Category: Photography

Ancient cars in LA

Indeed:

That was photoed by this blog’s setter-up Michael Jennings, last month, in Los Angeles. Presumably these cars were for some sort of movie or TV show. Whenever you see cars being carried about in lorries like that in London, that’s why they’re doing it.

I missed this photo when MJ first put it up at his Facebook site. But I encountered it more recently when an email incame, alerting me to another MJ photo. I liked that one, but then I scrolled back through all his recent Facebooked photos, and liked the above photo even more.

The roof of 120 Fenchurch Street

Yes, they claim it’s a garden, but really it’s just the roof. But what a roof:

Apparently, as of now, it’s free. Memo to self: when I get better or when the weather gets warmer, preferably both, check it out.

Bird and bird shadow

Charlie Waite hits the photographic spot for me hits the photographic spot for me:

(Again.)

Verticals. Horizontals. Excellent shadow. Symmetry. Beautiful blue and grey and white colours.

A commenter comments:

Any thoughts on cropping out the bird in flight altogether.

Question mark. Well, there’s nothing to stop you doing that if you’d like to. I tried it. Yes, quite nice.

I did a Charlie Waite twitter search. Reommended. Not the same as his mere twitter home.

Once again not mentioning The Wires!!! – this time in Kyoto

I think this must be the first The Wires!!! posting at BMNB, but there were several at BMOB. What these postings celebrate is photography that itself celebrates new architecture, typically Japanese, which is full of The Wires!!!, but which never mentions The Wires!!!

Here are some classic photos in this genre, which I first encountered in this report, celebrating a modernistical new house in Kyoto:

I tried copying the top one of these three photos from where I had first seen it, but that didn’t work. Instead I tried copying it from here. That worked, sort of, because I found I’d copied all three of the above photos, in one big old .jpg file.

But since these all three photos feature The Wires!!!, and since, once again, these The Wires!!! were never discussed in the text, I am content to just shove up all three, in one big old .jpg file.

One day, some Japanese architect is going to design a building which includes The Wires!!! itself, as a decorative feature.

I predict that as soon as The Wires!!! start getting buried, The Wires!!! will start to be missed, and will become a relentless topic of architectural analysis. In other words the opposite of what they are now.

Highly commended bird photos

A few from here:

The originals are only 600×400, but still worth a click through.

The top few medal-winning photos will get lots of views, but it’s the quality of the pack at the front of the pack, so to speak, that impresses me. As I keep saying here, the real story of photoing now is not that the most brilliant photoers are indeed brilliant, but that everyone else who is willing to spare only amateur amounts of time and money can be pretty brilliant also.

Ripped piece of paper under the microscope (100x magnification)

Here:

I included the 100x in the title, because that strikes me as not a lot of magnification, considering what it looks like. 100x is not that much more magnification than you can get with quite a lot of bridge cameras nowadays.

I’ve acquired a new camera, as noted in among this ramble yesterday. It has 60x. I wonder if I could persuade it to take photos like that. Probably not, because presumably microscopes get right up against what they’re microscoping, but cameras can’t do that.

Helicopter photos of London

Incoming from 6k:

Hi Brian

Hi 6k.

Hope you’re well.

I am, and likewise. Although, I usually know how you are, because you often blog about this subject. My recent favourite in this genre was the one where you included a chart of your stress levels for an entire day when there was a football match in the evening, involving your team.

Been a while since I’ve been in touch, but I am (of course) still reading BMNB dot com every day.

Good, good.

I only had to look at the title of this one – London’s Imperfect Geometry Revealed in Aerial Photography by Bernhard Lang – to know that I had to send it your way: enjoy!

Given 6k’s keenness on photoing with a drone, I half expected these aerial photos of London to be drone-photos also. But I guess it makes just as much sense to use a helicopter, given the amount of grief you’d surely get if you launched a drone into London’s sky. For starters, you can’t go within a kilometer of an airport, which rules out a big chunk of London near to London City Airport.

If you want to, make a start on drone law by reading this.

Meanwhile, my favourite of Herr Lang’s snaps was, of course, this, with all its bridges:

I make it eight of them.

My personal record is seven bridges, and all of my seven bridges are to be seen in the above photo by Lang. Only the nearest bridge (Waterloo Bridge) in his photo is missing from my photo. Not only that, but Lang’s photo also includes the spot where I did my photoing from, in the bottom left corner of his photo. This was the top of the Hotel ME, which is at the western end of the D that is made by The Strand and The Aldwych. Follow the link to my earlier posting at the start of this paragraph and you’ll also encounter a map which shows this. 6k thought I’d enjoy, and he was not wrong.

I’m not sure I agree about London’s geometry being “imperfect”. I know what this means, but it is these very “imperfections” that distinguish great cities from boring ones. Rectangular grids make for urban uniformity. “Imperfections” make a city far more interesting. But that’s a whole other posting.

Mother Nature’s a bitch

Here is one of the Highly Commended (Plants and Fungi) photos in this year’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, photoed by Real Photographer Frank Deschandol:

On a night-time fieldtrip in the Peruvian Amazon rainforest, Frank spotted this bizarre-looking weevil clinging to a fern stem. Its glazed eyes showed it was dead, and the three antennae-like projections growing out of its thorax were the ripe fruiting bodies of a ‘zombie’ fungus.

Spreading inside the weevil while it was alive, the parasitic fungus had taken control of its muscles and compelled it to climb. Fuelled by the weevil’s insides, the fungus then started to grow fruiting bodies topped by capsules that would release a multitude of tiny spores to infect new prey. Similar fungi are known to parasitize other insects.

Gruesome.

I made this photo 1000 pixels across, as is my wont. This made the up-and-down pixel count … 666. Very appropriate.

Creature stuff

First up: Otters chasing a butterfly.

Next, zebras:

One of these photos. Jordan Peterson would surely like this photo.

In case you didn’t realise, Cats bond with their people too. I’m already convinced. When GD2’s family’s cat Oscar got home after going awol, he slept for about a solid day. This says to me that he was stressed out when away from home, but not when home with his humans.

From Laughing Squid, a paper cameleon, a trampolining fox, and a raven who speaks German.

Lastly, and most depressingly: Animal painter known as ‘Galician Picasso’ found half eaten by own dogs.