I’ve finally got around to making my yearbooks for 2022 (as I wrote that there was a huge crack of thunder overhead – ominous?) and I have to say I am finding the whole process a lot more enjoyable than normal. Pride comes before a fall…lets hope not.
So the summer is here and boy have we had some glorious sunny days. Problem is the breeze has been blowing in straight from the arctic it has been really cold, by summer standards, at the same time. I’m still wearing a sleeveless fleece! Still this hasn’t stopped the garden from offering up some wonderful photo opportunities. Kodak moments me thinks!
My initial thoughts…
I watched this evening’s presentation by Apple of Vision Pro their latest wearable technology and marvelled at what would appear to be an incredible feat of engineering. However, I cannot say I understand the purpose of such a machine. I know it is a first attempt at trying to create a whole new category of machine but from what I saw at the presentation I fear no matter how many fine words are spoken in well polished presentations it can’t get away from the following facts:
1, The Price. “….Starts from $3300…” I am sure in future this number will be reduced as volumes increase (hopefully for Apple) but I doubt by that much. If this is the case then it will be dead in the water as there will be so few people willing or able to fork out such money. If this is the case then it will be play thing of the rich which won’t help sell Disney + subscriptions – Bob Iger made an appearance plugging how the service will be really great on the headset;
2, Battery Life. It was said that the battery pack will last for around 2 hours. After that it will have to be plugged into the mains. If this is correct you will have to have a supply of batteries at hand to use for more than 2 hours, again adding to the cost, or you are going to have to be connected to an extension cable and if so how will this work out in an office situation for example?;
3, Glasses. Anyone who has spent time at an opticians know just how long it takes to get the prescription just right by a professionally trained person. The impression I got from the presentation was the Zeiss lenses, which you will no doubt have to buy extra hence the ‘from‘ qualifier, will be fitted by a salesperson at an Apple store. I am sure that the Zeiss lenses are of the highest quality and the staff’s endeavours will be the best they can be but how much more will you have to pay and just how good will the final result be?;
4, Societal. Watching the presentation of just what a wonderful new world was being heralded in my mind kept drifting to the recent film Ready Player One. In the film the people want to spend all their time online instead of living in the real world. I know this is a far off vision but in one aspect the new product has started to dehumanise the user – the horrific digitally projected eyes of the person using the Vision Pro to show that they are looking at you on the screen of the device. We already have enough problems in society at the moment of without human eye contact being replaced by a pair of ghost eyes.
Perhaps the only positive thing I took away from the presentation was that it would be fantastic way to watch a movie unless of course you want to watch with someone else then they would have to have a set of Vision Pro’s as well. Oh and I can’t see these being very useful on a flight either with only 2 hours battery life.
I am sure there will be any number of people on social media right now telling you that this is the future and they are just as excited as Tim Cook about what the future holds but I am not one of them. This has all the appearance of a product struggling to find a role in world and no amount of Apple’s reality distortion field is going to hide the fact this has more in common with the 3D TV than iPhone. Just ask Meta.
Only history will prove which way this goes but things will have to change significantly before I will see this as an answer to a question no one is asking.
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So why do you need a lot of equipment to make photographs? Afterall a smartphone can deliver incredible images given the opportunity. I think the answer to this can be summed up in one word ‘quality‘. This is a really subjective word especially in a world dominated by image consumption on line rather than as a print but it still is the only real way answer the question.
Assuming that the image is good then if it has been produced by a large sensor and good quality lenses it will provide the photographer with so much more to work with in terms of bit depth, pixel quality and tolerance to help make a good image great. The equipment will also allow the photographer to pursue the image in ways that a smartphone simply cannot. This is not to say the smartphone doesn’t have a place, it certainly does and I have long been an advocate for the use of smartphones. But in an art form that relies more than anything else on quality of the image there is no way that a smartphone can out trump physics.
I captured all the images here using a variety of lenses ranging from a super wide 18mm to a long telephoto lens of 600 mm and this freedom cannot be found using a smartphone. Now it can be argued that you don’t need such a wide range of lenses to make excellent images and this is true. But the more you are restricted by the equipment you have available to you then greater the chance that you will not be able to fulfil your creative vision.
The one thing that any amount of equipment cannot do is provide a photographer with the eye for an image. This, to a degree, can be trained and developed over time. However, without it any images created will lack that certain something. Do I have it ‘the eye‘? I think so but you are more than welcome to disagree and that is fine. I only ever make photographs for myself and so if I am happy then that is all that matters.
Footnote:
All the images here were captured in the last two weeks in a variety of locations.
It has been a busy few weeks and I have found that I have let a number of things, this blog included, slide. Well I am trying to play catch up and this is the first (not sure of how many).
Yesterday my friend asked me an interesting question as we were standing outside a camera shop in a city centre street, an almost unheard of thing these days, “Why do you need any of this equipment anymore?” This got me thinking and these three photos illustrate his view up to a point. They were all captured using a my iPhone and were all taken with a specific aim in mind: Capture the moment that life presents to you.
Are they any good? I have no real idea. I like them, the only criteria I’m interested in. Will other people I have no idea and to be honest that doesn’t really concern me. Would they have been more considered if I had captured them with my Sony? Yes of course they would have been because that is a direct effect of using a camera with far more control compared to a smartphone.
Does this answer the question posed? It probably is as compete an answer as I gave yesterday. At least I’m consistent (?). Any way watch this space as I try and catch up with the work I’ve produced over the past few weeks but please don’t expect and ‘On photography” analysis of the art or craft of photography.
Having had a few days to think about the result of the local elections I think the following two images will send a cold shiver through the hearts of any Tory supporter in Leicestershire and Rutland – and beyond.
The final Tory hold out, Blaby, only stayed Tory by a few votes so little comfort there. It is even worse when you look at the breakdown of the votes for the new, non city of Leicester, constituencies. Here there is a good chance that NW Leicestershire (1) and Loughborough (2) could go to Labour. For the Liberal Democrats they have a really good chance of picking up Harborough (5) and may be Bosworth (7).
If this does happen it will mean that Leicestershire and Rutland will move from very solid Tory shires to a real mix. Now this would be a truly momentous change. There is a long time, actually perhaps not that long, between now and the General Election but if the local elections do prove to be a guide then as a philosopher might have said
The Tories are Fucked.
We’ll See.
I don’t know why I felt the need to make a Donald Trump caricature as the Joker other than deep down it seemed to make sense. Since his rise to political power Donald Trump has acted in a way that is little more than caricature so I guess the questions is ‘why not?’
I tried to do a similar thing with Joe Biden and I couldn’t make it work. Now this may be due to a lack of artistic ability, which I am willing to accept, but I think it is because Joe Biden is just bland in comparison to his predecessor. Perhaps the line drawing might be more fitting.
The morning after the night before and we still don’t have anything like the full picture of what has happened in the local elections yesterday with one exception: Rishi Sunak’s hold on the Conservative party this morning is a lot weaker than it was yesterday. The whole purpose of Sunak for the Conservative party was to be some sort of purgative – to flush away the bad tastes and memories of 2022 and for a while it seemed to have been working. The Windsor agreement was undoubtedly Sunak’s highpoint to date but as I write this at lunch time on the 5th May that does seem an awful long time ago. If things do go as badly as they seem to going last night then expect the Conservative party to enter a period of great unrest and Sunak’s hold on power will wilt away in the summer sun.
On a totally unconnected subject the Conservative Democratic Organisation CDO which is definitely NOT the Tory Momentum are to hold their first conference shortly. The key organiser of this group is Priti Patel. (Another key organiser of the CDO , David Campbell Bannerman, has just claimed that “…I think the way that we got rid of Boris, I’ve spoken to quite a few people who regret that on the doorstep..We want to get back to more traditional conservative policies.“) Now it would be churlish of me to suggest that the main policy this Organisation within the Conservative Party would appear to be the return to power of Boris Johnson but Campbell Bannerman’s comments might one to believe that might be the case.
A few days later the definitely independent National Conservatism group are holding their “NatCon” meeting in London on the 15th May when one of the keynote speakers will be Jacob Rees-Mogg. In short by the end of May there could be a head of stream building to topple Rishi Sunak.
Will anything come of any of this? Well perhaps not but if I was Rishi I would start look over his back as there is just the chance that the part he leads might be collapsing around him the country could be about to experience another Tory horror show.
Editor’s Note: This is all pure speculation on my part with no insider information at all. I just don’t want to live through another 12/18 months of the same nonsense we had last year. I fear that we might be about to see history repeating itself! Certainly the parts (?) are starting to be assembled.
YouTube, as I’m sure you’re all aware, is full of crap. Perhaps not as much as say Twitter but nonetheless you enter the world of YouTube holding your nose. Fortunately as you get used to the stench you start to notice one or two gems floating around and you grab hold of them. These gems lead to other gems and so you build up your own curated patch of YouTube. A patch that other people would consider crap but you don’t. No this is a safe place that reflects what you are interested in; where interesting videos appear as suggestions that you add to your little world and everything is just a little better.
This is how I came to be watching Produce like a Pro‘s documentary about Jeff Wayne’s The World of the Worlds. Now in the past these sort of documentaries were made by the BBC and were available on the iPlayer but I guess that ship has sailed. Fortunately (and I guess this is what the detractors of the BBC would say) there are people who willingly take up the slack and produce interesting documentaries. Perhaps the most interesting fact I learnt from the video was that the hit single Forever Autumn started out as a jingle for a Lego commercial. Strange how things work out.
So what, you might ask, has this got to do with the Rhythm and Geometry exhibition at the Djanogly Gallery, Nottingham? Good question but I’m afraid the answer is somewhat mundane. Since watching the documentary I have been relistening to Wayne’s magnum opus in full, something I first did back in 1978 when it first came out but haven’t done in a long long time, and I realise just how good it was. Still not explained about the connection I hear you few readers saying. Well the simple truth is I have been listening to the music whilst making the images in post. There happy? I doubt it but what can I say?
So if you are in the area then take a look at the exhibition. It is, as usual, very good and informative. Which, I guess, is all you can expect from an exhibition.
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