Category: My photographs

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

Quota sunset

Reflected in a boring building. With cars next to it.

Well I like it:

Busy day.

I took it in the vicinity of the Walthamstow “wetlands” (i.e. reservoirs), last November.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Royal Albert and his Hall

Yes, here is the Royal Albert Hall, photoed by me this afternoon:

That photo was taken early this afternoon. I was there to hear GodDaughter2’s graduation recital in the Royal College of Music, which is just down the steps and across Prince Consort Road, south of the Albert Hall. After I had heard GD2 do her singing, superbly, and after I and all her many other friends and family present had celebrated afterwards with her, I started to make my way home.

Before leaving the vicinity of the College and the Albert Hall, I took more photos of the statue of Prince Albert that stands at the top of the steps, the other side of the Hall from the Albert Memorial. In the photo above, you can hardly see the Prince Albert statue. But later in the afternoon, the direction of the sunlight having altered, Albert was looking a lot better:

The Royal Albert Hall is looking particular fine just now, because scaffolding.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Selfie with hats

Indeed:

Taken by me in, I’m pretty sure, Earlham Street, which is one of the spokes that converges on Seven Dials.

The mirror is presumably there for people to see how potential purchases look on them. But my first thought when I saw the mirror was: Is that for encouraging people to take selfies? And I was happy to oblige.

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

Wardour Street dragon

Indeed:

Photoed by me in the West End yesterday afternoon, prior to attending Lohengrin.

Other creatures don’t get any more other than that.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Trust them – they’re architects

I did a Samizdata posting today about the architect Patrik Schumacher, and his opinion that cities ought to be more created by market choices, and less by planning, than is customary today.

So, London. Is it planned, or did it just happen?:

That looks like a fairly happening sort of place, to my eye.

I love those little splashes of colour, in the middle. Thank you Renzo Piano. Here’s a photo, of (someone else’s photo of) Renzo Piano, which I took way back in 2007:

I wouldn’t trust just any architect, merely because any architect is an architect. But I would trust Renzo Piano. The above colourful offices. The Shard.

Shame they didn’t allow this. A case of planning meaning preventing. Which is mostly what it does mean, I suspect.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

The selfie hair pat

Yes, one of the more endearing things that lady photoers and their companions do just before photoing themselves is pat their hair:

Next time you see a lady taking selfies, watch out for this. Chances are she’ll oblige. It never makes any difference, but they almost always do it.

I took those two photos at Piccadilly Circus yesterday afternoon. I like the scaffolding. Not good enough to be worth photoing in its own right, but a nice background to those hair-patters.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Conjecture and refutation

One of my favourite public sculptures in London goes by the official name of Assembly. This, or perhaps it should be “these”, stand outside of the Woolwich Arsenal, on the south side of the river, downstream of the centre of London.

I photoed these militaristic characters a while back. Here is how they look, in their local context:

I did a posting (LINK TO THE OLD BLOG) here about them.

Here is one of the photos I showed in that posting:

That’s actually the inside of the head of one of these men, but your eye is telling you that this is a regular head, rather than any sort of concaveness. Yet concaveness is what it is. Your brain insists on telling you it’s a regular head, and you can’t successfully tell it any different.

Here’s another of these head-shaped holes, and this time it is a lot easier to see what is really going on, because there is a bit of context. Also present is a spider’s web, visibly flat, which couldn’t be if the head was sticking out like a regular head.

And now here is another photo which makes everything clear, by turning the head entirely black:

No chance, therefore, for the brain to misinterpret what’s going on.

The reason I was reminded of these sorts of optically illusional images is that I am currently reading this book, which is about how the brain in particular sees things, and in general makes sense of things. This was recommended by Alastair James, commenting on this earlier posting.

The point being that it isn’t just the brain that “makes” all this sense. The process of “making” sense takes place at all levels within the brain/nervous system. Your retina, for instance, is already prejudiced, so to speak, in how it looks at things.

Put it this way. The phrase that has kept on rattling around in my head while I’ve been reading this book is the title of another book, by Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations. We don’t just passively soak up information, and then only a bit later “make” sense of it. Our sense organs are all the time imposing intelligent guesses upon what we are experiencing.

That summary probably isn’t that good. But I’ve only on page 40 and I’ve been finding it pretty hard going.

The last photo above reminds me of the picture in this Samizdata posting that I did a year ago.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Photo of a photo of a bloke doing a picture of a bridge in Paris

Indeed:

Usual story. Started to write a piece for here. Realised it would go better there. Carried on writing it anyway. So, here? That.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog