bikes and things

Few shots from a walk around the countryside near Cambridge earlier today.

Another link to some rather nice work I’ve found via the wonderful medium of Twitter – it’s so good I’ve definitely had one of those “I wish I’d thought of that” moments with it. It’s a beautiful body of work which is part way through and is seeking funding to complete. Marc describes the work as follows:

“Those decaying vestiges of life-and-death human struggle — falling monuments to bellicosity — have a curious attraction to them. The paradoxes are rich. They once showcased unbridled strength and had the prowess to intimidate as they repelled intruders by unrelenting force. This was human power in its rawest form. Now these feeble structures derive their power from something else. With their guns and posts silent, they stand to testify that all things perish. No act of human defiance can possibly win the greatest of all battles of attrition, that of time…It is vitally important historical work.”

A number of the shots remind me of walking around the local area I grew up in near Bath exploring the old pill boxes, caves and old airfields used during the war – all of which are crumbling and being over taken by nature.

I’m going to buy a print and the book to help contribute – so should you! The thing that really swung it for me was seeing the video below where Marc explains the process and research that has gone into the project.

Edit: I’ve made my contribution to the project with some birthday money. Can’t wait to get my final print!

Few pictures from this weekend. Beautiful light again for a walk on the Sat, tried out the Dog Father on Northcross Road, bothered some dogs, bought a Christmas Tree, got the bike in for a service and also had the wonderful Janey Mac around for dinner.

Getting into taking a lot more snaps with the X100, not quite a photo a day but taking as many as I can. Here’s my effort from today.

…not in real life but on Flickr. I’ve been getting back into uploading more personal work to Flickr rather than just more formal work stuff thanks to getting my hands on that lovely Fujifilm X100.

I used to be a bit obsessed with hits, favourites and the possibility of getting into explore which is a way of showing what’s popular at present on site. This was during the 365 project time but that moment seems to have passed now. Having said that I have a set of images which gets updated each night showing which of my shots are most popular – via the very useful Flickr set manager. As a side you’d think that this kind of “smart set” would be built into Flickr as a standard feature but since being bought by Yahoo where all development seems to have stopped.

Anyway, back on track – I uploaded this image I took in the recent thick fog we had in London and added it to a few groups on Flickr. Since then it’s gone bonkers. At the time of writing this post it’s had 525 views, 35 comments and 59 favourites as well as making it into explore. I think I have better pictures but this seems to have appealed to a bunch of people.

I found a few printed photos the other day, nothing special, just a few snap shots, but I really enjoyed looking at them again. This got me thinking about how I would never go back more than a week or two on my Flickr stream and ever look at any of my shots from the past – partly the whole reason for taking pictures surely? iPhoto doesn’t cut it either as it’s so bloated and slow and currently crashes constantly – it suffers from the same problem as Flickr I guess, I’m not going to sit there and go through them. However I have a shoe box of 6″x4″ prints (matt with borders) from the last few years beside my desk are all from film cameras I occasionally use like Dad’s OM20, my lovely LC-A, Nikon F801 or the Olympus Trip 35. A lot of the pictures are rubbish but they remind me of being somewhere or doing something which I’d probably forgotten about. I guess I find a bit more of a connection with the printed version

Flickr is obviously my main online store of photos (some people use Facebook or Picasa etc). I’m always uploading new stuff of course but this seems to only enhance the transitory nature of these images, it’s always about the next image. I’ve also become a lot more critical of what I upload, so snap shots of friends don’t always make it. Do these go on Facebook instead? Hard to say.

In terms of digital storage this lot all sits in a big folder on my external drive titled “The great JPEG dump”. Paid work is all organised neatly but it’s always been hard to know what to do with the personal images. I was going to use Adobe Carousel but I can’t see that working out.

So I’ve decided that I’m going to go back to printing out actual photos and buying a box for each year. Some physical objects that I can look back on – maybe at Christmas each year and remember what’s gone on. I’ve found a cheap online printers and will do a set each month, I’ve even found somewhere that does a nice shoe box (yes you can find anything with Google). A bit like the 365 project but longer, maybe one box for each year. I’m going to go back and do all of 2011 and keep going as long as I can.

Updated: It’s working out quite well printing all these pics. Just sorting out the 2011 box now.

Or more reasons to like the X100.

One of the things that got me into back into photography a few years ago was the desire to take pictures of me and my friends mountain biking around Surrey Hills or Wales. I even went on a course to learn a bit more about it. At that time I had a slightly knackered D70 which then turned into a D300 and then onto a D700 which is my current camera. All the time the cameras were getting bigger and more expensive. So I ended up with a full frame camera, 28mm prime and SB-600 flash with remote triggers in my bag along with water, tools, jacket, food etc. Not that much fun and I didn’t enjoy riding as much with it – heavy and worrying about damaging the kit. However I do still enjoy taking riding photos and the ability to have a little off camera fill flash certainly helps.

D300, 18-70, SB-600 hidden behind rock. eBay triggers.

As I’ve just got the Fuji X100 I thought I’d have a quick try of the remote flash. The eBay trigger fits on easily and I tried it out with an old SB-24 I have. I tried it at 1/200s then 1/250s (my D70 could sync this fast) and then thought I’d go for 1/500s to see what happened? Perfect flash sync at 1/500s which is brilliant. Will make it much easier out on the trails. Shot this quick picture of my F810. Lovely and sharp and also very impressed with the lens so far.

So now the only problem is that the flash is bigger than the camera! Might try and get a smaller Chinese no name flash unit to take with me. All it needs is manual controls and a PC sync port & it’ll be golden. That and a few ball bungees to hold the flash on the nearest tree and I’m set.

Although the 35mm lens isn’t the widest as favoured for a lot of MTB shots I think I can probably make it work. It’s not that far off the 28mm I’ve been using recently.

Carrying this thing everywhere now. Need to get a longer strap I think but here’s a few more.

This little beauty landed on my desk today. Second hand, but one careful, and talented, owner. Bought from the funds from a recent portrait shoot. Pretty isn’t she?

Whilst not really being fan of the term “test shots”, here’s some test shots! Yay. Turned quite a few heads in the office with lots of oooohs and ahhhhs also a few “Is that a Leica?” Looking forward to using it properly next week when I have some time off.