Some articles on the web state “Time to Read 3 Minutes”. Essentially they’re saying; this is boring, keep with it, though we fully understand that you’re possibly of a generation that possesses a maximum 10 second attention span and therefore won’t make it to the end. Good news and with that in mind, you’ll like this one because there’s going to be very little “time to read”, it’ll be quick and painless. The photos have been piling up, gathering virtual dust on my computer. Lots of them, you could I argue way too many and I’d most likely agree. We are photographers though and as such we make photographs almost daily, or at least we should be otherwise we’re not perfecting our craft. Maybe perfecting is a poor choice of word, nothing is perfect, let’s say improving. Of course, we want to show these photographs. If you do shoot daily, and this is just a theory, curating the “good” stuff should be far simpler as there’s clearly going to be a lot more to choose from. Here we go then, news and travels in brief with some snaps:
That one above and the opener is from our family holiday in Turkey. We rented a cabana on the jetty each day, a brilliant move by me. It meant coming to the beach each morning, towels and a bottle of wine already waiting. In my defence I delayed drinking until at least 10:30am, come on, I’m not an alcoholic. Diving off the jetty into the beautiful Aegean Sea was fabulous. Better still the speedboat we hired (another suggestion by me; just saying) that took us out to beautiful secluded beaches. The children snorkelled, I swam in the crystal clear and warm waters. The colours in the photos are exactly as they were, an incredible blue. Louis and I dived off the back of the boat at one point and swam into an inlet cave. It was still fairly deep water, on the way out the captain announced that it was 10 or 20 km deep in places. Somewhere deep down in the depths lay a crashed WWII plane. Not at all spooky then. Once in the cave it was dark, but the water clear, thousands of sea creatures and weird looking fish caught in the small amount of light that reached in. Still too deep to stand. Louis freaked out, looked at me and announced “I need you”, grabbing me, pulling me down. I calmed him down, we managed not to drown or get attacked by weird fish or Airmen from 1943. We swam back to the boat and I was so happy, because I got to hear the best three words a father could wish for. By the way, I need him to.
Next stop Bath Races. I may have mentioned this before; when asking the extremely well seasoned race goer, and similarly well seasoned friend Kev, how he decided which horse to back as we watched them parading around the ring prior to racing “I pick the best looking stable girl and bet on the horse she’s leading around”. Not much of a tip, but it’s as good as anything I’ve tried. I look at the tipsters across several publications, find the common denominator between them for each race, usually it ends up being the ‘favourite’ and bet it ‘on the nose’ (to win). I struggled on this night, two of those so called “favourites” came last, one was third. Plenty of luck, all bad. I came good on the last three races and lost very little on the night. I was there with my eldest daughter Alex, just like Louis I also need her. Alex had no idea how to bet. I said “go up to the bookie, tell them which horse, give them some money, kiss it goodbye”. She decided not to bet on the first two races. What did she know that I didn’t? The other four races, she randomly picked horses, placed her bet and of course they galloped home and won. Sickening!
I was asked to photograph Louis’s school leavers party. In September he’ll be starting Secondary School. I did the same for Amélie’s class a couple of years ago. On her evening we enjoyed brilliant sunshine and blue skies, beautiful light. It was cloudy on Louis’s evening, but I managed to get some shots. In the first one below you’ll see his best friend Ryan in the queue for the ice cream van. They were allowed one each, marked on their wristband. Ryan told Louis that he wanted another and so would assume a disguise. Hilarious!
What else have I been doing? Well, I’d like to give you a story and some photos from my Street Photography sessions, alas there’s nothing to tell. You could say that everything so far in this post has been candid, documentary in style and therefore Street. I’ve had little success, in fact so close to changing the name of my blog to “Dead End Street”. That ought to improve in a couple of days, I’ll explain in a moment. Here’s some Street shots from the very few I’ve actually taken when out with that sole purpose:
Let’s wrap this up. On Sunday (two days time) I’m taking Louis away for a week. We’ll be in New York four nights and Washington DC for three. Okay, I’ll have to concentrate on him, mainly when we’re walking the streets and my tendency to be constantly on the look out for a photo. I don’t want to lose him in Manhattan, the worry is that he’s seen “Home Alone” and might want to recreate a few scenes. So not overly concerned for him, more the general public. Okay in Washington what’s the worse he’s likely to get up to? Note to Self: Question Louis about any plans he might have to over throw the U.S. government for a return to British rule. Incidentally he want’s to go on a helicopter flight in New York, I’ve also seen some movies and can’t help but think of “Blackhawk Down’.
I’ll leave you with some photos from a couple of days ago when I took Amélie, another I need, and Louis for brunch. They enjoyed the food and me the light:
There you go, short and sweet. Next blog post you’ll see what happens in the good old U S of A. As always my sincere thanks go to anyone taking the time to read this blog.
All images can be opened by clicking on the thumbnails and are made using a Leica M with Summicron 28mm Lens fitted.
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