a Photo Blog, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to dear dirty New York
I shot this looking out the window because I liked the geometry of it. The men were about to dig up a lot of the brick so they could lay some conduit along the base of the building, then cover it all up again. I thought of it as a black and white image at the time because of the strong shadows and the triangle formed by the two men and the circle of conduit in the lower left.
The NHS sent me for an annual blood test at the local hospital. Outside I found this sculpture surrounding a mirrored globe in the car park. I’m not sure what it’s about but I had to see what it would look like in a photograph.
I had an idea for a series of photos on insomnia. I thought of images of a woman lying in bed, in the dark, unable to sleep, eyes wide open, staring straight up. And I imagined another with a couple lying in bed, each on their own with no connection, both stuck in their own insomniac mental wanderings. Setting it up I would ideally have liked the camera looking straight down at the bed. The best I could manage was an awkwardly contrived tripod with one leg up at about an 80° angle, propped on a suitcase, with the other 2 legs pushed up against the bed. I left the room lights off but allowed street light in through the window behind the camera and room light through the door at the opposite side of the room. I used the Fuji’s base ISO of 160, resulting in exposures ranging between 2½ and 4 seconds, using a remote. Here are a couple more from the shoot, which in the end I decided was more about anomie than insomnia.
The lobby of my block of flats has these modernist lights suspended from the 1st floor (that’s the 2nd floor for Americans). I took a couple of pictures of them from the stairwell about halfway between. Both images are in colour but I’ve shifted the colour balance to make them match better.
Most of the University is off limits to students over the summer bu the library is still open. Leaving it one cloudy day I saw this shot of the dramatic sky through a kind of skylit walkway with the actual sky above and quickly grabbed a couple of shots. I then walked through the quad and saw another, kind of ominous view, below.
A most unremarkable photo. I was struck by the tree and it’s shadow on the plain green background of the grass. I tried it in B&W but that didn’t really work for me. I tried reducing the saturation and a variety of other treatments. In the end I left it alone but changed it from Fuji’s Provia, my standard base raw interpretation to Fuji’s Classic Negative, which is somewhat less saturated. This is less bright green than I remember the original scene but more like the image I was trying to capture.
Back home after our travels in July and this spore or floral frame was hanging by a single, unseen thread of spider silk from the side of the window. I watched it for days, blowing in the wind but not blowing away. Finally, one morning I opened the window wide, reached up and grabbed it by the thread. I then had the greatest difficulty detaching it and the still unseen spider thread from my finger and placing it on the window sill, in the stark sunlight, beside the shadow cast by a mint plant. Below is another shot I took of it by itself (with its shadow) using a 60mm macro lens.
A fitting close to our trip to Paris: a photo of bales of hay taken out the window of the EuroStar on the French side of the Channel.
We took a bus from the area of our hotel to the Gare du Nord to catch the EuroStar back to London. Click any of the images below to see them full-sized (you may need to click the post title first if you’re viewing this in an email or on social media).
After the Bois de Boulogne, we walked back to our hotel to get our bags. Our time in Paris was over.
From La Petite Ceinture we walked on to the Bois de Boulogne, a large park in Paris’ 16th arrondissement.
We also walked the length of La Petite Ceinture, a disused ancient railway line that has been transformed into a park. I had been hoping that it would be a little like the High Line in NY, affording me elevated views of the surrounding area but it was really the opposite, sunken and surrounded by tall trees, dark and lovely. Click any of the pictures below to enlarge them all.
Click any of the pictures below to see them full sized.
We went on from the Musée d’Orsay for a coffee and then the Musée Maillol which had a very comprehensive and nicely curated (and lighted!) retrospective of Elliot Erwitt, integrated loosely with some of the Maillol work. I’m not sure if it was an homage to Erwitt, but the path of the exhibition was directed with dog-paw prints throughout. The museum was not too crowded and everyone seemed to speak French, which was a relief. The audio guides were in French only, another positive, un-touristy sign. Click on the images below to see them enlarged.
When we finally emerged from the Musée d’Orsay, the crowd waiting to get in had swelled. And there was a queue snaking its way down the stairs and out to the street below. As much as I enjoyed it, it was a relief to leave the crowds of tourists behind.
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How we view art today – we photograph it with our phones. Click any picture below to see them larger.
Once again, I focused my lens more on the architecture, the geometry, the sub-text of this hallowed space. Click any of the pictures below to see them full-sized.
This was the queue we were asked to join for people who had tickets for the same time as our tickets. My tourist foreboding was rising. It was only about a 10-minute wait as they regulated how many people could squeeze through the revolving door at a time. Inside we started at the top with the ever popular Impressionists. It was wall to wall people and almost impossible to look at the paintings. One young woman had fainted and was lying on the floor with her family insisting she was fine. We quickly escaped to less crowded floors. Click any image below to see them bigger.
Our first full day we walked through the Tuileries Garden and over the Seine to the Musée d’Orsay which I had purchased timed tickets for a month in advance. Click any of the pictures below to see them all larger.
