Another image taken for Suspension
Night portraits
Taking pictures just for myself, getting up in the morning, and The Wreck of the Hesperus
Sylwia might have the right to feel a little insulted by the wreck bit, but I mean the ship, not her. This morning we did something that we haven't done for a long time - got up horribly early, and set out on a train ride to a particular place to take a particular photo. I had seen this place some time ago, and had meant to visit it for ages. Without actually being there I couldn't be sure it would be interesting, and it seemed a long way to go on the off chance, and it never seemed convenient. Last night I decided I had made enough excuses, and since we had to go to Glasgow to meet a client anyway, we could get up earlier (a word not usually in my vocabularly) and take my picture first. It's so refreshing to set off to take a picture, just for myself, with no ulterior motive (eg. money) in view! Sylwia not only served as the core (maybe I should say: corr!) of the picture, but also brought me the vital first cup of tea in the wee hours of the morning that got me out of bed. I almost never take any portraits of Sylwia - I don't know why, I certainly should. Sometimes it's hardest of all to take pictures of the people who are closest to you. This was as good an occasion as any to make up for lost time. So as soon as I had taken the picture without her that I wanted, this was time to take a portrait or two. Or three or four.
There's something about being a photographer that makes you blind, and of course it was much more important and fun to take pictures of Sylwia than some mouldy old ship. But both pictures needed to be taken.
I still have to develop the films from the Mamiya, it'll be interesting to see how they compare, but here is a preview of some of the pictures taken on the Nikon. We were there for an hour, before we had to dash for a lunch meeting with clients in Glasgow.
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.
Jeremy the Animator and Other Curiosities
Jeremy
Jeremy the Animator:
Heather the Historian:
Heather
Dea the Violinist
Once the flag waving is over
Royal wedding
Minsk Part I
A bomb went off on the Minsk metro the day before yesterday. Politics in Belarus can best be described as murky. The country has not historically had much luck. A third of the population died in WWII, Minsk, like everywhere else in the area, was flattened, then Chernobyl rendered much of its agricultural land unusable. The architects who rebuilt Minsk after the total destruction of the war must have asked themselves "what does Belarus have plenty of?" and the answer was clearly: space.
The scale of Minsk's buildings is simply mind-boggling. These buildings may seem a bit rabbit hutch-like to outsiders, but the people who live in these buildings, at least on the fourth or fifth floor upwards, have the most extraordinary views.
The result? Minsk is a city of people in flats in spectacularly huge but slightly grim buildings with breathtaking views of spectacularly huge but slightly grim buildings full of other people with spectacular views. Everyone must spend a lot of time staring back and forth at each other across the void.
A very wise dog legging it in Bratislava
This dog wasn't born yesterday
Summery weather here at last
To make it feel even better, an echo of Edinburgh's winter
New Year Carnage
This year we actually managed to climb Carlton Hill for the fireworks, thanks to James and Michelle urging us up the hill we arrived with nearly a minute to spare. Walking home back through the city was a uniquely Hogmanay experience:
Scotberia, or Scotjorca?
It is hard to believe these are the same country. 1) Sylwia being teletransported in a snow drift in central Edinburgh a couple of days ago:
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2) And the chilly North - St. Andrews, four months earlier:
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Back in Bratislava
I will always associate November in Bratislava with romance. Sylwia and I originally met at Bratislava Photo Month some 8 or 9 years ago. So of course it was time to go and revisit old haunts, and what better way than to go to the portfolio review event at Photo Month! So that's what we did. This time, we kept bumping into one of our heroes, Martin Parr, first of all in a cafe, then in the street, then in our hotel (of course, it turned out he was staying there). Of course, he doesn't know us from Adam, but he must have thought that we were stalking him.
And I had the most extraordinary morale boost, when I was awarded third prize in the portfolio review event!
Suitably encouraged, we went for a stroll over the Novy Most and into Petrzalka district, which I saw on the horizon years ago and have always wanted to visit. It is a monstruous monument to socialist architecture. Vaclav Havel, who became the Czech President after the end of communism, said of Petrzalka:
"I saw the industrial complex of the Slovnaft chemical factory and the giant Petrzalka housing estate right behind it. The view was enough to make me realize that for decades our statesmen and political leaders did not look or did not want to look out of the windows of their airplanes."
So of course I took some pictures. Which I haven't had a chance to prepare, but here are some rough contact scans from my flatbed.
Ray's a laugh
Ray_001
A portrait of our friend Ray. Despite being upside down, he's not from Australia, he's from El Salvador:-
A carniverous sweet kiosk in Warsaw
Warsaw 00597
Escape from it all (not)
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Another image from my Coasting series
Levitating Joe
We paid another visit to Portobello beach to take some portraits with Joe Colligan - Joe took some photos of Sylwia and me, and we took some portraits of him. Because of a mix-up with meeting times/places we met up there a bit late, but still had time for a stroll and to take some pictures. There's something wonderfully therapeutic about wandering around the seashore taking pictures.
More Peterburgers
The week I spent there with EveryChild gave me the opportunity to visit a number of families with a range of problems. I take my hat off to this lady, who was bringing up her three hyperactive sons single-handedly. They had suffered from serious health problems caused by an allergy, but were beginning to recover with some social support and once the source of the allergy was idenitified. The family was incredibly active, with boxes full of interesting items - a cat's skull, items of natural history collected in the countryside, collections of scientific interest. Music was a key part of their life. The mother deserved a medal for keeping the boys occupied. The eldest son will soon be starting to study art at Peterburg's world-renowned Hermitage.
Another family, another boy. He was very happy to pose with his toys - and the cat wanted some of the action too:
In Petersburg, like everywhere else the world over, family relations can be difficult sometimes:
I visited a hostel where children are able to stay whil their family are having problems - for example, while parents are in hospital and unable to care for the children. But some were there simply because they were able to get on with their parents.
A couple of the childrens' homes had been recently renovated.
And some homes hadn't seen renovation for a while.
This had nothing to do with the families I visited, except that it was near their building. But I liked this building. The legend on the side reads "Let's preserve the natural environment":-
Propiska in St Petersburg
I recently visited St. Petersburg, where I was working with EveryChild charity, taking pictures of St Peterburg families who have problems. EveryChild are doing some really fantastic work there, but it's a huge job. But what struck me most was how many social problems stem from the identity card and registration system (which used to be know as the 'propiska'). The Russian government use it as a way of controlling the population by stopping economic migrants moving to St Petersburg or Moscow where much of the big money is to be made. What it means is that there are two classes of society - those that have a Petersburg propiska, and those that don't. The latter are illegal immigrants in their own country, with no rights to social welfare, education, medical care or a job.
So many of Russia's problems stem from this old Soviet system of keeping control of the population by requiring registration and an internal passport - an identity card.
