User Friendly?

I was very tempted to break the silence of the last few weeks with yet another ecclesiastical image; I've spent a lot of time recently hiding from the wind in churches. However I don't really possess a cruel streak so I've passed on the organ pipes, gothic windows and hymnals. Instead an image from the new religion.

To be honest I'm not sure what this is. I think it might be a super-thin Apple MAC. Very neat but where do you put all the bits that make it work? The big hard drive, the card readers, the DVD ROM, etc. Perhaps they're hidden round the back somewhere; I didn't look as the machine didn't really interest me.

I've always found MAC owners to be very defensive. They seem to have some personal vendetta against Bill Gates who, despite his leanings towards world domination, is one of the world's great philanthropists. Also the MACites are always bleating on about how superior their toys are. They probably are. So was the Betamax. Enough said. What if Windows does crash at the slightest provocation, like a change in the wind direction in the Outer Hebrides or you accidentally putting the milk in after the tea instead of before? It's not a perfect world - that would be boredom personified.

Incidentally this isn't a product shot I ripped off - I took it while setting the lights for a television programmes called The Gadget Show. It was a change to design the lighting for something that didn't involve poker players.

Churning Away

I'm back from my three-week stint working in London and so have less time to pound the keyboard - do I hear a sigh of relief?

Today there was a tasty bit of light floating around and I thought a camera outing was in order; I fancied knocking out some images to upload to iStock, the photographic stock agency I shoot for. Pixie wanted to pop to Alcester (I think popping means a trip of less than two hours but I'm awaiting a precise definition) so we set off over the Lench Hills. This range is to the north of our village, rising up from the River Avon; they fall far short of mountain size and are of a gentle, pastoral nature. I like the Lenches; they're understated and very English, in reality more like hillettes, although very demanding to a fat man on a bike.

On the way I clocked that this old pair of milk churns (well screwed-down to the platform to deter the light-fingered) were rather gorgeously lit. I took a few pictures with just the barest hint of grovelling then we set off again (gosh, this is all so spiffingly exciting!) In Alcester the sun was still shining. Rather than retiring to the somewhat eccentric coffee/curtain material shop I patronise, I meandered around, squirting off the odd photo and having a good time. The town has a strong Georgian heritage - that's Georgian as in mad king and not as in former outpost of Russian imperial might.

Several years ago, when BritishTelecom attempted to replace all the traditional phone boxes with perspex and aluminium monstrosities, towns and villages with a bit of history quite rightly protested. As a result some of these red icons were kept on although I doubt they'll be in existence for much longer given the irresistible rise of the mobile phone. These instruments of refined torture are so ubiquitous that it would seem that they're issued at birth. Still the old boxes give you a place to shelter in a heavy rainstorm, particularly if you have a liking for the intimate odour that often pervades them.

I ducked into the church, searching for old monuments to immortalise in digits. As I snapped away I became aware that my shutter seemed to be very fast for the light available. Checking the camera I found it was set to 1000 ISO (I usually use 160). This is far too fast a speed for anything I might want to submit to iStock for sale because of the amount of graininess caused. All my efforts to find something commercial had failed.

Never mind. We stopped off on the way home and I had a very scrummy toasted teacake - there's no disappointment that can't be cured with food.

Party Time - Not

I'm not gregarious enough for parties, at least not for anything involving more than four people (and that's stretching it a bit). The thought of an evening spent surrounded by balloons fills me with gloom. Drinking warm, weak beer from a plastic glass is just one more facet of the devil's work. Anything vaguely edible on a stick or with a bone in it, needs to be cast to the winds. Life is just too short for enforced merriment. If hell exists, it will not be a place of fire and brimstone; it will be a flatly-lit room full of drunks talking about sport, their jobs, their kids or their neighbours. The food will be tepid and taste of cabbage.

I haven't been to any parties recently, thankfully. These thoughts were triggered by this image of balloons snagged on a barbed wire fence. The scene conjures to perfection my view of large scale jollity. Dull. Monotonous. Gloomy. I used to go to a lot of after-show shindigs where we joined the lovies and stood around telling each other how marvellous it all was. I was usually the first to leave; going home to Pixie was always going to be more entertaining.

If I'm at a party with Pixie - a very rare occurrence - I am made to behave myself. For a start I'm not allowed to indulge in my usual party activity which is to find a book or newspaper and retire to a dark corner (I have been known to take reading materials with me). If she catches me playing games on my PDA, I'm also in trouble. Nor am I allowed to eat too many cold sausages, pork pie segments or crisps. And I get told off if if I start talking her into leaving within 15 minutes of getting there. Also I'm expected to mingle. What an obscene activity that is! I'd rather hit my thumb repeatedly with a giant hammer.

Being antisocial is a real chore but it's worth striving for. Eventually you stop being invited to anything.

Now that is worth blowing a balloon up for.

(Oddly enough I'll talk to anyone I don't know it it's one-to-one; always up for a chat with the postman, girl on the checkout, bloke in the street. It's the group thing I can't cope with. No doubt there's a word for it in the psychological lexicon).

Shhhh

Some trains in the UK have a 'quiet' coach. Within its supposed cocoon of silence, the passenger, or should I say customer to use the modern jargon, should be able to relax, untroubled by tinny iPod headphones or mobiles with jaunty tunes.

Of course this admonition of 'shhhh' is totally ignored by those sorry dregs of humanity who lack respect for their fellow man and are too lazy to go out to the vestibule between the coaches. No, for them, the broadcasting of their intimate call to the mistress arranging a little bit of 'how's your father?' later, followed by the thinly apologetic excuse to the wife - 'working late, dear' - is for us all to hear. Makes men of them, I suppose.

However the vocal garbage of these cretins is as nothing compared to the train announcements. At every stop, and there are nine or ten between Evesham and London, a weary-sounding female voice goes through a litany of tedium concerning what company it is, what service it is, what to do during the expected crash, where the buffet is, where first-class accommodation resides, the position of the family coach and also that of the quiet coach. She then procedes to list what can't be done in the quiet zone. Unfortunately that doesn't include making repetitive, loud and banal announcements. I timed her outpouring once; it lasted 1 minute, 48 seconds. And you get one at every stop.

All this is grist to the mill to an old reactionary like myself. Technology for technology's sake. I used to be able to get on a train and travel without any on-board announcements whatsoever. Also I got to where I wanted to be, often, strangely enough, on time. While on the train there was nothing that important that I needed to communicate it instantly. If I wanted entertainment, I read a book, an essentially quiet mode of passing the time with only the gentle swishing sound of a page turning. A real human would pass through now and again, dressed in a natty uniform, and remind us that we needed to be in the front five coaches if we wanted to get off at Evesham. No disembodied voice warned us of the dire consequences of leaning out of the window, of opening the door before the train had stopped or the perils of leaving your belongings behind. As an educated person, you just knew these things. And if you didn't know the first two, then it was one less idiot in the gene pool.

Oz Groups of Three

I was thinking about Australia this morning, as you do from time to time, and also about groups of three (ditto); it beats thinking about how bad the traffic is and whether I really should eat any more Chocolate Hob Nobs. These thoughts sent me off to my back-catalogue of images from our last trip in 2005 - any excuse to wring some more mileage out of them.

The first is for Lee, and any trainspotters who may drop in. There's a roadbridge just to the north of Spencer Street station in Melbourne which is ideal for a bit of locomotion photography. I found an excuse to be there both at sunset and sunrise.

The pelicans are at Bateman's Bay, on what I believe is called the South Coast but it's on the east facing edge of the country - all relative, I suppose.

Lastly perhaps the most over-exposed icon of the Southern Hemisphere, if not the world. Incredibly expensive restaurant. The building is copyrighted and cannot be sold in photographic form without permission, even in a long shot. Normally I'd be inclined to remove it in Photoshop and replace it with a grasping hand but today I'm feeling generous.

Incidentally the ferry, named Queenscliff is, like others on the run to Manly, named after a famous Sydney surfing beach. Isn't that a refreshing change from deceased Queens, Princesses, etc.

Heavy Dapple

A week or so ago I talked about dingle, the bits of tree, branch or twig that cinematographers and photographers place in an image to form a frame, to lead the eye to a point of interest or just to break up an otherwise blank canvas - a swathe of blue sky for example.

Dingle has a mate in the break-up stakes. It's name is Dapple. I know that sounds like the name of a horse from a particularly soppy kid's story involving a wicked step-mother, a flaxen-haired girl and a street urchin from the wrong end of town, but I can assure you, it's also the name of a lighting technique.

In my business we create dapple by making suitable shapes in sheets of wood or metal and shining lights through them. Like most things in life, Nature can do it better although, as we know, not consistently and certainly not when you want it. In the image above, the plane trees in the town of Uzes in southern France have treated this building to what can only be described as the heavy version; Somewhere in this dense shade is a wall and three pairs of shutters.

And just out from the wall, a table, four chairs and some ice-cold lager.

Posts per Month

As a nerdy exercise, I've produced this graph (click here).

Proof if proof were needed.