Life Observed

Lets go to Rousillon, Vaucluse   in France. This picturesque little gem (well, its a tourist trap actually) is the home of rich deposits of red and yellow Ochre. You can scratch it straight off the cliffs.... It became the home of artists, drawn by the ready supply of a fine range of tones. Actually I rather hope there are some Cadmium Blue cliffs nearby to balance these warm colours.  Anyway, the scratchy brown stuff still draws tourists by the coachload. I recall the town boasts the least subtle toilets (even by French standards) that we came across. These will be the subject of a future post :-) We now find ourselves in Avignon outside the church of St Pierre. This features a pair of beatifully carved solid Walnut doors, rich in browns and fantastic detail. I didn't realise Walnut trees grew so square... still, what do I know about carpentry. The Internet tells me you can't go inside for some reason, however I am certain this is the interior....

Aah. The English Lakes. A mighty fine part of the country, wrought by glacier, time and tide. We had a nice break there one summer recently and went in search of a suitable hotel for our first night, near Kendal. We booked one of those Travelthing premier lodge generic hotels, and then set about finding exactly where it was. It turns out we were staying at the Killington Services on the M6, which did not appeal at all. Ah well, we paid the money and its only one night.Well, let me say I have never been so pleasantly surprised. It is set well back from the motorway and backs on to a moorland reservoir, with a fabulous view out of the back. I woke with the dawn and poked the nose out of the bedroom window - and this is the view.... Not exactly Watford Gap, eh? So, dear reader. I could have told you I did a 15Km hike up Scraggaw,  set up my bivouac overnight at 1500 feet, abseiled down the Devil's Groin with my five by four plate camera  and wooden tripod to get thi...

To continue my journey to digital photography I started yesterday, we move to 2005 when I bought the excellent Olympus 8080WZ. This award winning camera had a truly excellent lens in the best tradition of Olympus. It was built like a tank and produced sharper pictures than the Fuji. It was a "bridge" camera: It handles a little like a SLR but has a non interchangeable zoom lens. This was its main weak point.  In general it was very pleasing to use and the excellent Zuiko lens impressed me a great deal. Here is an example picture, a rainy shopping day in Rottingdean. Finally I decided that digital SLRs had come of age and I bought the smallest DSLR on the market at the time, the Olympus E400. Since then I have traded up several times but I remain most impressed with Zuiko lenses. Here's a winter shot. This is the high street in Marlborough all dressed for Christmas, taken at dusk one clear December Saturday. In this case an Olympus E620 delivers the goods...

Its all digital these days. We watch digital television, listen to digital radio, I even read digital books. We take digital pictures as well. I resisted buying a digital camera for several years, and as an alternative I took pictures on Fuji Provia and Velvia slide film and scanned them into the computer. This was a long and painful process compared to the instant gratification of a digital camera with a tiny screen on the back. Thus it was 2003 before I finally accepted that digital cameras were good enough and these pictures are from that changover year. This first picture (scanned the new way) is from my last slide film, a holiday in Wales. I recall it rained and the slides are dull and unremarkable. Thus my era of analogue images passed with a whimper. Here's a bright and brash picture from the new digital age. Unfortunately my first digicam (the Fuji S2800, a 2M pixel thing) was a poor substitute for old fashioned film. It was however a great deal f...

Here, for your consideration, are a selection of secret places I've found over the years. Some are pretty little towns, others are thought provoking corners of life's great pattern. Firstly we have Monpazier in France.  This lovely little Bastide town is well worth a visit, with its characteristic arches and shadows. Next we have Nicosia in Cyprus. These two pictures were taken just next to the green line, the U.N. administered division where the Turkish invaded north part of the island meets the Greek southern part. You find many reminders of the invasion and the war from forty years ago,  usually deserted and crumbling houses that have not been reclaimed or rebuilt. The division line runs through the centre of Nicosia and has itself become a strange tourist attraction. I suspect cafe Topsy last traded in 1974.  Its all rather sad. Here we find ourselves just next to the Plaza Mayor in Madrid. This was taken before ten in the morning, m...

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 a profile to consider. This is the end of a hollow tree trunk that fell down years ago. Most of the tree has been reclaimed by ivy and it is slowly disappearing back into the hedge. However the sharp edge where the wood gave way has slowly been weathered to this nice rounded abstract shape. The Zuiko 70-300mm provided this image. Now this is a different material, different era and very different photographic gear. This worn sandstone profile from the south coast was taken on Provia slide film a decade ago with a Nikon camera and lens. I quite like the hint of a stern face in the rock. Now a more familiar profile from last week.  This Victorian cross is echoed by its distant cousin across the village churchyard, lit by low winter sunshine. In this case I used an Olympus E600 camera fitted with a Russian Industar 50 manual lens. This is a 1970s copy of the 1907 four element classic Zeiss Tessar design. So - you have to focus and stop down by eye, you have ...