What does this say about me?

Posted on October 8, 2013 by Guthlac

This Mumford & Sons/Miley Cyrus remix of wrecking ball is much better than the original…that also goes for the video as well.

 

Miley Cyrus

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The problem with art courses

Posted on October 6, 2013 by Guthlac

“….The next pose will be for 40 minutes…so plenty of time…” These words fill me with dread. It is not the fault of the tutor or the course but rather more of problem, if that is the correct word, of myself. You see I’ve reached the point in my artistic career, such as it is, where I need to take my time. I don’t need time limits but the space and time to work on something to get it right and no course is ever going to give you that. Even life drawing sessions are far too short to do anything other than a preliminary sketch.

Of course it can be argued that this was not a problem in the past and the great masters managed to produce master pieces in such short amounts of time. This argument is, of course, totally without merit. Now I’m not saying that I will ever reach anything like the levels of the past masters and quit frankly I’m not sure I want to but what I do need to produce my best work is time. This is not what you get on any of these courses

Is there a solution to this dilemma? Of course there are but I also feel I do still need to attend these courses from time to time to keep refreshing my skills and, in a very masochistic sort of a way, embrace the frustrations that come with it. You can only do so much in such an amount of time.

Simon Marchini
http://www.simonmarchini.co.uk

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So very funny

Posted on October 4, 2013 by Guthlac

Hashtag

 

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Just what other Photographs haven’t I worked on?

Posted on October 4, 2013 by Guthlac

I came across this image this morning whilst going retrospectively geotagging my photographs.  There are many more I need to work that I just haven’t touched.

 

Princes Street Gardens - Edinburgh 

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Where have you been?

Posted on October 4, 2013 by Guthlac

Yesterday I made a rather rash statement that there is only one county in mainland Britain that I haven’t visited and that was Cornwall.   After saying this I started to check my facts and I realise that it wasn’t correct – I hadn’t visited Grampian and Cleveland.   However, as with all things geographical attention needs to be paid to boundaries as well as political ones.

Over the centuries whilst there has been a a general sense of continuity in the British, and by British I mean the countries that make up the main island of the British Isles archipelago – more geographical and political boundaries.  This being said the boundaries from time to time do move considerably, Berwick upon Tweed is perhaps the best example of this, changing from being in Scotland and England a number of time.  In fact Berwickshire is an old Scottish county but it’s county town is now firmly in England.  Now Berwickshire has been subsumed into the Border’s regional council – a political boundary.

So which counties should I count?   I think the boundaries that best suit my story are the modern administrative ones that lump together many of the ancient counties and shires of Scotland into much larger geographical areas.  Using this definition the only county I haven’t visited in Scotland is Grampian.   Hair splitting I know but it’s my story and so I set the rules – more boundaries.

As far as England is concerned then, apart from Cornwall which doesn’t consider itself part of England, the only other county I haven’t visited is Cleveland.  However, Cleveland used to be part of the North Riding of Yorkshire until quite recently so perhaps I should count Cleveland after all.   You see how slippery and yet how important boundaries are.

I then decided to look where I had taken photographs and fortunately Adobe Lightroom has a wonderful tool that uses the geo tagging data captured with an image to plot where the photograph was taken.  Unfortunately this information is only recorded by my iPhone so I’m going to have to manually tag most of my archive my photographs.  This will take some time but I think it will be worth it.   Anyway the following two maps show the results to date of my travels.   Of course by publishing this I allowing data on my life to be passed into the public domain which is a concern until you realise just how much data is recorded by Google alone on individuals and suddenly this seems somewhat trivial.

Where I've Captured Images in Britain and the near Continent Where I've captured images on global Scaley

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Forgetting what I’d taken

Posted on October 3, 2013 by Guthlac

I’ve just had a bit of blitz on my Facebook page of some photos from my archive.  It is really amazing how quickly one forgets the images one has stuffed away in that old shoe box called Lightroom.

Oyster Catchers - Seahouses Sunset over Park and Ride - Enderby Birds on water at Dawn - Swithland Huge Crowd of Knot - Calidris canuta and Oyster Catcher - Haemat Huge Crowd of Knot - Calidris canuta - Snettisham Red Deer - Cervus elaphus - Stag at dawn in the mist Whooper Swan - Watermead - Leicester

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A new Idea

Posted on October 3, 2013 by Guthlac

I went for a rather agreeable lunch today at my favourite National Trust property, Calke Abbey.  As I was doing this a germ of an idea for a new project was planted in my brain   ‘…How about making a 12 month study of Calke Abbey?…’.   Now this sounds like an interesting idea and one I think I may well pursue.   To start the whole process off here are some images I’ve made in and around the Calke Abbey estate.

Of course I don’t have anything like the photographic gear that I once had when creating many of these images.  However, that is an interesting challenge in itself.   Time to put my thinking cap on!

Pine Tree and Sheep Tree lined road to Calke Abbey Two Tree Sparrow - Passer montanu - on a branch - Calke The mighty oak - Calke Abbey Birds Feeding on a wall - Calke Group of Chaffinches - Calke Trees at Dawn - Calke Abbey Copse - Calke Abbey Copse and Road - Calke Daffodils - Calke Abbey Flower Pots - Calke Abbey Old Potting Shed - Calke Abbey Lamb - Calke Abbey Heron - Calke Abbey Bluebell Woods - Calke Abbey Dandelion seed heads - Calke Abbey Dicentra spectabilis - Calke Abbey Calke Abbey Path - Calke Abbey Tall Trees - Calke Abbey

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The fascination of watching a train crash

Posted on October 3, 2013 by Guthlac

We all suffer from that morbid curiosity of wanting to see a car crash or train wreak. Some of us may well protest that we find this all too distasteful but always turn our heads to see what is happening nonetheless. So it is with the continuing saga of the collapse of European club rugby as we know it and the creation of something new out of this carnage. Yesterday was perhaps the most pitiful sight so far when this year’s Heineken Cup was launched in Glasgow (I believe it is launched in each of the participating countries and yesterday it was Scotland).

Scotland is probably going to be the biggest looser in this creative destruction process. Their professional rugby has been struggling for sometime and probably has never really been able to properly support professional rugby in the same way as the other rugby nations of Europe. This means they are also in the weakest position when it comes to trying to get something out of the process with a very weak negotiating position. Yesterday they tried, without much luck, to try and get the negotiations going between England and France and the other European rugby nations. It looks like a forlorn hope.

I find the process wholly predictable and yet totally disheartening. The Heineken cup was formed 19 years ago out of a need for the newly professional rugby union to help generate income by encouraging competition between the top European clubs. It was established by the respective national rugby unions and to a greater extent controlled by them. It has been a huge success for the most part over this period but the underlying design problem has never been addressed – club v country. As the clubs have got richer, or at least better financed, then this underlying tension would only get worse. So now we have the best resourced leagues, England and France, wanting to take control away from the Unions and into their own hands and whilst this was always going to happen there was always going to be loosers. Unfortunately Scotland appears to the biggest losers.

So how will this all be resolved? Well as I wrote the other day…follow the money… and that leads to the break way or break up, which ever way you wish to look at it, of the current arrangements. It is very sad but always inevitable once people start to think about money as much as they think about the sport.

One final glimmer of hope for Scotland. I notice that all the PR shots of the Scottish teams from yesterday’s launched had BT Sports as their major shirt sponsors. With the Scottish vote on leaving the Union coming up next year then perhaps it might be in BT’s corporate interest to encourage the participation of Scottish teams in whatever comes next. So perhaps a British company will save Scottish rugby – now that would be interesting.

Simon Marchini
www.simonmarchini.co.uk

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Just exactly what didn’t this cyclist see?

Posted on October 2, 2013 by Guthlac

Was it the barrier or perhaps the flashing red lights.  We’ll never know but I guess she, I think it is a woman but I may be mistaken,  is one of the luckiest people to be alive.  

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A promo but what great cinematography

Posted on October 2, 2013 by Guthlac

This is a promo video for GoPro but disregarding that it contains some really stunning cinematography

Simon Marchini
Web: http://WWW.simonmarchini.co.uk

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