5 Weeks????? Nuggets!

Yes dear readers.

It is only 5 weeks before I have to hand in my year's work to be assessed for the ABC Level 3 Module "Exploring Photographic Imaging"

"Oh I see so what you going to do then?"

Good question think I will take an idea from Calvin & Hobbs:

However I may be waiting a long time for the 'inspiration' bus to turn up so think I may have to go with:

Alas I don't have a Plan B as in plan or smart dressed cockney rapper who appears on the TV/Radio etc etc.

"Yah but you have been filling in your workbook all year so that should help?"

Arh! the workbook looks a little like:

In fact, if it did have some tumble weed blowing through it it would be something, I can see it from here with a least a couple of inches of dust on it.  

"Up shit creek then matey?"

Well actually no I think not.

After a little email conversation with one of the tutors, it appears I may well have produced enough work to mount and display for the end of year show and fill in the work book to show I have done something.

Problem is, it is scattered all over the house and I need to find it and co-ordinate it.

Plus tomorrow night I have a one to one with the tutor.

That should be fun. I was going to get it all sorted last weekend and tonight, however as you can tell from this I haven't.

BUT I have turned up for lessons, been on a number of trips, been involved with the Silk Museum project, used at least two types of digital cameras, 35mm, 120 and polaroid film plus a number of assignments. So all is not lost yet. 

Just need to find it.

Yes yes I know I said at the beginning of the year, "I'll keep on top of it all as I go along"

Its one of those Captain Picard moments:

Skool Trip

Yes it's that time of year again when the college has field trip away for the weekend.

Basically, photos, booze, curry, early starts, late finish just about sums it up.

(Oh I hate seagulls especially at 5 in the morning and before the sun is up)






Fortunately this year I managed to scrounge a lift off Michelle, so there's me, Karen, Louise and Lynne all in Michelle's car driving around North Wales in the sun.




For those that can't remember what the sun looks like here is a picture of it sodding off  behind Criccieth.










So what did you do then?

Well we went exploring:

To be honest I did struggle to find something to photograph but I managed to make the best of it.

After that we wandered over to Aberdaron, a very small coastal town with a cracking pastie shop and a beach so we stopped and had a wander around.

There was a very nice old Church there.

Also went for a walk around the beach on which there were some artistic shapes to be had

OK I know what you're thinking and you're probably right.

There were also other things to see on the beach as well

There were a few other things as well but I have not got around to processing them, maybe next year I will just use my camera phone.

It was a really nice day and a good laugh and as the sun began to fade we headed back to Criccieth and up to the curry house.

It is slightly out of focus but I had had a fair bit of wine by then still very very scrummy.

Bardsey Island

Yes this was the main focus of the Skool Trip and boat ride out to the island with no running water (no Star Bucks) and chemical toilet, oh, and electricity either by generator or candle. You can hire a cottage out there if you want to get away from it all. 

The boat ride out was fun as we all had to stick on our life vests because the waves were certainly bigger than the boat, like being on a water roller coaster.

It got more exciting after this bit.

And what's on Bardsey?

Not a lot really, some cottages (still working ones with families farming) an old church, a light house and when in season loads of sea birds.

Well if you need to dry a pan out then leave it on a fence post.

There is a really nice old Church with Abbey and graveyard (it's me I can't resist graveyards)

Back where the boat comes in there were a whole bunch of seals, that watched us photographing them and doing sod all else.

There on the rock over there burping, farting and being fat.

One long walk around the island which was fun and then the trip back on the "Black Pig" (Google it) that was very sedate after the trip over.

Now if only I could remember what this button does?

How to impress with a BIG lens.

Look over there (sounding like a machine gun range, no idea what it was)
















Hmmm! I wonder if I can get a beer on this boat

Once back on dry land we all headed back to cars said our goodbyes and headed off home.

Which due to it being a nice day and road works meant it took aaaaaagggggggeeeesssssss to get back.

This is the last shot from the weekend and it just makes me laugh and is titled

Champagne Girls On Tour.

Yep that's us sitting on the kerb eating carrot cake (very nice as well), drinking coffee in a petrol station on the A55 with only one bog and a steady stream of people and cars coming through.

The joys of the Skool Trip.

Silk

Did you know that Macclesfield was once a massive producer of silk products?

Nope me neither.

Now it has virtually all disappeared, like most things in this country cheap imports and failure to update the working looms, invest in the skills and infrastructure etc leads to an inevitable collapse.

However there is museum and in there is a whole bunch of looms and things to spin and weave silk. It appears that when the place closed in the 1980's, the work force just up and left, leaving the entire place as is.

So why were you there?

Well you see, Matt has this idea to photograph the place, record what's left and print it all on silk as a cyanotype print for an exhibition and to be held in the archives.

  

Certainly an interesting idea and with a fair few people on board there are some ideas floating about.


OK so what happened?

I got the wrong end of the stick, as usual, as it turned out that the trip over the weekend was a reconnoitre of the place.













So armed with a digital camera and a medium format SLR I joined the rest of the crew and fired off some snaps inside the mill.

OK did you learn anything?

Yep I did.

Using a medium format film camera with a large mirror, weighing in at around 1.5 kgs, I can't hand hold steady at an 1/8th second, nor 1/2 second for that matter.

A metering prism is a great idea but difficult to focus when you're not using very fast lenses or the light is less than bright.

Developing a 400ISO film in Rodinal 1:50 @ 25^o degrees for 1 hour works really well. Grainy YES but that's what I wanted.

Film is great. Square format is great.

Digital cameras can catch you unawares, especially if you have not read the instruction book fully. Shooting in RAW, then you select one of the novelty filters, the camera then changes to JPEG and for some reason the shutter speeds drop really really low.

Nope, can't hand hold a small digi camera at 1/2 second shutter speed either.

So I managed to get a couple of images I liked but next time if we shoot in there I will take a tripod and a torch or leave the prism at home.

Yes I will also RTFM on the digi camera too.

What to do on a cold foggy Sunday?

Well go out and take some pictures.

Yes I know, you can get up off the floor now, I have actually run a roll of film through one of the cameras I have.

Matt, the college tutor, has decided it is his mission to "get me taking pictures again". So with this in mind he very kindly gave me a load of out of date film, transparency, colour print and 2 black and white ones.

The film I used last week was a Fuji Pro 160S film, which according to Fuji superb skin tones, fine grain, natural grey balance. Fine should be good for using in temperatures around zero.

These were shot in and around where I live so here goes.

Out of all of the above my favourite 2 are the top and bottom ones of this set.

Don't you just love square formats?

Why crop it?

Lots of people seem to think that is the way to deal with the format but not me I love it and yes I should use it more.  

Now! Bear in mind that it was very cold and foggy plus I did not have any warm up filters on, how come they all came back from the developers with a fairly heavy magenta cast?

As in the Bullrush image, see how there is a cast to it that I couldn't remove. Then again I kind of like it so that's ok.

I assume the reason is that the film was out of date. Suppose I should have looked at the packaging first but hey, that is the fun of photography, never being to sure what's going to happen.

OK OK, I know if I had shot digitally it would have turned out just right.

But you know what I really don't care, it's far more fun doing it this way.

For those that know me in the real world, you didn't think I would get through a whole year without one head stone did you?

Is there anybody out there?

 Did anyone watch the BBC Stargazing which was on over the last week?

OK basically it is trying encourage people to take an interest in science as well as the night sky.

Something not so easy in the UK due to light pollution and cloudy overcast skies.

However this year it was good, cloud free nights up here in the North and where we are the light pollution is not so bad. So a good pair of binoculars and you can see a fair few things up there.

 The andromeda galaxy which can just about be seen by the naked eye in a very dark place.

Of course one thing that always pops up on these programs is the question, "is there life out there?"

I suppose by the law of averages, sod's law and the fact that there are something like 10¹¹ to 10¹² stars in our galaxy, and there are perhaps something like 10¹¹ or 10¹² galaxies I would say yes, somewhere out there there is life.

Now the problem with this is that if you listen to the likes of Prof Brian Cox, all he will say is "well the most likely thing we will discover is microbes".

Microbes?

How dull is that?

Now anyone who reads or watches any Science Fiction stuff will know that the universe is full of alien races.

Kidnapped Princess in gold bikini may be pushing it a bit but you never know what's out there.









I suppose the Star Wars universe is plausible but at the end of the day all they are doing is playing cowboys and indians but with blasters. Let's be fair, the Imperial Troopers would still run into problems with the local coppers and I doubt survive for long in any town centre after closing time.

Hmmm! not likely but what about the Star Trek universe?

Well at least that is based around humans and their continuing exploration, expansion, exploitation and to "boldly go where no one has gone before".

OK well, trouble is that it assumes that everyone else in the neighbourhood is at the same point in their evolution, warp drive, ships with artificial gravity, atmospheres, transporters etc etc.

Of course the big thing about the Star Trek universe is that some races are friendly and others are not, which does make for a good story.













 Realistically what ares the chances of anything arriving and saying 'Hello'.

It could end up like the original 1950's film "The Day The Earth Stood Still" although a film about the fears and politics of the time, I think it still stands today as to what our reaction may be to a large flying saucer landing somewhere.












So let's see, our nearest galaxy is some 2 million light years away, even if it does have 'life as we know it', it would take (assuming you can't travel faster than light) 2 million years travelling at the speed of light (186,282 miles per second) to get here. Don't worry I'll pack some extra sandwiches and treats for the trip.

Now assuming that when we look at the galaxy it is 2 million years in the past, then I assume that if they are looking at us, we are 2 million years in the past.

What would they see of Earth 2 million years ago?

Animals, plants, life definitely but nothing to go for a trip out when you could just go to the nearest park or zoo and see the same thing.

Plus why would an alien race travel these vast distances to arrive here, abduct some simple minded folk, anally probe them, then allow them to escape so they could write a book about it and turn up on daytime TV chat shows?

While we are at it here is an image showing all the space junk around earth at the moment.

Would you want to fly through all that and scratch the paint work on your ship?

Earth is also very noisy, all the mother ship would have to do is park itself up near Jupiter and listen in.

What would they hear or see?

Celebrity big brother, strange Japanese game shows, rolling news slagging everything and everyone off, constant goings on about the climate etc etc etc. Plus we would be considered very primitive, I mean we can't even get out of our own atmosphere without a huge push and only managed to land man on our nearest planet, the moon, a few times.

I do believe there is life on other planets but I don't believe "they are among us" but it could be a little like this small video the first minute is the best bit:

Goodbye 2011 Hello 2012

(The above was pinched from someecards.com)

I suppose a Happy New Year to you dear readers, yes I know a couple of days late but hey, when have you ever known me to be on time?

"So how was 2011 then?"

Odd in so many ways, I mean the beginning of 2011 yours truly had thermal everything on, yet at the end I am sat here in a t-shirt, so the weather was interesting if nothing else this year.

The Large Hadron Collider started up and the whole world was not consumed by a run away black hole. However they did find a neutrino that went faster than light. Now if that ends up being true then there is going to be a huge shit storm kicked up over that, I bet, turn most of Einstein's theories upside down for a start. Defiantly have to keep an eye on that.

The rest of the world basically went to shit, with wars here and there, economies disappearing up there own arse and no politician able to take the bull by the horns and sort it all out. Again something to watch in the new year as well.

"Yeah yeah I know all that but what about you?"

Hmmmmm!!!!.

Not much really got another couple of cameras this year and now I am at a stage where I am seriously thinking of getting rid of about 85% of them.

Finished and passed the Darkroom module at college. That was more challenging than I excepted and if I do it again then I will shoot new stuff using medium format. Don't know if it will be easier, but certainly more fun.

Currently my 'photo mojo' has left the room found a nice comfy chair in front of the fire and gone to sleep and at the moment that is fine, although college starts again in a couple of weeks so I had best either bail out or start getting my head sorted.

However having said that it looks like I am now a member of the "Macc Girls Photo Club" which is really just a good excuse to meet up and drink coffee/tea and eat cakes. Which you have to admit is pretty cool.

Swore I would not by Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 3, but I did and now play it way to much online. Also got introduced to Angry Birds, simple game and has similar feeling to the old Worms games and like Worms very addictive to play.

A few other things went tits up as well but that is another story for another day.

So on towards 2012.

Yep and if the Hadron Collider runs out of control, opens a portal to another world and a flood of zombies arrive, just keep this little poster in mind:

Restrepo

RESTREPO is a feature-length documentary that chronicles the deployment of a platoon of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley. The movie focuses on a remote 15-man outpost, "Restrepo," named after a platoon medic who was killed in action. It was considered one of the most dangerous postings in the U.S. military. This is an entirely experiential film: the cameras never leave the valley; there are no interviews with generals or diplomats. The only goal is to make viewers feel as if they have just been through a 90-minute deployment. This is war, full stop. The conclusions are up to you.

The above taken from National Geographic Movies

This is a DVD review, something I have not done before so should be interesting.

Restrepo was a film made by Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington (Tim Hetherington tragically died while covering the Libyan's fight for freedom) which can be read about at Tim Hetherington home page.

This was shown one college class, as a way of displaying how photographers are now using DSLR's to make films. The tutor Matt is very excited about this development and for many reasons I can see why but for me, at the moment, for the stuff I do I remain unconvinced.

However back to Restrepo.

It follows a platoon of American Soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and concentrates on the soldiers involved. It follows the year timeline from the trip out, setting up Restrepo outpost, patrols and finally the trip home. Considering the amount of images collected over a year, it has been very skilfully edited down to 90 minutes.

A section of the film covers the 'Rock Avalanche' operation to clear out the Taliban from positions further up the valley. This is a fairly intense piece of filming especially when the patrol ran into an ambush. However from the point of view of the camera man (if it was me I would have done the same, ducked) it was difficult to get a grasp on what was actually going on.

This is dealt with by interspersing the film with interviews with the combatants, where they talk about their reactions, what they thought and what their fears were. This was a good way keeping the audience on the edge of their seats.

I can see why it won at the Sundance Film Festival.

However for me, I found it, well a little too 'clean' and feel the hand of the censor at work.

Why?

The Americans, quite understandably, want to paint any operations in Afghanistan in a good light. This is because it is a very sensitive political subject plus the more soldiers that come home in body bags the more the populace gets fed up.

As you watch the film the soldiers are doing their best to get the locals on their side, often in the film you hear:

"You people need jobs, we are going to build a road through the valley which will bring trade and make you all rich"

Really?

Considering that the Taliban control nearly 85% of the valley and they are so entrenched in peoples families, in the culture etc I am sorry but even to me that seems like a very tall order.

Even after watching it for only 10 minutes the cultural difference between the locals and the Americans is so wide, its just not funny. Again, like a lot of places in the world as one of the soldiers puts it "They don't want us here and we don't want to be here".

The interviews of the soldiers are well done and obviously been conducted after the tour has finished. It is interesting to see that no matter what the time frame is, World War 2, Vietnam, Yom Kippur of the 20th Century, interviews like this are very very similar.

That is not to take anything away from the soldiers as I feel it is important to air these simply to show others that war is not glorious.

Again I can feel the censor at work showing the human cost as soldiers lose their friends and how they all pull together and how they are fighting to save the locals from the Taliban, which I still feel is nowhere near what the truth really is.

You can get a little glimpse of this if you watch the deleted scenes and listen to the interviews in the extras bit of the DVD, here you do get a sense of what it is like, how infantry humour is dark, infantile and just plain silly sometimes.

However for me the interview about "Hearts and minds" is the really good one and I think should have been part of the main movie. Here one of the soldiers during the interview says:

"Hearts and minds? fuck em, how can you have hearts and minds when an Afgan shoots an RPG at you and puts his wife and child in front knowing you won't shoot back."

Certainly makes you think.

Overall it is very good piece of work and if you are interested in modern day conflicts then it is certainly worth a watch.