Blue Rope

Blue Rope
Originally uploaded by Tawny042

Funny things happen in Flickr, View wise. Nobody looks at this photo for months. Then there is a dozen or so views in the last few days. Well then, can't complain - and I'm not - as long as people are looking. Similar comment with another photo of mine in Flickr called "Goods Inwards" - although with different viewing figures.

Chinese New Year

Into central London for the Chinese New Year (year of the Tiger) festivities in Trafalgar Square and around Chinatown. Lousy day weather wise, but at least the heavy rain on the way in stopped mostly, but the dark and gloomy clouds hardly cleared, so the light from a photographic point of view wasn't great - very poor actually.

 

 

 

Concentrated on some details, the lanterns etc for once rather than the people. The area and streets around Lisle Street and Gerrard Street isnt that big, became very crowded, and I got fed up with the people milling around. Can't understand why some idiots were trying to get through with bikes.

Incidently these guys - see the photo below - were in Trafalgar Square before the festivities started .

Thought the one on the right looked a little out of place .....

Competition Win

Some good news for me during the week - one of my photos won a competition at my local Photographic Society. The competition is the George Bunzl Cup which is for colour pictorial prints, one of a series of Open Challenge Cups within the Society. Here it is, at least in digital form -

The photo was taken during the Night Carnival, at last year's Thames Festival in central London. The Festival was held in mid September, and you can see some more of my (less successful) photos of the event in previous posts from around then. The bluring effect of the people was obtained by using a combination of a slow shutter speed and an off-camera flash (ie not the built in rubbish flash), the print was an A3+ size on Somerset Enhanced satin paper (wonderful paper !), in a 40cm x 50cm Antique White window mount.

Portraits - Irving Penn Exhibition

Back to the National Portrait Gallery in central London on Wednesday last to see the Irving Penn exhibition. My last visit to the Gallery was to see the Beatles to Bowie exhibition a few weeks back. This exhibition overlaps the that time scale to a certain extent - the sixties - but covers 7 decades in all.

The prints are presented chronologically (as was the Beatles to Bowie exhibition) and as this exhibition features only one photographer you can see a developing style over the years. For example there is a change from the 1940's whole figure shots (with minimal props), then the closely cropped head and shoulders shots from the 1950's onwards,  and laterly emphasis on the face and eyes (eg Al Pacino), and sometimes with the part of the face in deep shadow (eg the portraits of Pablo Picasso and Issey Miyake). I also liked the portrait of Lisa Fonassagrives-Penn in the Harlequin dress, possibly because being more high-key was a little different to the rest ?

There are 120 prints in this exhibition, all monochrome and taken on film. Yes, no digital. I wonder if digital has caught up yet tp film technically  - in monochrome -  to the sheer quality of what was on show. 

The exhibition continues until June 6th, 2010. Its worth the £10 entrance fee.