Photography and skiing - Survival Tip No. 104

One of the perks of having children is sometimes you end up doing things that in the normal course of sanity one simply couldn't be fagged doing. Not that unoften, it even turns out to be fun. Take this morning for example. For a start, "morning" isn't usually a word that enters my vocabulary, beyond being that part of the day devoted to cups of coffee and bacon sandwiches. It was pouring with rain. Miserable. In the normal course I would be cowering on the settee listening to the rain hitting the gutter wondering whether it might not be better simply to get back into bed.

But instead, here I was skiing with Liska up at Hillend, getting soaked to the skin. Brilliant fun, probably quite good for my health (pneumonia aside), and not as untasty as eating a salad.

Anyway, the thing that I discovered was this: if you decide to take photos while skiing, it's probably best not to look through the viewfinder and close the other eye. And if you decide to ignore that advice and do it anyway, remember that, if you're using a wide angle lens, when you stop looking through the viewfinder and open both eyes again, you will discover that everything is much closer and that you are going much faster than the wide angle lens led you to believe.

Also, bear in mind that, if you're using ISO 100 film, the vibrations are going to mean that your pictures will be blurry anyway. Especially that last frame you took as you hit the wall covered in mattresses at the bottom of the slope.

Just a thought.

Being film, and seeing as I have some frames left, I don't yet know how blurry they are, and whether they're interesting-blurry, or just blurry-blurry. In the unlikely event it's the former, I'll post one on here. In the meantime, here is a picture I took in a train hurtling down a dark tunnel, which for some reason wasn't blurry in the right bits.

Speed London