Photography – Page 44 – a sibilant intake of breath

Scotland 2006 photos: second batch

All taken during our first big hike on Friday, this series of photos shows a bit of the majesty of the Scottish highlands.

There is really no mistaking the glacial origins of these mountains, though the erosion patterns of the rocks look quite unusual to someone used to mountains in British Columbia.

These are three of the five peaks we climbed on Friday, including at least one of the three Munros.

While requiring less exertion, descents were often rather more daunting than ascents.

Continuity of hats is an important element of hiking trips.

From left to right: Milan, Mark, Helen, Kathleen, Dengli, Chris, and Bruno. Photo taken by Andrew or Roman.

With tutorials tomorrow, I need to get some sleep. More photos and descriptions of the trip should come online tomorrow.

Scotland 2006 photos: first batch

Before putting anything on Photo.net, I will put a few of my better photos up here. I used my film camera for the shots I hoped would turn out more artistically. These digital shots are meant more as a documentation of the excursion. These are all from the ‘Five Sisters of Kintail’ hike that we did on Friday.

When we first got out of the minibus on Friday morning, I joked that we were about to climb the steep rise in front of us. We then went on to do exactly that: through the fog, with one backpack dropped and recovered from at least 100m below before we reached the first ridge.

Here we are atop that ridge. On account of the fog, we didn’t get much of a view for quite a while.

Bruno and Andrew leading along the ridge.

Ecology on Scottish mountain tops is a study in grasses, lichen, and perhaps sheep.

When the fog did clear a bit, we got a close up view of the legacy of glaciers upon the Scottish Highlands.

Dust to dust

Back on the 6th of February, I first noted the presence of some kind of opaque foreign matter on the sensor of my Canon Powershot A510 digital camera. Today, I examined what has taken place since.

The state of the sensor:

Note: the colour cast on the original is just because I shot it using auto white balance and tungsten illumination. The second was taken using sunlight. The general speckle pattern all over it is from the wall, not the sensor.

Both shots were taken at the smallest aperture allowed by the A510 at the shortest focal length (f/8). To me, the comparison indicates a worsening situation. There has been speculation that the foreign substance is not dust, but mold. That would be consistent with the fact that it seems to be worsening, as well as to how the problem first emerged after a period of particularly dismal and rainy weather.

Why it matters, and what to do

Shots that involve areas of solid colour as well as small apertures frequently require touching up in Photoshop to remove the blotches. Sometimes, that isn’t even possible for me. (Look near the ground, to the left of the chapel.) Cleaning the sensor would require paying a technician rather more than the value of the camera. I bought it in North Vancouver for C$273.55 (£132), which included a 512 meg SD card that can be used with a new camera. Replacing it with a comparable camera would cost less (because this model has been replaced by newer ones) and more (because everything costs more in England). The big choice is whether to replace the thing, or start putting money into a digital SLR fund.

Having a camera small enough that I literally carry it everywhere has quite a bit of value to it. Having a DSLR would probably improve the quality of photos that I put on here, but it would definitely be more of a conspicuous item to carry and use. It would also further stress iPhoto, with larger image files…

…wanders back to his reading, pondering…

On self-representation

Every photographer understands the impetus behind the self-portrait: not some formal tripod and time-delay creation, but the quasi-accidental inclusion of oneself in a composition, in the form of a shadow, perhaps, or a reflection.

Photography is a curious art-form, for many reasons. Unlike most forms of artistic representation, it requires relatively little ability to translate sight into the moment of a hand. Instead, it required just one firm touch upon a button, under conditions that are recognized as being correct. The difficulty of affirming the originality of that act may partially explain the motivation behind the photographer’s self-portrait.

Mostly, however, I think of it as a playful interchange between photographer and observer. Whereas the two are normally in a conspiracy with regards to the subject (at the same time as the photographer and the subject are in conspiracy against the observer), in this case, there is a kind of simultaneous mutual revealing, which is very artistically and emotively interesting.

Reading, writing, walking

With all that is ongoing, it has been a busy day. That said, things now seem to be on track for tomorrow’s lecture. Monday, I will be teaching another seminar and meeting with Dr. Hurrell to discuss the lacklustre result of the research design essay. Tuesday, I am going to London to see the Kandinsky exhibition with Sarah Webster. This is especially welcome, as it will be the first time I’ve seen her since her wedding, back in March.

A postcard from Kelly arrived today. She will be returning from Scotland sometime in the next week, though things are uncertain given all the vagaries that attach themselves to what is simultaneously a research trip and a family holiday. Her safe return is much anticipated.

While retracing a portion of the bike ride I described here a few days ago on foot with Antonia this afternoon, I managed to take some photographs with which I am reasonably pleased . Once you have more than 4000 from a place as small as Oxford, it becomes hard to come up with something good every day. As such, I’ve used a few of them to adorn photos from past days that were lacking images. The general idea is that posts without specific topics (ie. this one) should include photographs at the rate of about one per day. This is to compensate for the fact that I am just summarizing things at you.

iBook, RAM, and iPhoto

Hardware geekery of limited interest to follow: Continue reading “iBook, RAM, and iPhoto”

A mystery

In my mail this morning, I found a roll of Fuji Velvia 100, a voucher for processing, and an invoice for about eleven quid. It’s all from a place called 7dayshop.com, in Guernsey. From the slip, it’s unclear whether the invoice is a bill that demands payment or simply a receipt for payment made.

I am as sure as sure can be that I didn’t order any such thing. I have stopped shooting film entirely in the UK and, if I were to start, I would almost certainly use T-Max or HD400. It seems at least possible that someone sent this as a gift. If so, please let me know before I call them curiously and accuse them of sending unsolicited transparency film. Likewise, if so, thanks for sending me such an excellent variety of film.

Thanks for your help.

[Update: 4:04pm] The mystery is solved; see comments.

My history with light and lenses

Over the last few days, I went through all 6000 or so original photos that I have copied to my laptop over the years. The vast majority were either taken in Oxford or in Vancouver, in the days leading up to my departure. There are also some travel photos – notably from my European trip in 2004 – and various sets of images scanned from rolls of film. I have very few photos from the period prior to what might be termed the middle of the Meghan era. Even going back that far fills me with conviction that I’ve lived a pretty interesting life; enough so that whole swaths of it can be forgotten entirely and come back like a CD you listened to a hundred times years ago, but never since.

While the quality of the photos has been improving, the subject matter and general characteristics of composition seem to be quite consistent. If anything, photos taken since I got a digital camera have been a bit more experimental upon occasion. There are also more shots of kinds that I prefer to have on a hard drive somewhere than on a website: not explicit, but simply not attempts at art or documentation for public consumption. I want what I put online to be attractive in a fairly conventional sense: with lines that guide the eye, proper exposure, and people looking good.

I really wish I had scanned some photos or negatives from my earliest period of real photography: after I got a manual Pentax SLR in tenth grade and started to do my own developing and printing. Much of it was quite technically imperfect, but it was nonetheless quite an exciting introduction into an empowering new medium. I particularly liked some of the shots generated over the course of a long string of trips to Victoria to visit Kate. Opening the huge plastic box with my old photo stuff in it, when next I am moving the bulk of my physical stuff in Vancouver, will probably involve a far more profound variant of the feeling of unfamiliar familiarity described above.

As with writing, I often feel somewhat entrapped within my own photographic style. I want to do something radically different, but attempts to do so are rarely good enough to warrant any public display – the ultimate objective of the greater part of everything I do. I can’t just turn around, like Orson Scott Card did, and write a cyberpunk short story that is any good.

Like with almost everything I do, I am almost always really pleased to get any kind of substantive response to photography I’ve done: regardless of how critical or positive it is. I am putting these things out there to be engaged with, to alter the ways that people think about me, themselves, and the world. If I am managing to do so, please tell me. If there is a way I could do better, I would be even happier to hear it.

PS. The gateway to almost all the photography I have online is here.

PPS. Given the annoyance of my increasingly fungus-covered digital camera sensor, donations to my photo gear fund are extremely welcome.

Pitt Rivers Redux

At the Natural History and Pitt Rivers, there was a kind of luminous open house tonight – with less frantic versions of the kind of lights used at dances, as well as shadow theatre with extensive musical accompaniment and torchlit wandering sessions through the Pitt Rivers collection. Many thanks to Antonia for the invitation and accompaniment.

The large number of people present marked this out as quite a successful event. It definitely changed the way in which you experienced the place, and the items therein. Also entertaining was the 1918 version of the film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea they were screening. It’s odd how it is so accurate in some regards, and so laughably wrong in others.

PS. Walking home through Oxford at midnight on a Saturday in the spring is not recommended for those who are single and unhappy about it.

Second summer day

With Kai at a party in London and Alex in Vienna for the marathon, this is my first night alone in the Church Walk flat. It follows a day that was excellent in many ways. The weather had the same brightness and warmth of yesterday, and it was accompanied nicely by the Feist CD that Jonathan recommended to me, called “Let it Die.” A few weeks will be necessary to really comprehend the style, but I could tell immediately that I like it. Already, the CD strikes me as unusually versatile – with a style that’s hard to pin down. The tone is similarly liable to shift dramatically between songs: from playful to forlorn. I rather like the song in French.

After meeting with Dr. Hurrell and reading in the Wadham MCR for a few hours, I spent the evening walking and conversing with Roz. At one point, we got excellent veggie burgers from a place on Walton Street called Peppers. The smell and clientele reminded me of the Jamaican place across the street from the hostel in Manhattan where I stayed in the days after the blackout in 2003. Their burgers are both very filling and surprisingly tasty, for a vegetarian product in the UK. Given that it’s just a few blocks away and is open late, it risks becoming the Pita Pit of this place of residence (a reference that anyone from UBC should understand).

Earlier, Rosalind and I wandered through Trinity College, which I had previously seen only from the outside, and the Wadham gardens. They have begun to change dramatically, with the coming of sun and longer days. For someone who arrived in Oxford in late September, it’s still something of a surprise to see groups of trees with leaves on them. I am looking forward to a summer of working, cycling, and researching here.

Migration news: geeky stuff

The migration from Blogger to WordPress is going well. I have the colours and formatting on the new blog more or less where I want them. I already much prefer the commenting and management system of WordPress. I just need to come up with a sharp new banner and tweak a few small things. Then, I will shift the WordPress version to the front page. I think I can do so without breaking the links to the old Blogger posts: at least until Google indexes them on the basis of their new permalinks.

Now that I am getting used to it a bit, I prefer the cleaner lines and overall layout of the new blog, as well as the greater versatility of the content management system.

Between the 20th and 24th of June, the Oxford Playhouse is staging Paradise Lost. I shall make a point of going. Roz says that she is also keen to come, if she hasn’t headed off to Rome for the summer by that point.
Tomorrow afternoon is the first OUSSG executive meeting, meant to sort out what to do about the dinners this term. It will be good to finally meet the rest of both the new and old executive in a context meant for planning.
I got a quartet of very diverse fictional books from a free box in Nuffield that Margaret directed me towards, when I was waiting for my supervision. I’ll have a look through them in the summer.