Life Observed

Looking for all the world like a busking band, this couple (a professional classical Musician and an Artist) were perched by the road advertising our Arts Event at church on Saturday: "Can you play over the hills and far away"? :-)

Our company is now firmly in the grip of the Quality Management System, which is a joyous and wonderful creation that ensures our products are very well made indeed. However, if you fail to fill in the correct form or use the proper Work Instruction, you will be hunted down by our crack team of Maasai Warriors and ritually humiliated in front of all the employees, like this:

Been there, seen it all. Nothing is new under the sun. Especially under the Cyprus sun.  The Swallows come and go, the tourists come and go. The sun shines most days and time passes slowly. All a man can do is drink his coffee and watch it all unfold. Yes, it's a hard life.

Dry: Not as in a no drinks wedding but as in a not Wet Wedding... I left the conventional pictures to the professional photographer and lurked in search of the other moments. Once upon a time the couple placed disposable cameras on the tables for people to use, these days they leave pre-addressed envelopes with  blank DVD disk so you can put your own images on there. So here are two I thought they might like:

Walk round your local village and you will see a small phenomenon.  Folks buy a block of two or three old houses, they knock through the walls and make one large house.They build extra rooms on the back, add a swimming pool and solar heating, park a pair of expensive 4x4s at the front. This six bedroom pied a terre in attractive rural surroundings is then renamed The Old Gamekeepers Cottage. Cottage? This is inverted snobbery. A romantic notion. Cottage as in Rather Smart Rural Retreat actually. We lived in this cottage when I was young in the 1960s. It was down on the farm right next to the cow yard and only ten years earlier it had outside toilets. That was a proper cottage - with rats.... No. I think we should extend this inverted snobbery. Rural bolt holes for the rich should now be named The Old Cowman's Hovel . Now that sounds truly romantic.

Here we are in ancient Cirencester.  This is the old street cross, next to medieval St John the Baptist church. No doubt in years gone by this would have been the place for pilgrims to pause for something to eat and to hear the latest news. But here we have a 21st Century pilgrim with all the pilgrim's essentials. She has a backpack, a take out Costa coffee and the inevitable iPhone. What did we all do with our lives before the smartphone was invented? What was it like before all products started with an i ?

Curled up, away from the light, are the Family's memories. Those pictures we took in 1941 on the sea front at Blackpool of Aunt what's-her-name and Cousin thingy. We didn't write their names on the back, why bother? We know who they are, it seems like stating the obvious. Now we are older, a new generation and their children come along and look through the box of memories. They ask us who these people are, but it's so long ago and we no longer remember. We don't remember because we didn't write their names on the back of the picture. The faces look at us across the years in silent disapproval. How could we have forgotten? These images are forty to seventy years old now, and they are the only copies. No-one kept negatives.  These faces and places are preserved only as molecules of silver salts on a paper backing, yet they have survived all those years. What are the chances your digital images will still be there stored as precarious patte...

Sometimes I see something that catches my eye and I try to capture an image of it to share.  In this case we seem to have something inexplicable going on. Actually we are late at a churchyard fair which is packing up for the day, so whatever this was will remain a mystery...

T here is a little tea shop across town from us. It's in a kind of portacabin and does not posses delusions of grandeur. However they feel moved to put up signs like the one below all over the place .  Perhaps they have been scarred by some previous experience. Are they justified? It comes as a surprise to have phones banned in such a forceful way.  Well, I would tend to say that they are. People do seem to leave their phone on and armed in all sorts of inappropriate places. Quite apart from the wretched ring tone in the Theatre , I find the same distraction happens regularly during Sunday services at church. Interrupting a conversation in a tea shop with your phone is bad enough, but interrupting God...

Here is the second of Snaarman's quick guides to music. Previously we mentioned Folk, Blues and Busking, and made some useful observations about Violins. Today we deal with people who play music indoors and in the dark, and firstly we feature Rock Bands . The Rock Band can usually be spotted somewhere dark and loud. Very loud, in fact so loud you can't hear the lyrics clearly. Don't worry, this is intentional. Smoke and lights are also an essential part of the experience.  Have a look around the audience and try to find the sound mixer. This is a good place to stand, if it sounds OK for him it might just sound ok for you. Now  we move on to Pub Bands . A band in a pub have the same ambitions as the rock band on stage. They would like everyone in the building to be deafened, and in this they can usually succeed. When you half fill a small pub with amplifiers and speakers the remaining space can be battered with sound quite easily.  Despite the p...

Here is Snaaman's quick guide to music.  Look no further because you will find all you need on these humble pages. We start with Folk. You can spot Folk musicians by their earnest and determined look. This genre deals with relationships, loss, separation (and the Navy if the lyrics mention ropes or heave away ). The songs tend to be a tad depressing. They sometimes sing with one finger in their ear and use strange language (if you hear Eng-er-land in association with Rolling Main , then you are probably listening to folk music). If you wish to make Folk louder then you ask the audience to join in because amplifiers are not encouraged by purists. Folk music often brings with it  Morris Dancing . Be aware that this in turn involves Beer and Beards.   Blues The first thing to realise is that Blues and Folk are not the same thing. Blues is nothing to do with Jazz because it uses a simple tune repeated all through the song whereas ...

This was probably my Shot of the Day. Very Monet.. .  Once again I gave this the Orton treatment as I felt it added a dreamy quality to it. This also illustrates my theory, if you have something red in the shot, make sure its near the front, not in the background :-) Here's a little detail from the Pagoda in the grounds. It proved impossible to photograph the building clear of visitors (short of shouting "Fire!" and there's only so many times that trick will work...) The Tropical Glasshouse makes some nice shapes, but I bet this looks better at dawn with mist on the water. BTW: Moron the subject

Well, as I reported earlier , the whole nation took a day off yesterday. I suspect a lot of us just sat in front of the TV, while others headed away from the commotion and ignored it all. Some of us had street parties ... Now the Street Party is a strange and infrequent thing in reserved British society. I don't remember going to one before, and it smacks a little of Empire and flag waving.  It is the sort of thing we used to do, but now seems rather quaint and at odds with the twenty first century. However, once the idea takes root and you get enough people involved (about eighty percent of our little street) then it works out well. We didn't quite have the jelly, cake and Union Jack street party from the 1950s, but we did get ourselves proper trestle tables and a real Silver Band. A nice tight focus shot of a  valve trombone. Even though it seems a slightly odd thing to do, it worked out well, the neighbours spent more time chatting together ...

Street photography is not really for me. I feel happier photographing landscape than I do photographing people . However, with the right camera or the right circumstances I sometimes turn up the occasional street scene. Here is the fruit and veg stand at our local market. I took this from the hip with my cheap FED50 film camera. Focus by zone, click and hope! I spotted this conversation in a square in Avignon some time ago. It was a grab shot of what seemed an interesting subject. This sepia tint image has had the Orton Sandwich effect added. I wonder if you have to get a signed model release these days to do this? That would have slowed Cartier-Bresson down eh? Here we have a lace maker on the streets of Omodos in Cyprus. I fear we did not buy any lace from her, though we did buy a tablecloth further down the street. Perhaps that counts. Street scenes. Hmm. Some folks do it effortlessly, I feel I need to practice more.

Here's an antidote for these dull Winter days. A glimpse of summer and the English at their maddest. Yes, its the Morris Dancing displays at Guildford. Multiple Morris sides are out on the green under the castle all armed with beards, sticks, handkerchiefs and pewter tankards of Real Ale. A nice tight focus shot , taken from a distance. One wouldn't want to get bitten. I would like to think this is a tradition we foster mainly to confuse the French.. Long may it continue. As to the wooden Zebra, don't ask. Beards and tankards, and is that a cod piece? ... Excellent :-) Medieval royalty turn out to oversee the event. These are kings Uthur and Arthur with their medicinal ale to hand. Who says that beer and swords don't mix... So, next time you see something like this, be thankful that we English are still mad, despite the rest of the world.

I like architecture, landscape, light and shade, abstract and all things natural. These are the subjects that occupy my viewfinder. However we all have our blind spots and mine is people.   I have a colleague who is a prodigious people photographer. I would say ninety percent of his pictures involve people, and he covers Glastonbury on a regular basis. I have a suspicion he would be lost if instructed to make a quality landscape image, just as I would be out of my comfort zone doing a portrait session. (Edit: If you travel forward in time you will find I have done the odd portrait session ). However, it all depends on the context. If you are dealing with someone who is putting on an act in some way, a performer, then you are half way towards the end result. They expect to interact, and are probably happy to be photographed. Here we have the Newbury Town crier in full cry. He is on duty, in costume and in character, and is fair game for a picture. Even so I felt I...