23 Years

Amazing we are still here and together.

Life . . . . . .

Today

1992

Ken

Polling Station

May 7th 2015

Angie. Cast the vote.

Ken

Another Birthday

This time it's Angie's turn (3rd May). I first saw Angie when I was 14 years old in a now long gone record shop in Southend. You know the story . . . .

Life long.

Happy Birthday Angie!

Perfect day

Ken



Edit:

Hope you don't mind us crashing the party

Edit Edit:

Most welcome! Angie says thank you both! :)

Birthday Girl this morning

I'm John, He's Paul

Free, as a bird
It's the next best thing to me
Free as a bird
Free as a bird
Free as a bird

Sean

Friends

Simple as that.

Ten years . . . .

Ken

Kras & Klaus, Kindred Spirits

The Photographer Klaus Tamm has won the GDT Nature Photographer Of The Year 2015




Klaus's Work

Kras's Work


Sean

Old School Editing

The 2nd picture shows the lost craft of improving a portrait by hand

Tip to Dee for the inspiration

Sermon from the mount

(you may need headphones)

Have a good one

Trevor

It's all a blur

For some Canon shooters the most prised set of lenses amongst primes shooters is knows as.
'The Holy Trinity'.

The lenses are:
The 35mm F/1.4 L
The 85mm F/1.2 L
The 135mm f/2.0 L


You're going to get lots of talk about ultra sharp at one end and buttery smooth at the other. They are very traditional focal lengths. My 35mm and 135mm hasn't been updated in years, and predate digital. the 85mm has been updated but not dramatically. I have the (none L) 1.8 version of the lens.

I began to take photography more seriously when I started looking in to its history. I was drawn to pictures of peopleor things that pertained to the human condition. I found my heroes and my guides and bought the tools that I thought would help me make my own statements. I guess you'd call the shooters that I most idtentified  with the ''F8 & Be There'  photographers. The Street shooters and the PJ's where content and context is everything.

One of my very favourite photographers is the late W Eugene Smith who famously said.
"What use is having a great depth of field, if there is not an adequate depth of feeling"

I'm not much of an Ansel Adams fan but he had a point when he said.
"There's nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept"

I can't find a insightful quote about the current obsession with  blur.

Zzzz

Not A Matter Of Life & Dof

I typed four paragraphs about Bokeh (aka the Out Of Depth of field area of pictures) before thinking better of it and deleting it. That's 60 minutes of my life I won't get back, but I've saved anybody reading this a boring five minutes. I'm not going to write about it

I'll show you what I mean

Ohhhhh Buttery Smooth Bokeh. Shame about the model

 Grave of my parents

Diane getting in the way of my blur

Grave of Diane's parents

Sean


Update:

Famed Bokeh Lens

The 135mm F/2.0 L that I used for these pictures is a famed lens with Canon shooters. Lot’s of people like to get ‘Background Separation' with this lens by opening up the aperture to F/2.0. 

I  just  like to be able to still shoot in tough light. If I take somebody out to shoot them and then begin to separate them from their background, I usually conclude that I must have taken them to the wrong place. If It’s a found picture, say in a bar or on a street, I'm obviously there because that’s the environment where the things I like to shoot are to be found, that's the environment I love. Why would I want to blur that away?

The camera and lens is a heavy old 5.5lb combo . It was twilight in late December, the light was fading, I’m not muscle bound. I shot at F/2.0 so I could get  comfortable shutter speeds. The 'Bokeh', 'Background Blur' 'O.D.F' area in the pictures are a consequence of the conditions I was shooting in, not really an aesthetic choice at all. 

A good read on depth

Testing old lenses

By far the most popular things I sell are vintage lenses. I like to test them all out if I have the time. I gave some time to a Russian 500mm mirror lens and I'm not quite sure I like it. My instinct tells me that I should love it. It's a bit of a beast with manual focusing at such an extreme focal length.

Took it out today and I'm still not sure. The Bokeh (I'm not keen on that word) is unusual in the way it does circles, which I like. Usually fixed at f8 there are some good results to be had with these lenses with a subtle approach.

Six feet away this blackbird had a bath while out testing, is he telling me something?

Ken

In Search of Bluebells

First cycle trip in to the woods with Angie's new bike.

Ken

(Edit: 17th, a recent discovery Julie Fowlis, I like her.)

Gorillapod has lost his grip

Ruskin's View - My View

Diane - Church Brow Cottage - overlooking Ruskin's View - Kirby Lonsdale

I took this picture from the grounds of St Mary's Church, in the beautiful Cumbrian village of Kirkby Lonsdale. I was stood in the same churchyard where turner stood to paint, Kirkby Londsdale Churchyard 

He did this after reading Wordsworth's advice:
"By no means omit looking at the Vale of Lune from the Churchyard"

Diane is stood at the gate of Church Brow Cottage with The Lune Vally In the background. It’s a partial view of what is famously known as Ruskin’s view. Ruskin described the view as: "One Of The Loveliest Scenes in England, Therefore, the world"

I failed to come away with a good picture of the beautiful churchyard (but then who would dare to try after Turner?). Nor did I come away with a good picture of Ruskin’s view. But I had another view in mind, one that I happen to think is one of the finest in England.  


Sean

John Ruskin's Lost Daguerreotypes

I've known about this for a while, I think this one will please you, Ken. I recall Angie being as a fan of The Pre-Raphaelites -  so maybe Ange to.

John Ruskin wasn't a Pre-Raphaelite, but he was a patron of that movement and major art critic of the period. He was played by Tom Hollander in Desperate Romantics on the Beeb.

Some lost Daguerreotypes of a trip to Venice taken by Ruskin were recently put up for auction by somebody who had no clue of what they had in their possession. The starting price was £80

Read More Here

Venice-Ducal Palace-By John Ruskin Circa 1851

Sean

Cracked Bat Box

We were given a cracked bat box from a good friend, Yve. I have repaired the crack and have placed it high on the Eucalyptus tree.

The early days we'd see many bats, last year we only saw two.

Welcome many more bats!

Ken

It's never too late

Man, I got this in just in time.

New shoots

Congratulations on being an Uncle again Sean!

From the garden today

Ken

Waiting

I went to see my sister today. Her third child is due in three weeks time, so I'm going to be an uncle again.

Vera is one of those people that doesn't enjoy having her picture taken. She just doesn't think she's photographable, but she did mention that she'd like a good picture of herself whilst pregnant. I promised to come back with my camera and lighting on my next visit and take a picture I know she'll love. She said that was impossible

I only had my iPhone with me today. I took a quick snap of her by her window where she was already sat. She was worried about her double chin in her profile, I told her not to be daft (she's pregnant after all). I told her to look up at the ceiling to try make the picture more flattering for her. I was just playing really and she was laughing when I snapped it. Still, as a one shot taken with and edited with an iPhone, it's not too bad. Vera thinks its a good picture, but has concerns with her profile

I think there's a good picture in there somewhere, and I'll return to try find it.

Times ticking

Watching

I'm always struggling in which way or that way with my own photography. As a kid I would set up feeding stations, make bird tables, film and photograph them. Mum, Dad & I would go to Dunwich in Suffolk to see the then rare Avocet at Minsmere, staying in Pat's (the vet) caravan on top of the sandy cliffs.  If I'm really honest with myself then nature photography is my thing.

I was strongly reminded of this when I saw the blackbird sitting on her nest yesterday right next to where we park the car in the front garden.

Ken

It didn't look like that from here

The sky up here was full of light grey clouds during the eclipse. Thankfully there was plenty of breaks in the cloud to see the eclipse in all its celestial glory. But lets face it, the surrounding sky itself looked quite dull. I stopped the shutter down on the camera to capture the eclipse, not to make the sky more dramatic, but that is of course what it did happen in some of the shots. 

People who have seen the pictures have said. “Wow…It didn’t look like that from here!”. Even my partner in crime said much the same. I was quite surprised that she did not know that what a camera sees and what we see are not necessarily the same thing. 

On Tv, an eclipse usually looks quite dramatic. Before I understand exposure I always thought it just looked more dramatic in different parts of the world, but I know different now. How disappointed I wonder were those kids that had only seen one in pictures or TV before? 

The real wonder is the eclipse itself, not the clouds. 

The end looks nigh

I made my way to Egypt

It didn't look like that from here, either.

"Nature will reveals herself as she is"
Richard Feynman

When shooting eclipses or people, it might be worth remembering what Ferdinando Gonzaga, the 17th centuryDuke of Mantua said to the painter who painted the portrait of his wife, Christiana.

 “You have depicted her better than any other,” since you have improved and embellished her looks without diminishing her likeness.”


 Sean

Dad's Birthday

It's late at night (or early morning) and it's Dad's Birthday today (20th). I wish he was around to share the solar eclipse, I know he would have loved to have experienced it.

Happy Birthday Dad!

Ken

If it matters to you

Somewhere in some tin that time forgot, is video on mini dv tape of my wedding day.

It was shot by my brother, Daniel.  I’ve haven't  the video since the day he rigged up the cam to his TV before giving me the tape to transfer on to a CD/DVD. That was over six years ago

 They don’t make the little cams that take the tapes any more. I don’t know a single person who owns one, but in 2008 they were pretty standard. I know that there’s plenty of places that convert them for you today. I could easily convert it myself (which was my original intention) if I only I knew somebody who owned one of the camcorders, but I don’t.

The tape is probably next to some old MP3 mindiscs that were bought to go in the £400 Sony separate I owned in the early 00's.

 Lets say somebody comes across that tin in 50 years time. What would they do with the Video tape and minidisk? How the hell would they go about viewing those without real effort? The minidisk could have an early demo of a new Beatles on it, the video of them rehearsing. How would would they know?

We all know what negatives are, we all know what pictures are. Nobody looks at a bicycle and wonders what it does.  I might be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that everybody will still know what to do with a beautifully printed picture or bicycle that they happen upon in a hundred years time. Someone will hang the picture, someone will ride the bike. They may even transport them on a train to a new home. You could do the very same with a printed picture in 1890, when the train the bicycle and the printed picture were becoming more and more important



How  about in 2090 when somebody finds your Western Digital HD or an old iPhone with a dead battery and no charger?

Unprinted iPhone image of Diane

Not every picture needs to be saved, not every picture should be saved. But if you want a future Ken Smith to find what you have left behind, make your intention clear, make it easier for them to see that your pictures mattered


Sean

It's obvious

"A photograph should be more interesting than the subject and transcend its obviousness."

Jeffrey Ladd

Most pictures don’t matter. Most aren’t  taken with much thought for the morrow, let alone the next hundred years. There are happy accidents of course, and pictures may take on new meaning

as people and places come and go from our lives, but it can’t be denied that most pictures don’t matter. That’s not because they were taken with some instamatic or an iPhone, the vast majority of studio pictures don’t matter either, the vast majority of 8 x 10 5 x 7 don’t matter. 

Unless you happen to stumble in to the studio of a Richard Avedon, most studio portraits don’t matter to anybody but the client or the maker. It’s always been that way; Photography is a very democratic medium, and when it comes to viewing pictures, most people vote with there feet pretty quickly. 

Even our own pictures become too familiar to us, that is until some change in our lives occurs or there’s a fresh pair of eyes to share our history with, or when we need a reminder that the thing's we have invested our lives in are worth while, and not without meaning.

But most pictures do not transcend their obviousness.

Diane at KFC

Some Do

Dead Fox Cub. Ken Smith

So we have a picture of Diane taken around Christmas time in KFC with my iPhone. It's a pretty good snap. Does everything it needs to do, everything is right there in the picture. That's not an accident, I've been using a 35mm lens for years, and just happens to be what an iPhone uses so I know how to compose a picture with an iPhone.  It's a fun well taken snap of Diane, I need not say  any more about it then that (but I might another day)


On to Ken's picture

I've said before that I'm one of Seven. I may or may not have mentioned that six of us were ran over by motor vehicles when we were children.  You don't need to have been knocked down to think of that cub as a stand in for a child. I'm hardly a naturalist, but  how can you not think of mans never ending encroachment on nature (which came first suburbia or  the fox?).

The fox looks looks like it's just found the last piece of grass in world, and sprawled out on it.

No fox's were killed in the making of Diane's hat


Sean

The On Going Struggle

My family don't know that this blog exists.  I have only ever shown it to one of my friends, and only because I posted their picture on the blog. It’s never been a tool for self promotion, It’s never been about trying to find an audience, the blog is simply a means to an end. A commitment device, not to blogging, not to photography… But to friendship

As my posts declined, so to my contact with The Smiths. I gave a lot of thought about what should be done with this blog, but I forgot about why it was started.

 Well, I have remembered.


 Sean