Rodding my creative plumbing…

Posted on December 28, 2022 by Guthlac

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.

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The year of THREE Prime Ministers….

Posted on December 26, 2022 by Guthlac

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???

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Christmas Time in Nottingham….

Posted on December 16, 2022 by Guthlac

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.

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Backache…

Posted on December 10, 2022 by Guthlac

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!!!!

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Barbara’s Bridge…

Posted on December 10, 2022 by Guthlac

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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Cold Feet, Widgeon and Green Woodpeckers….

Posted on December 7, 2022 by Guthlac

It was the first dawn of the cold spell that is heading our way for the next few days and it was just me, a couple of friendly dogs, a Green Woodpecker and a few Wigeon. The wigeon are easy to spot on the local pond but the woodpecker far less so. Nonetheless both make their presents felt as they filled the air with their calls.

As for the cold toes well they quickly warm up again when I get home and any discomfort it was worth it for glorious frost dawn. It should be colder over the next few days so my toes have been warned!

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Creative Drought…

Posted on December 5, 2022 by Guthlac

Christmas is coming and with it comes the end of the year. All very normal, all very festive but, and this is a very elephant size butt, I now have to start the process of creating my yearbooks and 2022 has proved to be a creative drought. Compared to 2021, which was a bumper year for content creation, I have very little work to fill my art yearbook. Now this is a problem of my own making and compared to all the other problems in this crazy world not worth even a nanosecond of consideration. However, that is not the only world I inhabit, my goodness this is getting very metaphysical, but in my world it is a big thing.

I can only hope something of a creative tsunami will metaphorically hit me over the next few days to help alleviate this bleak vista.

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Nightowl…

Posted on December 2, 2022 by Guthlac

Here we go again…a few days of respite and I am again feeling ‘under the weather’. Long Covid or something else? I don’t know but the one thing it has meant is, for various reasons, I am out walking the mean streets early in the morning.

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It’s wet but not cold…

Posted on November 19, 2022 by Guthlac

Only a few weeks ago this pond was bone dry… now it’s not

Such is the crazy world we now live in.

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What a SHITTY autumn this is turning out to be…

Posted on November 11, 2022 by Guthlac

So October was all about COVID: catching it, enduring it and recovering from it. November has now disabused me of any notion that I am finished with COVID. Instead I have been suffering from fatigue. I caught what was probably a cold and instead of taking a couple of days to clear has now taken the best part of two weeks and I still don’t feel right. The last time I actually captured a photograph in anger was back on the 24th October. I now have to plan my day around the fact that should I do some form of exercise, say go for a short walk, I will probably feel not fir for much afterwards. It is getting better but it is so frustrating.

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