Trafalgar Square

The front of the National Gallery has recently been given a clear view from Trafalgar Square by pedestrianisation, so now they cover part of its frontage with a big yellow advert for HP disguised as infotainment about van Gogh and his yellow chair painting. I’ve no idea what they are doing behind the hoarding but I suppose it could have been worse. I like yellow and it provided me with this and a few other photo opportunities. Sorry I missed the van Gogh parts.

Learning to Blink

Bell’s Palsy is supposed to be a diagnosis of exclusion but reading this trumpeter’s description convinced me.

I’m finding it quite disconcerting to look in a mirror, attempt to raise both eyebrows and see only one of them move. The numbness on one side of my mouth is similar to the way it feels when a dental anesthetic is wearing off, so annoying when drinking. I can only manage half a smile. The worse thing is having to protect my right eye. It’s not blinking so I have to remember to do some “manual” closing to stop it drying out.

It’s making me think about all the stuff I do automatically. I like to think that I often take photographs without thinking too much but it’s nowhere near as unthinking as blinking.

Cool Dog on the Bus

>Just read a thought provoking article (People, Places, Things) by Kevin Bjorke. I’m not sure why it made me post this dog picture but I’m not about to start captioning pictures with type of camera and other technical details. Kevin will know that this is a digital shot. I managed to get 6 pictures but the bus was moving more than the dog.

Dependency on a Currency

No waffling about technology today just a picture from this morning.

Someone’s gotta do it

I bought a 0.42x converter at a camera fair. It didn’t have the right adapter for my fuji so I just held it in front of the lens. It and the bus window were pretty cruddy, so after defishing the shot with panotools I thought I’d add to the low quality look and ran a lomo action on it. The lomo action blew out too much detail for my liking so I backed up a bit in the history. I’m fairly sure the action came from here, but I can’t connect to the site to check at the moment.

The converter is destined to sit on an old 6×9cm folder and is part of the ongoing investigation into finding cheap ways to do medium format panoramas.

More Stretching

This is another picture stitched from three digital pictures. You can also see a bigger version.

Stretching Exercises

In the process of putting the cyclops back together the spring broke. I’m leaving it until I’ve got the energy to tackle it again. In the meantime I’ve been learning how to use PTMac / Panotools and joining up 2 or 3 shots from the digital. I bought a 2-way hot-shoe spirit level to assist, which may have the side effect of straigtening up my hip shooting. Obviously I forgot to use it on this picture.

Tainted by the Regime

Todays task: Compare and contrast - the original (click trailer) and the advert.

Neat, neat, neat

Here’s a picture taken a couple of days ago, somewhere along Holborn while on a wander with Jawed and Joel.

Sculpture Comes Down

Maybe it doesn’t look as significant as other sculptures coming down in Baghdad but here’s Anish Kapoor’s Marsyas in the process of being removed from the Tate Modern at the same time. Another view.

If you didn’t see it while it was up, here are some 3D versions that you can fly through. [Update: not any more]

The Final Test

I hope that this will be a substitute for the Photo a Week project. Something less constrained that gives me an incentive to post pictures regularly.