Simon's Blog

Eastman Color…

Posted on September 22, 2020 by Guthlac

After the black and white images of yesterday I thought it would be nice to blink once more into the world of colour. Yesterday was a busy day.

Posted in autumn, Jubilee Park, Photography, Street Photography | Tagged Dawn, Jubilee Park, Liverpool, Mist, photography, River Mersey, River Soar, Sculpture, sunrise, The Beatles | Leave a comment

It has been a long day. At dawn I was out to catch the first light of probably the last day of what has passed for freedom this year. Tomorrow promises to bring more restrictions for most and sorrow for some.

So with this in mind we made a dash upto Liverpool to catch the Don McCullin exhibition. McCullin is a wonderfully forceful photographer who has recorded some of the worst things man can do to man over the last 60 years. He has also been a huge influence on the photography that I make. I didn’t really realise just how much until today as I stood by the display cabinet and saw McCullin’s work in the Sunday Times Magazine. This is the same magazine I used to consume as a kid each Sunday and so perhaps without knowing it was exposed to his work.

As for the photographs well what can be said? Nothing I guess other than I have seen many of them before and they don’t lose their power.

It has been a long day and I am tired. Tomorrow I have the welcome task of sorting through the 1000 images I have captured today….There are worse ways of spending a day.

Posted in autumn, Jubilee Park, Photography, Street Photography | Tagged autumn, Dawn, Don McCullin, Jubilee Park, Liverpool, Mist, River Soar, Tate Liverpool | 1 Comment

I blame Holbein….

Posted on September 19, 2020 by Guthlac

Over the past few weeks I have been wading through Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy and I have to say it has really coloured my world view at the moment. We, the UK ( Yes around 40% of Scots voted for Brexit as well as a similar number in Northern Ireland) are going through yet another convulsion in our confused relationship with continental Europe. We have a fickle leader who doesn’t seem to know from one day to the next what he thinks. His supporters claim that this is a cunning plan to put the nasty Europeans on the backfoot. Unfortunately, the only foot that seems to have been injured in this latest example of government thinking is our own as we seem to have shot ourselves in it.

On a wider scale this whole thing does remind me of the divorce of Catherine of Aragon from Henry 8th – a very disunited Europe coming together only to condemn the English King. Eventually some form of compromise was found although it took years. This sounds oh so familiar.

As a result of Wolf Hall I started to look once more at the sketches of the English court by Hans Holbein. One of them caught my eye, Thomas More and Family, and this was the inspiration for the drawing above. I wondered whether Jacob Rees-Mogg should have been included, even though he is such caricature in real life, as he is being frozen out of the whole Government process. Then of course he went and opened his mouth. Endless Carping! This is a Government that just keeps on putting their foot in their huge mouth! I think I’m going to stop with these foot metaphors .

So maybe it was all a cunning (or is that Cumming’s?) plan and we will get a deal of sorts with the EU, it won’t be the end but just the beginning of years of squabbling, and we may well hit the Prime Minister’s 500k testing capacity by the end of next month. But given the current incumbent of No 10’s performance who knows other than there will be yet another unforced error just around the corner. Then another…then another…then…..

Posted in Apple Pencil, Art, Brexit, Conservative Party, drawing, European Referendum, Procreate | Tagged Brexit, Catherine of Aragon, Hans Holbein, Henry 8th, Hilary Mantel, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Thomas More, Wolf hall | Leave a comment

Strange Bedfellows….

Posted on September 17, 2020 by Guthlac

Strange the way that inspiration takes you!

Posted in Apple Pencil, Art, Corvid 19, Digital Painting, drawing, Procreate | Tagged Digital Painting, Dominic Cummings, drawing, Michael Gove, portrait, Procreate, woman | Leave a comment

Silent Running….

Posted on September 15, 2020 by Guthlac

Another day another test of my new Sony A7 R3 camera body so I decided to take the electronic shutter for a test whilst hanging around the Clock Tower in Leicester this morning.

The overall result was that it wasn’t bad at all. I had the shutter set to 1/500th and a mixture of F stops between f2 and f5.6 whilst using the Sony 50mm f1.8 – the so called ‘nifty fifty’. Things seemed to work out really well providing you don’t try to pan too quickly. The big problem I did get, and I had found this out the previous weekend whilst again walking through central Leicester, was that letting the camera rest off my shoulder when it wasn’t being used meant that many of the setting set by both the wheel and function button kept setting themselves to wildly inappropriate settings. Compared to a small amount of rolling shutter this was far more serious.

The best solution to this I have found is to switch the camera off when not using it as at least that way I can guarantee the setting will remain the same. (As I shoot RAW this is an annoyance but if was only shooting JPEG – not sure why you would do that with a 42M Pixel sensor but some people might) – it could mean that many images would become unusable as opposed to needing work in post.) The time delay caused by the camera booting itself up, about 1 – 2 seconds, is less than the time I would have to waste checking that the setting are correct for what I want to do. This is really annoying but hardly a show stopper and when compared to the glorious results this sensor gives is something I can live with.

So the electronic shutter isn’t a problem for me for the way I use my camera compared to changing of settings whilst the camera sits on hip between shots is. But again I’m old enough and ugly enough to have come up with an work around. It hardly enhances the user experience and could be described as a major problem (there may be a solution if I dig deep enough in the menu system, which I have done, but haven’t found a solution to date). I like the images I have captured with the camera and, as I have mentioned more that once, they are only meant to please me – if other people like them is a very welcome bonus.

Posted in autumn, Photography | Tagged City of Leicester, Clock Tower, photography, Sony A7 R Mk 3, Street Photography | Leave a comment

A few Days in the Garden….

Posted on September 13, 2020 by Guthlac

Another period of immobility – getting old is a real pain! So nothing more to do than to pass the time of day in the garden.

Posted in autumn, Gardens, Photography | Tagged autumn, Butterfly, Flowers, garden, Honey Bee, Pollination, Sparrow Hawk | Leave a comment

‘Tis the Season…

Posted on September 13, 2020 by Guthlac

It only seems like yesterday when Brexit was the talk of the town – not sure what replaced it? Anyway, it is Brexit season again and this time it is for real (where have we heard that before?). We have blood curdling articles about how this is crazy and this is wrong. Steve Baker has once again become a thing and the European Union is threatening all sorts of craziness. I am currently listening to the Wolf Hall trilogy and I have to say much of the blood curdling language was being used then about Henry 8th’s split with Rome (Of course martyrs are not being beheaded or burnt alive at the moment so that is a significant difference!) sounds very familiar. However, the period and the book does does give some perspective to the current pointless pissing competition.

Will a deal be struck? My belief is that it will because the last thing the Johnson government needs is another mother of all ‘fuck ups’ at Dover in January next year. We are told that the plans are well advanced to deal with no deal (or is that an ‘Australian Deal’?) but given the way that this government has handled the Corvid crises and the Examination Crises it can ill afford another mess on top of a probable very bad economic picture caused by Covid. Equally, the EU can ill afford a No Deal either because of all the problems associated with Covid (I have written before about the problems facing the EU should trade be disrupted but it is worth reiterating the EU has c €100bn trade surplus and much of that goes through Dover/Calais and a reduction in this is going cause big problems for the individual EU countries/companies.) And then there is Ireland which has the potential of going very badly wrong very quickly. The Republic’s economy is built upon very dodgy tax policies as well as a very weak government at the moment which means it could collapse and usher in a Sein Fein lead government which is certainly not going to be friendly to a British government. This would be compounded should Joe Biden win the election because of his romantic connections to a mythical Ireland which would mean that he would take a very keen interest and no doubt want to ‘help’. In short there is little advantage to any of the parties to walk away with a No Deal. Of course that doesn’t mean it won’t happen.

The Wolf Hall trilogy ends with Thomas Cromwell losing his head because his European machinations. If Boris Johnson makes a mess of Brexit then he could be quickly shown the door – the Conservative Party is much more blood thirty, metaphorically speaking, than Henry 8th. When Cromwell fell the Duke of Norfolk is supposed to have said that ‘…that was for the Thetford Priory (the last resting place for the Howard family which was closed by Cromwell)…’. When they come for Boris will his replacement, perhaps a local North Yorkshire MP, say…’ and that is for Barnard Castle…’?

Posted in American Politics, Apple Pencil, Art, Brexit, Conservative Party, Corvid 19, drawing, European Referendum, Politics, Procreate, USA Presidential Election | Tagged Apple Pencil, Barnard Castle, Boris Johnson, Brexit, Calais, Dover, drawing, Duke of Norfolk, Joe Biden, No Deal Brexit, portrait, Procreate, Republic of Ireland, Sein Fein, Thetford Priory, Thomas Cromwell, Wolf hall | Leave a comment

If Only the Earth Was Flat….

Posted on September 9, 2020 by Guthlac

Over the past few weeks my YouTube feed has been inundated with videos explaining why all the scientists, science, NASA, your own eyesight are wrong. The world is flat. I am amazed at the lengths people will go to prove something that is clearly not correct to be correct. Such is life and such are people. I thought about this as I was standing on the top of Warren Hills just to the north of Coalville. To the north you can see just beyond the city of Nottingham and to the south west the hills beyond the city of Birmingham. If only the earth were flat I would have had an incredible view yesterday as I could look to the edge of the disk upon which we all live. I couldn’t and that is because the world is round. Sorry guys.

Posted in autumn, Photography | Tagged autumn, charnwood Forest, City of Birmingham, City of Nottingham, Deep Time, Flat Earth, NASA, Ratcliffe on Soar power station, Trent Valley | Leave a comment

Damp, Friendly Dog Noses…

Posted on September 5, 2020 by Guthlac

As I write this it is just about 24 hours since I received my new camera through the post. It is far far too early to give any reasoned views about the machine but first impressions are….well impressive. This morning it was up with the dawn chorus, this being early autumn, that means a more manageable 6:00am. When you venture out into my local park at that day you tend to meet early morning dog walkers and their usually very friendly dogs. Today was no exception and I really don’t mind that but you do have to make it clear to the dog that the lens of my camera is not a place for them to stick their big black damp nose!

Talking of dampness I really need to put on my waterproof boots from now on as the grass is covered in dew and my summer shoes are not, that is an understatement, very waterproof. But it was a beautiful morning and not too chilly so I didn’t mind that much.

Another thing you get at this time of the day are the canadian geese moving from their nighttime roost to their morning feeding place. Now this isn’t as impressive as the winter dawn flights of barnacle geese but is now part of the Leicestershire ecosystem and should accepted.