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

Some time ago

In colour. Bond still strong.

Ken

The Very Occasional

K&K is not quite dead yet. A struggle but still here :)

Ken