After the last few weeks we’ve had it was nice to get away for a few hours and enjoy some great art at the ever reliable Djanogly Gallery in Nottingham. The current exhibition, Sophie Ryder: Sculpture, Drawings, Prints, is a great snapshot of her work – including 100 Mexican rabbits – you’ll have to go to understand what I’m talking about.
On the way home I couldn’t resist a couple of images of the Ratcliffe Power Station – a long time muse..
Interesting start to the New Year…
Another day another scandal…Today we have the Chairman of the Conservative Party who is fighting for his political career after he was found to have had to pay a significant fine because he failed to pay his taxes. He claims it was a ‘mistake‘ but if reports are to be believed he had to pay a multi million pound fine – some mistake. Oh and by the way when he was negotiating this settlement he was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the man responsible for collect all the taxes! You cannot make this up. He will have to go and it looks like the PM is getting ready to dump him – but not yet. Why you may also ask? Who knows but every minute he stays put he is doing more and more damage to the tattered reputation of the government and the Conservative Party.
Another fine mess coming down the pike is the is the local elections this year. This year we’re supposed to produce photo ID – stop voter fraud is the reason but many people suspect something more sinister is the real reason. Anyway, having to produce a photo ID is not widely known and you can guarantee there will be many elderly voters who will turn up and will be told they can’t vote because they don’t have photo ID. It has the potential for causing chaos ( you can picture the scene now ‘My great grandad fought the Nazi and he wasn’t allowed to vote..’ or something along those line). I suspect the Labour party will be on the lookout for such a case and boy will it make a stink when it hits the social media/ media. Who’s bright idea was this?
I don’t know if you can smell it but the wiff in the air is the carcass of the decaying Tory Government.
There was a time when I would get out and about before dawn to catch the light…There was a time! Now, whilst the spirit is willing the flesh, I’m sorry to say, is weak and the thought of leaving my nice warm bed for a drive out somewhere and then jumping through the mud and ice for that wonderful, well I think it is – your mileage may vary, photograph no longer fills me with anything other than discombobulation. Coco and slippers here I come!
Side note: This coal fired power station is supposed to be closed down by 2025…I’m not holding my breath on that!
Well the New Year saw me visiting the hospital a lot but thankfully that is behind us. However, it does help to remind oneself what is really important in your life and what is not. This blog was not high on my priority list which I’m sure you would agree.
So with things settling down it has meant I can get out an make a few images. Boy was it cold this morning – with wind chill -7 degrees C and it felt it at times. Now of course there are plenty of places colder than that right now but round here it is cold and that is all I’ve got to compare with.
I say ‘make‘ a few images well both of these have been made by me capturing them, then by the Adobe Lightroom A.I. stitching them together as Panos and finally me once again working on each image in Post Production. Is this the rise of Skynet? I doubt it, oh I hope I’m right, but in truth these are just new tools we have created for the world in which we live. How they will progress is fascinating but I doubt they will be the end of the world as we know it. No we are more than capable of doing that on our own without the help of any Artificial Intelligence.
Nothing quite like spending half an hour or so with your sketchbook just doodling to try and release the congested creative plumbing. Too gross? Maybe but it seems to work for me.
Could anyone make this up? I doubt it but here we are racing towards 2023 and we have to look back at the car crash that the British political class has become. It is very easy to blame it on Boris Johnson because, and let us have a little Christmas compassion, he was crap. Brilliant at getting the job useless when he got the job and I mean USELESS. No I think it is in no small part the fault of the Conservative Party. They claim, with some justification, to be the party of government so if this is the case then that must mean the mess we are in is very much their problem and Johnson very much their creation and creature. It must be remembered that he very nearly became Prime Minister again when ‘I Know‘ Liz Truss’s huge ego smashed into reality demonstrating what an empty vessel she was.
Is there a silver lining? Not at the moment but we can all live in hope for the new year, can’t we???
Yesterday was a getting out day and so I rode an overcrowded tram into the centre of Nottingham to visit the latest exhibition at the Nottingham Contemporary art gallery: Hollow Earth: Art, Caves & The Subterranean Imaginary with my good friend and art guru David Manley. Now we both have a very hit and miss relationship with the gallery which is usually in direct proportion to the quality of the exhibition they are putting on at the time of the visit. This one was a hit and so the gallery is in our good books – for now.
After feasting on the art it was time to feast on, well, food so we walked through the town centre to our favourite Thai eating place, Paste Thai, which was, as usual, excellent. On the way I got to try out my new lens in the main role I bought it for – street photography. Not quite Ernst Haas but then again Nottingham isn’t Manhattan.
After that it was pleasant trip home. The North East has the ‘Angel of the North‘: here in the East Midlands we have Ratcliffe Power Station and yesterday evening it was pumping out CO2 into the atmosphere like there was no tomorrow, which if we keep doing the same there won’t be! Nonetheless in the late afternoon sun it looked majestic.
I’m sure I’ve moaned about this before somewhere on this blog but I have yet again my chronic back pain has flared up. The truth is is that there is nothing medieval science can do to help me as it is combination of getting older and being a human being. I know the drill: take painkillers, keep mobile the best you can and after a day or so things will get back to what they were and this is working it is just frustrating as I appear to have found a first world solution to a very first world problem: Simple Photography.
What, you might ask, is Simple Photography? For me it means having one camera and lens that allows me to make photographs I like without compromising quality of image as well as quality of life. To put another way: I can go out with my wife and she doesn’t have to hang around whilst I fiddle with gear to capture an image. Now of course smartphones are an obvious solution and that is what I thought for a long time but as of late I just don’t think that is the case anymore. I don’t know whether it is the ever encroaching computational photography or I just find the quality of the image from my iPhone not up to scratch anymore it doesn’t work for me.
As this is a first world problem and I am a first world person I threw money at the problem. I bought a rather superb lens for my APS-C in September and this seemed to be the answer but after a while it has become clear it wasn’t. So I have just bought another lens, Sony’s 40mm f2.5, and this really seems a much better fit: great quality lens in a much smaller form factor than the APS-C lens and is the perfect focal length for my full frame camera. So yesterday I was off out at dawn in the park to give the lens a test and I have to say it is a really great small lens. However, this is where my old back comes crashing into the party!
Late yesterday I tweaked my back and with the paths covered in frost I have made the executive decision that staying inside for a day and letting my back get better is the right thing to do. Which, of course, is REALLY frustrating as I want get out and play with my new lens. I know, I know, I’m regressing to a small child and there will be other opportunities but it feels such a great fit for my needs and I just can’t make the most of it. BOOO … IT’S NOT FAIR!!!!
It was bloody cold down by the River Humber and the Humber Bridge. The light was wonderful and it was well worth the trip. I have always thought that the bridge was a fitting memorial to one of the political forces of nature, Barbara Castle, who, as transport secretary, in the 1960’s got the bridge authorised. Let’s park the possible ‘pork barrelism’ allegations at this time and just wonder at what humans can do when they put their mind to things.
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