Is quoting yourself allowed? It is if you are me, here:
The state of the world is now such that, if you want to be optimistic about your own country, don’t whatever you do look at your own country. Look at all the others.
Here.
I do want to be an optimist, today and every day. Happy Easter everybody.
The recent sunny weather is a mixed blessing for the photographer. On the one hand, everything that is well lit is well lit. But, stuff in the shade is in the shade, and the contrast between the two, if you are trying to include both, means that one or the other tends to suffer. But then I spied a clutch of parked motorbikes, all dark except for their mirrors, pointing upwards and reflecting the brightly lit building behind and above, and I think that I was able to use that contrast to my advantage:
Many photos recently. The good weather has been a long time in arriving.
Too many photos recently? I hope you agree not. After all, it only takes a moment to decide you want to look no further at a photo, if that’s what you decide. A bad (you think) photo wastes very little of your time.
Architecture | London | My photographs | Transport
A few days ago, I was out and about snapping, as is my wont, and I saw something rather unfamiliar in the sky over London, a dirty-looking vapour trail.
Vapour trails usually look white, as the older vapour trail that makes an X with this new one is. Something about the way vapour trails are usually lit makes them look white, against a blue sky. Mechanical clouds, you might say. And what could possibly be wrong with that? Vapour trails are just nice, clean steam.
But that one looks a whole lot dirtier, doesn’t it? And there’s the remnants of another, across the X, horizontally.
This was snapped just before it got dark, and I presume that has something to do with it. For some reason, this particular vapour trail was not lit. High clouds blocking the sun from it, but not blocking the sun from lighting us down on the ground? Or the older vapour trail, the one that’s white? I don’t know.
What I do know is that if vapour trails always looked this dark and dirty, there would surely have been a lot more talk about restricting air travel even than there is. Air travel would long ago have become more expensive.
Now, you could say that clouds are often this dark too, presumably for similar reasons. But clouds look natural. This vapour trail looks like mechanised evil spewing into the sky. It looks, in other words, just what the environmentalists have finally persuaded a lot of people that it is, despite usual appearances to the contrary.
Is there anyone in the world who reads this blog but not this one? Perhaps, but it seems improbable. On that off chance, this demographic should be sure not to miss this analysis of an epic car chase in one of those Confessions Of movies starring Robin Askwith.
That’s a seventies Rolls Royce going through a brick wall. It seems that Mark Holland also takes pictures off of his telly.
This is not a move I would care to try unless I owned a lot of Rolls Royces, and as it happens I don’t own even one. Frankly I think the wall would, in real life, have given a better account of itself.
But, I reckon the new German Panzer Roller would probably have done exactly that to it. For months I have been watching out for one of these in the streets of London, moving slowly enough for me to photo it. Nothing. Well, one, moving far too quickly. And then a few weeks ago I finally encountered one. It was parked outside the magnificently red bricked Westminster Cathedral (the Roman Catholic one in Victoria Street), ready to take away the Nigerian bride and groom from their magnificent Nigerian wedding. It was the best looking wedding I have ever chanced upon. Great hats. Ascot, forget it. It was as if the entire occasion had been organised for my entire benefit.
I may stick up more photos of that event anon, with hats, but I promise nothing. Sadly the light was not great, which is what has put me off doing this earlier.
I was expecting to find the new Roller overbearing and ugly. But I like it.
A week ago I was in Hampstead for a supper date with Jackie D and Antoine, and was somewhat delayed in my journey, by a sunset. All had seemed normal and grey and dreary when I set out on my journey from the heart of civilisation to the outer edge of 0207 land. But when I emerged from West Hampstead tube station, I encountered some extraordinary sunlight crashing in across the railway bridge. There was a break in the clouds right where the evening sun was. Out came the Canon S1 IS!
Trouble is, cheap digital cameras, at any rate in my hands, are not necessarily at their peak of performance in conditions like these. The drama in what you see is in the spectacular contrasts between the bright bits and the dark bits, between where the sun is and where the clouds are, or between the bright orange buildings lit up by the sun, and the dark clouds behind them. I’m sure there are ways of dealing with all that, knobs I could twiddle, but I don’t know about them properly.
Here is a photo which illustrates the problem.
Basically I just stuck my camera over the parapet and hoped for the best, and because of all the rails, regularly polished by trains, I got some nice effects. But look at that sunset! Just a blaze of pure white. It was more interesting than that, believe me.
The purple splodge is some kind of camera thingy effect, or so Bruce the Real Photographer told me when he dropped by. A more devoted Photoshopper than I, such as Bruce the Real Photographer, could remove it, but I am a puritan about Photoshop. I think Photoshop is for sizing, cropping, brightness, contrast, and nothing else. Cutting things out is Stalinism. It is also too much like hard work.
However, there were some photographable sunset effects to be observed, which I snapped away at more in hope than expecation, but which did come out quite well.
Click to get any of those bigger.
The light here is coming in under the high clouds and lighting up the interesting low clouds. I know, I know, you’ve already seen pretty sunsets. But for me, this was a little victory, and this blog is all about me and my needs.
I almost forgot.
About a month ago, I spent a few days in France, with Goddaughter 2 and her family, way down in the south just beyond Perpignan. I sat on the left hand side of the airplane on the way down, and just when I had abandoned hope of seeing anything interesting, look what I saw!
That’s right, the magnifique Millau Viaduct.
My 10x optical zoom lens and anti-shake software, on my new camera, together worked a wonder. If anything, the zoom actually worked too well. This shot shows four towers, but there are seven in all.
This posting may come and go and come again. This is because I will be fiddling about with the size of the picture until the width is exactly right.
I’m still housekeeping, in other words.