Long one

Sometimes you should take pictures you wouldn’t normally take.

Protection

Something from the growing backlog of pictures.

St. Paul’s Cathedral, corner of

I’ve finally made some progress on the new book. Deciding on a change in the way it’s put together is making it look a lot more feasible. Keep nagging me.

November, TCR

I’ve put together six pictures into a new gallery called November Landscapes (removed May ‘05).

Nor is this

This is not a caption for the picture.

Heritage

Heritage delivery system at the revamped Tower of London.

Shop Window

Taking pictures of shop windows can be a lazy form of street photography but sometimes they’re hard to resist - apples.

Hard Hat Zone

Last weekend I spent some time in the Malvern Hills taking terrible landscape pictures. Fortunately we also managed to squeeze in a day trip to Birmingham for some proper pictures of rubbish, building sites, etc., including this one.

Independent

I had a photo in The Independent on Friday (they don’t seem to cover art reviews on their web site, so no link). It was a picture of one of Paul Spooner’s Butcher’s Shops. There was also an article on this in last Sunday’s Observer (more info).

Crumpled

I’ve made a new gallery of recent pictures [link removed].

Lartigue

The Lartigue show at the Hayward is great. I really admire his playfulness and experimental spirit. The upstairs show, ‘About Face: Photography and the Death of the Portrait’, not only has a naff sub-title but also seems to get itself in a knot about the use of technology in photography, which they say is “challenging our perceptions of beauty and truth”.

At one point, the curators say we can no longer accept the idea of portraits being windows on the soul (who ever did?) and then alongside a series of red-eyed (from flash) teenagers, they claim the red eyes made them look like predators (or words to that effect). As if non-predatory people won’t have red eyes. They go on to say that the red-eye effect is a “technical glitch normally removed in printing”. Hilarious.

There are some interesting things in it but I recommend ignoring the interpretation boards. This is another of my “diCorcia without flashlight” pictures.

Crisps

Watching the New Shock of the New on Saturday, I was surprised and disappointed that Mr Hughes highlighted a spelling mistake in a Tracey Emin piece. Finishing on an extra ‘L’ in beautiful seemed more stupid than the spelling mistake to me and undercut his argument somewhat. Still, I’m looking forward to the re-run of the original series, which I haven’t seen since it was first shown.

In trying to work out the date of the first transmission, I came across this tragic tale. I’d assumed the stick was just old age.

This woman is eating Walker’s Crisps. Which reminds me to recommend this unusual book on London Walking.