This was taken on my first visit to Milton Keynes back in April. If you click on the image and squint you might be able to tell that the reason was for an Euan Uglow show at MK Gallery, about which I hope to write more at some point. Before that, this post is otherwise serving as an announcement of yet another rebuild of my website. Hence the title; it started as a 'dummy' post - a temporary filler, also, I'm a... But then, I quite like the photo. Figure in the landscape, broken tiles and so on.

Eventually, all the blog post images should be re-sized similarly. I'm also re-uploading most of the photo galleries from the old site, again, resizing the photos for a more modern web.

This time it's built on Eleventy.

These are the 10 prints I sent to the Open Press Project for their annual Open Print Exchange. There's a reasonably small fee to enter but then you get 9 prints from other participants and a catalogue. To make the whole thing manageable and to encourage use of their press, the size of the paper is limited to 7cm square. It's pot luck what you get back but apparently it's enough to encourage me to make the effort because this is the second year I've done it.

Ahh, custom keycaps. Irresistible. They came from YUZU Custom Keycaps. The original set were black which I didn't like when it was dark in the room. I couldn't find perfect symbols for all the 'odd' keys but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. The keyboard is a UHK 60 from Ultimate Hacking Keyboard which I've been using since 2019. SpaceMouse in the middle and gel wrist supports for both hands.

I signed up for a photography workshop that I saw advertised on Instagram so that I could get close up to these sound mirrors (AKA: Acoustic mirror - Wikipedia). There a few dotted around the country but these three are the most well known. They are located in Greatstone / Denge, near Dungeness on the south-east coast of Kent.

Quarrying happened after they were built so they are now on an island. Access is via a small swing bridge which someone from English Heritage opened and then "guarded" for a couple of hours while we wandered around trying to not get in each other's photos.

I've put 12 of my photos in a Sound Mirrors gallery.

I've got two painted relief prints on display at the Murmurations gallery (website gone). Each print is 27x18cm. I also made a small edition from a new plate to sell as cards. These are also hand printed on the Fome School etching press and painted.

It's a long time since I've done this. Pictures at an exhibition (dead link). I made selections for most of the categories while I was procrastinating over painting. As soon as I've finished this blog post I can get back to the painting.

Here are the five pictures of mine that are on show, including the one above.

I've also put a bunch of older work loose in the browser racks, including Cornershops and some other "old favourites".

Making Mounts for a Small Press

I once had grand ideas of building a big etching press and even got as far as getting a friend to make some rollers for me. That was a few years ago and so recently I scaled back my ambition and bought a small press to test my interest and get better at the other parts of the photopolymer plate printing process.

This post might be of interest to one or two people - three would be very surprising - but on my searching I couldn't find any solutions other than "bolt it to a table with some L-brackets". It did seem like it would be worth doing a good job of it because in the researching I did find that some people struggled to get prints off of this press. I read one person saying they'd done it with cable ties but that didn't sound very solid to me.

The manufacturer seems equally silent on the matter but the slots cut in the side panels made me think they were expecting some kind of U-shaped straps. Not the kind of thing I was going to find in the local hardware shop anyway. Update: Fome sell a kit with 2 g-clamps, which seems like an afterthought as it's a way to clamp only one side of the press. With another two clamps I can imagine it would be quite solid but your bench would need to be a similar width to the press.

So, 3D-printing. I've stuck with the simple L-brackets but filled the slots so there can't be any sideways movement of the press.

There are four slots and it turned out that they weren't even the same width (different by about 0.6mm by my measuring) so I printed two slightly fatter than the other two.

The messiness on the bottom of the print is due to overdoing the glue on the printing platform, this being my first ABS print (I don't bother with glue when printing in PLA). Result: They work well. Hopefully a future post will show an actual print from the press itself! Update 2: I 3D printed another set and made up a mounting kit for another Fome owner who got in touch. The two different sizes worked for him too. I've also used the press to make some small relief prints (A6 cards; see July 2017 post) and I'm confident it'll cope with small etching plates.

GIF animation:

Bigger video:

This is a work in progress (built partly in SimLab Composer). Currently you can zoom-in / scroll around the model and stop / start the animation. See more on the project page

This post is about a support that I 3D printed for the Rode SC6 which keeps it connected more solidly to an iPhone. I got a Rode smartLav+ (Amazon UK link) which is a nice lavalier mic for use with mobile phones. The first annoyance was not being able to monitor the audio as it was being recorded due to the headphone socket being used by the mic! So I then had to find an adapter to split the mic and the headphones. It took me longer than it should because it turns out that Rode make one themselves - you'd think they draw it to the attention of mic owners. Some people complain about the adapter not working because it triggers the music or podcast app on the phone. I didn't have a problem with that but for me, particularly when using it with a phone case, it wasn't stable enough in the socket. It was just too easy to knock it slightly out of the socket. Here's the adapter on Amazon UK

I started with a £1 iPhone case from the local pound shop. I got a flexible one that's reasonably thick. It's got a football on the back. Never mind. To make sure the case wasn't the cause of keeping the adapter away from the socket I cut away all the plastic that was likely to be in the way.

Here's how it looks underneath. I glued it in place and that seemed strong enough but I thought I might as well run a weld of plastic along the edge with my 3Doodler.

The case is flexible so I can push the phone onto the jack and then pull the top of the case over the phone for a really tight fit. I started by measuring the adapter and modelling around it. Here's a render.

You can download it to print yourself on pinshape. I've sent a test to Shapeways and will update this post when I've got it back and checked it fits ok; so if you don't have a printer you'll be able to buy it from there.

I'm slowly migrating my old site to this new domain and learning Hugo in the process. It's mainly a convoluted way of decluttering the old site because it's hard to throw everything away, all at once, sometimes.

I'm not keeping everything but anything before this post comes from the old WordPress site.

This was shot during a Dear Serge event at the De La Warr Pavilion. It's a stretch to tag this with 'automata' but the sounds were made by little machines.

Dear Serge was a weird and wonderful, free event which ran every couple of months on a Saturday for a couple of years and sadly stopped in 2015. Generally, it was a mix of avant-garde music, or music and performance. You can see lots of old performances on the Pavilion's Vimeo Channel.

I recently got some laser cutting done for a job and it got me thinking...

I designed this pinhole camera around 9 years ago using 3D software and Illustrator so I thought I'd repurpose the files for laser cutting. It's the same basic design but I'm making it easier to load film and of course, it's now going to be built much more accurately.

Meanwhile one of the two pictures that I marked as 'creative commons', as an experiment, on my Flickr got picked up and used on PetaPixel: When Everyone Has Access to the Same Cameras... in a post which references Seth Godin's blog post. They make a point I've long thought about digital cameras - they have make it harder to make pictures that look different from everyone else's. Which is partly why I've tried to use (and build) odd cameras over the years.

So I'm getting back to making and the pinhole seemed like the easiest first step. There are more plans!

Update: Two of my Urban Mandalas will be on show as part of the London Independent Photography annual show. It runs from 16 to 28 of October. There are more details and images on my urban mandalas page.

Previously: three of the Urban Mandalas were on show at the Keyworth Centre, London South Bank University from Wednesday, August 1 to Wednesday, August 15, 2012.

Three of my pictures are included in the group show of contemporary London street photography (dead link) which is part of the London Festival of Photography (which was at: www.lfph.org but not whenever I look).

The King's Cross show is on until the 15th of August. Follow the link above, or use the diary (dead link) to find out about all the other shows and events that are on. They're mostly in the King's Cross area and most run to the end of June. There is a lot to see! If you can't make it, my pictures are here: 1, 2 and 3.

I was a bit confused by the new development at King's Cross so I made this picture to make it easier to find the show.

Well, two things at least. I'm selling my Nikon SuperCoolscan 4000 ED (sold). This is a high resolution 35mm film / slide scanner. Also my Sigma DP1 camera (sold).

This unrelated picture is from yesterday's wander after teaching in deepest Wood Green.

So much of what I've done recently has involved construction in the computer and yesterday felt like it had been a long time since I'd wandered just trying to take simple pictures.

Old Comments

The comments from the previous WordPress blog.

Peter Haken: Lovely candid shot here, seeing photo captures of picture frames always makes me smile, great capture

Londoner: It's amazing that this isn't staged, almost! What a great shot, and look how nonchalant your candid subject looks!

Brett from the London Street Photography Festival (dead link) asked me to plug their international street photo awards (dead link).

Meanwhile, the latest LIP magazine has a series of my house corner pictures across the centre spread. They are intended to be laid out in a grid like this but if you can't get a copy of the mag you can download it or see them singly on Flickr. Think of them as indoor street photography.

This is one of two of my new wide-o-rama pictures that are in the LIP 23rd Annual Show which runs from 18-21 October at Strand Gallery on John Adam Street (just behind the Strand at the Charing Cross end).

Like a good member I'm doing my bit by sitting in the gallery on Friday morning (21st) so drop in, say hello and look at the other 120+ pictures.

This is the first test of a something I'm building so that I can get back to making panoramic pictures. Super simple and lots of fun.

Update: See next post for another example.

When I think about photography and surrealism I tend to wonder if it's still possible to do straight photography that could be considered surrealist. The question will be tested over the coming week as my "instruction" (no. 37) for the Street Photography Now Project Flickr group, here. Please feel free to respond by joining the group and posting one picture that you've shot during this week (deadline: 10am GMT Friday 17 June 2011).

Apologies to RSS subscribers for the recent outage followed by a blast of old posts. It was broken and has been fixed as part of the (still ongoing) site redesign.

I shot this yesterday and it prompted me to update the Wait gallery. I'm fairly sure you had to work quite hard to find those pictures previously but as part of a slow upgrade of this site, I've done something sensible for a change and added it to the galleries page.

This picture is made from four cameras triggered simultaneously. It's a weird feeling taking a picture when someone else is pressing the shutter release on their camera a few feet away. More fun is pressing the button and making 3 other cameras take a picture (so we took turns). This was shot in 2007 with Jawed Ashraf, Helen Cheng and Dayton Taylor, so long ago that I'm not certain which picture is "mine" and who was triggering - not that it matters.

I'm posting it out now because I recently went to a talk at the Blurb pop-up shop by WassinkLundgren where they showed a series which you can see here: Tokyo Tokyo | Ruben Lundgren. It's clear they didn't use synchronised cameras but the multiple perspective thing is a nice idea.

As regular readers will know, Jawed and I did similar things with lightsquare (where we tried to catch the flash from the other camera by shouting) and Twins 1 & 2 (2004) which are more automated and random than any of the stuff above. Then, of course, we had to make a movie.

Old Comments

The comments from the previous WordPress blog.

Tiffany: Love the quad Gary!! As you know Adrian and I tried the two simultaneous cameras and gave up after days of concerted effort with little reward. I love this quad thing and would love to see more! T

Gary: Thanks T. The reason we haven't bothered to glue any of these together before is because, on first viewing, it didn't look worth the effort. Perhaps not looking for a few years really is a good idea. This was the first set that stood out so I might look again at some point.

We only did one day and mostly, it felt like good practice for another day that never happened.

At last, a book of contemporary street photography and even better, I have a photo in it (not this one, it's the 'wait' picture that I posted in July '03). I've only just got my copy but on first browse it look great. You can like it on Facebook or perhaps you'd better buy it first on amazon.

Update: The paperback is here.

Books are affiliate links.

More strange happenings in green spaces. We were passing and I'm "doing parks" at the moment so I had to wander in. They were part of a team raising money for Macmillan. Coincidentally, Macmillan helped me recently so if you're feeling flush here's the link to donate.

I've been taking a lot of pictures in parks lately. You can see some more of them and find out why here. The second picture on that page is in the issue 16 of FLIP magazine which you can buy in the Photographers' Gallery and other outlets listed at that link.

Update: you can download the old magazines as PDFs.

See something suspicious? This was shot at the "I'm a photographer, not a terrorist" (domain gone) event / flashmob / protest thing last Saturday. Despite the thousands of photographers who turned out it was a fairly quiet but jolly occasion and there wasn't a lot of incident.

At one point the National Gallery security decided it would be a good idea to prevent people taking pictures from the portico - normally a good vantage point for tourists taking pictures of Trafalgar Square. Of course, this action didn't go unnoticed and only encouraged the eager photographers to flock to the steps. Eventually the security guys gave up and closed the entrance. You can see lots more pictures in the flickr pool, including me (snapped incidentally by Cory Doctorow - fame at last) and another one of mine.

I usually post recent pictures in the blog but this one (from 2002) is in an auction in aid of Article 25. Their Art for Architecture fund raiser takes place on December 3rd. The photography section is a bit thin but it's nice to be alongside the spectacular Wired cover by Jason Hawkes. You can find out more here.

Update: This picture is in the group exhibition of contemporary street photography (link died) at King's Cross station in London (1 June - 15 August 2012).

Over the last couple of weeks I've had a job shooting architectural details at a bunch of London locations. It's been fun seeing some new places, looking at them in a way I wouldn't normally do and after the work was done it was also an opportunity to play - making pictures like this one.

I'll be running the next street photography workshop on July 25 / August 8 - see the Photofusion site for more information. This shot was taken on the previous running when I was demonstrating how to be unprofessional by gate crashing someone else's shoot.

Old Comments

The comments from the previous WordPress blog.

Andrew Gould: Love the combination of elements in this one.

After work.

Yesterday I ran a kind of cut-down version of my street photography workshop for the London Photographic Meetup Group. They seemed like a keen bunch and during the talk, laughed in all the right places, which is always reassuring. Thanks to the organisers, Tom and Alex, for looking after me.

This was my first time using Stage Hand a super useful iPhone / iPod Touch app for controlling Keynote on the laptop over wi-fi - it worked well and I recommend it. Update: it no longer exists of course.

I've had the 5D Mk 2 since late last year but somehow managed to avoid posting any pictures here. This is one I shot with an old manual lens which I'm using just to make my life more difficult. The dates for the next running of the Street Photography Workshop have been set (June 6 & 20) and I'm also starting a new, two-day video introduction course (May 12 & 19) mainly covering Final Cut Express.

See also here in 2005:

and here in 2002:

Old Comments

The comments from the previous WordPress blog.

echo: hi, Gary! I am the new to ur blog. my friend who is in China wants ENVOY camera and searched a lot on ebay as well. unfortunately, nothing good to found. Could u suggest any?

Thx a lot! Echo hu,

Gary: I guess the Envoy is pretty rare - I sold mine on ebay. I'm thinking of selling my Veriwide so let me know if you're interested. I'll post on this blog if it goes on ebay.

echo: Hi Gary: My friend searched some information on Veriwide, but he thought it's too big for him to use. So thx a lot!

Take Care!

I thought I should add a contribution to the current climate of financial panic with this game snapped on a local stall yesterday.

According to this survey (dead link) digital cameras are the most confusing gadget and 46% of us don't read the manuals. I spend a fair amount of time teaching people how to use their DSLRs so don't find any of this surprising. Compared to the simple, manual only, film cameras that I learnt on, the modern digital camera is incredibly complex with a horrible interface and for the novice, an indecipherable manual.

Old Comments

The comments from the previous WordPress blog.

Andrew Gould: What a quirky street shot! This has real charm to it!

I've recently rebuilt this site and a lot of the older blog posts are currently a bit broken. Apologies also if you got a dump of recent posts in your RSS reader today. Let me know if you spot any other oddities. Things should be straight again by next week.

The first running of this year's Street Photography Workshop is underway but there are still places available on the next. Update: We had to change the original August dates and it is now due to run on the 13th & 27th of September. Details should be on the Photofusion website soon.

I was confused by the title of the current Tate photography show and after my first visit last week I'm thinking I still don't quite get it. Street and Studio: An Urban History of Photography is actually about portraiture and claims to highlight "...the crossovers between the genres [Street and Studio] and their influence on each other." So, sounds interesting but women under hypnosis? I'll need to read the blurb to see where they fit in. Not that I didn't enjoy it. There was plenty I hadn't seen before as well as some old favourites.

The picture that had the strongest impact was this one by Pieter Hugo (the direct link broke but it's one in that series). I'm a little worried that I'm just impressed by the size of the hyena. I thought hyenas were more reasonable, dog-sized creatures (Max agreed and said this was because we're informed by Disney films). They had the book of Pieter Hugo's series which I just about managed to resist buying (Update: of course it's worth a fortune now). The printing looked great and even the non-hyena pictures seemed to have a strong other-worldly quality. The show is on until 31 August so plenty of time to revisit.

I'm running a Street Photography Workshop in London next month. The format will be the same as last year - two Saturdays with a weekend in between (28 June & 12 July). Photofusion are hosting as previously and you can read more details on their web site, or you can contact me if you have more questions. If this is of interest, you might also enjoy this new video which shows Bruce Gilden (link gone) at work on the streets of New York. You don't have to do it his way!

Old Comments

The comments from the previous WordPress blog.

/jd: gotta push those barriers ;-)

Very good :)

My favourite carry everywhere camera was probably the Yashica T5 but it's hard to imagine having a digital as good and simple to use as that. My latest substitute is the Sigma DP1. The previous, Lumix LX2, is now on ebay (sold). The Sigma is fairly clunky in lots of ways and the colour is pretty weird but I'm enjoying the struggle. This is a shot from the new camera.

Coming out of the Photographers' Gallery I was encouraged by the light ahead. As I squatted down to fish a camera out of my bag I noticed something moving in the distance - a thumb on a film advance lever. It's funny how things like that stand out in a crowd and I shouldn't really be surprised when another photographer also spots the light, especially near the Photographers' Gallery.

As I started to get up, the thumb turned, to reveal Matt Stuart. Ha! I don't often meet people I know when strolling around London but towards the end of an enjoyable wander with Matt we also ran into Stephen McLaren.

Anyway, back to the light. That junction* has six roads branching off making for a relatively large open space that often seems to have a fair amount of reflected light. I can't think of any good pictures that I've taken there but I like this one that Jawed took with a battered 6x9 folder of mine. Maybe it's a place where I should spend more time shooting but often I'm happy to just look.

Here's what Matt was looking at (from a different position with a longer lens). The man with the blank green sign was promoting McDonalds but only if you approached him from behind. It did look strange, running at 50% effeciency, but I had to wonder if blank signs were on the long list of things to avoid shooting, with shop mannequins and homeless people. I was tempted to clone out the Selfridges text on the yellow bag to make another blank thing but it didn't seem worth the effort and I settled for cloning some of the clipped highlights.

Update: *The Photographers' Gallery has moved since then.

Old Comments

The comments from the previous WordPress blog.

Paul Russell: Typical. You wait for a street photographer for ages, and then three turn up at once.

Maybe the guy with the McDonalds sign was a performance artist, à la Mr Odd Erection.

This is one from Cornershops, a new series. They really need to be seen as big prints but... view more here: Cornershops

Three from this set will be on show as part of the LIP 19th annual exhibition: 14th to 27th October 2007 at Cottons Atrium.

Old Comments

The comments from the previous WordPress blog.

Dave Clarke: Your "cornershop" series is very striking and refreshingly topical. I love down-to-earth everyday subjects shot with such attention to timing and detail. Am trying to work out whether they're stitched fisheye's or panoramic shots? If they're stitched well.....I can't see the joins!

Great pix anyhow, and the subject is complimented well by your choice of technique.

admin: Thanks! Yes, the join is deliberately hard to spot :-) They have 'shared' sky for example. Most people don't seem to notice shadows that indicate the sun being in two different places. That adds to the fun for me.

I'm running the Street Photography workshop for Photofusion again. The last one was fun, the feedback was good. It runs over two Saturdays (22 Sep / 6 Oct) with 2 weeks in-between to give time for practice. You can find more details on the Photofusion site or feel free to contact me if you want to discuss.

I was going to title this post, The Bizarre World of Not London but I'm aware that most people don't realise that I'm joking most of the time so I went with numbers and acronyms. I recently went on a rare trip out of London; firstly to see the Birth of Colour exhibition at the National Media Museum in Bradford. This was the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television (I don't remember it ever being called just the National Museum of Photography so I guess this sign in the photo was just a contraction).

The curation of the show was a bit "Blue Peter" in its tone but I suppose that's partly due to the NMM being closer to the Science Museum than an art gallery and a lot of the exhibits seemed to take the dumbed down approach so I also assume it's the house style. In fairness, there is a lot of good supporting material on their web site for the show.

Fortunately, they did have some actual autochrome transparencies on display. I wanted to get an idea of what 4 million potato starch grains per square inch could look like, because you can't really tell from web photos (or the recent TV series - original link broke). I think most of them were "quarter plate" size, so a bit bigger than 6x9cm format, and they looked great; the best of them similar to modern transparencies to my eyes (although they weren't of consistent quality) but there were a couple of thin, vertical portraits which were much bigger and looked stunning.

Bradford seemed surprisingly rundown. I keep hearing about how much growth is happening in Leeds and Manchester but Bradford was dominated by boarded up shops and huge office to-let banners as if it hadn't changed since the last recession. There were signs of tidying up in the centre which presumably means that it'll only end up looking like everywhere else, so I rejoice in the mess.

We took advantage of the one of the nice cinemas at the NMM followed by curry at a very cheap restaurant, which in a neat coincidence, Sarah spotted in that day's Guardian - The Kashmir (scroll to third restaurant). Because of the article, I half expected it to be full of Guardian readers but we seemed to be the only people who looked out of place.

The next day, on the way to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, it seemed like Leeds, seen from the train, had lots of emerging glass and steel and a horizon of cranes. That completed the survey of Northern developments.

Yorkshire Sculpture Park
If you visit the YSP website you will see that the nearest railway station is Wakefield but there's no mention of how you're supposed to get from there to the park. We had half a plan to get a cab from the station but arriving at Wakefield decided to be more adventurous and find a bus. There were no signs at the station, no YSP leaflets amongst the many other attractions in the 'things to do' rack but a helpful man in the information office directed us to the bus station. Same thing at the bus station, no mention of the sculpture park. Another helpful man gave us the bus number and we started to feel like this wasn't a well travelled route. The bus didn't get us all the way there but the weather was ok so the 20 minute walk wasn't a problem. By the time we arrived it was pretty clear that they expect everyone to get there by car. There's no charge for entry, only for car parking. I felt a bit confused as I thought I might have been part of their target audience. Another delusion shattered :-)

The main reason for this part of the trip was the Andy Goldsworthy show (2007 seems to have gone missing on the YSP site) and seeing some of his work in the flesh made me realise that it's about 4,000 times more interesting than looking at the usual presentation as photographs. The pictures on the web site don't do it justice and the postcards in the shop are even worse but I'd say, If you're anywhere near the YSP before January '08 you should go.

This was during the school holidays so the main building and restaurant were quite busy. However, most people didn't venture far from the main galleries and even if they had I suspect, like me, they would have found the park map confusing and signage irritatingly minimal. This turned out to be a positive as it meant that the James Turrell Deer Shelter Skyspace was reasonably quiet. In this case, I was less wowed than expected after seeing similar rooms on TV (here, I think). I suspect you need to sit for hours in changing, end of the day, light to get the full effect. (More on the Deer Shelter skyspace).

So that's RL 2 vs TV 1.

Update: I had a search hit from someone looking for the bus from Wakefield to YSP, so it's not just me and hopefully this will help:

Link to the web site for the bus - search for '435' for a PDF of the above. More recent check: the journey planner on the site shows the options and route on a map and even the YSP website now says a 96 bus does "frequent stops at YSP". There, things do get better.

Old Comments

The comments from the previous WordPress blog.

Jim Bond: Hi Gary

I'm sure you enjoyed your public transport adventure, but next time give us a ring and you can have the luxury of a car ride back to the station. The Sculpture Park is 5 minutes from here. Enjoyed your pics and blog.

Jim

admin: Hi Jim

That makes it even funnier and is another indication of how poor my northern geography is because I had no idea you were anywhere near there.

Gary

Paul Halliday: The NMM was original The National Museum of Film, Television and Photography.Now that's a mouthful.

I see you ate at The Kashmir - good choice ... I eat there almost every day. No, really, I do.

You're right about Bradford being run down ... it's gone to the dogs, which is a real shame because the city of my childhood was proud and vibrant, the city of my teenage years was still proud and bustling with (youth) culture. It's dead now :(

The Goldsworthy collection at YSP is something else, isn't it? We've had a number of days there and I think I've had something new from the exhibitions each time. I do like the skylights - I can spend ages in that structure enjoying the silence and the blue from different angles.

I hope you enjoyed the visit 'oop North ... do come again.

Rachel Perry: Hi...I Googled for manchester art galleries, but found your page about on TV vs RL |...and have to say thanks. nice read.

A couple of years ago I made a short video with Jawed Ashraf that is like a moving version of our Twins project. I haven't put it online before because I think it really works better when shown bigger, either projected or on a large screen, but Michael David Murphy at 2point8.whileseated (dead link) linked to some street photography videos which made me think... so, now you can see it here.

The recent Street Photography workshop went well and another has been scheduled - get in touch for more information or see the Photofusion page.

Old Comments

The comments from the previous WordPress blog.

Siegfried: Very interesting video! The split screen is overwhelming, there's just so much going on. The Twins set has some great trompe-l'oeils.

I'd love to see more work in this direction.

The How We Are: Photographing Britain show at the Tate has a flickr tie-in (link dead) where users are supposed to have their pictures displaying as part of the exhibit (over 5,000 pictures in the group currently). Unfortunately all four screens were showing either crashed Windows or a spinning slideshow wheel with no pictures (how hard can it be?). The rest of the show is well worth seeing although I have to admit that I found the best part of the last room was the ability to pull up my own flickr account and run it on a computer that was working. In other news, my daughter Max is just finishing her degree and has put her final piece, a Knitimation Video, online. Go watch it.

I'm always interested in seeing the underpants of a gallery and while I'm sure running such an enterprise is often a thankless task, it amuses me how often they seem unprepared for visitors. I sometimes find myself more interested in the mechanics of the place than the stuff on show. Today I went to Alec Soth at HOST (website gone) and fortunately the pictures were enough of a distraction from all the construction work but I did feel like I was getting in the way a bit. Still, my arrival seemed to prompt the stacking of the otherwise empty bookshelf which gave me another chance to browse the Niagara book and get in the way some more.

Old Comments

The comments from the previous WordPress blog.

ben roberts: ah... you should have been there a wee bit later on for the 'closing party'!

one thing i love about the host gallery is that they stock up their shelves with books for openings/events - keeps people interested and hanging around after they have seen the images.

I'm leading a Street Photography Workshop at Photofusion which runs on two Saturdays in July (7th and 21st) with time in-between for practice. Among the plus points is that it's a small group of participants. There are more details on the Photofusion site and it's half-full already so if you're interested but have questions, feel free to contact me. Update: another has been scheduled. Update 2: I'm planning to run it again in the summer. NB: This was 2007.

A new Cabaret Mechanical Theatre show opens at the end of next week at Kinetica in London and runs for a month.

Resonance FM (London's first radio arts station - providing "a radical alternative to the universal formulae of mainstream broadcasting") is raising money so it can stay on air, buy a new antenna, etc. Even if you're not in London, they're worth supporting so that me, you and everyone else can listen online.

I originally started my page of links to London art gallery web sites because a lot of them were very hard to find via google. However, it has since become very popular so I've tidied it up a bit and added a featured gallery spot at the top with the vague plan of making vast amounts of advertising revenue [Update: I even made it into an iPhone app but I eventually got bored of that job]. I never set out to be a listings guy but hey, if it means I can take more pictures we can't complain. This picture was taken after a wander around the insides of Battersea Power Station, which had more art.

Definitions, pigeon-holes, limitations and inspiration. Are people who hang on to the "old" forms of street photography the equivalent of stuckist painters? I'm tempted to write something longer in response to the suggestion that Street Photography is dead but in the meantime here's a picture of a bus stop.

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The comments from the previous WordPress blog.

Kevin Bjorke: I see dead genres...

And they don't know that they're dead.

(no one else knows, either)

Joe: you know there are some street images that belong in hotel rooms, there are some that belong on hotel walls, there are some that belong on the cover of fashion magazines, and there are some that belong in them, all of these can be different degrees of "street", but the best ones are the ones that belong in hard-cover books, because they need to be locked there, not because they are photo journalism of depraved nations, but because they are just too engaging,

engaging because they are just too relevant to what we see every day, but are unable to stare at, nor do we want to have these images staring back at us in our walk to the kitchen, I'm thinking engaging, common and candid and the resurrection of 'street'.

I think that 'street' as many people know it, has in-fact been reduced to advanced pattern recognition, but I think the candid nature of street has the possibilities of being stronger than ever with the introduction of more discreet quality image collection possibilities. So has street died?, it would be a long debate, but I the mean time, i give you a gallery of bus stops, let's let them suggest :-)

-joe

admin: Yes, it's the reductionists that irritate me the most. I also don't mind seeing street on the walk to to the kitchen, hey, even in the kitchen. So, yes, I don't think another categorisation based on display location is going to help us. Even if kitchen wall street sounds pretty grim.

Here's another category for you - mountain biking street photographers.

Gary

I've been intending to make a shelf-challenging book of panoramic photos for a long time but the intended size has even intimidated me, so in the meantime, I've put together a small, pocket-sized, version. Entitled, Small Book Big City, this is a limited edition of only ten copies and to ease the pain of the size versus price ratio it comes with a print (approx 20" / 50cm long) of one of the images. You can see all the pictures in the book and find out more, here.

This is mainly a plug for a course I'm running at Photofusion in October but as ever, you can ignore the text and just look at the picture. The course is called 'Starting Digital Photography', it runs for three days (3, 4, 5th October) and is aimed at people who want to get the most from their digital SLR with an introduction to Photoshop. More details on the Photofusion page. The course is limited to eight people but if you'd prefer something more tailored, or shorter, I also do one-to-one tuition (Update: not any more).

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Digital Traveler: Man...your photography is similar to mine. I love that picture! I hope you can take a look at my blog. Maybe you can consider using my book, Digital Art Photography For Dummies: Bamberg, Matthew - Amazon.co.uk as part of your classes. At any rate, spread the word, my book's for sale all over the U.K.

Usually long but always intriguing. We managed to see four that were new to me during the recent NFT season and have also been catching up by renting the few available DVDs. Tonight was Histoire de Marie et Julien: Jacques Rivette’s Material Ghost Story – Senses of Cinema which may well be his "greatest achievement" but although the cat was very good, of the more recent films, I preferred Va savoir (2001) - TMDb.

Having just completed a rare 5-day week of teaching I'm once again wondering how people manage to do that 9 to 5 thing on a regular basis. World of Work. It's odd.

The Guardian web site has a slideshow of 11 pictures from the Onto the Streets show so you can try to spot my picture. Update 0: sigh, it's a Flash slideshow so you probably can't see it.

Update 1: This picture is included in the Venustreet - contemporary street photography Blurb book.

Update 2: This picture is in the group exhibition of London Festival of Photography (archived) at King's Cross station in London (1 June - 15 August 2012).

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Chas: I'm a little miffed that they included the 'Guy with red ball' shot from the InPublic site. That one's getting a bit old by now. (sheesh!).

Chas.

admin: Well, I guess part of the point of the exhibition is to make the pictures visible to people who don't know the work from the web. Also, for those who do know the pictures it's good to have a chance to see how they work as prints.

My pictures are all from 2002 so ancient in internet terms but they've never been exhibited. If you're still not happy you could always try curating your own show :-)

Gary

As promised in a previous post, I've made a gallery of the five photos that are in the forthcoming Photofusion show.

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ed nixon: Thanks for the link to the gallery containing the Serra revision. I've grabbed a copy to update the City Language piece:

Feature PhotoDoc: City Language (archived)

I like this one very much too.

ATB

admin: Thanks Ed.

I'd grown used to the colour of the old version but the new one makes more sense I think.

Gary

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ed nixon: Nice one Gary. ...edN

I've got some pictures in the group show, Onto The Streets (archived), which opens next month at Photofusion in Brixton (21 July to 16 September and then touring to Greece and Croatia I think). I'll put together a web gallery of my pictures and add a link here when I'm a bit less busy. Update: gallery of my photos.

It seems that World Pinhole Day is the only time I use my pinhole camera.

The test rolls from the camera of the previous post were fairly entertaining but I think I need to rebuild the body and this shot is just to show that it wasn't a complete disaster. It's a gxwide (I had to name it so that it could have a blog category) and will take some getting used to so I think constructing a viewfinder is probably a good idea. See here: Version One

I haven't posted a "gear in pieces" picture for awhile so here's the next best thing; the first version of an extremely wide angle medium format (6x12cm) camera I'm building. It's mostly bits bought on ebay with a couple of pieces of plywood in the middle, all held together with lots of tape. It's missing some niceties and hopefully the final version will have less tape. I've put a couple of test rolls through - results to follow assuming there's something on the film.

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John Kendall: This is an exciting project. I've always wanted to buy a VistaShift 612 from Ralph Fuerbringer, but don't believe that they are available any longer.

Your camera reminds me of the huge area coverage of his camera.

I'd love to make one but don't think I'm skilled enough.

Have you ever made a camera for anyone else?

Thanks

• John Kendall Sugar Land, Texas.

admin: Hi John - I'm not sure if I have the skills myself! If you do what I did, it really isn't very difficult and I'm sure you could find someone to put the bits together for you. The "body" is only a flat piece with a hole in the middle - more or less. I haven't tested it enough to decide whether I'm happy with what it produces.

steve: Any chance you could give me some pointers in constructing a Version One?

admin: It really is just a lens (which includes a shutter), a focus mount, a plywood spacer and a roll-film holder. The focus mount and film holder came from Hong Kong or China via ebay. Search on ebay - 6x12 Roll Film Back - should find same or similar. I can't see the helical lens mount on ebay at the moment but you can get more expensive / better versions to match a particular lens. Here's a discussion on Helical focussing mounts in lenses | Photo.net Photography Forums.

I hope that helps.

In case of confusion, see BBC News, or here.

Another accidental diptych.

I recently started reading "City Gorged with Dreams: Surrealism and Documentary Photography in Interwar Paris" which ought to be interesting because it's a study of "surrealist realism": the exploration of a real-life surreality encountered on the streets of the city. On reaching chapter three - Nadja: a 'voluntary banality'? - I thought I'd better break off to read the book of the chapter title. I didn't really take to Breton's style of writing and although I enjoyed his descriptions of the meetings with Nadja the story had more impact after finishing it, first by reading the introduction (glad that I didn't read it first) and secondly by filling in details via a quick google and reading this essay^[1] by poet, Susan Elmslie. Coincidences ensued. In a box of booja-booja chocolates, the message (Boojagram No. 17) read, "Practice a reliable attitude towards fish". I didn't think much of it, except that it was a little odder than the usual booja sentiment. However, I then went out and drove over a big fish, maybe a piece of salmon, in the middle of our road and on the return journey noticed a black glove in the middle of another road. Unrelated to this, I walked past a woman who said into her phone, "I get lost if I walk around".

City Gorged with Dreams - Surrealism and Documentary Photography in Interwar Paris by Ian Walker and Nadja by Andre Breton. NB: Those are affiliate links.

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ed nixon: Thanks for this cite. I've been working my way through 'Illuminations', the Walter Benjamin collection edited by Hannah Arendt. A year or so ago, they published an edition of Benjamin's "The Arcades Project" which is his unfinished, perhaps unfinishable, magnum opus. That's next of the 'working through' list.

I think it's remarkable how fruitful a place Paris was in the first 30 to 40 years of the last century. One of my favorite aspects is the Diagelev/Nijinsky/Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo era, particularly as documented in the journals or 'conversations' of Igor Stravinsky with Robert Craft.

...edN

5DWII - day five. So, what have we learned about Landscape this week? "It's just a medium" - JA, or a vessel that we can pour whatever we want into. I've mostly been reminded that it's just another unhelpful label although I have been enjoying making some bad landscape pictures. As labels go, I certainly prefer the term street photography but that's because I have a very wide open view of what street photography is and can be, whereas some people think it died with HCB or Winogrand. A term with little or no baggage would be ideal but unlikely. Joining 'urban' to 'landscape' only makes it worse.

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ed nixon: Let's say 'street photography' could be described, not to say defined, over an n-point space, with 'n' being something less than or equal to 10 but greater than or equal to 4.

Which n of your images would describe the largest possible space that would fit over your notion of street photography?

...edN

ed nixon: And then which (same) 'n' images from 'the wild' (not created by you, but by others) would do the same thing -- fit over your notion of street photography?

In this thought experiment, the space will be, in one sense or other, larger or smaller or the same in size -- whatever 'size' might come to mean. Or there might be comparable facets (subsets of x images) between the two spaces, but not on other facets.

...edN

admin: Having struggled to understand the first question I find the second leaves me even more confused. I'm reminded of the health practitioner who asks if 10 is no pain, how much pain do you have at the moment? I tend to shrug and then pick a number from the air, depending on my mood.

Most of my images fit into (or over?) my notion of Street Photography but then I'm not even thinking about various bits of commercial work I have done. What does it tell you if I say 8, 9 or 10?

If I have understood you correctly then answering the second part seems impossible. I think I need to see pictures. An infographic so I can see the concept and then some examples so we can start filing. I was thinking Diane Arbus might be an interesting person to start with but maybe it would be better to use someone who isn't normally associated with SP at all.

Gary

5DWII - day three. That phrase is the excuse for everything. I thought I might try it next time I knock over somebody's beer in a pub. In this time of heightened security... It's bound to calm the situation instantly.

Today we tried to find the spot where I took this picture in 2002 (3.5 years ago), having only the vaguest memory of a one time visit to the area. Amazingly, we found it. It's funny how pieces of geography fit back together as you approach them.

5DWII - day two. I forgot to mention that the theme for the week is 'Landscape' or 'Landscape is Dead' if you want to be more provocative. Nigel Cooke at the South London Gallery is well worth seeing. I wasn't expecting to enjoy this so try not to judge by the web pictures, ignore the references to graffiti (or anything else that might put you off) and make the effort to travel beyond Camberwell.

We also went to hear him talk eloquently and entertainingly about his work later at the Tate. So it turns out painting isn't dead either.

5DWII - day one.

First entry from the Canon S80 compact.

I have to admit that being invited to submit pictures to a show called Snapping Little Britain had me a little worried but it turned out to be better than I expected. It's a group show which, although it had too many seaside pictures for my liking, I wanted to be positive about by linking to some of the other work. Unfortunately I can't find any useful web links (I thought all photographers had web sites!). The show is at the Orleans House Gallery in Richmond and runs until April 30th. It's in a nice location if you fancy a day out by the river. If you can't make it, my three pictures are here (removed), including one which I did as an A2 lightbox. This picture was taken after the private view last night.

Teaching yesterday I probably made it sound like I'm in constant turmoil battling the list of things that I don't take photographs of. Chairs dumped on the street are on the list partly because they always make me think of Richard Wentworth. So today I walked past and then went back just to prove I'm not completely ruled by my own rules.

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Tom: Does it make a difference if the chair has been "placed" rather than "dumped", as theres a fair number of chair shots on your site?

Make you should have a "chair" category, so they are easer to track down?

tom

admin: I can't see any "dumped" chairs in the blog (phew). By placed, I wonder if you are referring to things like park / street benches, which I see as a different category entirely. I can't tag pictures that are outside the blog so there wouldn't be many in "chairs" if it was a category. Maybe if I called it "sit", or something.

Tom: Not dumped, but I meant stuff like:

Fat Red Armchair and Resistance is Futile

which are both pretty chair-like, though I guess not dumped. Maybe I'm just not seeing the significance of dumped chairs specifically.

tom

admin: Next time you go out you will see dumped chairs everywhere. You may see significance, or you may need to wait until you've shot hundreds, transcended the cliché and produced the bumper book of dumped chairs. Unless it's not a cliché, I've imagined the whole thing and they're not everywhere. Either way, the book will need a snappy title.

Tom: Maybe I'll just sign up to the street furniture (SF) mailing list and lurk there for awhile.

My dislike of 360 degree panoramas printed flat was confirmed by this Unquiet Thames - Crispin Hughes exhibition. I had to explain how they were made to a couple of parents who were telling their small son that they were "fisheye" pictures. I started with the fact that the verticals would be curved as well if they'd been fisheye pictures and wished I hadn't started. My problem is that I find 360s are just too hard for me to read when presented flat. Maybe it's just that I'm more used to the cylindrical presentation which is difficult in a gallery context. I prefer it when they are more tableaux-like with people in them, like most of John Brownlow's here. I've unwrapped and printed this 360 of mine but again it has people to hold it together. Without people they seem to descend into not unattractive graphics. The symmetry in the bridges is interesting but the upstream and downstream of the river both going into the picture seems too wrong. JB has an under a bridge shot in the set above but to me it's the sofa and in the London set, the collected crap, that draws the eye - the part that has the easily read perspective - with the architecture becoming a spectacular framing device. So, worth a look if you're in the area but I will be sticking to partial panoramas. It was also my first visit to the Museum of London Docklands (it's been open nearly three years). It had lots of non-functioning technology (like the audio that should have accompanied the panoramas) but since there was much more to look at than I'd expected that didn't seem to matter.

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Michael Abbott: "My problem is that I find 360s are just too hard for me to read when presented flat."

I think the ones that work in that PDF are the ones where you don't have to read them, those whose 360-ness isn't the first thing you notice. I guess this amounts to saying that for them to work as flat pictures, they have to work as flat pictures, rather than forcing you to work at reconstrunting the situation.

Pg 8a, 10a, maybe 9b fall into this category for me, I don't think they're great but at least they manage not to shout about being 360. The subject matter seems like it might lend itself to this, although it doesn't seem to be what he was after.

admin: Hi Michael

Yes, there is lots more positive stuff I could have said but given that I usually write very little and brief text is supposed to be one of the rules of this blog that post seemed long enough as it was. The final page of the PDF has probably my favourite images. The top one has gorgeous colour and good balance between the street level light (Whining again, but I was disappointed that so many had bleached out backgrounds, especially as it's relatively easy to bracket and merge in Photoshop when shooting like this) and the lower one describes the space well, partly because it effectively breaks into a more manageable diptych of two 180 degree pictures.

Gary

This picture has made it onto the cover of the new LIP magazine. The printing looks a little light for my taste but I like the way the designer made it wrap onto the back cover with the spline on the edge of the shop window, although I can imagine some people not realising that the picture continues.

Janet Hall was one of the founding members of LIP and she left some of her camera equipment to the organisation when she died recently. If you are interested in a 5x4 Sinar, lenses or a pair of studio flash heads, here is the link to the ebay auction (finished) which I am running on behalf of LIP. (link is to the camera, follow the link to my other auctions for more).

I'm sure there will be lots of photoblogs bulging with excitement about Adobe Lightroom but all I have to say is that I'm glad I wasn't sucked into the Aperture hype - as much as I like Apple. Not wishing to get into arguments over which is better I can see these programs being quite appealing to a lot of photographers who don't want to deal with the behemoth that is Photoshop, as well as those who need a better way to deal with editing, cataloguing, etc. This picture comes via my first, five minute play with Lightroom.

I went to see the Jeff Wall show again and noticed a couple of new oddities which could have been discussed for hours had I not been there with real people. However, afterwards one of the real people was kind enough to buy me a copy of the book below which, despite my having enough books at the moment, seemed relevant to my current thinking. Later in the pub, her generosity was heightened by the fact that she had her purse emptied by a pickpocket.

Singular Images: Essays on Remarkable Photographs

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ed nixon: I'd value your posting your impressions of this book. It can be ordered through amazon.ca as a special order; it seems to be distributed very narrowly, in the UK.

I was given a 'gift' vouchure, read permission, at Christmas to go out and get myself something 'photographic'. It's a very difficult decision to make, particularly when the funds are not large, and you wonder what it might be exactly that you'd get the most value out of, what might light a new fire, start with 'pictures?' or with 'words?'

I wish this book had a bit more focus on 'modern' or 'recent'. I'm sure there is a great deal to see and know about Julia Margaret Cameron, etc. but... it's just so long ago -- more than one whole century away and aeons of technological change (both in the medium and in the environment) away too.

Sorry about your friend's purse; yet another one of those personal violations that make one feel dirty and vulnerable and helpless.

...edN

admin: Hi Ed

The book is published by the Tate but Aperture are putting it out in the US so probably better to wait.

I've only read the intro and the Jeff Wall chapter and to be honest it didn't tell me much about Jeff Wall that I didn't know already. I picked it up because I keep feeling the pressure to work, or edit, for series of pictures. The book probably won't help me but being aware of this dilemma, Jawed has suggested making the next book from pictures in this blog. I'm fairly determined to do the panorama book next which isn't a series even though it might sound and look like one.

Have you read the Szarkowski book?

I'm happy to report that we didn't let the thievery crimp our evening.

Gary

ed nixon: Thanks Gary. Jawed has good ideas.

Rightly or wrongly, I class this book in the same category as the recent publication by Geoff Dyer, The Ongoing Moment. I've read good things about this one and will probably pick it up.

I'm a great fan of Szarkowski's writing. I have the "Looking" book and have enjoyed his essays on Winogrand and a somewhat older set in his edition on Modern American Photography that rifles through the MOMA photo collection. He has a great talent for the analysis and categorization that is levened with fine flights of fancy, metaphor or illusion.

...edN

Apparently we are entering a post-ironic age and we all have to say what we mean. I'm not sure I'll be able to cope.

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ed nixon: Well perhaps it will be better than having to mean what we say.

...edN

PS: Happy New Year.

I moved my domain last Friday (16 Dec 05) so if you've emailed me in the last few days and haven't had a reply please resend.

For various reasons, I've changed from MovableType to Wordpress. There's bound to be a few things that are broken but hopefully everything will be better in the long runbzzwrt future. This is a picture from the past, obviously.

If like me, you've only seen one or two Jeff Wall pictures in group shows before, then the current show at the Tate Modern is well worth seeing. I'm still wondering how much of my admiration for the pictures is to do with being seduced by the format (huge lightboxes) but they certainly have more interest than say Gregory Crewdson's huge (non-lightbox) pictures. Perhaps somebody will fund me to produce some of my own pictures as lightboxes and then I'll have a better understanding.

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ed nixon: I hope they do fund you. I wonder if there is an increasing prevalence of rear lighted displays in shows? Whether it has something to do with the overwhelming amount of rear lit 'content' we are subjected to? PC monitors, Televisions, jumbotrons, neon and on an on. Plain old paper just can't 'shine up' to the incandescence of the light box effect? Another form of incipient illiteracy?

...edN

PS: How's Interiors going? :-)

Gary: Wouldn't those guys working on illuminated manuscripts have bound up some stained glass if they could have? I've always liked the richness of transparencies. Paper is just different and currently, a lot more practical but exhibiting paper behind glass doesn't help when comparing to lit transparencies. The Jeff Wall show also has some big black and white prints - the room is like an eye rest - but a couple of them are really dark and so become mirrors.

Interiors is stalled like everything else seems to be at the moment. Coincedentally though, this evening I set up and tested a new camera support (Nodal Ninja) which I think will be helpful.

Bilbo: Ah, I think the attraction of Wall is totally the lure of the lightbox. You made me realise what it was that was making me itch about the Tate Exhibition. It's not so much the actual pictures, as the lovely, bright silvery boxes.......as I walked around, I did think how great MY pictures would look displayed in such a way.

Mind you, the re-animated Russian Soldiers and the Invisible Man are outstanding pictures. Rest was a bit pants, I reckon.

Gary: Hi Bilbo

Well, easy to say of course but I think it's important not to miss the fact of how carefully most of these pictures are constructed and what lengths he goes to to hide the construction. I don't mean that you should need to understand how they were made in order to appreciate them but that your pictures as big transparencies may lack those qualities which come from the construction.

One, expensive, way to find out of course.

For what it's worth, my own favourite is the Flooded Grave.

The last time I went to Micklepage was nearly two years ago for a Paul Trevor workshop. This time it was Chris Steele-Perkins and Mark Power doing a day each. There can't be many ways to hear two Magnum photographers talk in the level of detail that events like this allow. This and the previous event were run by IPSE. I'm not a member but if you're a photographer in the South East it might be worth joining.

This and another Cyclops picture will be in the LIP Annual Exhibition next month.

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Richard Hopper: Hi Gary, Micklepage now has a website!

The new book is finally rolling out. Find out more and buy a copy: Pavemental.

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John Brownlow: lovely. The Imperial War Museum, no?

Gary: IWM, yes, (see above!) It's an odd place - chock-full of the most depressing brutality but with a shop at the end just like any other museum, except that the pencil cases are camouflaged.

ed nixon: On seeing the RSS feed, I expected to see a young-ish individual with spikey hair, safety-pin-pierce and a newspaper full of greasy sausages (although I have no evidence they are ever served that way.) This? An interesting Brit 'understatement' and pun. And I can see where the reputation about bollards comes up. I assume these are in fact disabled WWII German...? The tail part looks almost like a propeller on a torpedo. Nice light. And the balloon adds a certain blitzy resonance, at least for those who might remember (or have read a book or two of 20th century history.) All the best. ...edN

Gary: Bangers are also small fireworks that just, um, bang. I try to remind myself to make sure that the entry title has nothing to do with the picture so you should be grateful for understatement. It's outside the Imperial War Museum - and I thnk the shells actually go with the big battleship guns that are stretching into the distance behind the people. I hadn't thought about the balloon that way. It was one of those times when the people were nice enough to just walk into the picture and perform.

ed nixon: Boy, I have to have my eyes checked or get more sleep. I look at this photo again and what initially looked like a propeller atop the item on the right now resolves itself into one of the guns you mention. I saw two halves of the same weapon - one tail down in the concrete (on the left), the other tail up. Makes me think I should really hang up my camera. Cheers. ...edN

jd: reminds me of a Paul Klee picture wundervol! ...and we won't mention 80's eurovision songs ;-) l8r /jd

I've had a manic four weeks editing video for a DVD and teaching two days a week. Things have calmed now so I'm back to scanning Cyclops negatives like this one.

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John Brownlow: that it is firkin awesome image, Gary. Light is wonderful. My Noblex is in a box awaiting repair. There's a strange moment when you start to see everything in a cylindrical projection. I really like the 6x17 format

John Brownlow: There is a huge difference between digital composites and pano negs, you're right. The composites are more rhetorical or operatic. The pano negs have a sort of greybeard authority. "Oh, well, you young stitched whippersnappers are all very well but I show you what it was actually LIKE". Or something. They feel radically different, visually speaking.

Gary: I can't remember what I said about the differences, but at the moment, for me the most important difference is in the making. Not that I'm dealing in decisive moments here but it feels much easier (err, emotionally, not just technically) to take one picture than it does to think about and take multiple pictures. Hmm, I'm not sure what that emotion is...

You may be right about the visual difference too. I might try seeing how easily I can replicate Cyclops pictures (in terms of angle of view / format) with my digital.

Another Cyclops picture.

I spent an hour or so teaching a friend how to use his Canon EOS-1D Mark II and he gave me an old 35mm (doh!) Ricoh 500 rangefinder as payment. His excuse was that he thought I collected old cameras, which I definitely do not^[1]. I'm not trying as hard as I should to give up 35mm film and couldn't resist putting a roll through it. The focussing tabs and the film winder on the bottom are nice features. There were lots of blank frames so I guess the shutter is sticky but this picture is one that worked.

Meanwhile, my new book is ready! It's called Pavemental and has 22 wonderful photographs in it. Unfortunately, I'm too busy working on a DVD to post any more information. If you're desperate, just send me cash.

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Gary: Well ok but the good thing about finishing this one is that I can get on with the panoramic book. That's going to have metal covers so if it's spiral bound putting it together might be more engineering than book binding.

Tom: Sweet! It's Spiral bound, all photographic books should be spiral bound.

Gary: £36 to you. I should sort this out properly but here's a preview page.

jd: hurray! how much is cash? ;) l8r /jd

We are all becoming more used to the sound of our own voices.

Since my first Cyclops is currently in a thousand pieces awaiting motorisation I was tempted by a Mark I version of the same camera. I'm happy to report that the new one seems to be working pretty well (click on the thumb).

I should also mention that The Barbican coughed up a refund and offered complimentary tickets to a another showing of the Eggleston film mentioned in the previous post.

I went to see William Eggleston in the Real World at the Barbican but the DVD skipped, eventually stalled and the show was abandoned. Michael Almereyda said it was "nobody's fault". The discussion between him, Martin Parr and Val Williams was pretty lame too. There should have been a riot or at least the offer of a refund. (Update: the Barbican organised a free re-screening)

Back to diary mode: I went with Tom (website gone) to a talk by Joel Meyerowitz at the Tate Modern last night. JM is an impressive speaker on photography as well as a great photographer. When I saw his Ground Zero show at the Museum of London I was amazed to learn that it was his first solo show in the UK.

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ed nixon: This is very lovely, Gary, and answers a bit of my question on the SP list about lighting conditions.

We're just past the mid-point of Toronto's month-long Contact photography show. I'm headed down to see the Ground Zero show this morning.

...edN

"It's the inverse of your Converse" (Overheard, or maybe imagined).

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Rock: Sparse! Very nice.

A new picture from my pinhole camera as posted to the World Pinhole Day web site.

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sparx: This is a very cool picture. Very sharp for a pinhole and no vignetting is amazing.

Gary: Hello and thanks. The lack of vignetting is due to the fact that the camera has a curved film plane so the light travels the same distance over the whole picture (more or less). You can see the design here

I've been attacking the backlog of film again. This is a supersampler picture.

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The comments from the previous WordPress blog

Alastair: What a wonderful collection of pictures; I've enjoyed browsing your archives. Thank you.

"This is the third time she's asked me for a blood test." (overheard)

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The comments from the previous WordPress blog

Sara D'amore: I agree that random pictures are sometimes the best! :)

One of my pictures is on the cover of the London Independent Photography magazine. You can see it here on my old site.

Something from the growing backlog of pictures.

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The comments from the previous WordPress blog.

Rock: Nice ear muffs.

zoomvienna: Good looking shot here...

Entry 86.

Old Comments

The comments from the previous WordPress blog.

Jerry Halstead: The butts that chair has seen...

I've put together six pictures into a new gallery called November Landscapes (removed May '05).

Another wander with Jawed and Jiri, who suggested we go to Silvertown ^[1]. Strange place, probably waiting to be demolished. This picture was taken outside the Tate and Lyle refinery. We ended the day at the UK premiere of Eggleston's Stranded in Canton. I wanted to enjoy it but it was too much like watching home movies. In fairness, most people seemed to be clapping enthusiastically when it finished so maybe I dozed off time too many times.

Heritage delivery system at the revamped Tower of London.

A big loss: John Peel died.

I gave up using a Palm Pilot some years ago, in favour of storing contacts in my phone but I have relapsed and bought a Zire 72. It's a major distraction, hopefully only temporarily, as long as I can avoid downloading games. I don't seem to play games anymore. Remember Laurie Anderson's Puppet Motel - Wikipedia? Is anyone making things like that at the moment?

I'm testing Ecto (blogging software, gone now). If blogging is easier I might do it more often.

Taken on a grey day wandering with Jawed and Jiri.

Taking pictures of shop windows can be a lazy form of street photography but sometimes they're hard to resist.

Last weekend I spent some time in the Malvern Hills taking terrible landscape pictures. Fortunately we also managed to squeeze in a day trip to Birmingham for some proper pictures of rubbish, building sites, etc.

I had one of my photos in The Independent on Friday (I can't find art reviews on their web site, so no link). It was a picture of one of Paul Spooner's Butcher's Shops. There was also an article on this in last Sunday's Observer. More info: scroll to Butcher's Shop, Sep 2004.

Byng Place near Gordon Square.

The Lartigue show at the Hayward is great. I really admire his playfulness and experimental spirit. The upstairs show, 'About Face: Photography and the Death of the Portrait', not only has a naff sub-title but also seems to get itself in a knot about the use of technology in photography, which they say is "challenging our perceptions of beauty and truth".

At one point, the curators say we can no longer accept the idea of portraits being windows on the soul (who ever did?) and then alongside a series of red-eyed (from flash) teenagers, they claim the red eyes made them look like predators (or words to that effect). As if non-predatory people won't have red eyes. They go on to say that the red-eye effect is a "technical glitch normally removed in printing". Hilarious.

There are some interesting things in it but I recommend ignoring the interpretation boards. This is another of my "diCorcia without flashlight" pictures.

Sorry about all the flowers, seascapes and nudity - normal madness is resumed with a return to the city.

A plug: Deleting spam messages from the comments was getting to be a chore. I felt like someone cleaning graffiti off their property every morning, but then I discovered MT-Blacklist (via this (dead link) site), which is excellent and if you use MT becomes a must have once the spammers have found you.

And plugging back: Yesterday, much to my surprise, this site appeared in The Guardian's Weblog as 'Top Blog'. (NB: this was 2004 and The Guardian no longer appear to maintain a page about blogs.)

Update: I'm now using Wordpress.

Update 2: Now using The world's fastest framework for building websites | Hugo just to keep my life difficult.

Update 3: Yup, switched again. I'm now using Eleventy - "a simpler static site generator".

Mechanisms, a short film I directed is showing as part of the "Tinkering!" festival at the Exploratorium in San Francisco on Saturday 24th July at 2pm. I also did some work on the Fax Machine episode of The Secret Life of Machines that they are showing in the same set (I shot some video in Paris which got badly transferred to film). There are lots of other good movies in the festival so it's worth clicking through their calendar if you're in that part of the world.

I've added a new 'wait' category for pictures posted in here. This also leads to the new Wait Gallery.

This is another Veriwide shot which needs to be seen bigger really. I was attracted by the way the ASDA sign was popping out. It looked quite surreal but I'm not sure that comes across at web resolutions.

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Gary: I thought it was about the trollies conspiring.

ryan: The photo depicts the haunting and almost omnipresent quality of mass-consumerism. Or just a really bright sign.

Watching the New Shock of the New on Saturday, I was surprised and disappointed that Mr Hughes highlighted a spelling mistake in a Tracey Emin piece. Finishing on an extra 'L' in beautiful seemed more stupid than the spelling mistake to me and undercut his argument somewhat. Probably I missed something and still, I'm looking forward to the re-run of the original series, which I haven't seen since it was first shown.

In trying to work out the date of the first transmission, I came across this tragic tale. I'd assumed the stick was just old age.

This woman is eating Walker's Crisps. Which reminds me to recommend this unusual book on London Walking (affiliate link).

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Paul in Minneapols: Nice pix. And who sez England is colorless place, huh!?

Due to the fact that Planet Drum is moving, I won't have a regular excuse to wander around Borough anymore. Trips to Croydon have stopped as well. Excuses needed.

Update: I have no idea what this link was about but it's gone now.

Memory Tool via creativepro.

I've just returned from two days in Hunkin Land helping out on some animation for one of Tim's new simulator rides. This one will be walking the dog in Southwold and become part of his Pier Arcade.

This conversation with Kevin Bjorke reminded me about two great books that I haven't looked at in a long time. Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain will get you over the blocks that most people have about their ability to produce a likeness when drawing. Understanding Comics is a great read on art, graphics and the psychology of sequential art even if you're not interested in comics.

I've added a new gallery to my main photography page, Twins, which was made with Jawed Ashraf.

I've had some problems with e-mail over the last week or so. If you've sent me something and I haven't replied, please resend or use the contact form to get in touch.

I've upgraded my flatbed to an Epson 4870 which looks like it'll be a lot better for scanning medium format film. This picture is of Paternoster Vents (Wikipedia) designed by Thomas Heatherwick, near Paternoster Square.

Here's another picture from my pinhole camera. I'll make a gallery of the new stuff here soon.

I've set up some 'categories'; currently eight cameras and, um, bollards. Since there was only one veriwide picture I'm adding this one.

I'm also trying to integrate all of this with the rest of the site so the category pages also have links to more pictures and information elsewhere. I haven't done anything for some of the cameras yet but bollards are in place. The categories are listed on the left right.

Update: This has all changed with the current iteration of this blog.

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Gary: Hi Joern Mine is 63/1994. I think I read that the first two digits indicate the year so I guess that would make sense in relation to your figures.

Joern Dudek: Hello Gary,

what´s number is your veriwide camera? Please look inside. Only 2000 were made from 1959-1963.

Kind Regards, Joern

Gary: Thanks Joern

You can always shoot 800 ASA and / or fix light fall off with PanoTools. Not perfect, but what is!

Joern Dudek, Germany: Hello Veriwide User,

I love this little gem! This is my favorite travel camera, because the Plaubel is so handy. The only handicap is, that you have to shoot at f/16- f/32 for perfect images. Sometimes there is not enough light on location for shootings from the hip.

Regards, Joern

Gary: Thanks Brian.

I got mine from the US via ebay for around £500. It would have been much more if it had included the original Leitz 21mm finder - collectors go mad just for a finder apparently.

Gary

Gary: Thanks Brian.

I got mine from the US via ebay for around £500. It would have been much more if it had included the original Leitz 21mm finder - collectors go mad just for a finder apparently.

Gary

This is the same corner that I used for the front of my first book (S'gone Now). I might put that selection back online at some point.

I discovered Smoke today. It fell open on an article called Sham City about Paternoster Square - "London's new architectural theme-park" - which was making me laugh. When I looked at the back and realised it was only £2 (twosquid, blimey!) I thought I'd better buy it. It's a shame all the pictures are black and white but for 50 pages you can't grumble can ya guv'nor (People don't seem to call London 'The Smoke' anymore, do they?).

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Tudy: I love the balls in the window. great capture.

For regular viewers, here is my current favourite pinhole pic from the recent batch. For non-regular viewers, sorry - you missed it - the pinhole page is here.

Yesterday was World Pinhole Day which started disastrously when my camera broke at the end of the first roll of film. Fortunately I managed to find a shop that sold Superglue on a Sunday and the repair held so I shot another 4 or 5 rolls. I then ran into Tom (Update: domain gone) who said he first recognised me by the camera I was holding. He was on his way to buy some 5x4 so I suggested he continue the madness by joining me on a wander with some members from the Topica Streetphoto list. I'm not currently subscribed to that and this picture wasn't taken with the pinhole.

I can recommend the Bill Brandt exhibition at the V&A (Update: another broken link and content no longer available) until 25th July. It made me feel like I'd overlooked him even though his book Shadow of Light is probably the photographic book I've owned the longest.

This picture has nothing to do with Bill Brandt except that it was taken inside the V&A.

This is another picture from a relatively intensive week of photography. Day 4 included walking an audio tour, (it was called Linked but, no irony, the website is no more), which revolves around the M11 link road development. It's an interesting area but unfortunately I had a dodgy headset with a weak battery and it took much longer to complete than it was supposed to.

Meanwhile, I'm artist of the week on The Lebanon.com. Funny, huh?

Update: The Linked website has gone but there are a few reviews of it if you search, or here's someone who tried to find it in 2011: Lost and Found in E17: a field student of public art. I think it's inevitable that these don't tend to last. It relied on technology that needed care and maintenance and funding rarely seems to include a budget for maintenance.

Related: Answering Missing Voice - another audio tour which is no longer easy to follow.

This is the first picture that I took on the first day of a five day exercise. More later.

This usage of 'Recorded Delivery' stickers as a form of graffiti is fairly common in London. I suppose the top one here might be serving some other, practical function but generally it always seems like a bit of cheat to me. Certainly cheap anyway. I see plain paper sticker art less often but I'll keep an eye out for it next week.

I've transferred all the old entries from GreyMatter and this is the first test using Movable Type.

I'm thinking of switching to MovableType.org and redesigning the whole site so it may go a bit quiet. I'm going to take part in this QTVR pano event: The Original WWP: Tooley Street, even though or because, I haven't shot a 360 for a long time.

[Update: I did use Movable Type but then switched to WordPress and then...]

I've made a new page for the Cyclops panoramic camera. I get quite a lot of hits from people searching for pictures of bollards. They often fail because I removed one so I thought I'd put this up and then people can also tell me why they are looking for them.

I took the Cyclops and my home-made pinhole camera out and struggled with both. The Cyclops wasn't swinging its lens fully and I'm wondering if I might be able to replace the clockwork with a motor. A piece of the pinhole snapped off but that's a lot easier to repair - Mk II could be in the pipeline. Pictures, if any worked, coming soon. As usual, a digital picture fills the space.

30 December 03.

I took part in a two-part workshop which involved building a light-operated machine which made sound and making an animation by scratching 16mm film. At the end, all the participants' machines were triggered by the light from the film projector via all the film animations spliced together. So the machines formed the soundtrack for the film. All this in three hours. Len Lye did scratch animation and kinetic art.

A Sunday wander with Jawed and Kevin who wanted to do Speaker's Corner. I hadn't been there for years. It was more entertaining than I'd expected.

Work is underway on my next book of photographs. I've left it late but I'm planning to have some ready in time for Christmas even though it's cancelled. There won't be as many in the edition this time, so if you're interested in knowing what's going to be in it let me know. Not this picture obviously.

Lunch time in Docklands. Pastel shades. It seemed like a separate city. Not different, but taller and more modern with not much trace of docks.

I spent a couple of days with Tim Hunkin last week, playing with a 5x4 camera for the first time. We shot Ilfochrome paper positives and some c-41, like this one. Obviously you can't see the resolution of 5"x4" negatives in a 650 pixel wide web image.

I suppose if you walk around for a long enough your are going to see a ladder reflecting in a similar way to one you saw recently. The yellow ladder from the previous entry (gone now) fell into a cool mute blog (also gone) a couple of days ago.

I received one of these mad 4 lens cameras as a present. You can have the four pictures taken over 2 seconds or 0.2 of a second. I'm not sure how much I want to make pictures that depend on a time element but it's a bit of fun. This is a short panning shot from the first roll. Lomo

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Gary: Actually the alternative to 4 shots in 2 seconds is four shots with gaps of 0.2 seconds between them (the shutter isn't that fast).

jd: yeah, I like that. Can't imagine what a bank of nine would do :-)

Blinking has returned and my face is almost completely back under control. I did take a might be better than nothing homeopathic remedy but the effects of Bell's Palsy were fading then.

Yes, it really is hot here so this is a picture from a couple of months back in case we forget what it's usually like in London.

Bell's Palsy is supposed to be a diagnosis of exclusion but reading this trumpeter's (link died) description convinced me. I'm finding it quite disconcerting to look in a mirror, attempt to raise both eyebrows and see only one of them move. The numbness on one side of my mouth is similar to the way it feels when a dental anesthetic is wearing off, so annoying when drinking. I can only manage half a smile. The worse thing is having to protect my right eye. It's not blinking so I have to remember to do some "manual" closing to stop it drying out. It's making me think about all the stuff I do automatically. I like to think that I often take photographs without thinking too much but it's nowhere near as unthinking as blinking.

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Gary: Thanks to everyone for all the comments.

Because this entry is popular wih spammers I've decided to close it for comments.

Here's a site with lots of information about Bell's and this is their facial exercises page: www.bellspalsy.ws/exercise.htm

and here's a BBC article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/tayside_and_central/7045375.stm

Good luck.

jill fiengo: my son got Bells palsey for the first time when he was about 7 yrs old his face never completely recovered. Then just tonight he is now 11 he started to complain about ear pain testerday and today and then at dinner his face began to droop and his eye he felt the tingling sensation and is now very upset about this. It is so upsetting to see tis happening not to mention that I'm so worried that he will gain further permanent residual effects. I'm so sad for my boy.

jill: Hi, i got bells Aug. 26, 2004. I noticed that morning the side of my right tongue felt funny, almost sore, and my right jaw joint was hurting, about 4 pm the whole right side of my face was paralyzed. Talk about scared!!! I went to the emergency room and the doctor did some motor tests, the last one he asked me to do was to wrinkle my forehead, which I couldn't. He said that most stroke victims can still wrinkle their foreheads, so he knew i had bells. I did the steroids for a week and an anti-viral. Reading some of your posts seems to give me hope, I was trying to get an idea of how long it normally takes to get most of the functions back. thanks for letting me ramble on. God Bless

jacque: please email to above address - thanks.

My husband went into the hospital last night after noticing the right side of his mouth and eye were drooping. They kept him overnight, and in the morning (today) pronounced it bell's palsy, possibly due to lyme disease. Here's the rub: I am a wreck. I'm trying to be fine in front of him but I'm so worried that it was actually a mini-stroke. How do they know for sure? He had a cat scan and blood tests is this enough to know?

thanks for your advice and good luck to everyone.

brian: I had bells palsey in 1982 when I was 20, It started about 10am when i noticed that one side of my tounge felt strange .like when when you have been to the dentist. By 3pm the whole side of my face had completly droped, i managed to see a doctor the same day and he told me what it was . I had all the symptoms like not being able to shut my eye at night to slurping when drinking my pint of beer. lucky for me I recovered in about two weeks, thank god.....I was left with a slight difference on one side of my face when I smile . Anyone who has this I feel for you and hope you make a full recovery.

Jean: I have had this horrible thing for almost 6 months. I knew what it was when I woke up in the morning but it was still a shock. I am going to start physical t. next week, hopefully that will help. I am beginning to look a bit more like myself. I, like the rest of you, would not wish this upon my worst enemy. But, I try to keep a positive attitude. I am a teacher and my students help me everyday because they like me no matter what I look like. Good luck to you all and thank you for sharing your stories.

Debbie: I have had bells for over 2years it was really bad in the begining it is just learning to live with it i use nuro stimulation everyday which as helped also physio i still cannot smile my eye shuts but still waters when eatng i have had synkinesis which has not help my recovery my face looks quite even with the good side even though i have not got much movement

sal: Gary,I managed to contract Bells Palsey for my eighteenth Birthday. That was twenty five years ago.I had a very bad case which lasted for me a period of twelve months.Eating with a straw, eyepatch and artificial tears to stop the dryness in my eye.I'm a registered nurse and when the onset was occurring I was at work I kept asking people around me if my face was smiling properly I felt so silly.My main asset in those days was my smile and the fact it was so infectious.It knocked my self esteem as I was so outgoing.I still have days if I'm tired that my leftside of my face will drop slightly but I still keep going.So just make the most of what you have and remember its what is in the heart that matters................regards sal

Gary: Thanks Mac It seems I was lucky - I was back to 100% within a month. Best wishes

John U: I came down with Bells Palsey 5 weeks ago and it is quite annoying. I can close my right eye but only when the left eye is closed and even then I have to sort of touch the right eye lid to get it to close. It seems strange to drink everything with a straw but not much I can do about that. In my work I am suppose to carry a firearm and I have found it difficult to qualify as my eye keeps drying out and I have to massage the right eyelid to keep it moist. Has anyone heard of any possitive results using Acyclovir which is a herpes medication. Also has anyone had any possitive results with vitamins B12 and B6? Anyway just have to keep pushing forward with the hope that it will vanish as quickly as it appeared.

Dave Small: Gary I came down with Bells Palsey about 15yrs ago.it was a shock seeing my mouth at a 40% angle. But that overtime is much better.The dryness in the eye although much improved still bothers me.But with good eye drops,Ilearned to live with it. How long has this been bothering you? It clears up with most people in a relativly short time. I made the mistake of taking a trip to the Arizona desert shortly after I was diagnosed. The dryness was hell on my eye. Never again. We should have a category for crap people leave on the street.

Mac W: Hi Gary, I was diagnosed with a severe case of Bell Palsy almost 2 yrs ago, (Oct 14, 2001). I was put on steroids for only 1 week, and was told that time was the next factor for a recovery. Although I've met other people that has had it, they said that their symptoms lasted anywhere from a week to 2 to 3 months. Although I've had some recovery noted, I still get the tightness around the cheek and eye area. I can blink, but I have weak motor skills around the mouth and in the brow area. Unlike Dave I have the excessive tearing, especially when I eat. I realize it could be worse, but I wouldn't wish this condition on anyone, (except Bin Laden). May God bless.

Gary: Thanks for that Kevin. I think having only half a working face is enough to induce paranoia so I'm avoiding the drugs. I'm hoping it's peaked, in which case it sounds like I don't have it as bad as you got it. I have a very weak left eye which tends to stay open when shooting so, depending on the viewfinder postion, it can be useful for peripheral vision.

bjorke: Early one Saturday morning about four years ago I awoke with Courtney and as I rose I thought she was just the most adorable creature on the planet. I raised my hands to pantomime that I was taking her picture with an "air camera" -- and at that moment discovered that I was quite unable to close my left eye. What the hell? Half an hour later I read about Bell's Palsy on the web and three hours later had an MD confirm the self-diagnosis. She prescribed steroids to reduce the swelling (brought on by a cold combined with pressure from snorkeling) -- the only time I've ever taken medication where the "possible side effects" pamphlet ended its list with "paranoia, insanity, death." Oh well. I sent out an email to the people I worked with to assure them that I had not experienced a stroke -- I had just the usual amount of brain damage, Everyone was quite supportive (especially Courtney). I had to tape my left eye shut to sleep for a couple of weeks, and use thick gel-like eyedrops. I had to learn to shoot with with my left eye (since it wouldn't close) or w/both eyes open. After a while almost all of the function returned, though I'm still unable to smile 100% symetrically. Most people don't notice, however -- they just figure my constant smirk comes from arrogance :)

I try to avoid repetition but it's hard to resist sometimes. People place all sorts of things on the button boxes at pedestrian crossings. I've previously taken pictures of apple cores and other discarded food, bottles, drinks cans, that sort of thing. I suppose what I have to avoid is displaying them as a set or making a book with this one as the cover.

Update 1: Give it time.

Update 2: This picture appears in Street Photography Now by Sophie Haworth and Stephen McLaren.

Update 3: Here's the current set: Wait

I do get excited sometimes. While my kids have annoyed me by buying themselves 15GB iPods, I have been lifted by the arrival of a piece of 40 year-old technology. I'd like an iPod but a Brooks-Plaubel Veriwide 100 has a lens which is equivalent to 18mm on a 35mm camera and makes 92x56mm negatives. This is one of the first pictures from it and I'll post a gallery with more soon but overall, yes, I'm excited.

No waffling about old technology today just a picture from this morning.

I've been too busy to keep this more up to date, but I can report another eBay purchase. The Envoy Wide Angle. Made around 1950 it's a 6x9cm camera with a 64mm lens. I shot four rolls before I noticed that the hole in the tripod bush went all the way through into the body. Oops. This is one of the shots that didn't suffer too much from the light leak. More to follow when I've fixed it up a bit.

Update: More photos on the Envoy gallery page.

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Gary: Hi Mine is orange more than red but I suppose it may have faded. If you're shooting colour and especially fast film then it's probably best to put something as dark as possible in the hole and keep it closed and away from the sun as much as possible. Gary

KEVIN: Hello, Can you tell me if there should be a red window in the envoy wideangle camera's back or just a clear hole, in order to view film exposure number. regards, Kevin.

I managed to put the Cyclops back together and although it's not perfect it does now make photos. It seems I managed to put the loose lens element back in the right place but it still needs some adjustment. I think the lens needs to start from slightly further around because I'm getting a dark area at the start of the swing. This means I'm losing about 1 cm of the 155 x 55 mm negative (could be worse!). There is some evidence of camera shake - the lens movement is fairly violent - but it would be a shame not to be able use it for handheld pictures.

[Update: I added a page (Feb '04) on the Cyclops].

I'm reading The Look of Architecture which makes connections between architecture and clothing that had never occurred to me before. It's also a bit negative about the failure of photography to capture important aspects of architecture which makes me wonder what the author would think of Tadao Ando: The Colours of Light which also seems to be at the top of my pile at the moment and has some great photographs by Richard Pare - Wikipedia.

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K-Tee: Hi, im writing my dissertation on fashion and architecture and am also reading The Look of Architecture, and just wondered if you knew of any other good sources of information for this subject...? Thanks K-Tee.

kavita: i am studying the influence of architecture on clothes or vice versa...if anyone can tell me where to look...it would be most brateful....especially with regard to indian context

Gary: Yes, the absence of people is one of the things the book mentions. People seem to be too distracting. Similarly, interiors have to be perfectly arranged as if unlived in. Although I like a lot of the Pare photos in the other book, I think they do tend to reduce the Ando architecture to abstraction. Is architecture overlooked as an element in street photography that does have people?

KB: Curious about this "failure." I have my own opinion about architectural photography -- it almost always ignores human scale -- in fact goes out of its way to avoid human figures or even occupied parking lots. As such it ignores architecture's most primal function, that of "commodity" to human use and occupation.

Al: Great picture, reds are always tough and you nailed it. The Coke can is icing on the cake.

This is another picture stitched from three digital pictures.

It was described as a "cyclops" and apparently made in the USA in the 1990s. There is no brand or model name on the camera. It produces a 6x17cm negative so that's only 4 shots on a roll. I haven't been able to find much mention of it on the web so if you know anything, please let me know. It appears to work and I've put 3 rolls through it today. If the pictures are any good I'll post them here. In fact, I might post them here even if they aren't.

Update: No pictures from the new camera because it turned out that the suspicious noise was an element of the lens loose inside, so I only had three rolls of very blurry pictures. It was dissapointingly difficult to open up the camera and of course, the lens was the hardest part to get to. I've glued the glass back into the mount and repositioned it in what I hope is the right place. I should be able to get the rest of it back together but this is turning into more of a project than I'd intended.

Update 2: I made a Cyclops page.

Maybe it doesn't look as significant as other sculptures coming down in Baghdad but here's Anish Kapoor's Marsyas in the process of being removed from the Tate Modern at the same time.

If you didn't see it while it was up, here are some 3D versions that you can fly through. [Update: not any more]

Sorry if you've seen the first three pictures before (now deleted) but it's been a bit of a struggle to set this up. Let me know if anything looks odd - HTML wise.

As the logo at the bottom indicates, this is driven by 'Greymatter' blogging software (was GM - it's now MoveableType). I've also used iView and a bit of Applescript to save myself having to type code in the entries.

New pictures should follow soon.

[Update: now using Wordpress]

[2021-01-30: Final Update? Now using Hugo! Yes, this was the start of my blog in 2003 when it was called 'In the Realm of the Underwhelmed'. I removed it from my other site in 2016 and intended putting it back up on this site but it took until 2021 for me to get around to it.]

[2026: Final final update! Now using Eleventy, another static site generator.]