A Day at the Beach - or - The Mistening

A brisk day at the beach, with extra-added mist and near death experiences laced with hot chocolate and menthols.

Great Things I Have Seen - Margaret Durow

I saw this photo somewhere on the internet one day and immediately wanted to see more, and some e-rooting turned up a few websites showing Margaret Durow's work. There's such a great atmosphere to it and a lot of her other photos come from the same place. Or go to the same place.
Her black and white pieces are generally quite moody, contrasty scenes and her colour photos are filled with bursts and light leaks.

There's just something very comforting about them, an escapism. Her website's pretty great; simple and straightforward and easy on the text, the way a photo-site should be.

Dedicated follower of

This doesn't tie in with the rest really, but I won't bother restricting what I upload - only in the sense that I think I'll just put important stuff here. And this is pretty significant as it was my first fashion shoot. Lots of fun, neatly mixed with nerves. Can't wait to do more.

Pavemeant

Some light and some shoes and some

I'm pretty proud of this one; it was one of the first digital photos I took that I was really happy with, though it was an awakening of sorts to the danger of digital - I took about 25 photos of this rock and when I got home I had to sit down and pick the best one... So I don't take many photos of the same thing anymore, and if I do I delete them in camera at the time and decide there and then which one is the best looking one. Much less time in front of the computer, more time for porridge ymmm...












Lost shoes have been a favourite thing of mine for as long as I've been taking photographs. Not just the inherent small mystery of them but the fact that they look so expectant. A friend summed it up with the phrase "empty shoes".








I'm beginning to get the hang of the whole format of this blog, hopefully I can make it a little less all over the shop, though not too much so. I think this is sort of influenced by this (by Ralph Gibson as part of his "Somnambulist" series) which is one of my favourite photos.















More second hand sunlight, though this one might just be a little too subtle. I've been trying out some brightness/colour things, quite liking the results so far though some practice will be good. I wonder if someone looking at this photo would actually see anything of worth in it. Not, I mean, that it would make a difference to me; I'll still take these photographs, I suppose I'm just wondering about the nature of seeing in general. It's enough for me at the moment that I like it.

Handling

More second-hand sunlight... I'm really not sure about that phrase but the longer I leave it the harder it will be to dislodge it.

Bus, beds, church, coffee

I've taken a few photos of people on buses looking out the window. It's a bit of a cliché already I guess but I like to indulge sometimes. I think what draws me is the frame-within-a-frame aspect of having a window surround a body.

This one above is from my last night at home. The scene sort of looks like how I felt at the time, or maybe more what I wanted for myself at two in the morning and still some packing left to do.

Teevee

Oh look! Words!

I've been looking at blogs. Then a person I know had a blog and it had words. There's no real reason for this to have words but I suppose, if there are words then maybe it seems more... more like there's point. Anyway.
Who the hell's gonna be reading this anyways? But anyway, that's not the point.

I made this thing so I could have a place away from flickr where I'm not bothering with wondering about how many views the photo gets or how many comments there are or any of that ridiculous stuff, and since I started it (though I haven't used it in months) I've found I've gone off flickr quite a bit. Maybe it's just coincidence, it probably is, well no, actually it probably isn't.

I thought I would only put one type of photo on here, the ones more concerned with strange semi-natural lighting you encounter on the street, but I'm gonna broaden that I think to all artificial light that comes from things other than conventional lights normally associated with, say,studio photography. So it's gonna be streetlights, car headlights, the light from a TV, from phones, reflected light (or 'second-hand sunlight' which I may or may not continue calling it) and whatever else I encounter.

I'm not sure what attracts me, I suppose it's something to do with the serendipity of it. But also the semi-naturalness of it. Light that does stuff for which it wasn't originally intended, like the streetlight installed for security but ends up being a perfect spot for an absolutely inconsequential bush, made famous in a photograph. Or the headlight of a car that's just pulling away from its parking spot but for about two seconds lights up the metal piping cover on the footpath. Complete banality elevated to a sort of significance by pure chance, and its significance cemented by being photographed.

I think I need to think it through, or, to be more accurate, I need to write about it more. I'll figure out why I take photographs of these things. For now I suppose it suffices that I just think they look good.

I've also started doing more self-portraits; well, I have been since I got a digital camera in March, but only recently have I been comfortable with sharing them. Lights seem to come into it quite a lot, maybe it's a comfort thing for me - I don't feel so egocentric if there's another point of focus in the photo, some sort of strange lighting effect or technique. But I think it works for the sake of the photo too.