Gosh, I am getting near the end of this task . . .

Clicking on the title gets you to a link about outdoor living; the cycling, the camping, stuff I used to do before being very busy took over . . .

My goodness me, the past six months has been a Sisyphean task (the guy pushing the large person-sized rock uphill, written about in Greek mythology).

It starts (on my photography course) when you get a little behind (the negatives don't process or print well, it rains for two weeks when you want to shoot outdoors), you cannot make a set of images which 'go together' well enough to complement each other and tell a story (which is what the brief has asked you to do).

Then personal matters intrude - you know they shouldn't, but life doesn't seem to observe etiquette in this way - you spend days sorting through complicated personal finance and getting legal advice when someone else is trying to make you liable for a HUGE amount of money they have taken, which you are supposed to ensure is safely looked after.

You work part-time on a peripatetic basis, and are always on the end of a telephone or sending e-mails, looking for the next day's work . . .

You spend weeks and months trying to organise a Photography Final Project, which you've always wanted to do and now you have a reason to carry it out - photographs of the Labour Party on the hustings just before the British General Election (later this week). None of your many letters and e-mails and phone calls are returned.

So you give up. But still needing a Final Project, you try on several old ones, and something gells.

Now, the 'American Football in London' project was NOT a piece of cake. A very steep learning curve was overcome, in terms of shooting crisp and well-composed imagery which they wanted, and which I could use for my project. That's done now.

I no longer have to go out four days a week and shoot the training and the games at football pitches in London and elsewhere. Don't get me wrong, it has been lots of fun, and just like being a professional. I still have the opportunity to shoot at future fixtures, and look forward to doing so. it is challenging to anticipate the 'decisive moment' in oppositional pitch-based team sport; pressing the shutter button just as the players collide, or the pass is thrown, or the touchdown is kicked over the bar; that is almost all you need to do.

As well as remembering to keep the shutter speed at 1/500th of a second, the aperture small enough to keep the depth of field you envisage for that shot, and the ISO low enough to give 'smooth-grained' digital prints A-2 sized or larger. You're shooting in daylight in a temperate-zone spring-time location, so every time a shadow falls on the playing field, the exposure changes too.

And, I've been run over by players sliding off the field at my feet, once at each football game. . . you have to leap fast to scoot out of the way . . . difficult to see the problem rushing towards you at very high speed, if you're following the action through a telephoto lens . . .

But I've got a week or two of sifting through 6,000 digital images to find the 'Top 50' which might be exhibition quality. And, I've got to cram scores of pages in a virgin workbook chock-fill of the ideas I've had and discarded about shooting this major piece of work.

But, I now feel this task is within my grasp. There's the printing and mounting of the chosen mages, ready for the Degree Exhibition in June. Expensive, but I am certain I'll get it there and on time.

And, before I forget, there were a couple of other pieces of college work which fell by the wayside. I'd better get them written up (today would be ideal, wouldn't it ?) and handed in. Then I can sleep the sleep of the innocent once more , don't you think ?

How are you going to vote ??

This title links to a blog about voting, candidates, etcetera. They say young people won't vote, because the process is " . . . nothing to do with me, mate."

A frightening demographic is that this (British) election on Thursday will be decided by the 'over-55's'; there's lots more of them than the 'under-25's', and they DO get out and vote.

Apparently many of us are reported as confused about which party manifesto says exactly what on various policy topics. And, we've all been bamboozled by the charisma or not of the leaders in the televised debates.

it's easy for me - I'm in one of those mainstream parties, and have been for decades.

I was chatting to a university student yesterday; he asked 'Well, why don't you vote Lib-Dem, then ?" I said I'd have to resign from my party. I can instead only hope that they get back to the policies they used to have in the good old days . . . he is un-decided, but he thinks he'll vote Lib-Dem. I said "Please vote, it does matter."

As easy as falling off a . . .

You know how it is : you're cleaning the gutters and you just want to get it done (mucky hands, wet leaves on head, you can picture it . . .) I was on a little ladder just like the one in the picture, and was just twisting 'round to get down off the top.

One second you're fine, the next you're free-falling. In my case it was only less than 2.0 metres. I Ianded on my feet. I didn't bang my head. I was winded, but that was it.

Except for the past three weeks it FEELS LIKE I landed on my arms (I didn't). It is like having had both arms twisted around past the point where they usually don't go - the fall lasted one second, and three weeks later my arms are nearly pain-free. Click on the title for an H + S advert . . .

What do you suggest I do next time ? I did get right back on the ladder, and I finished cleaning the guttering.

Geoff Holt - Quadraplegic sails Atlantic

Geoff wrote an article in The Sunday Times about his single-handed sail across the Atlantic. Feel inspired; read a similar article about him by clicking on my blog-post title.
Photo by Phil Yeomans. Post created using the iPhone. It took 300 seconds to complete the post; can you do it quicker ?

Snow, snow and a bit more to come . . .

My road at mid-morning today. It is 0 degrees Celcius, but with the 28 mph (46 kph for the Canadians) gusts from the north-east, it will feel like -5 or so. As you can see there's lots of ice. Snow is fluffy and you have trouble slipping on it. Ice is super-slippery, and even more so when it's about freezing and there's melted ice-water lying on top. I put grit on the pavement (sidewalk for the Canadians) down my side of the road, and that is great for getting up to the top of the road, where the Council has gritted the road and pavement.
I am writing this particular blog as my sister Mad (who lives in Fort St John in Canada, about ten miles from the Arctic Circle. It gets down to - 50 Celcius there in the winter, but warms up in the summer.) rang and left a message that she'd seen horrendous reports on TV, of people marooned in the countryside, pregnant mums unable to get out of the house to the maternity ward, etcetera. She was ringing to find out if we were coping.
Mad, we are fine. The central heating is getting a good workout, and our cat Pixie hasn't been out in the garden for a few weeks now. There's lots of grub in the shops, and anytime I want a bottle of whiskey, it's just next door. I am waiting for a thaw, as I'd like to get back on my bicycle. One downside is that there's no supply work for me as a teacher, because 1,000 secondary schools in London are shut. Something about the playgrounds being too slippery.
it is snowing gently outside my window as I write this blog. Unusually for central London, it is staying when it hits the ground. We are due for a BIG fall later today (click on my post title for the official Met Weather forecast for my area); as we have no idea how to control a motor vehicle in the snow over here, it is safest if they keep all the cars off the road until the snow is cleared, but no-one seems to care.
The man on the radio said it was warmer in Antarctica than in London yesterday. By the way, Happy Birthday for tomorrow Mad. Will you be doing a spot of ice-fishing through the river ice ?





















Postscript : six of us in my road (there's ninety front doors here) got out and scraped the compressed snow (turns into slick ice, doesn't it !) from the pavement in front of our shop or house. We got a little carried away, and the next thing you know, half the pavement down the north side is cleared (our little road is 300 m long, each house-front is five metres wide). The guys who go to the gym bashed away at the ice on the end of the road, where the cars are sliding about.

Tip - use a six kg. hammer with a one metre long handle; drop it from a height of 300 mm (watch out for your toes). This makes a shock wave which disrupts the molecules, and then you can sweep the ice bits out of the way. Cheaper than grit and salt, as well. There's sixty thousand Arsenal football fans in Finsbury Park this afternoon, and I'm sure those coming down our road will appreciate our efforts.

ONE Tetra-byte back-up . . . .

For the past three months my Macbook Pro has been without a full back-up. Silly really, but no-one told me what to do when both the hard disk drive and the back-up drive are 98 % full. I went to the mecca at the Apple Store on Regent Street yesterday, and they said 'Normally you delete to make space.'

Very sensible, but I've been sticking files on the computer from five years ago, as and when I needed old photos, old spreadsheets, and so on. My buddy Ben had said 'Don't just buy another Time Capsule, add an external hard disk drive to it, and save money !'. The Apple Geniuses agreed, and so I got a Lacie 1 Tb drive, which has a USB 2.0 connection (my existing Time Capsule only has RJ45 and USB 2.0, they forgot to put Firewire on it).
Yesterday I had 316 Gb used on my MacBook. This morning I've dumped 80 Gb so far, all onto the new back-up. Wow, it is like losing weight . . .click on the post title to whizz to an online article all about Time Machine . . . if you don't have a Mac, this is a REALLY good reason to change over from a PC . . . another reason is that they're a lot more fun to use and to look at. Yes, I know, PC's are catching up . . .

No heating in a snowstorm . . .

The central heating went off last night. We didn't notice for an hour or two. It was -2 Celcius overnight and we're helping to look after an eighty-seven year old. British Gas won't come out to have a look until a daytime slot next day, as we aren"t a priority (we have an alternative method of heating, an ancient electric bar fire). It's been like camping inside the house, every possible blanket piled up on the pensioner, and waking up every half hour to check the temperature. The nice young man at the call-centre last night said they were working 'flat out'. I decided it would be a good time to re-read 'The Spy who came in from the Cold'. Wish us luck. Ecerything's just about warm enough at the moment (06.00 h) but no heating or hot water until the engineer gets here through the ice and snow.
Cluck on the title to go to an article about surviving a power-out. Post-script :- the service-man said that a small piece of ice fell into the boiler flue; this trggered the 'flame-failure device' to switch off the boiler, and that was that.

Photographer stopped for snapping . . .

After I received my letter from the Secretary of State at the Home Office in November 2009, stating in part, in relation to section 40 of the Terrorism Act 2000
" . . . . Important: section 43 does not prohibit the taking of photographs, film or digital images in a public place and members of the public and the press should not be prevented from doing so in exercise of the powers conferred by section 43."
I concluded that police would not now be preventing me from taking photos in a public place.

This all arose because in September I had been taking shots, from the pavement outside North Greenwich Bus station. of the Docklands City skyline and the O2 building nearby. Two O2 security guards were aggressive (see my earlier post), threatened to personally confiscate my cameras, and called the police. The police, when I also rang them on 999, said that I had to desist immediately. I pointed out that I was in a public place, and would they please come and see. No-one came, and I was able to walk away, although the guards said they were having me arrested for 'being a terrorist' and for 'taking photos'.

I nearly fell off my chair to read in the Grauniad this morning that Paul Lewis (a well-known and award-winning photo-journalist), was closely questioned by a rather large number of City of London police on Thursday, for taking shots which hundreds of people shoot daily, of the Gherkin.

I and a colleague on the HNC course were told, only two weeks ago, whilst she wanted to film in St Pancras mainline railway station in London, that the British Transport police had just the day before been briefed to allow most filming, and to be less aggressive when they approach photographers. This is what I expected to read about in the papers, NOT that a very well-known journalist has been treated like a criminal. Click on the title to read the depressing article in the Guardian.

Reality intruded last week for us, as we were told brusquely by a security guard at Paddington mainline railway station that we were forbidden from filming without a permit. So, we went and got one each. And I noted that every ten minutes someone in uniform passed by. Gosh, we were only waiting for the next arrival at Platform One.

Remember, there are fifty or more security high-resolution CCTV cameras covering most parts of this station. Every move we made has now been stored on film, ready to be reviewed at any moment for at least the next year. If YOU use a station, you're on film now for a while, too.

There is an urban tale which states that if you walk from one end of Oxford Street to the other, you have been recorded on 196 CCTV cameras. Useful, if you drop your keys . . . What do you think ? You could also Google 'I'm a Photographer not a Terrorist', or click on my post title, which is a link to the Paul Lewis article . . .

Left Brain versus Right Brain . . .

It all started at college. The Business Studies lecturer explained 'Artist's Statements' as writing that 'all artists (including photographers) use when they are writing up a blurb to say who they are and what they do' when they are going to be in an exhibition, publish a book, etcetera. I think it's meant to 'contextualise the artist and their work", and perhaps differentiate them from the rest of the pack.
I am worried, because the ones we read in class that day, and the stuff I read at exhibitions, and in books, are so 'over-written'. Unnecessary phrases and clauses, entire paragraphs appear to be included just to 'add on' descriptions of phenonmena which the artist wants you to think about, as guiding principles for the creation of their work before you.

Bryan Appleyard (click on the post title) describes Iain McGilchrist's 30-year search to find out more about 'Right brain-Left brain' understanding of the world. Read more in the review by Appleyard. The article describes the 'left brain' as the 'rule-following and ordering' side, and the 'right brain' helps us understand 'contextualising' understanding, meaning' etcetera.

Basically, McGilchrist's very deep book describes scientifically how each person's brain looks at information and then reports the analysis back to our conscious level (where we 'think').
My homework is to compose an 'Artist Statement' for myself. I'm not sure where to start, but I guess with he facts, then tack on a few concepts . . . . does this mean I start with plain left-side data, and then move on to embellish the raw facts using right-side context ?

MA Photography - what is it ?

I went to an Open Evening to find out about the MA. They've got several at University of Westminster, one in Photography and another in Photojournalism.
One REALLY important question I asked was "Do you need a first degree to read for an MA?" "Nope, you just need commitment and the ability to do 'high-level' research." So, that's a 'yes' for anyone on my current HNC course. What do you do on an MA Photography ? It seems it's not a regular under-grad route. there are no projects, you set your own work. It lasts one year FT, or several years PT.
What equipment can you borrow/ use ? Everything is at least professional quality. The tour was like going around a television studio, with say ten studios. the ones I saw had lighting I've only seen in books. TEN colour printing machines, three or four digital printing suites (Mac G5's everywhere), the monitors are calibrated EVERY WEEK.
Vacuum-pressing machines for photo-mounting onto aluminium, 24/7 library, thousands of DVD's to borrow as there's media studies at the Harrow campus. Apparently the canteen food is only 'average'. They have loads of dorms, but I guess anyone doing an MA already lives in London.
I might look into it a bit more. But, one of the other candidates (Hello, Jocelyn) was telling me about a similar course on offer at LCC, so I might check that one out. As always, click on the post title to to go to the Uni write-up on this course.