Category: Advertising

Big Thing Alignment with an appropriate slogan in the foreground

Photoed by me last Monday, from the train on the way back from Denmark Hill (which is where I also photoed that helipad (better to scroll down to that)):

The train being the explanation for that reflection, on the right there.

At the time, of course, I was merely going for that rather splendid Big Thing Alignment, of The Shard with The City Big Thing Cluster. And at the time, I was merely regretting that it probably wouldn’t come out quite as sharply as I’d have liked, and so it proved.

What I was not going for was a machine in a foreground with the words “REACH FOR THE SK…” on its arm. Presumably reach for the SKY. Which is, I think, rather suitable.

Shame I didn’t quite get all of that little slogan, but I got enough for the photo to be worth showing here.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Ruthless boohoo man

Earlier this evening I was in the City, checking out the latest Big Things, but this posting isn’t about that.

I care just enough about England doing well in the World Cup to have to try not to care, as opposed to truly not caring. Countries like Tunisia are getting better at soccer, and countries like England are getting worse, so today’s game, Tunisia v England, was a banana skin almost guaranteed to embarrass England. I chose early this evening for my City walkabout because the weather forecast was good, but also because if I was photoing in the City, I could forget about this sure-to-be excruciating game.

Fat chance. For starters, I was constantly walking past pubs full of people crying out in unison and in frustration, at England’s evidently imperfect performance. Also, I had my mobile phone with me, and it was able to tell me what the shouting was all about. I tried not to mind when Tunisia equalised with a penalty. I tried not even to know. But I did, because I did.

Also, in one of those urban coincidences, I encountered two further soccer reminders, both involving Dele Alli, a Spurs player who also plays in this England side. These two photos were taken by me within a minute of one another, the first outside Liverpool Street tube, and the second down on the tube platform:

On the left, an Evening Standard headline, all about how ruthless England must be, against Tunisia. Sadly, they ruthlessly missed almost all of the many goal chances they created. Had that other Spurs player, Kane, not scored at the beginning, and then again right at the end in extra time, England would have been humiliated.

And on the right, an advertising campaign which Dele Alli was surely asking for trouble by agreeing to. He is fronting for clothing brand boohoo MAN. This is a photocaption waiting to happen. When England fail to win the World Cup, and they will, quite soon, fail to win the World Cup, Dele Alli will be photoed, a lot, looking unhappy. And the unhappiest photo of all will have the words “boohoo man” under it, in many media outlets. This will greatly benefit boohoo, by getting its name talked about, so I suppose, come to think of it, that the prospect of such coverage has already greatly benefited Del Alli. But I consider this very undignified, even if Dele Alli is already boohooing all the way to the bank.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

More photoers

Yes, in Piccadilly Circus, photoed at the same time as those hair-patting ladies. And this time, you know, just photoers, just photoing photos.

What strikes me is what a good camera I now have. The light was not good. I was there to meet up with someone, not to make the best of some sunny weather, because there was no sunny weather to be made the best of. In the bad old days, when their were two zeroes in the years, most of these photos would have been an unsightly blur. But now, the only thing I worry about is if there are recognisable faces on show:

Once again, I made the selection of what to show here entirely by me liking the photo and you not seeing recognisable faces. No thought was given to what sort of cameras were being used. Which means that what cameras were actually being used becomes interesting and informative, like a small scientific experiment.

Once again, we observe the rise and rise of the smartphone as the preferred way for regular people to photo. There are some Real Photographer cameras to be seen here. And I think there always will be, because there will always be photoers for whom the best possible photos are the thing they want, and the best that a big old clunky machine can do will always be better that what a smartphone can do.

But, thinking about that some more, is that right? Will there actually soon come a time when all photoing is done by little things the size of a biscuit?

And will there then be a Great Grumble from all the Real Photographers – a category which is maybe starting to include me – similar to the one when digital cameras first got going?

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Flotsametrics

I find signs to be an endless source of fun and revelation, and I frequently photo them. So I was much entertained by this New York Times story, about a sign that went wandering. Across the Atlantic Ocean.

Hurricane Sandy grabbed this sign from the town of Brielle, on the eastern coast of the USA, in October 2012. But, on or around May 14th 2018:

A man walking along the Plage du Pin Sec, near Bordeaux, spotted it. The faded sign was missing a chunk, but he could still read the legend “Diane Turton Realtors 732-292-1400.”

“It was curious,” the man, Hannes Frank, 64, a semiretired software consultant who lives in Brussels, said by phone on Thursday. “I looked at it and found it quaint.”

And he got in touch with the enterprise advertised on the sign. By their nature, signs can be very informative.

The NYT says that its preferred expert on flotsametrics reckons that, given how long this sign took to make its way to France, it may well have crossed the Atlantic not once, but three times.

Flotsametrics is the study of things that float. Now that the Lefties – like the Lefties who own, run and write for the NYT – are giving up on the claim that capitalism is ruining the planet by ruining the weather, they are back to bitching about how capitalism squirts out lots of rubbish, and they have become particular obsessed with rubbish that hangs about in the sea, especially if it floats. So this story is actually part of The Narrative, even though it is presumably also a genuine and a genuinely good story.

Once the capitalists work out how to transform all the world’s rubbish into – oh, I don’t know – something like gunk for 3D printers to turn into replacement body parts, the lefties will have to think of some other insult to throw at capitalism. But for now, this rubbish thing is getting back to being their biggest complaint. Again.

But just clearing the rubbish up is no good. Oh no. The rubbish must be stopped at source by stamping out capitalism, starting with plastic drinking straws. The actual source of this oceanic rubbish is mostly rivers in poor countries. But that’s a mere fact. The Narrative is what matters.

This has been a spontaneous rant, which is why I am keeping it here, rather than switching it to there.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Heroes with photoers

Ten years ago, to the very day, I took these photos. Two are of regular heroes, Indiana Jones and Lara Croft; and two are heroes of the Super variety, Batman, and Superman:

The above heroes were, of course, not real. They were plasticated sculptures, standing outside the old London County Council building, to advertise movies, presumably.

It’s interesting – is it not? – that no such statues are erected to honour real people. Or none that I know of. Those are still done in monochromatic metal.

I’ve just seen how the photos have worked out. Indy is trying to whip Superman. And Lara Croft is shooting Superman. Both of which seem rather unwise.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Death Wish avec Bruce Willis

I spent most of the time I had available today for blogging working on a piece about Dominic Frisby, in connection with this. I want to sleep on it rather than shove it up tonight, but it should be up at Samizdata tomorrow.

So here is a quota movie poster, on the side of a bus, which I photoed in Paris, when I was there recently:

I don’t love movies as much as I used to, but I still love movie posters. And I especially love them when they are advertising an Anglo-movie to non-Anglos.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

A missed opportunity

I really like this photo I took, a couple of years ago; of a poster featuring the Wheel with its top sliced off; and behind it the actual top of the actual Wheel

However, another version of this photo might have been even better. If I had gone closer to the poster, and put the top of the actual Wheel right on top of the poster, that might have been truly impressive.

But I distinctly remember thinking at the time that what with the road being full of traffic, this might have meant a long wait waiting for a gap, and what with me already having had a long day and wanting to get home, so I said to myself: I’ll come back later.

But by the time I did come back later, the poster had gone.

If you see a photo, take the photo: Immediately.

One of the categories I have assigned to this posting is: How the mind works. But this was more a case of: How my mind didn’t work.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Two adverts for the Pauline Quirke Academy of Performing Arts

I’d never heard of it, until, yesterday, at a bus stop near near Finsbury Park tube station, I observed, and photoed, this:

This advert didn’t impress me. I actually laughed. The Pauline Quirke Academy. Give over. You’re ‘avin’ a laugh. I did anyway.

Later, I saw the same advert in the tube:

This did impress me.

I think it was that the back of a bus is a tacky advertising spot, used by tacky enterprises that you have never heard of and will never hear of again. Ergo, the PQA must be tacky and will soon disappear. The tube is not such a tacky spot to advertise. Ergo, the PQA is not so tacky after all.

I wish the PQA every success. PQA website.

Pauline Quirke is best known to me for doing this. And to most others, if the internet is anything to go by.

Might someone else who saw both adverts have been more impressed by the bus advert than by the tube advert?

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Quota taxi covered in quota red flamingos

I’m trying to wrench my sleep patterns back into something like sanity, and this now leaves me very tired. Which is the plan working, but it makes blogging rather difficult. So, today, one photo, and that’s your lot:

Plus, although I’m tired, here is a detail, that emphasises the flamingo aspect:

The relevant bit of the website.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Worse than bad form

There were so many fun things in Churchill’s underground wartime lair. Some of my favourites were not to be seen among the genuine antiquities. Rather were they mere reproductions, on sale in the gift shop. Of these, I think this one, a wartime poster, spoke to me most eloquently, from that far off time, just a handful of years before I was born:

I have always been very careful to refrain from dressing extravagantly.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog