Category Archives: Photography
Railing
Not as crisp as it should be. Bah!
Webbed wheels
Everywhere I look this morning there are webs I didn’t know existed.
Web 0.1
In our garden this morning.
The marriage market
This striking photograph taken by US photographer Stephanie Sinclair in Afghanistan was named Unicef Photo of the Year yesterday. It’s a wedding picture. The cadaverous cove in the turban is a bridegroom; the kid next him is his new 11-year-old wife. The blurb says that the chap is 40 years of age, but he looks about 70 to me. The photograph vividly encapsulates life for millions of girls in this day and age. Unicef claims that upwards of 60 million under-age girls are married every year. Barbaric.
Later: Another Unicef prizewinner here. Thanks to Pete for the link.
Classic images
This shot of a cheeky lad snapped in the Rue Mouffetard in 1954 by Henri Cartier-Bresson is my favourite picture. Now I discover that it was the photographer’s least favourite picture! At any rate, this is what John Banville writes in his review of Magnum Magnum, the anniversary collection of work by Magnum photographers:
Taste is a strange thing, and again and again throughout Magnum Magnum one is surprised by what seem not so much contrasts as head-on collisions. In a brief introductory essay Gerry Badger wonders what might be the quintessential Magnum image. He decides on Henri Cartier-Bresson’s picture of ”that wonderfully cheeky Parisian urchin cradling two bottles of wine”. It is ironic, therefore, to recall that when, a couple of years before his death, I mentioned this very snapshot to HCB, he threw his hands in the air and cried out as if in pain: ”Terrible! Terrible! I should destroy the negative!”
Just goes to show: great minds seldom think alike.
You don’t say?
Another unobtrusive Leica shot.
Hmmm… Just looked at it again. It should have been cropped more tightly. Like this:
The best medicine
My mother used to say that ‘laughter is the best medicine’. This picture of a good friend in jovial mood confirms that. It was taken with my trusty old Leica M4. It’s astonishing how unobtrusive this ancient machine is: people genuinely don’t seem to notice it.
Rose-coloured lenses
Shot with a 200mm lens in an idle moment.
Editorial dependence
Spotted on the desk of the colleague who is currently editing my stuff. Surely it can’t be that bad? According to Wikipedia, strychnine is a very toxic, colorless crystalline alkaloid used as a pesticide, particularly for killing small vertebrates such as rodents.