Take Me To The Moon
Take Me To The Moon - 5.1mm at f/2, ISO 200, Shutter speed 1/40 sec
[NOTE: If you're simply looking for my write up on these photographs, scroll down to below the last photograph, the rest is a rant]
It's been a while since I posted new photographs: almost a week I think. Things have gotten busy for me lately with a personal trainer making sure I actually train and prepare food like a normal person. This has been really good for me. It also requires a lot of sleep. I've been using Posterous as my blogging platform for six months now and when I started this blog, it was simply to see if I had it in me to blog. Am I a blogger? That's the question I was looking to answer. I started out blogging about Apple. Predictable, I know. But photography soon took over as I thought it would be interesting to document my experiences with my new Leica D-Lux 4 compact digital camera. It was never about getting out and photographing enough to give myself an excuse to run out and buy a big DSLR. When I discovered how close the D-Lux 4's manual controls were to those on offer from a big Canon or Nikon body, I thought it would be cool to do the exact opposite of what most people do who get hooked on photography. Don't run out and buy a big body that shoots 7 frames a second and kit it out with a range of lens, some of which you could use to take great photos of the moon's surface, see how far I can push forward with what I have. If I have Photographer stamped on my heart, it doesn't really matter what's in my hands. That's my philosophy.
Surfacing - 5.1mm at f/2, ISO 400, Shutter speed 1/25 sec
These last few weeks I've been thinking more and more about why I take photographs, and why I'm driven to blog about them. A Counselling Psychologist once told me, "Everything we do, we do for a reason". Even if the reason isn't immediately obvious to us, and falls towards the bottom of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, there is still a reason. I suppose I've been trying to discover this reason. Lately I've been feeling like I've outgrown my D-Lux 4. It does a great job, but it's still quite limited when compared to a Leica M9 rangefinder or Canon 5D Mk II. You can only really go above an ISO of 400 if you want that grainy look, and shooting in low light and expecting a nice sharp image, isn't going to happen. I suppose I am getting frustrated when I look at some of the great photographs others are taking with more versatile gear, and thinking "I could take that!".
Tunnel of Love - 5.1mm at f/2, ISO 400, Shutter speed 1/50 sec
Something else that's cut into the amount of time I've spent on photography lately, and this is ironic, is looking more closely at moving this blog over to the WordPress platform. A new design, a new name, properly planned for expansion in the future with support for multiple blogs, a wiki, a community and other ideas still floating about. Then there's the fact that actually writing code in my spare time, is probably the absolute last thing I want to do with what little time I have to myself. My strong interest in composition in photography (it's far stronger than any other aspect of photography, the gear, the history, the endless amount of tweets on Twitter who's links I could only hope to ever consume all of) has taken me into areas of design that could be applied to other 'things' that are designed. For example, I can apply what I've learnt about gestalt principles of perception used in photographic composition to design my new blog. I find that prospect cool, but I don't find the actual act of opening hypertext files even remotely interesting. Just how will this new blog ever get created then? Coding it is so unappealing, I may actually pay someone to do it. But probably not, because that would cut into my gear acquisition. How many photographers do you know that have bought Capture One 5 PRO to use with a compact digital, for god's sake?
I think more photographers should dedicate more time, and effort to creating content online. Even if it amounts to nothing more than a journal of your activities as a photographer. If you already have an internet connection, you can do it for free. Loads of blogging services out there. It's far more about creating and thinking and seeing where it takes you, than anything else. If you're happy where you are, you may gain nothing from the experience.
The District Line - 5.1mm at f/2, ISO 400, Shutter speed 1/200 sec
OK time to actually talk about the photographs I've published today. I like the first one the most. It's new, and I tell myself it has a hint of the Fibonacci sequence about it, even if it's not strictly a spiral. I like to try and apply the numerical sequence to the distances on the edges of the frame where lines in the composition intersect them. I also like the colors, and how the composition is peppered with red. The curved roof, the overhead lighting, the perception of depth, all contribute to it's appeal to me.
This second photograph is the original color image I took some months back and blogged about in the post titled Surfacing (a post with nothing but black and white JPEG's I'd taken during a day on the south bank of the Thames). I like it in color too. I processed this a few weeks ago, but I remember putting it through a Kodachrome process, to get that awesome red. I think I've been a little color starved lately. I can't remember the last time I actually cross-processed and image. The third photograph has been cross-processed. I think you can actually still see some noise in the white of the advertising boards. The final image is a bit of a surprise include for me, because I've had a cool black and white version of it sitting on my laptop for weeks. Unpublished, and still it sits there.
