Looking at – and seeing – the world
March 3, 2021 8 Comments
.
One of our friends’ daughters; growing up very fast now.
Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window – recommended.
Technique: D700 with 105mm Nikkor lens; 3200 ISO; centre-weighted metering; Lightroom; Silver Efex Pro 2, starting at the Warm Tone Paper preset and adding a moderate coffee tone.
.
.
.
February 20, 2021 13 Comments
.
Young Luo girl on a farm near Akala in western Kenya; Apr 1979.
Click onto the image to open a larger version on a separate window.
Technique: OM-1 with 50mm Zuiko lens; Agfa CT18 colour slide film, rated at 64 ISO; mono conversion and vignetting in Silver Efex Pro.
THE ARCHIVE KENYA SERIES
I’m re-posting photographs that I took in Kenya over 30 years ago. You can find more context here . Click onto the “Archive Kenya” tag (below) to see more of these film images from Kenya.
.
.
.
January 31, 2021 8 Comments
.
Young Luo girl on a farm near Akala, in the far west of Kenya; Apr 1979.
She is leaning against the decorated wall of a thatched hut and, despite her friends and family being close by, she looks concerned and perhaps wary. This might have been her first close encounter with a white person and, although the OM-1 is wonderfully compact, with anything like a sophisticated modern camera.
Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window.
Technique: OM-1 with 50mm Zuiko lens; Agfa CT18 colour slide film rated at 64 ISO.
THE ARCHIVE KENYA SERIES
I’m re-posting photographs that I took in Kenya over 30 years ago. You can find more context here . Click onto the “Archive Kenya” tag (below) to see more of these film images from Kenya.
.
.
.
January 7, 2021 13 Comments
.
We were visiting friends when their elder daughter, whom we like very much, suddenly started asking her parents about how words are written. She knew how letters and combinations of letters sound and how they look when written down, but she’d never equated the two before.
A few words of explanation from her parents and – to the vast astonishment of everyone present – she just started phonetically pronouncing words and then writing them all over large pieces of scrap paper on the floor!
I had my camera to hand, and a unique occasion was recorded. This is not a good picture photographically, but in this sort of instance that doesn’t worry me at all – and I love her tentative, slightly doubtful expression.
Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window.
Technique: D700 with 105mm Nikkor lens; 3200 ISO; south Bristol; 26 Apr 2009.
UPDATE: yes, photographically, in technical terms, this is not a good picture. But it is nevertheless a very valuable picture, and especially so to the girl and her family – here is a fundamental achievement on her part, a fundamental moment in her life. Which feeds into one of my core beliefs about photography – that by far the most important aspect of an image is its content – have interesting / striking / meaningful content, and the technicalities come a very, very long way second.
So, ok, let’s turn this on its head. Here’s a meaningful image that is technically imperfect. Who would rather have a meaningless image that is technically perfect? .
.
.
.
December 25, 2020 16 Comments
LOL! I’ve been looking back the FATman archives for a Christmas photo for this post, and really cannot find a single one! I think I just don’t do Christmas photos. And so to something from brighter, warmer days:
Driving on the eastern reaches of Queen’s Sedge Moor, heading for the little hamlet of Barrow; and, suddenly, the road overshadowed by a giant – an oak I think – backlit from the east.
And so to standing back as far as the narrow lane permitted, looking up through a very wide angle lens; and to overexposing the scene – avoiding a pure silhouette – to retain some colour in the tree’s leaves and some detail in its trunk, while letting the rising sun’s glare burn out much of the backdrop.
Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window, and click onto that image to further enlarge it – recommended.
Technique: X-T2 with 10-24 Fujinon lens at 15mm (equiv); 400 ISO; Lightroom, using the Velvia/Vivid film simulation; Queen’s Sedge Moor, on the Somerset Levels south of Wells; 24 May 2019.
In this post, a little while back, I talked about the fact that, due to child poverty, large numbers of children in the UK – which is one of the world’s richer countries, after all – are routinely experiencing hunger. Quite simply, this is a national disgrace, and I am ashamed of my country’s government for allowing such circumstances to routinely occur. Today of all days, it seems right to repeat this message, and I would be grateful if those who have not seen it would look at this post. Adrian
.
.
.
October 30, 2020 11 Comments
.
Luo family on a farm near Akala, in the far west of Kenya; April 1979.
The backdrop is the painted wall of a wattle and daub hut, the smooth surface layer of which is starting to flake off on the far right. Minor points, maybe that I’ve only really appreciated now, after all these years, are the Vicks poster and the kitten.
Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window – recommended.
Technique: OM-1 with 50mm Zuiko lens; Agfa CT18 colour slide film, rated at 64 ISO.
UPDATE: The people in Kenya were in the main very friendly and hospitable. I very much enjoyed my years in that country. Again – once again – I wish that I had photographed more of the people that I met there.
THE ARCHIVE KENYA SERIES
I’m re-posting photographs that I took in Kenya over 30 years ago. You can find more context here . Click onto the “Archive Kenya” tag (below) to see more of these film images from Kenya.
.
.
.
October 25, 2020 19 Comments
Mother and baby: love, compassion, kindness: are these emotions considered relevant by England’s Conservative government?
I have spent a long time in the Third World and seen total, abject poverty. But then – and this is a shocking thing to say – that was the Third World and such sights were not unexpected. Those countries face enormous challenges in the modern world, and many of the amenities, commodities, values and lifestyles that we in the developed West take for granted are simply not available to millions of people towards the lower levels of the prevailing social hierarchies. Seeing such hardship has had a lasting effect on me, it has really altered the way I look at the world in general, and I am grateful for that – albeit it is enlightenment bought at the price of witnessing the plight of others.
But when I returned to England in 1989, at the end of the Thatcher Years ( an earlier Conservative government), I had thought that I had left all of this dire poverty behind me – so that I was all the more shocked and saddened to see people begging and sleeping out on city streets here.
Because it is a simple fact that although the UK is a developed and wealthy Western nation, there are still large numbers of poor, vulnerable and disadvantaged people here – a fact that was further driven into me as I then worked for 20 years in Social Services Departments, collating and analysing service user data. During this SSD work, I came into contact with the Free School Meals Service, which provides free school lunches for children from deprived social backgrounds.
And now, as well as lunches, many schools are providing breakfasts and other food for their children. A friend of mine is a School Governor, and I have become involved in this crisis in a small way by donating funds to be used to help this school’s most needy families. On asking what sorts of things the money would be used for, I was told that it would buy “luxuries” that these families could not usually afford – like biscuits and fresh fruit. Well, what does one say? This is the UK in 2020 and, to some, such really very basic items are luxuries??? I have to admit that all this has affected me deeply, and the more so since many families are now also being ravaged by both the covid pandemic and the consequent rising unemployment.
Father and baby: love, compassion, kindness: are these emotions considered relevant by England’s Conservative government?
The government in England has now voted – disgracefully voted, in my view – not to provide needy children with Free School Meals over the imminent Half-Term Holiday – and this has prompted Marcus Rashford, a famous footballer from a deprived family background, to campaign to overturn this government vote – as he has affected these issues in the past and been awarded an MBE for doing so. Even if the vote is overturned, that this Half-Term starts here tomorrow will mean that the U-turn, one of so many that this really incompetent English government has made, will not come in time for these children. But of course the longer Christmas school holiday is rushing towards us, and it may well effect things then.
These events have prompted public uproar. 700,000 have signed a petition against the government’s decision, and 800,000 have signed another petition, to remove public subsidies on the cost of Members of Parliament’s food and drinks. Many local councils, businesses, cafes and other food outlets have said they will provide free meals for children if the government fails to. Over 2,000 top children’s doctors have signed an open letter to the government, condemning their policies.
If you would like to know more about these issues, here is Marcus Rashford’s twitter address; please have a look: @MarcusRashford . And you can also of course simply dial marcus rashford into Google.
Thank you.
.
.
.
October 22, 2020 6 Comments
.
House on a farm near Akala, in the far west of Kenya; April 1979.
These are Luo people who live in the immensely fertile far west of Kenya, not far from Lake Victoria – a vast body of water that supplies them with vast quantities of fish, and with frequent thunder storms which keep their land totally green.
The structure consists of mud walls, above which a conical thatched roof is mounted on a great mass of wooden poles. There is quite a gap between the roof and the walls but, in this hot, equatorial area, cold weather is not an issue. This hut has at least two rooms: the doorway to a second room is to the left of the people. The mud walls have decorations drawn straight onto them, and there is an oil lamp hanging up. Notice how everything, including the chest of drawers and some of the pictures hanging on the walls, has cloth covers.
Food and water are not an issue for these people, they live in a wonderfully fecund landscape. But there are diseases – it was here that malaria first got its claws into me, despite my using mosquito nets and prophylactics.
Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window – recommended.
Technique: OM-1 with 28mm Zuiko lens; Agfa CT18 colour slide film, rated at 64 ISO.
.
.
.
September 5, 2020 11 Comments
.
Boys fishing at Dunga, near Kisumu, on the shores of Lake Victoria in western Kenya; April 1979.
A moment 41 years ago, frozen in time, and to me, now, many of these children seem like statues – they have a simple and unknowing grace.
Photographing dark-skinned people on any sort of bright day can be problematical if any kind of detail, facial features, etc is required. In such a situation, its best to seek out some shade or to use a little flash. I had neither of those options here – and I probably wasn’t even thinking about them anyway – so, decades later, I’ve used a high key preset to strain every last bit of detail out of the scene.
Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window – recommended .
Technique: OM-1 with 75-150 Zuiko lens at 150mm; Agfa CT18 colour slide film, rated at 64 ISO; converted to mono with Silver Efex Pro 2, starting at the High Key 1 preset.
THE ARCHIVE KENYA SERIES
I’m re-posting photographs that I took in Kenya over 30 years ago. You can find more context here . Click onto the “Archive Kenya” tag (below) to see more of these film images from Kenya.
.
.
.
August 30, 2020 12 Comments
.
One of the wonderful little girls in our lives – aged three and giving the camera a fleeting look. 9 Sept 2012.
I suppose this is high key mistiness – good old Minimalist “less is more” maybe – and I want to try more images in this vein.
I’ve used the Antique Plate II preset in SEP2 as a starting point, and converted its rectangular vignette to a circular one. Her eyes were a little too sharp – that 105mm is really something else! – so I’ve reduced their structure and added a little blur.
Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window – recommended.
Technique: D700 with 105mm Nikkor lens; 6400 ISO; converted to mono in Silver Efex Pro 2.
.
.
.
