A long time ago in a world far far away… from the one I inhabit now I used to work nights on a regular basis. Many of my colleagues at the time thought that nights were the best time I was never that sure. Just recently I have been out at night and I have to say they do have a certain feel to them.
Of course they also have that frisson of danger. The unknown shadows – what hides within?
Nut life has moved on and I have moved on but every now and then I find myself out in the earlyish hours of the morning.
As we slowly crawl towards the shortest day the winter is really starting to take hold and the temperature is descending towards freezing. There was a time in the past where I didn’t mind such matters but now the cold winds seem seep into my aging joints. Being outside in the cold is no longer something I look forward to. This is also feeding into my growing antipathy towards travelling great distances to make photographs. I guess I’m going to have to adapt to trying to make interesting photographs closer to home – in this case Abbey Park, Leicester.
Of course one of the advantage of the shorter days is that I don’t have to be outside until late into the day to get the best light. By 2pm the golden hour is starting so I can be back home for a nice cuppa in the afternoon (I am British and tea is important!)
So the days pass and I still desperately strain for hope of deliverance. When will what little talent I had to create things of interest please return to me? Instead I labour for days and nothing seems to work. I no longer have the motivation to get out to capture life with my camera; My art is showing terminal signs of decay and decline and all I seem to find interest in is my historical research which is very rewarding but I all the time feel that I have missed one huge well known fact that renders everything I have discovered out moot,
I guess the only way out of this funk is to just keep working at things in the vain hope that enthusiasm will return and this unblock the drain. It is, at least, a hope.
It has been almost four years so I thought it was time to update my iPhone and these are some of the first images I have made. From the get go the camera is much better than on the 8 plus and the lens I have been really enjoying is the ultra wide with the joke focal length of 1.54 mm which is something around 16 mm I believe in full frame world. A very powerful tool to have in you pocket when the need arises.
So this will be my sixth iPhone since, I think, 2009 and it is a reasonable statement of fact that they have been the one constant camera throughout all that period as Canon cameras have been replaced by Sony cameras which in many ways tells its own story. I look forward to the next fews years in the company of the one camera I’ll always have with me.
We are living in strange times indeed. As I write this many places in continental Europe are entering lock downs, restrictions and general despondency. Meanwhile in England we are going about our business in much the same way we have for the past few months. There are a number of reasons to believe we might not have to endure many more restrictions but if one thing this pandemic has taught me is to never assume something is going to happen or not happen. We await the the next card the gods deals to us.
On a happier theme I spent yesterday recharging by visiting family in north London. London really is a different place to the rest of England or Britain. We spent time at Alexandra Place admiring the view across east London. It is startling and yet most of the the tourist London. The London that appears on travel programmes and American sitcoms, the West End is obscured from view behind the Hampstead hills.
I know this is a well worn cliche but London is a world city and is also the engine of the British economy. It is also crowded and loud and in places dangerous but I have to say I love it.
As a means of contrast we drove home through the autumnal English countryside which was every bit as exciting, in a VERY different way. Now I know there are many things wrong with this country at the moment but the drive home today also reminded me that there are so many things right about this small island that I call home.
It was a ‘proper’ frost yesterday. Nothing compared to the frosts endured by many in the north and east but certainly cold enough to make my toes go numb. That was the last day of cold for the next few days but I’m sure, even with the crazy weather we seem to be experiencing nowadays, it won’t be the last.
One never knows just when life will deal you an interesting card. This afternoon I had the privilege of spend just a few moments with our resident hedgehog. Nothing like happenchance to get the creative juice flowing.
That didn’t really work out the way I thought it would – not at all. October has shot past and I have new real idea where the month disappeared to but it has. I am not sure I have learnt anything new apart from realising that I have been a lot more brutal in my selection process in the past than I thought.
The last three images are from the end of the time when Covid was a thing. The last photograph was captured inside an asda superstore just before the first lockdown was announced. Many things have changed in the meantime and we have all learnt a great deal more about epidemiology than most of us would want to have.
We are really not through the problems associated with Covid and as I go about my business I look around and I fear that there is a great shock just awaiting. I really hope that I am wrong.
So when I started Photober at the beginning of the month I thought it would be straight forward. Just pick an image a day from my back catalogue – what could be more difficult? Well actually, the most difficult thing has been finding the time to do just that. I have been so busy for the past three weeks that I just couldn’t find the time each day.
This is stupid I know but that is just how things have been this month. My RAM has been mostly committed to other things this month.
Hold the press…no can this be true? This afternoon I went out for a walk in the park and I captured some photos. Not sure this is the start of my photographic reanimation but it did feel good.
It is also for a very long time that the sky has been full contrails. What does this mean? Not sure other than there was an awful lot of CO2 dumped into the atmosphere and that isn’t a good thing. I know how self centred of me to remind people that the airline industry is a major contributor to the increase in CO2 levels. Damn Remoaner! No wait isn’t Boris Johnson going green..well at least until the COP 26 conference is over. My god it is a confusing world we live in it was much simpler when Covid was a thing…no wait it still is as we are rapidly catching up with the USA in the number of daily cases. remember that the USA’s population is over 6 times larger than ours. Life is really really confusing.
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