooking green grass and flowers doesn't seem so bad. My job isn't so bad after all. Now I have to work so I'll bid you à bien tôt.
Keith
11th March 2008
Blimey, three entries in six days. Either there's been a lot going on recently, or I've got nothing better to be doing. I'll decide later which one it is. Anyway, this time is bad news. My tripod head went into surgery this afternoon (well, on my office floor with an allen key and a pair of pliers and a very bad tempered and impatient surgeon - me). It was opened up to find out why it was being such a pain in the arse recently and inside I found a mess of displaced springs and broken plastic. I made exhaustive attempts to resuscitate it (well, had a sip of my Starbucks and thought 'I can't be bothered') and it was pronounced dead on the floor. Rest in pieces. Now let the shopping begin.....
Dr. Keith (the bestest surgeon in the world)
16th March 2008
They say men make very bad patients. Whether or not this is true depends largely on the wimpiness of the man involved. In my case, extremely wimpy. I've spent the last couple of days suffering and today being completely unable to go to work because I feel so rubbish and having no voice, I've spend the day moping and whining to anyone who would listen to my feeble pining - until I realised no one was and they were just humouring me. Eventually realising that my ever-increasing patheticness and unjustifiable claims that I think I'm dying were getting me nowhere, I retired to bed only to find I had the choice of war films, a programme where some unpleasant and vulgar woman witters on about creating a 'new minimalist life' in the SW1 flat or the usual trailer trash that channel 5 puts out. I decided that my last few remaining hours could be put to better use in the office so I locked myself away - venturing out every half an hour or so to make sure everyone knows I was still suffering, and tried to work out how to get my printer to match my screen. I'll spare you the details of exactly how I did it because it's really boring (and the fact that it was actually quite easy and would make me look like a bit of a pillock). To cut a long story short, I can now confidently click 'print' and know I'm going to get what I want without having to go through the downright irritating process of having to print about 6 test images first tweaking settings. I've never been a little bit grateful at being ill before, but today I am because I've been putting that job off for months. Anyway, I'm feeling pretty rough after a few hours at the computer so I'm going back to bed. Hopefully Top Gear will be on to come and save me again. If I make it through the night, I'll write again soon.
Keith
27th March 2007
I don't know how best to start this entry. Do I start it with 'My dream has been shattered' or 'Thank god for that'? Let's just see how it pans out. I am of course referring to the prospect of wedding photography. Every serious amatuer/aspiring pro/full time pro that ever lived has, at some stage had heard the words 'will you photograph my wedding, we'd love you to do it' from friends and family. What of course that actually translates to in real speak is that 'we've looked around, realised that it's gonna cost 2 grand and because you'd do it for free we'd like you to do it, but you weren't our first choice'. Now at this stage anyone with any sense would say no and advise the couple strongly to employ a professional to do the job because as shoots go, it's probably about the most stress you're ever likely to have. For example, I went out last night to try and photograph some hunting Barn Owls - only saw one, didn't get the shot. Never mind, I'll try again next week. Wedding, you miss the shot, you screw it up and you've had it because you cannot go back and reshoot. It's a one-shot deal, and on balance I'd rather have the owls. All of this is circling around one thing. As you may know I shot my sisters wedding on Saturday (unfortunately I wasn't asked, I offered to do it). Fact is, I'd be doing her a favour by saving her a couple of grand which would be useful with the new house and she'd be doing me a favour by getting me portfolio material so I could shoot weddings professionally. My background in portrait photography stems from the studio - a shoot typically consists of us sitting down and discussing the shoot, paying attention to every small detail to get the final look we're both after. It's typically a case of one shot every 5 or 10 minutes. As my hours of research before the day itself would lead me to believe, shooting the wedding would be hard work, mentally and physically typically shooting 700+ shots throughout the day. Anyway, I'll spare you the pre-wedding prep that I did, but not sleeping and becoming paranoid something would go wrong did feature highly in the week before. I'll even spare you the account of the shooting on the day, which had to encompass intermittent snow, biting cold, harsh sunlight and terrible wind. The results are acceptable, not the best photography I've ever done but then the circumstances were less than ideal. It was a very steep learning curve throughout the day - I've picked up loads of little tips if I were to do it again. The one tip that will stay with me though, is that I will never ever ever ever ever ever agree to do a wedding again! To sum up and to answer my own question I posed at the start, my dream has been shattered, thank god for that!
Keith
30th March 2008
When I sit down and ponder things, it usually ends up in some kind of extravagant purchase that only I, in my own mind, can attempt to justify - usually by the line 'I just want one'. It's at the stage now that when I do start pondering, my wallet gets taken off me and hidden. Of course I get round that problem by remembering my card details. 1-up to me! This time though, I'm sitting in my office pondering something different - is photography really moving on, or is it in fact going backwards? For years it was all about using old film cameras - carefully setting each exposure before hearing the very satisfying 'ku-chunk' of the shutter. You'd carefully consider what was the right film for different situations and then lock yourself away in a darkroom at home getting high off the unmistakeable aroma of Acetic acid and Sodium Thiosulphate and experimenting with different developing times, paper, dodging and burning and so on. These days it's all so, what's the word.... sterile. You shoot on a digital camera in RAW, not really paying that much attention to exposure because of the old classic, and my biggest pet hate 'fix it in Photoshop' and then plug a memory card into the computer, alter it in a few minutes on some nice software, touch the image up and then print it. It's a very clean and hassle-free process. It's not just about the workflow though, cameras are getting more intelligent - 45 AF points, breathtaking ISO and noise performance, super-silent shutters and all kinds of electronic witchcraft that goes on in the camera (none of which I understand I might add). Add all of this together, and I can't help thinking that photography is going backwards. Yes technology is moving on, and what the lastest DSLR's can do is mind-blowing, but let's be honest, you and I both know that deep down we prefer looking at a nice handmade print from a 6x7 MF camera. And so it goes on, new cameras are ever striving to achieve the perfect image - flawless skin-tones, no noise, excellent colour reproduction yada yada yada. I'm sorry, with this and the fact that almost all digital photographs have some kind of manipulation (subtle or not) but I think that all of this just isn't photography anymore. It's just technology and software. I'm a big believer that the perfect image is in fact an imperfect image - old cameras had their little flaws and characteristics - be it leaking light, vignetting or whatever, but they're loved because of their imperfections, not despite them. Time for a confession, whilst I respect my 40D hugely - my admiration for what it can do has no limits, I just don't love it. I don't get that warm satisfying feeling when I'm looking through pictures I've taken with it - all I do is scrutinise how well it copes with contrast, how good the noise is at ISO400. One of my very favourite cameras is my Holga - it's a toy medium format camera - costs between £20 and £40 - £40 gets you the top of the range version with a multicoloured flash but this is totally unnecessary, and it has such a unique characteristic it puts on every image it takes - it leaks light because it's very badly built, mine's sealed with duct tape - changing the film involved peeling off a cubic metre of tape, it has two attachment sizes for different sized images (6x4.5 and 6x6) - except of course the two they include are both 6x6 - they just screwed up (I'm not joking!), but I absolutely adore it - you can shoot pretty much what you want because it's so inoffensive in comparison to a DSLR - people just think you're poor, which is good because you never get mugged for your camera! There's no messing around with fancy gizmos, it's got 2 settings, f8 or f11 (except the camera is designed with the f11 aperture at the front rending the other one useless), two shutter speeds (1/100 and bulb) and three focusing distances. It's basic in every single way yet the final result, although not perfect, I prefer the images from that to my 40D with a £2000 worth of lens on it. They just have character and personality. I can't describe what I mean by that but trust me. Of course these days toys like this have no place in the market that's after the flawless image - if I turned up to a fashion shoot sporting my duct-taped Holga round my neck, I'd just be laughed at and mocked for all eternity - not to mention fired. However for a bit of fun and an image that's just so full of character, they're tricky to beat. All of this adds up to my original point - is photography going backwards? Is it going forwards? Is it even going backwards at the same time as going forwards? Should, in the digital age, the film dinosaurs be left for extinction or should we all go back to film every once in a while (viva la Velvia revolution!)? You decide. Of course I can't just leave it there, it's become traditional for my pondering to end up with me buying something, so I'm off to order a pinhold camera. I'll let you know when it comes.
Keith
14th April 2008
This month had promised to be an exciting month - starting with my birthday and ending with me going to Tuscany and a few little things in the middle. We're now almost half way through the month and things so far, are going fine - I'm still young enough to be able to laugh birthdays off (although my crows feet and grey hairs seem to have gotten more obvious!) and I've got a new toy to play with - a Wii! Anyone that knows me will understand how amused I am at swinging a wiimote round the room as I'm trying to play baseball! I'm such a child. My pinhole camera came a few days after I'd ordered it - excellent service and a beautiful camera - just got to order some film for it now as I've run out - may have to wait till payday though! Photography wise this month has been a bit dead - only actually got the camera out of the bag a couple of times, and one of those was to put it into a new bag I got. Still, it's good cos it's making me more enthusiastic about getting to Tuscany in a smidgen under 3 weeks. Just keeping my fingers crossed that the poppies are on form and we get the mist in the valleys around Belvedere. The highlight of my month so far though was paying a visit to see Vince Jones at a bird of prey conservation and education facility in Gloucester. Each bird in his care had their own story to tell, from mistreated pets to owls that think a bath of engine oil makes them look better. What's immediately apparent from chatting to Vince, is just how much is involved in birds of prey and the blatant loop holes and gaps in the legislation protecting these birds. There is no governing body or law to stop sales of birds of prey - no licensing or registration - nothing. To me, that's unfair - grossly unfair. Wild animals belong in one place only, the wild - not being sold to anyone regardless of whether they have the first clue about how to look after a bird. There's one thing with a rescued bird being looked after by someone who really understands the bird and looks after it properly as that bird wouldn't be able to return to the wild but birds being bred in captivity just to be sold as pets is a whole different matter. Anyway, rant over. The birds we flew, Leighton (a Common Buzzard) and Kaln (a European Eagle owl) both had a sob story, but after being looked after, they're now back to full health and love to get out and fly. I know how they feel!! Kahn was even the star of an investigation to find out the top speed of an eagle owl - involving police with speed guns and some tempting bait - 34mph - pretty quick. To mark his success he has a little toy police car in his aviary which he plays with - provided me much amusement! Anyway, next stop, Tuscany in a couple of weeks. Got a bad run at work to get out the way first then a break! I'll write when I'm back. Is there a specific prayer that one can say for early morning mist and poppies in the fields??
Keith
12th May 2008
It's been a while since I've written so there's some catching up to do. I've just returned from Tuscany after a weeks' shooting - a location that had been on my 'must do' list for ages. I expected a lot because of all the wonderful photographs I'd seen of the place before. When we were out there, that very point started a bit of a debate. Is it a good idea to research your location by looking at photographs, or is turning up blind a better option? I'm not sure there's a right or wrong answer but I can't help thinking that if you're looking through photographs of a well known location taken by another photographer, the chances are that photograph was the result of patience, excellent weather and light and generally everything being as perfect as it could be. I fear all this can do is lead you to disappointment, because invariably, conditions and light aren't perfect at the exact moment you're there and you have to make the most of what you have and if you're trying to better a photograph that had everything going for it, you're going to be unhappy with the results. I guess the argument for reseaching the location is so you can get an idea of where to go, what times to go there and so on. Maybe the answer is to research, but not obsess. Tuscany is a landscape that's quite distinctive, lots of green, lots of cypress trees and lots of poppies - usually. We were a bit lacking in the poppy department until the last day when they finally came good. If we'd have been there another couple of days we'd have got the best of them, but hey ho that's life. Every time I'm away, I try something different, and this one was no exception. In fact I tried four things that I'd never done before. First of all I'd bought myself my pinhole camera. You don't half get some inquisitive looks when you're using it though - and it's even more tricky when you're trying to keep people out of the way for 1, 2, 3 or so minutes whilst it exposes the film. I'm really excited about the films coming back from the labs! Second thing, I got myself a Holga lens for my old 20D. A £700 camera new, and a £15 plastic lens on it. There's some irony there surely?! Still, used on the right subject, it produced some nice looking, distinctive images. The trick to experimental areas of photography is knowing when they work and when they don't. 99% of the time no one wants to see a Holga'd landscape but an isolated subject works very well. Third thing, I managed to get my paws on a infrared converted Nikon D70 for a while when I was over there. I'd always wanted to try IR photography - the computer software that simulates IR is good, but no match for the real thing. I'm so impressed with the results, I'm booking my 20D in to go and be converted. The fourth thing I had a play with was digital panoramic stitching. I've been sitting here this morning putting 6 or so images into CS3's photomerge function and it's produced, with very little effort some stunning panoramics. I'm so impressed with what it's done - and how easily it did it. So, that, added to the (generally) good food and nice accomodation made Tuscany into a great location to go to. However, with anything, there's usually a 'but' that appears somewhere. This trip is of course no different. The big 'but' here is those irritating oaf-like ape creatures that work for and run easyJet. I won't bore you with the details of the totally incompetent way they run the airline but all I'll say is that everything to do with the flight is an optional extra. Flight £10 each way, taxes £40, taking your bags on the flight(??????????????????) £10, having a glass of water on the flight £2, eating some horrible airline food with a cup of stewed coffee served in a plastic cup £7. Total cost of flight £80. Of course it doesn't stop there.... "Do you want a pilot with that sir? That'll be an extra £50. We have a special offer on engines - you pay for one, you get the other one free - £50. Wings? They're not available on the Pisa flight - sorry." Not only that, their seat legroom is probably the worst I have ever seen. More still - when you sit on the plane, if you get the seat by the middle exits, the steward(ess) - must be politically correct and embrace equal opportunities, comes over to you and tells you that if you crash - and they're very quick to point out it's 'highly unlikely' which is reassuring considering the pilot only looks about 12 years old, the stewardess has applied her makeup with a trowel and you don't actually have wings on this flight, then you must know how to open the doors. Yeah, great. I only wanted to sit down and read the in flight magazine and use the sick bag to practise my origami - I didn't realise I was expected to be part of the in-flight team! Tea or coffee sir? It gets worse.... (nearly over now) they make pathetic excuses for cancelling flights, don't give you any kind of compensation, tell you your options are to either fly to an airport 150 miles away from where your car is parked and it's not their problem how you get back to your car, or your alternative option is to hang around a very unpleasant airport for 24 hours and see if they have any space on the correct flight the next day - but they tell you they can't guarantee a seat as the flight is fully booked which basically would mean you're stuck there until someone doesn't turn up for their flight one day. Could that take a day, a week, a month??? Should I even consider getting my mail rerouted - 'FAO The Despondant easyJet passenger, Sitting On The Floor, In The Corner, Ground Floor, Pisa Airport, Pisa.' Not only that, they can't be bothered to deal with the problem to your face, they give you a number to ring which is a nightmare to get hold of because the number is 'unobtainable' and when someone does finally get through, it utters some jibberish in Italian then cuts off. At the airport, there was one of those 'security wrap' things that you pay for something to be wrapped in cling film. No idea why anyone pay to have their suitcase look like a ready meal for one, but the thought of going and getting myself wrapped up and put on the plane as baggage did cross my mind. To cut a long, and very irritating story short, despite all onward connections for the three of us were at Bristol airport (be it cars parked or onward flights), we ended up having to fly back to Gatwick and at great expense to all of us make our own arrangements to get home. Add to which how rude 80% of all Italians I met were, really soured the experience for me, and I for one will certainly not be returning to Italy any time soon, and I would rather swim across the Atlantic wearing a sandwich board that said 'All sharks are puffs - ps I'm strawberry flavoured' than fly with notsoeasyJet ever again. Rant over. Anyway, next job is to process the 1800-odd images I took and sort out my next trip. Not sure where yet, but I'll keep you posted.
Keith
6th June 2008
You know it's funny. During the drab winter months I seem to forever be looking out of the window into a dull grey miserableness wishing the weather would either brighten up or do something dramatic other than just vast eternal greyness. Skip forward to spring and hey presto - photogenic weather conditions with nice light and guess what - I'm always at work. Just a small observation. Anyway, I haven't tripped a shutter since the last time I wrote which is kind of shocking. Having said that, the times after my trips abroad are usually quiet and fruitless due to the humungous workload of images that need dealing with. Every time I think about going out, I just remember that the more images I add to an unprocessed collection makes me more likely not to deal with them at all. It takes a special amount of laziness not to process images quickly. Having said that, what I tend to do is flick through them and pick out the ones that jump out at me and deal with those and then forget the rest. All well and good, it's good basic elements of digital workflow. However, a couple of times recently I've opened Lightroom and had a squizz back through some old images I never bothered doing anything with and I was quite suprised that there were some little gems hidden amongst them that have now been recovered and processed accordingly. A lesson that maybe I should take my time a bit more at the processing stage. Nonetheless - the news of the day. I've today got my 20D back that went in for IR conversion surgery 3 weeks ago. Good news is patient doing well and there are no complications as far as I can tell. Having said that, it's an indirect complication because the bill of £215 caused my blood pressure to rise so the camera gets the surgery and I suffer the pain for it. A bit like marriage I think. Slightly deviating from the point, but after months of deliberation, pondering and agonising thinking, I've now decided that my next major trip will be New England in the fall. For me, 'Captain Organisation' himself, to have it all booked - flights and car hire, 4 months in advance is quite staggering. I cannot deny things ger organised much better when I'm not involved in the organisation. All that's nornally left for me to do is to have a eureka moment the night before 'Umm, what airport was it again? It began with 'b' - Bristol, no, Birmingham, No, Bournemouth, no - ah that's it - Manchester'. Although the flights and car are booked, accomodation still remains a blank - we'll sort it out when we're there. I hate being tied to areas - I'd rather go where I please. So that's the main trip sorted, there will be the odd weekend here and there as well but that'll very much be on a 'I'm bored, let's go away for the weekend' kind of arrangement. Anyway, must dash, I'll give the 20D a good test when we get some nice conditions when I'm not at work and report back what's what.
Keith
26th October 2008
It's been a long time but I'm back. I've had the summer off from shooting - not by choice I'll add, more by necessity. It's been a 2-way cycle - if I'm not working, I was sleeping. If I wasn't sleeping, I was working so that kinda sums my summer up. Bring on the violins. Anyway, I've just returned from one of my all-time must see destinations - New England in the fall. We arrived into Boston on the 7th Oct (after flying from Birmingham via Amsterdam - which is 300 miles in the wrong direction to start with), picked up the hire car and then drove north into the state of Vermont selecting our accomodation as we went along with having no pre-determined route. (tbc)
