Searchlights

{Today's Soundtrack: Scott Matthews - Is This Love}

Winter Blues

Scientifically speaking, when you look at a snow scene your eyes make corrections to the real colour, so you think you are looking at a balanced colour 'temperature', nice and neutral. Actually it's blue, as you can see when you look in the shadows of this uncorrected photograph. The atmosphere draws out out red and yellow light waves, and by the time the vast, clear skies have had their say it leaves mainly blue light waves hitting the ground, so that's what is actually bouncing around of this pretty–but cold–winter light. (Clever things, eyes and brains. Have you heard that thing about wearing glasses that invert your view, and it takes just a short while for your brain to re-invert the image so you think you are the right way up again and can walk straight? Just what is real??)

The snowy blue here looks a lot prettier than I'm feeling this back-end of January. As a colleague said the other day, "We just need Spring to come now." Amen, brother.

Cold and grey and fed up with winter now, unashamedly and self-indulgently thinking of sweeter things. x


{Today's Soundtrack: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Come on girl, snap out of it.}

Idiot

I just had a comment on the hot air balloons posts. The author claimed to have itchy genitals and was upset because looking at my 'pretentious' images wasn't helping. He claimed he was somehow made to look at them, twice. (I take it he means the images, not his testicles.) This is interesting - does he mean that someone put him in a chair and – clockwork orange style - pinned his eyelids back and put his head in a vice facing the screen?

Mister, no one made you look. They aren't pretentious images, it's just what I saw. Sorry you rail against the world so much you can't think of anything more constructive to say, and no, I haven't published your comment because you're a bit of an idiot.

No one makes you do anything. Take some responsibility for yourself.

I hope your balls stop itching soon.


{Today's Soundtrack: music practice}

Easy Like...

...Sunday morning. Fresh coffee, sunlight, melodies. For once, it's enough.

{Today's soundtrack: Nick Drake - Pink Moon}

Homeland : epilogue

So we hover over our homeland. That's where we live. That's what our people look like en masse. The river like a silver thread, buildings like lego blocks and those people standing in their pyjamas in the back garden waving...

People always say you can hear dogs barking from way up in a balloon. I didn't hear any dogs barking. In between bursts of flame, I just heard hearts pounding.

{Today's Soundtrack: Scott Matthews - John Leckie Sessions}

Homeland : episode iii

(Continuation of the series from Aug '07)

Clinging to the edge of a big basket that comes almost up to my chin, I realise I'm not breathing...

Everything is getting smaller and smaller, and an extraordinary tenderness wells up for the tiny humans down there looking like such vulnerable little specks. You can't help but feel moved about us and our possibilities.

{That Moment's Soundtrack: Halcyon + On + On - Orbital}

Homeland : episode iv

They thought the sun would burn off that mist, but it is thick and we get lost inside it. As I pray we will be looked after (not just us in the basket, but everyone down there too) we rise above the fog and emerge hovering just metres above the cloud base, hundreds of other balloons now in view, and there are patches where the cloud breaks and detail of the land becomes clear again.

The day we fly, I am preparing to shoot the Angels project. The task ahead feels quite overwhelming, but as we float over Bristol I realise–in the scheme of things–how tiny the physical space is that these Angels will inhabit. Suddenly I can relax, manage to let go of ballast.

{Sub-Sountrack: Lamb - Fly}

Mist slides underneath us like a warm blanket over Bristol, which is shrouded one minute then visible again, giving us glimpses of water like silver running through the city.

Sometimes the view is clear, sometimes not. We hang in suspense and carry on floating our way in and out of this weird semi-sensory deprivation, each person quiet and captivated by their own wildest hopes, until a radio interruption announces another balloon directly below us, suddenly emerging from the fog and dangerously close. Is this what it's like to discover the person of your dreams?

{That Moment's Soundtrack: Weightlessness - Freelance Hellraiser}

Finishing Things - Homeland revisited

I reneged on a promise - said I'd finish something and didn't. Please forgive me? Have a read through these to set the scene, as I am going to mend my broken word but it might not make sense out of context.

The series is Homeland from August 2007.

On a different and significant note, I have recently finished something else quite massive. Have a look here to see what that is.

{Today's Soundtrack: my strumming & song.}

House of Love

Yippee! Big Brother's back, again, save me a seat! Alternatively... anyone fancy coming round for tea and a slice of redcurrant pie, as I go ahead and just pour boiling water down the back of the telly?

{Today's Soundtrack: House of Love - House of Love}

An Email That Made Me Think

My friend Penny emailed this morning and asked my professional opinion on this article in the Guardian, and more specifically, this quote:

"photography, once a noble art, has become, thanks to the move to digital, a mental illness"

Arguably, it's dangerous to ask me–who thinks enough already–what I think, but here's my (at times controversial) reply:

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Hiya Pen,

Interesting. I wouldn't say photography itself has become a mental illness, but the use of mobile/camera phones has, in line with our cultural obsession with machines and technology. This naturally overspills into more hi-spec camera use – I can't tell you the number of times I have been shooting a job and a keen amateur approaches me wanting to know the spec of my camera, quick to point out theirs is better. "If you'll excuse me," I think, " I have some images to make." (It's not about the camera!)

Largely, I would challenge people to consider whether or not what they do really is 'photography', although technically that's exactly what it is. I wouldn't say most use is helpful in a news and current affairs context, as implied by the article. Aesthetically and conceptually, the majority of common photographic practice is undiscerning, goes unedited and is more of a 'need to belong' activity than a refined and insightful use of imagery to detect deeper truths about the world we live in. A mental illness? Only in the sense it is fear driven, ie. led by a belief that if we (society at large) don't do it (take pictures of everything on our technically brilliant gadgets), we feel we will be missing something crucial to our collective experience and welfare, and if we don't have a snap of it then it didn't happen and we are poorer as a result. That is clearly a lie, but sadly is it the only thing many of us have to cling to?

Yes, I do feel sad when I see so many people unable to enjoy life without a camera between them and their real experience. As a professional photographer, I still say the same. Only yesterday I went for a walk around the docks with my camera, debating in my head (again) whether or not I was a genuine photographer because I kept my camera in its case on such an unusual snowy day. Then I saw a particularly brilliantly designed snowman and couldn't resist.

For me to record images of the world around me, I need to be engaged with the world around me, and I can only do this if I stop and take it in one on one occasionally. It means when I do lift my camera to my face, the intuitive response is then much more interesting to look at.

So no, photography isn't a mental illness, but gadgetry maybe. For me it all shouts of our need to belong.

That's what I think anyway... you did ask!

Bessx

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{Today's Soundtrack: Nina Simone - Don't Explain}