Looking at – and seeing – the world
November 9, 2018 9 Comments
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Table and seats outside a fast food café in Newquay, Cornwall; 11 Sept 2013.
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Technique: D800 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 135mm; 800 ISO; Silver Efex Pro 2’s High Contrast Smooth preset.
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November 8, 2018 4 Comments
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Sitting in the back of the Three Rivers Cafe, Truro, Cornwall; 26 Sept 2012.
Sitting in the back, eating food that included a really not bad steak and kidney pie, a nice piece of gammon, lots of chips and two mugs of hot tea, this view opened up in front of us and, as always, the G11 went for it!
My eyes were first caught by the rows of black seats with their backlit, horizontal tops and the intervening white-topped tables. There’s probably potential for mono and/or re-coloured image(s) here.
But, looking at it all more generally, here are the trappings of a basic but good English cafe (definitely pronounced “caff”!) – rows of clean tables and seats (all bolted to the floor), tall menus and sugar pourers, salt and pepper couples – and backlit shakers of gloriously dark amber vinegar.
Some degree of privacy is afforded by the curtains and, above this, a hanging basket brings floral colour. This rectangular area of window looks strange and disconnected – it could be a picture hanging on the wall.
All this and chips too? Wonderful!!!
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Technique: Canon G11 PowerShot at 140mm (35mm equivalent); 400 ISO.
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November 7, 2018 6 Comments
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The tide coming in, seen from the end of Western Pier at St Ives, Cornwall; 27 Sept 2012.
This is a picture of the shallow wavelets of the incoming tide moving over the clean sand in St Ives Harbour – it was taken at the same time as another(!) The Tide Coming In.
I like the dark purple-blues here, the black lines of the incoming wavelets, and golden brown of the submerged sand. The picture is starting to look more like a painting and, as always, I’m happy with that.
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Technique: D700 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 300mm; 400 ISO; manipulated in Capture NX2.
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October 7, 2018 6 Comments
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The camouflaged upperparts of a Ray, lying on the bottom of its tank in Newquay Aquarium, Cornwall; 6 Nov 2007.
This picture is not completely sharp because it was taken looking down through moving water. But with this wonderful colouration and patterning, I don’t think that matters at all – in fact the whole hazy blueness of the image adds to its atmosphere.
Technique: F6 with 24mm-85mm Nikkor lens; Fuji Provia 400X colour slide, rated at 1600 ISO.
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June 30, 2018 17 Comments
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Someone of maybe my own years (and bulk?) gazes at a beauty stereotype in a slimming emporium’s window, in Penzance, Cornwall; 25 Sept 2012.
Here’s something that can get me reaching urgently for my dictionary of Anglo-Saxon profanity! We think we’re free but we’re certainly not. We want to fit in, we want respect and admiration – envy even – from our friends and neighbours, and so we are prey to all the latest fashions, role models, celebrity recipes, gimmicks, cars, buzzwords and facile stereotypes.
Well, OK, this lady and I would very probably be healthier if we were slimmer – but as to fulfilling an envied role model ->>> this blog’s called FATman Photos isn’t it??? … not SLIMman Snapshots!!!
Click onto the image to open another version in a separate window, and click onto that image to enlarge it.
Technique: D700 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 300mm; 400 ISO.
UPDATE: this was first posted five years ago and, since then, I was diagnosed as pre-diabetic and, as a result (and also quite astonishingly) I lost a lot of weight – 50 pounds or more – to get myself out of the “danger zone”. I certainly enjoy what I eat and drink and, now, I’ve put some of that weight back on, but I’m also completely into a routine of 5-6 mile daily walks that Sue, my wonderful doctor, is all in favour of. I’m not aspiring to “The Body Beautiful” (which is just as well really … 🙂 ) but its a continual fight against the flab >>> that’s inescapable fact, that’s how it is!
BUT, I do, even more so, stick by my words in paragraph 2 of this post: we are certainly NOT free, and we are prey to a vast number of body image-related pressures and taboos, which we are plainly incapable of shrugging off. In the years since I put out this post, two things have happened, two things to mention.
First that, with the luxury of retirement, I’ve had more time to sit back and look at what’s happening around me and, never having been that much of a conformer, I eschew a lot of it. For better or worse, I am what I am, I am what I am happy with, and others’ opinions matter less. This is partly an age thing too of course.
But then, re all the pressures etc that I touched upon in the second paragraph of this post, there is the burgeoning trend, especially amongst young people, for selfies – self-portraits in which they have become trapped into trying to show their peers and the world at large not so much how they look, but rather how they WANT TO LOOK, how they want to be seen, how wonderful they would like others to think their lives are. I can only see this as an ultimately sad process, and one which must bring much anxiety, fear and pressure. Here in the UK, young people are under increasing pressures from daily life, their mental health problems are rising and – not least here in Bristol – university students are committing suicide. It is always easy to see the past through rose-coloured glasses, to think that everything was wonderful back then. I try not to think along these lines: some things were good back then, some things were not. But, equally, I do not think that the modern world, with its incessant emphasis on body image, fame, celebrity culture, mobile communication devices and The Great God Cash is a healthy environment for young people. This is not a Natural (note the capital) state of affairs, and it is certainly a very sad state of affairs.
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June 19, 2018 5 Comments
.Camborne, Cornwall: mannequin in a shop window; 9 Oct 2013.
I take shots of these dummies from time to time. Here I was attracted by that loosely hanging, white hand, but now I’m also looking at the hairy red sweater with its horizontal stripes, and the plastic “water droplets” on those fashionably distressed jeans. The black backdrop keeps it simple.
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Technique: D800 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 300mm; 400 ISO.
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June 17, 2018 5 Comments
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Poster in the window of a beauty salon, seen through the shop’s security grill; Newquay, Cornwall; 11 Sept 2013.
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Technique: D800 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 240mm; 1600 ISO.
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February 28, 2018 18 Comments
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Upstairs in The Victoria Tea Room, Penzance, Cornwall; 25 Apr 2012.
We returned yesterday from a few days in the far southwest of Cornwall, based between Penzance and St Ives. And in a week of awful weather all over England we were far enough southwest to miss it all – it only rained at night, and the days were dry and even sunny!
Whenever we’re in Penzance we always visit this tearoom. Amongst many other tasty goodies it serves up 11 item English breakfasts – which I hold a profound reverence for – and we like to sit beside the windows upstairs, looking out over Penzance’s main street.
In this cafe there are many bentwood chairs in a beautiful green, and the place has an over all low key, Minimalist, green and grey decor that I like very much. This cup and saucer provided a good foil for its low key surroundings, and the chairbacks on the right resemble the curving stems of some exotic plant.
The first post in this series on chairs, which contains context and an image, can be found here. Subsequent posts are here: 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 . Each will open in a new window.
Click onto this image to open a larger version in a separate window.
Technique: Canon G11 PowerShot; 400 ISO.
UPDATE: this excellent eatery has closed down – a great loss. And while I’m talking about this image – I can say that its a great favourite of mine. I have always loved its vast simplicity.
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January 9, 2018 4 Comments
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Tables and chairs outside a cafe in Penzance, Cornwall; 25 Apr 2012.
I love the abundance of shapes and textures here, and the fact that none of the objects is portrayed in its entirety. I remember reading about some artists’ liking for truncating objects with the frame and I think this a powerful tool – for use even with portraits.
The first post in this series on chairs, which contains context and an image, can be found here. Subsequent posts are here: 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 . Each will open in a new window.
Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window, then click onto that image to enlarge it further.
Technique: D700 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 300mm; 1600 ISO; converted to mono in Silver Efex Pro 2.
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November 3, 2017 11 Comments
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Seaside café. Cheap, cheerful, functional – and no less enjoyable for all that. No pretence, what you see is what you get. Visually, a cacophony of shape and colour.
The first post in this series on chairs, which contains context and an image, can be found here. Subsequent posts are here: 2 3 4 5 6 7 . Each will open in a new window.
Click onto the image to open another version in a separate window, and click onto that image to enlarge it.
Technique: X-T1 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 305mm (equiv); 800 ISO; Lightroom, using the Provia/Standard film simulation; Porthleven, Cornwall; 18 Oct 2016.
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