On my way to work. I’m always waiting for a dramatic sky, but so far no luck…
Category Archives: Photography
Lights of passage
St Edward’s Passage, Cambridge, photographed by Brian at the weekend.
Help!
A window in a Cambridge street.
The road just taken
On the way from Kenmare, last Monday. It was one of those magical days when the rain-rinsed Irish air is so clear that you have the feeling that a layer has been peeled off your eyes.
PXN8.COM – Online Photo Editor
Another really neat idea — an Online Photo Editor. And it offers an easy upload to Flickr from inside the browser.
Powerbook Moon
I guess only Apple Mac users will appreciate this. It shows how a little bit of PhotoShopping goes a long way.
Thanks to Brian for the link.
Adobe LightRoom
I’ve just begun trying out the Beta version of LightRoom and am startled by how good it is. I was initially put off by all the guff about how it was tailored to the ‘workflow’ needs of serious photographers. In practice, it’s a very neatly designed program. The ‘workflow’ idea is embodied in the notion of four main phases in the life of an image — Library (storage and filing), Develop (adjust), Slideshow (Display) and Print (see top right-hand corner of picture). Unlike most other Adobe products I’ve used, LightRoom seems intuitive and fairly self-explanatory. It’s nowhere near as powerful as PhotoShop for image manipulation, but then life is too short for most of us to learn PhotoShop. All in all, my first encounter with the software has been a revelation. No doubt more experienced and perceptive users will soon be emailing me lists of its deficiencies. But my reaction is positive so far.
Joined-up photography
One of the photographic forms I really admire is David Hockney’s ‘Joiners’ . Like all great artists, he makes it look easy. But actually it’s fiendishly difficult to do well. This is an attempt I made to convey the feeling of the Connemara graveyard in which my grandparents (and five of their children) lie buried. It’s a beautiful, peaceful, windswept place, from which you can see Galway Bay and the Aran Islands, and somehow cried out for something better than a static picture. But this doesn’t work because, for example, I missed out the heads of two of the Celtic crosses. You can’t read the headstone at this resolution, but it reveals that, in 1922, two of their children died within a week of one another (both from infectious diseases now routinely vaccinated against). And they lost another child just a year later. The horror is unimaginable. But that’s what life was like in rural Ireland in those days.
London panorama
While waiting to give a lecture in a room on the 10th floor of a central London building, I amused myself taking photographs through the windows. This was stitched together from two shots. The poor quality is partly attributable to reflections from the glass.
So…?
Reminds me of a joke much loved by the kids.
Q: What’s the difference between dogs and cats?
A: Dogs come when you call. Cats merely take a message and may get back to you.