Ever since doing this posting, I have had that photo up on my computer screen, and I remain very fond of it.
Here are two more photos of that same piece of art/signage, photoed around the same time, although on two different days. Slightly more creatively photoed in that there are other things going on also:
I look forward to getting back to the top of the Tate Modern Extension, which is where this is. It’s one of my favourite spots in all of London.
Indeed:
Photoed by me last Tuesday, near to where I live.
At first the only one I was going to stick up here was photo number 15, the one with the bloke holding his glasses in his mouth, because I just liked it. But then, I thought, some of these others are not too bad as well, and one photo led to another … and:
All photoed by me in the space of less than one hour, outside Westminster Abbey.
I love the old little cameras, now all gobbled up by the Mighty Mobile. But most of all I love how much fun we were all having, them photoing and me photoing them photoing.
Also: lots of maps. Also now swallowed up by the Mighty Mobile.
I think this is an amazing photo, and not just because I happen to be obsessed with the phenomenon of mass digital photoing. I think I’d love this photo however my interest, or lack of it, in photoing, or for that matter in cricket, might have developed. I think it really tells you something about the job of being an elite sportsman:
What this is is the moment when cricket super-legend Sachin Tendulkar stepped out of the privacy of his changing room to walk out onto the pitch in Mumbai, to play his very last innings in test match cricket.
Others admired this photo very much also. It was the MCC-Wisden Photograph of the Year 2013. I was ignoring Twitter then, which is why I missed it back then. If I’d seen it, I’m sure I’d have noticed it.
Time for some more photos photoed in and from the top of the Tate Modern Extension, photoed August 30th 2016:
The one in the middle, no 5, shows that I wasn’t the only one interested in reflections.
I’ll know that my life is back on track, if it ever does get back on track, when I can again go to this superb place.
Meanwhile, I continue to tell myself this, which I photoed more recently in the same superb place.
Came across this in the New York Times, New York being where this double sculpture is to be seen, or was in January of last year:
The internet wander that took me to these sculptures began with the Diamond Geezer, who, in this posting, says:
Mon 16: A sculpture of a dog and a rabbit on a bike has appeared at Canary Wharf, entirely off the radar of the usual websites and social media influencers who’d normally be going nuts over it (because nobody’s getting out and about any more).
That got me to Gillie and Marc, who made this double thing. There I saw a photo of a sculpture of a pack of photoer dogs could learn no more about that there, so I did an image search, and that got me to the New Yorker piece linked to above, with the above photo at the top of it.
I love the internet.
One of my favourite Twitter feeds is the one featuring historic cricket pictures, at which I recently discovered this photo:
The reason I was so glad to see this photo was: I was there! I would have seen this! And I am delighted to see my high opinion of this innings of Sanga’s agreed with by other Surrey fans.
I didn’t photo that particular incident, and if I had it wouldn’t have come out nearly as well as the photo above, but I did photo lots of other photos that day, of which one of my favourites was this, also of Kumar Sangakkara:
A photoer like me cannot compete with the Real Photographers when it comes to on-field action, several dozen yards away. So I made a point of photoing Sanga from close up, after the game was done and won.
As did others.
Here‘s the Cricinfo report of that day.
I’m working on a slightly more complicated posting, using photos I took at the top of Tate Modern, on June 22nd 2018. But I don’t want to be hurrying that posting, so in the meantime, to get things started here today, here’s another photo I photoed on that visit:
I like how we can see the details of his rucksack straps. I like his hair, a lot. I like how you can recognise St Paul’s, even though St Paul’s is out of focus.
But, I love the fingers of his left hand. That’s a classic digital photoer thing. At all contortional cost, those fingers must not get in the way of the camera. So, he does that absurdly exaggerated thing, to make entirely sure.
Yes, in February 2011, I was photoing butterflies, in shopwindows:
And yes, Harrods.
There’s another art that must surely have become a bit more elaborate since the arrival of digital photography. If your window display s temporary, why bother to go to too much bother? But if you can easily go snap and make it rather more permanent, then you’ll surely bother that little bit more.
One of the better talks I have ever given concerned the impact of digital photography, and in that I recall mentioning someone who used digital photography to “collect”, to so speak, butterflies. Real ones. By photoing them rather than by stabbing them with pins. If I’d thought of shop-window displays when preparing that talk, I might have mentioned them also, along with graffiti and ice sculpture.
I like this photo, which I photoed in the summer of 2013, somewhere in the vicinity of Victoria Station, Victoria Street, or some such place:
I like it for lots of reasons, including that it is a fine example of the modified cliché photo. What could be more banal than a bloke photoing a guardsman, in the Buckingham Palace part of London? Yet the manner in which this scene is presented is most unusual.
Like I say, I like it. But I don’t understand it. How – and for that matter why – was that effect created, behind an office door of impeccable dullness and insignificance? They are clearly not shadows of an actual photoer and an actual guardsman, standing behind me as I photo, because where is my shadow? Are the photoer and the guardsman cardboard cut-outs? If so, the cardboard of the guardsman’s bayonet is very thin and vulnerable.
Are these just big bits of paper, stuck on the inside of the windows? Is it that straightforward? But if so, how come the shadows of the two guys seems of the same sort as the shadow of the two poles with the rope hanging in between them? Which appears to be a real shadow of a real thing, see below the shadow.
Are the two guys 3D sculptures? But if so, why? Why go to all that bother in such a place?
And what is that strange ghost-like thing, just to the right of the photoer?
I like puzzle photos, but I prefer it when the puzzle is soluble.