Yawn, A Product Shot

Taken with Canon 5D

I have been aware that my posts are steadily increasing in length, and I want to address that. Part of my reason in writing these posts is to understand the concepts I am discussing myself, and quite often writing them down tunes ideas that I have and provides me with a better understanding of how I view things. The downside is that through this written exploration there are often many avenues that I need to explore to conclude. This can end up looking like waffle too drawn out, so I shall instead cut out all the shit edit more carefully after the facts and conclusions are closer to being arrived at. Promise.

One of the other functions of this blog was to post the photos that I am taking of the moment. So the photo shown here is what I have been shooting recently, sadly that means it is a rather dull product shot, but that is what I have been shooting.

Now that I have posted my own shot, I am satisfied that the balance of my shots.vs.others has been kept, so I can now do what I wanted to do but felt guilty for not posting my own photo for a long time and get on with posting part two of “Photo Of The Week, By Other People”.

Photo Of The Week, By Other People #1

Photograph by Paul Bishop. Reproduced here for editorial Purposes

The human psyche is a very strange thing when it comes to likes, dislikes, tastes for and objections against. Our preferences for certain things are a mixture of traits we are born with, together with experiences we have had, and as such they are generally outside of our conscious control giving us little idea why exactly it is we prefer this thing over that thing. If we stop to think about it logically (which we really don’t very often) we can rarely link any objective and logical reason why we like something, it just is that way. The interesting point in this is that we then believe it to be illogical if someone else does not share our taste for something, and the illogical does not sit comfortably in the human world of categorisation; it doesn’t fit neatly so there must be something wrong. This usually leads us to challenge the illogic.

To take an example, I really do not like apricots and although the simple statement, “No thank you, I don’t really like apricots.” should be enough to convey to someone offering apricots that I don’t enjoy eating them and I don’t want to eat any now, it rarely seems to finalise the conversation. The person offering will, on frequent occasions, find this illogical; they like apricots for no good reason so how can it be that another person does not like apricots for no good reason? This will result in a human knee-jerk reaction of them challenging you, “They’re lovely, just try a piece, you might really like it.” The issue here is not so much that you don’t like apricots, but that it seems illogical to not like apricots. Luckily this does not develop into a brawl whereby the challenger attempts to stuff apricots down your throat because the challenger then falls back on prior experience to provide some logic. The experience is that, although it is not in itself logical, some people just don’t like the same things as you and this knowledge provides a logical enough explanation to back down. To illustrate this point, have a think about younger children; who are yet to learn this knowledge. Children can treat with absolute horror another child (or adult for that matter) who does not share an instinctive or sub-consciously learned taste with them. Their incredulous reaction to this can last for long periods of time, and they will usually find it necessary to communicate this to others, and to treat the victim as if from another planet.

To put some context in all of that, I am going to write a little about a minor debate I had with a friend of mine a few days ago. The origin of the debate was a Google group thread on the photography of Rineke Dijkstra. The thread itself was not all that interesting (surprise), and contained the usual assortment of those that hated Dijkstra’s work and those that thought it was inspired, none of them bothered to really discuss why they had such opinions; and a number quoted some other peoples descriptions of the work. The fact that there were opposing views comes as no surprise because, as I discussed at the start of this essay, each person has their own opinions. What was quite thought provoking, or more - added weight to an existing notion I had, was that my friend thought that Dijkstra’s work was “bland”. The thing here is that I think it is important to separate the photograph from the photographed, is it the photograph that is bland or the subject of the photograph? Maybe I should set a reference of what bland means to me, and that is something which is lacking flavour, character or interest. In the case of Dijkstra, I think it would be hard to argue that her photographs are bland as they certainly have flavour; large sections of her work show a style which is instantly recognisable; and of course the style is a characteristic of her work. The fact that her photographs generate discussion, such as that particular thread, proves that her work generates interest. So what about the subjects? Probably her best known images are photographs of people taken on beaches, with strong front fill-lighting. Again, I don’t think any person is completely lacking character, and if anything these photos seem to show more insight to the subject’s character than a cheesy smiling portrait, which ultimately make everyone look the same. I don’t think anyone is fooled into believing that people spend their whole lives smiling, therefore cheesy smiling portraits are not particularly portraying an accurate image.

I really don’t want to give the idea that I am finding fault with stating that the images are bland – as I fully understand what my friend was trying to say to me. For what it is worth, Dijkstra’s photographs don’t do a great deal for me either, but describing them as bland doesn’t seem to fit well – and that interests me. It interests me on the level of thinking how it is best to describe photographs. One criticism I do have of many people viewing photographs is that they do not spend long enough looking at them before making their final judgement. As with so much of contemporary life we are looking for instant gratification, and are pretty impatient if it is not immediately forthcoming. I described in an earlier essay how I have become bored with typical “pretty” photographs. I think it is that immediate prettiness that so many people look for in photographs, and if it is not there they quickly move on. This further boils down to what purpose photographs serve to different people. If prettiness is what is required, what purpose does that serve? Is it a form of escapism, to view images of places or situations you would rather be in (this is the basis of nearly all advertising photographs), and hence the photographs that are too close to general actuality don’t server that purpose and are rejected? This might be the case but for whatever reason I find it unfortunate that a very large percentage of great photography is not given the time needed as it does not deal with the pretty.

There is another criticism I have of threads such as these, and this is that they are quite often based from images displayed through the internet. In the case of this Dijkstra thread this is particularly acute, as most of the images I found from Dijkstra on the net are very small, in fact only really categorised as large thumbnails. Now I am not saying that to appreciate every photograph you need to see large prints, but they do need to be of a size where you can get absorbed into the image, and really start to feel it. The necessary size of the print varies from image to image, some only work well if printed large, some work better a smaller size, but I would say there isn’t any photograph taken that doesn’t need to be viewed at least 12x8”. How one can draw conclusions on portraits where the expression on the face is not even visible is beyond me.

So what am I comfortable with, as a means of describing images such as Dijkstra’s? Well as I have already said, they are not pretty. I think that is fair. A word commonly used in photography criticism is “banal”, which although quite similar to “bland” in daily usage has some important differences when it comes to discussing the subject of photographs. By “banal” I mean something which is dull and unoriginal. Note that I am talking in this case of the photograph’s subject and not the photograph in its own right. In fact most of the photographs I am drawn to are of banal subjects. At the risk of edging into a discussion over “What is Art?”, which is a question without an answer, as it is different things to different people, as different times of the day; I think it is accurate to say that art, and particularly realism of which photography is a part (generally), can be made from bringing a focus or meaning to something which it does not, or is not seen to, have in every day life. These types of subjects are quite often banal and the more banal they are the more impact they have when put in a new perspective by juxtaposition or other creative intent. There is of course room in there to have banal photographs of banal subjects, and to draw a closure on my feelings over Dijkstra’s work, for me they are banal photographs of banal subjects. I find them unoriginal photographs as they seem to close to the work of Diane Arbus, but do not generate the same feelings or interest. They also, for my tastes, do not display the technical ability of Arbus.

All of which brings me to the photograph show at the top of the page. From an aesthetic and emotional perspective I enjoy this photograph for the tonal range, and the graphic nature. Although the photograph contains a lot of dirt and grime, the execution of the image is very clean. This is something that appeals to me and works hand in hand with the graphic lines; noting the majority of my own photographs are very graphic in nature. The lighting is superb, with the large area of deep shadow reduced to black and the touch of light on the wall behind giving the photograph depth and separating the vacuum cleaner from the rest of the image. You will notice that was the first time I mentioned the obvious subject, the vacuum cleaner. It is a banal subject, but by the way it has been photographed here it has been taken out of its usual context. There is also a touch of irony going on, a machine which sole purpose is to clean is found here in anything but a clean environment and itself covered in dirt. The cleaner also conjures up memories of a time when vacuum cleaners looked this way. A fairly obvious statement, but then think how differently they look now.

On a technical level I also appreciate this photograph. The exposure is absolute perfection, this is exactly the sort of light you would get in such a location, and immediately makes me sense the damp smell of the place. The depth of field has been considered to ensure that the background wall that adds so much to the image is sharp as well as the vacuum cleaner. As with many photographs of this type, the detail is all important, the human brain likes to wander around details. The sharpness and detail in the vacuum cleaner and the debris covering it give us the feeling that this cleaner has served well. The overall composition balances well, there is around half the frame in shadow and half in light, and the consideration to the composition is what has resulted in the graphic lines I spoke of before; the line in the floor leading in to the shadow, the handle of the vacuum cleaner picking up from there and leading us to the background.

All in all I think it is a nice, pleasing and well executed photograph. Sure it is a banal subject but, in my opinion, it is far from being a banal photograph – and it could never be bland. Naturally others will see it differently, some will find it bland or banal or both; that’s all good and to be expected. Luckily, through the experience that I wrote about earlier in this essay, I understand that it will not be to everyone’s tastes but I wont challenge that and it doesn’t alter my interest in it. This mentality also carries through to my own photography; the fact is you can’t please all the people all the time, and in trying to do so will most likely produce banal photographs. The reality is that there is really only one person you can be assured by pleasing with your images and that is yourself. By targeting that audience you are assured to please at least someone, and that makes the photograph taking exercise all the more enjoyable. It is quite likely that if an image pleases you, it will also appeal to others sharing that taste. My only request is that viewers take a few moments to really look at this, and any other photograph, rather than dismissing it with a fleeting glance.

Sadly due to my limitations on this blog I am contributing yet another undersized reproduction of the print, but in this case I think the size is just large enough to make the image work. A slightly larger version can be seen by clicking on the image.

Early on in this essay I suggested that tastes also vary with time, I cannot say whether I would have always liked this photograph, or that I always will. I think it is likely, but time changes many things. Who knows, I may one day develop a taste for apricots.

iView Catalogued Date Script

iView Cataloged Date Script (for the US). As a slight break from the usual format of this blog, I am going to do something to actually benefit others, well have the slightest possibility to. The reason for this is that there maybe a number of other iView users out there wishing to have this functionality in iView as I wished, but are unable to find an existing solution on the internet ; as I did. Hopefully by leaving this here it will get picked up by the search engines and provide a solution to those seeking it.

The Problem
I used to use Extensis Portfolio for my digital asset management (DAM) and found that while it provided a very broad range of functions, its overall UI was poor and not particularly pleasant to use. Most of the dialogues reminded me of software circa Windows 3.1 – development took the form of adding function through yet more nasty dialogs. None of this made its operation particularly intuitive and, although improved with V8, I was still not all that impressed with it. I tried out iView mediaPro and was immediately more at home with its UI – and its common sense approach to layout and dialogs; it is just fairly apparent how to do something and doesn’t require delving through various nasty dialogs to do so. So I migrated.

Those 3 words, “so I migrated”, wrap up about 2 days solid work on devising a way to export the Portfolio database and import it into iView mediPro. I am not going to get into that here as it is a painful memory, but as I remember it I did eventually create some XML and VBA scripts to convert one to another. If anyone is interested, leave a comment and I will dig them out.

So, anyway, back to the point. There of course are some disadvantages to iView; as with all competing software the ideal seems to require a mixture of all offerings. Initially iView’s biggest disadvantage was that of speed, but this seems to have been greatly improved with the releases up to 3.1.1 to a point where it is now fine. There were also some scrolling issues but I have not witnessed these since installing v3.1.1. These afore mentioned issues are more generic to the package as a whole compared with Portfolio, but there are some functionality issues too. I found that iView’s auto cataloguing features far inferior to that of Portfolio. Initially this may sound trivial, but it can be a real pain. Let me explain. In Portfolio I could set the software up to automatically update specific folders and sub-folders which avoids the issue of forgetting to do so manually. iView is also capable of the same function, however the difference comes in the visibility of exactly what it has done whilst you were not involved. Portfolio offers a number of tools to see what cataloguing activities have been carried out, so allowing you to complete any metadata work on them. iView doesn’t offer any way of seeing what it has catalogued, other than the fact that by default it appends all new (automatic or manual) catalogued images to the end of the thumbnails. This is risky, in that if you manipulate the library or re-sort, those newly catalogued items will find their way to their correct location in the library – making it extremely difficult to find. For this specific reason I felt unable to allow iView to use any automatic cataloguing; instead having to carry out all the cataloguing manually and step by step so that I could keep track of what it was importing. This turned into a bit of an issue, as I was forgetting to update some files and folders. I decided that I had to find a way of letting iView import any and all new items in my main image folders, but still be able to find them and work with them at any time. Portfolio offers a fairly simple mechanism to do this, with its more advanced search dialogue you can specify to show items catalogued between two dates; and that is all that was needed. Upon looking in iView for similar functionality I found that while it does offer to “Show Last Import” this only shows the last folder catalogued. This means that if a number of folders were updated in an auto import then you will not be able to highlight any but the last. iView also offers a search key based on catalogue date, it only allows searching for items catalogued on, before or after a specified date. This doesn’t work for my purposes as if I wanted to show all items catalogued in the last week, there is no way to do that. One ray of hope that this dialog did provide however, was that each item in the database must be date stamped with the date, and hopefully time, that it was catalogued.

The Solution
A quick look in iView’s object model reference showed that indeed it does store, for each item, a catalogued date/time stamp. So it was just a question of writing a script that would look at each file in the library and see if this stamp matched a set of criteria that I could specify, and then do something with those files so that I could immediately identify them and allow me to work on them.

So that I could confidently capture any automatically catalogued files, I needed to allow the script to find files catalogued over various time frames, as only looking back one day might miss some catalogued the previous day, but there would be times when I really only wanted to see that last set of items catalogued.

I also wanted to do something other than just select the files it found matching the criteria. This would work fine and allow me to do what I needed with them manually, but if I was writing an automated script it really should extend to cover all functions that can be automated. I decided that a perfect solution would be to create a new Catalog Set specific to that search and add the matching items to it.

The screenshot at the top shows the end result of running the script. It has created a new Catalog Set named with a date/time stamp and how far back the search went. From here these can be worked on easily without fear of losing track of them, and then the Catalog Set simply deleted once you are happy they are complete. (The files themselves remain unchanged.)


Once the script is installed (see below), it can be run on any catalogue and will initially ask you the time frame over which you want it to match criteria. It will then run through the entire catalogue and if the item’s added to catalogue date falls within the criteria it selects it, if it doesn’t it deselects it. It is necessary to deselect so to avoid any items selected prior to running the script turning up in the results. Once it has finished it will ask you whether you want to add them to a new Catalog Set, I don’t know why you wouldn’t but the option is there. Note: You will need to have Catalog Sets visible in the Catalog Fields section to see and work with any Catalog Sets.


And that is it. Feel free to do with it as you wish.

Install
The script is written with VBS, so Mac users might have to convert it to JS or AS. To install it simply create a new folder in the iView plug-ins scripts folder (nominally C:\Program Files\iView MediaPro3\Plug-ins\Scripts\ on a Windows platform, Mac will be much the same) called My Script (or anything you like) and save this script file into that new folder. Upon restarting iView mediPro, this new folder will appear under the Scripts menu item, and the script will be available. Just click on it to run.

Finally, for any coders, I know it isn’t that clean. Don’t bother me about it.

Gotta Love Photography

Taken with Nokia N80 Phone Camera

Right, let’s get this back on track. After spending a number of days in the company of others, the risk of social integration was a real one. The solution was simple, bugger off for a few days solitary confinement in a car, with only a camera and laptop for company.

The further you travel, the better your photography. It is a fact – written in stone. Everyone knows it, no-one disputes it. Some say it is due to putting yourself in unfamiliar surroundings allowing you to see more clearly the natural beauty of your surroundings, which, in your usual habitat go unnoticed by your disregardful oblivion. “Bollocks”, I say. It is clearly due to the fact that after travelling for a full day with the express purpose of taking photographs, then spending 48 hours alone in a car with your equipment, with nothing else to think about other than taking photos, you are in a pretty good shape to do so – and you are going to be pretty sick upon failure.

Sadly failure in this case is almost a certainty. Old Murphy was probably munching on a cheese and pickle sandwich, chuckling over the dreadful outcome of some works he had previously been sticking his oh so broad spanner into, when he noticed me on the M1 motorway. Him with the all seeing eye of disruption was instantly aware that I was on a mission. It was as plainly obvious to him as a coal miner in a Tipp-Ex factory. He spotted the gas stove, the camera, the tripod, the sleeping bag, the look of anticipation on my brow, my general happy-go-lucky – whistling to the radio – this is what life’s all about demeanour. For old Murphy, it was like a red rag to a bull, I had to be knobbled. The only question was how?

Meanwhile, there I was the unknowing focus of Murphy’s wicked attentions and joyfully heading towards some dramatic landscapes. The radio reminded me that this was officially the hottest July on record shortly after I had stocked up with water. The food supplies were sorted, the water was sorted and the agenda was open – I had no reason to return to civilisation for days.

I reached my first potential location late afternoon, and it was looking good. The sun would rise and once clear of the surrounding hills would light my chosen scene perfectly. Hell, I might even get a bit of ground mist for good measure. This was it; I was going to be rewarded for my effort. There were a good few hours left of sunlight so I continued the location hunt. Finally with the sun saying its farewell for the evening and having my location for the AM set I decided to set-up for a potential sun-rise shot. You know the kind of thing, lots of colour in the sky, partially silhouetted, really over done cliché stuff. Still why not – it was there and I had nothing better to do. With that in the bag, it was time to eat and get some rest.

Driving back to the location I had decided to sleep, due to its close proximity to my early morning shoot location, I couldn’t help notice how different it looked when the light was gone, and so too were all the people. In fact as I approached the sleep location I realised that there probably wasn’t another single person within a 5 mile radius. It looked different alright. Once parked up I generally sorted out the living quarters, which involved moving all the camera equipment to one side to allow enough room for the sleeping bag. Next on the agenda was some food. When all you have on your mind is getting photos, food ranks down there with breathing. Yep you need it but as long as you get it, who cares? So the supplies taken were 10 MRE packets of baked beans with processed sausages. This didn’t make the choice of what to eat a problem. The stove was quickly assembled in the pitch black, with the assistance of a Maglite (surely there should include some sort of teeth handle with these?), and the MRE thrown into the pot. It was just at that point that I realised again that I was miles from anywhere, in the middle of a forest, and I couldn’t see further than my hand. I probably spent as much time looking over my shoulder as I did at staring at the pot of water – which of course appeared to take the sort of time to boil that new species take to evolve. I was mighty glad to get back inside with my tepid MRE, throw the food down my throat and get in the sleeping bag. I feel asleep, sometime around 12AM, wondering what the strange scratching noises were.

The alarm went off at 3.45AM, and I couldn’t believe it but I actually felt comfortable. The Spork stuck to the side of my face was barely noticeable. I remembered falling asleep to the sound of scratching, but now there was another sound - a sort of dripping sound. No! I couldn’t be! Sure enough, Murphy, spurred on by the fact that we were in the middle of a heat wave, had decided to drop some rain on me. How could the weather change so much in 4 hours, when it hadn’t changed at all in the previous 4 weeks? I immediately jumped out of the sleeping bag, threw on some clothes (the clothes) and crawled from the car to asses the situation. Yep, it was bad. No stormy clouds, just a heavy blanket of off white grey. Surely it would clear? I made my way down to the shoot location and set-up, hoping that there might be some breaks in the cloud – hell it might even work out good. It was getting lighter, as one would expect, but the thick clouds were just getting brighter grey. I knocked up another MRE of beans and sausages, cup of tea to go with it, all piping hot this time with the comfort of light. Still no breaks in the clouds. I guess I waited there 2 hours, certainly enough time for two more cups of tea and even enough time to ponder about another helping of beans and sausages. It wasn’t looking good. I shot off a few frames (well I was there anyway) and eventually decided it wasn’t going to get any better.

Still optimistic I decided to pack up and drive around looking for other locations. The more I drove the worse the weather got. At one point I actually drove up into the clouds. I was feeling the onset of slight disappointment. The only thing for it was to head north to a completely different location and hope the weather cleared on the way – maybe even get some evening shots and certainly get ready for morning shots the following day. So, with hopes in hand I headed for the Lake District.

By the time I reached Windemere the weather was showing a better side. In fact it was almost perfect, nice fluffy cumulous. The routine began again, scouting for locations. I was a little quicker to get parked up, and although I had spent all my time scouting and didn’t capture any shots, I was ready for the morning. Another MRE and lights out at 11PM.

I decided to not open my eyes when the alarm went off, instead just listened. Nope, not a sound of rain. So I had a little pear out. Hmmm. Difficult to tell, only the barest hint of light. The gas stove cringed when I stuck another pot of water containing a baked beans and sausage MRE on it, then I walked down to the shoot location. What light there was confirmed that the cloud was back. It wasn’t quite as business-like as the previous day, so maybe it would offer opportunities. The MRE was consumed, the tea was brewed and decanted into an insulated bottle and the camera gear was picked up. Back at the shoot location I set-up and tucked into the tea – and waited. I waited some more, and finally, for about 10 seconds there was the barest break in the clouds. I shot off two frames and it was gone.

I decided that I was not really going to be rewarded for my efforts and patience, so I packed up and decided to take a scenic route on the way home. The weather never really did break, although through continued patience I did manage to grab a couple of shots in the brief moments when the sun penetrated the clouds.

Murphy 3278 : Me 0

(Some shots from this trip are on my main site)

Hats Off

Taken with Canon 5D

I have watched the Tour de France on TV probably about as much as the next person and I suspect my level of cycling experience falls in the lower bracket of the average group. So let’s say that cycling doesn’t find a place in my own personal nirvana – and it would probably take me a while to consider taking it up even when I have conquered the vast array of interests currently floating around in my grey ether. Having said all that, I have a great admiration of the kind of raw determination that saw Scott reach the South Pole. (The fact he didn’t make it back is irrelevant – as in Scott’s words, “But we have been to the Pole and we shall die like gentlemen”.)

I am sure you will agree that you could not appreciate the hardships and extreme circumstances Scott had to endure unless you had been there – and if you had been there you would not be reading this now (for a number of reasons…). Being there is in no way substituted by media portrayal or imagination.

What first struck me as we idled up to our viewing location at the base of L’Alpe d’Huez was the atmosphere of competition. Apprehension hangs in air like tropical humidity; you can’t see it, you can’t smell it, you can’t hear it but boy, can you feel it. It’s as if the pinpoint focus of thousands of people sweeps you along like a current towards one point – the finish. When I looked in the direction from which the riders were coming I felt uneasiness, as if I was trying to go against the flow, which unconsciously forced me to turn around and look up, and up, to the finish. Strangely, from where I was located I couldn’t even see the finish but I knew it was there, it was an unseen beacon of accomplishment.

It was a baking hot day, the kind of dry heat that seems to wick all the moisture from your mouth with every spoken word. We were settled down in our position around midday, which meant that the sun was high in a northern hemisphere summer sky beating straight down, forcing us to stand flat backed against a wall in an attempt to stay within the thin line of shadow it afforded. Ever since I had a camera failure in Malaysia from sweat running down my finger and into the shutter release I have been cautious in hot and sweaty situations. This was one of those situations – we had driven 4 hours in an air-conditioned car and after 30 minutes in this heat the sweat was running. It was about this time I re-calibrated my respect for the guys who had covered a similar distance that morning, in the same conditions, by sheer muscle power, driven by their determination to reach the objective.

Anyone who knows me will most likely admit that I am not the fittest person they know; in fact talk of my fitness may even bring a smile to their face. The fact that my brother was one of cyclists this day brought even closer to me what extreme levels of fitness and determination are necessary to run with this crowd. I am aware of the levels of training that were put in, not only for this particular event, but in general for the years prior. I can quite honestly say I cannot really imagine fitness at these levels. More important than that though is the level of determination I know my brother possesses, just one look at him would have terriers conceding defeat in a rabbit tug of war. Like I said, I knew this beforehand but to be put in the context of this event and to get a taste of the stuff required filled me with pride.

My role was to photograph, and photograph I did. I have around 100 great shots of cyclists I have never met before and am unlikely to ever see again. Then, as Murphy would have it, I was distracted the exact moment my brother cycled into view and to make matters worse he was one of only a handful of cyclists that rode directly behind another rider in relation to where I was located. By the time I got a clear shot, and had re-zoomed, re-focused and flicked the shutter speed up he was directly opposite me. Unfortunately I hadn’t had enough time to zoom out fully and at this point was still too long and so I caught an interesting crop! Somehow it didn’t seem to matter that I hadn’t caught “the shot”; I was there and had felt it.

It is highly unlikely (on the same scale as Elvis really working in a fish shop) that I will ever attempt any such display of effort, or even consider it; I am just not made of the right material. All the same, being there, wrapped in that atmosphere and feeling that heat that I found a new level of respect.

My hat is off to you.

In Betweens

Taken with Canon 5D

I am writing this in transit back to the HQ, where the relative level of activity will drop so severely as to mimic that of someone suffering a fatal heart attack during a particularly boisterous session of sex. To maintain some resemblance of order, I will continue the posts as they were planned during the remainder of my stay in Europe. I had organized in my head each post, although sadly time (and internet access) was too limited to actually get the posts done.

A particular phenomenon occurs when visiting the mother land, which I believe is common to all. That is that unless you are doing something specific, you have nothing at all to do. You don’t really feel this when you are on holiday, as they are usually taken for the specific purposes of doing little, and you usually find yourself in suitable places to do nothing in. However, when you are a visitor to your own country, times arise when you are in between planned activities and you find yourself at a loose end. You don’t own any property so you are not surrounded by little things that would otherwise absorb this time, and most people are unavailable due to work responsibilities. Sure, you can spend these times shopping, or visiting galleries and so on, but there are days when that just doesn’t fit the bill.

After returning from Dartmoor, and before heading to France, I had a couple of days such as this. So what do I find myself filling this time with? Well, inspired by new regulations on passport photographs that I had read during my own application for a new passport, I set about trying to make a set of self-portraits in a passport style that would be so ridiculously unsuitable as to cause offence. It may sound strange, but there are people out there, whom are quite content to blow a couple of hours playing with off-camera flash, and I am one. I am so pleased with the results of my little shoot I am considering sending them in with a bogus passport application.

I also had time to consider some things that strike me about my country-folk. One thing that immediately stood out is they way that even in a very busy street no one ever looks at anyone else. It is as if nobody is aware that there are any other human beings around, there is no eye contact, and people march around with a sense of purpose as if contemplating life changing decisions – permanently. It is a strange contrast to what I am used to where, almost in stark contrast, people can be annoyingly interested in you as you walk down the street. Quite often the exchange ends with a smile, but even when no smile is forthcoming, you are left with the feeling that you are sharing that part of the universe with other human beings, who recognize your existence.

So, with an obvious over abundance of time on my hands, I began to prepare to head for France, to take in a photographic overload of potential shots, and unfortunately be unable to take hardly a shot.