Knights

If you were a Medieval knight, one of the best ways to sort out problems was by hitting people with a pike.  Doing so in a tourney, helped to sharpen the skills for warfare.

The knights’ features are obscured by the helmets.  Unfortunate for photography but probably a good thing for their faces.The Portaloos are not a period detail.

I had my aperture wide open as usual, increasing my shutter speed.  This is a necessity if you want to take action shots in the murk of the English sun but by a happy coincidence, the result of throwing the background out of focus helps to separate the knight from the crowd.  Where would sports photography be if optical physics worked differently?

Monument

If, like me, you’ve been mourning the loss of another 35mm film producer in the shape of Kodak, it may not be bad news after all.  According to AG Photography (from whom I get most of my film), Kodak recent move to Chapter 11 is a good move for the following reasons:

1. It means they can re-organise the company without the threat of the liabilities that have hung over the business in recent years;

2. They can re-finance the company. By making the move into bankruptcy protection they have been able to secure $950m of funding from Citibank

3. For a number of years it has seemed top management in the company have been obsessed with Wall Street and the share price of the company. In our opinion this has been a hinderance to the effective management of the business. Now the company is de-listed from the NYSE, they don’t have to concern themselves with Wall Street and can take decisions freely.

4. It is expected the company will remain in Chapter 11 for around 12 months, at the end of which a new Kodak will emerge.

Perhaps Kodak will do an ‘Ilford’ and emerge as a solvent company with a plan for the future.

In the meantime, here’s a picture of a monument taken on monochrome film and then worked on a lot in Photoshop.

I cropped it and then worked on the levels until all the shades of grey were just about gone.

All The Right Notes, Not Necessarily In The Right Order

Also this week, I finally caught up and looked at all of the comments to a previous post of mine, about photography magazines which you can read here:

http://mostlymonochrome.wordpress.com/2011/10/26/why-i-hate-photography-magazines/

The comments largely agree with me.  I was looking through a magazine earlier this week in the local library and one thing that struck me was how much mention of video there was in the articles.  Its photography but not as I know it.  Still the same emphasis on kit and product over technique and simply great photos.  I contend that you can get more out of a half decent photo book than from a magazine, especially if you browse it for half an hour in a book shop and then leave without buying it.

Here ends my rant.

Brusselles Central

EOS 5 with Fujicolour.

Web

This was taken with the largest aperture I could get out of the lens – 3.5.

Bus Stop

As it’s New Year, I’ve taken some time to update my pages underneath the header.  The wordpress.com annual report is linked up there together with the ten most popular images from 2011.

This image above is not one of them but the young lady with her attention fixed on her phone shows why mobile technology is ruining street photography.  More and more, instead of looking up in case there’s someone trying to take a picture, people are tweeting and updating their status on facebook. Eyes down will be the pose of the 21st Century.

Ubiquitous Picture of an Aeroplane Wing

One of the great photographic cliches and like most cliches, it’s hard to resist.

Canon EOS 5 and Fujicolour C200.

Henry VIII

The Last Rays of the Sun

The is the sun just moments before it set, in a forest.  I’m not sure if it works or not.  Comments and criticisms are welcome.

Update:

Thanks for all the comments.  I think that problem is that I took the shot too late.  A few minutes before and there would have been more detail on the image.  It’s been cropped and lightened to try and get less black and more detail but there isn’t much to work with.  A better image would have been ‘The Second Last Rays of the Sun.’

London

“When a man is tired of London, he is tired of people walking into him.”

Doctor Johnson