Sunday 27 January 2008

Individuality

Give two photographers exactly the same subject and you're sure to get two different pictures.

Improvisation

You don’t always have to look through the viewfinder (or at the screen) of your digital camera to take a good picture.

Dave's fine study of a pint of ale, which you see posted herebelow (Glass Half Full), was made using a pub table to support his heavy camera, with added value from a few beer mats pushed underneath the lens, to get the low-angle framing just right.

A trial and error approach soon yielded exactly the shot he wanted.

Saturday 26 January 2008

Glass Half Full

While Pixie and Sparkly were out and about in Worcester doing something doubtless involving handbags or lady's clothing, Peter and I took ourselves off to the 'Farrier's' in Fish Street.


There we drank, or is it quaffed, a superb real ale named Hobgoblin. My, was it a cracking pint! Rich, nutty with a mouth warming sweetness and a sizzling slice of hoppiness. Served at a perfect, just below, room temperture. Coolers? Frosted glasses? On your bikes! This was the drink for men, not your namby-pamby, ice-cold, foreign muck.

Sunday 20 January 2008

Gnomonic gnees

The expression of intense concentration about me in Dave's profile shot of me has less to do with photography (a point-and-shoot camera is a relatively simple device) and rather more with the brain-hurting thinking I was engaged in. Why, I was asking myself, would anyone put a sundial on the North-facing side of this cube, on a pedestal, in Malvern Abbey grounds?

The answer came later, in a discussion with Dave, when we talked, not only about his knees, but also about how far round “behind” the sun would actually "travel" at certain times of the year. The old adage “The sun rises in the East and sets in the West” isn’t strictly true at all points on our beautiful blue planet.


Later that day, and keeping with the shooting into the sun and flagging it off the camera theme, my young friend does something arty with the rather unusual sundial in the churchyard at Malvern Priory.

The difference between my attempts at this sort of shot and Peter's is that his knees still work whereas mine feel decidedly flaky rising from this sort of position. That's the reason I've taken to attaching my camera to a monopod and using it upside down, triggering the shutter with a cable release. It's a bit like using a metal detector.

Flagging off the lens

Shooting straight into the intensity of the sun while including that brightly burning sphere in the frame isn’t usually recommended. It’s best to employ a device to block out the sun. A tree or a signpost will usually do. In this case I rather wanted to use Dave’s unmistakeable silhouette to, as we in the lighting business say, “flag the sun off my lens”.

Friday 18 January 2008

Splish, Splash


Peter has been waiting for me to upload this image but I'm inhabiting a negativity node with regards to blogging at the moment - I get them from time to time; they blow over.

Anyway, here it is. Let play commence!

Tuesday 1 January 2008

2007 Dinner, 2008 Breakfast

The Fab Four had decided to celebrate the change of year together. On New Year’s Eve, Pixie’s renowned attention to detail and her fondness for colour co-ordination was directed to laying this inviting dinner table.

On seeing it, I realised I should have brought golden Christmas crackers, but, bathed in the warm glow from a lit corner of the room, these silver ones obligingly assumed an auric air.

The next morning dexterous Dave rustled up our call-orders, deliciously fresh from his man-sized stove, adding a surprise splash of Madeira to the pan-fried mushrooms, thereby instantly redefining the term “Full English Breakfast”.