Topsy Turvy Day

Well I have been bluebell hunting this morning.  Again encouraging puzzled looks as I stalked through the undergrowth of Swithland woods in search of the illusive photograph.  How do I capture the bluebell wood without being a cliche?  Still no real answer to this but I think the photographs are getting better.

As I look at these examples of this morning's hunt I find myself again coming under the influence of John Blakemore.  There is a fascinating article about Blakemore in the latest issue of Ag.  Blakemore has been a long term influence on my work going back to the 1970's.  He is usually associated with black and white photographs, many of the Derbyshire peak district.  In this latest article his colour work is explored.   I do find quite a bit of crossover.

Now why topsy turvy?  Well as usual I cocked my backing up of files and so one vital file was not backed up.  What does this mean?   It means that I have got to spend sometime tomorrow recreating the file and then my back up program for my images will work again.  It is not the worst oversight I have done but nonetheless it is frustrating.   At least I was able to get out for a few hours and makes some photographs.  When will I ever learn?

One final thought.  I mentioned this the other day about Safari but I feel I need to expand on why I disliked what I saw with the beta of the Apple Safari browser.  Why Why Why?   Why do software companies have to keep playing around with things.  The new interface is a mess.  I am sure if you are a Mac user this may fit more closely to your experience, it certainly looks like iTunes - however as a usable interface I find it very confusing.  Hopefully by the time the final version is release there will be some series reworking of the interface.  What I want from a browser is simplicity.  It is not the reason why I surf the internet but just the conduit.  It should be as unobtrusive as possible.  Please Apple do not spoil my favourite browser.   

Experimentation

As photographers we are used to failure.  Unless I am unusual, and in this particular area I don't think I am, we are more unsuccessful than successful.   We do a shoot and take a number of photographs, we look at the contact sheets/images on the screen and select only those that meet whatever criteria we have set,   the rest are discarded.  We define ourselves not by our successes but our failures.  Indeed it is what drives us on, to perfect our art, to make the next photograph better than the last.  But we know failure, we know its frustration, its stigma.   For every success we have a thousand failures.  Indeed recently it has been estimated that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become really competent in whatever field of endeavour we are working.

So why this dwelling on failure?   Well I have had one of those shoots.  I spent most of the morning in  Swithland Woods, a popular woodland area.  For the most part it was deserted and so I had time just to ponder and think about what I was taking.  In fact there really wasn't much to take.   I had continued the experiment with the tilt and shift lens.  I also continued to work with the G9 and tethered flash.  But nothing really worked.   So I changed my approach and started to use 2nd curtain flash on bushes as they swayed in the stiff breeze.  This was far more successful,  but not what I had thought about when I set out.   So this is why I started to think about failure.  Sometimes things go totally wrong.  Sometime they just don't gel but perhaps the worst is when they don't do anything at all.  When you get one of those days it is really frustrating.  Today was one those days.   Still there is always tomorrow.