Good intentions
Oh well. Like so many other things in life, blogging (and this blog in particular) starts off all fun and exciting but then fizzles out and is soon ignored.
We’ve had a few good rides recently, including a weekend away camping on the North York Moors, but of late cycling has been curtailed: Jane had a spill and came away with bumps and grazes, while something upset my achilles tendon causing it to flare up again - at which point my physio advised me to lay off for a while. Discretion is the better part of valour and all that, so I’m off the bike for a while to let it recover. Hopefully won’t be too long as I’ve already packed in frisbee while I recover, so my fitness is already suffering.
Still, I have something to fill the time - in a fit of what can only be termed as optimistic stupidity, I’ve started a photography AS-level. Although I enjoy photography (as a sideline to whatever I’m doing rather than as an activity in itself), I am honest enough to realise that I get it wrong far more often than I get it right, and on top of that I’m not prolific eneough to be able to get a decent amount of good ones. So, I signed up hoping to learn more about the dark arts of exposure and composition. I was rather disappointed at first then to realise that the course I’ve signed up for doesn’t really have much to do with the mechanics of photography - for that, I learnt, I should have signed up for a City & Guilds course. Instead, the course is more about the arty side of photography.
Still, I’m deciced to give it a go despite not actually having a very arty inclination normally. I am glad I did so - last night’s lesson was very enjoyable. First half we covered exposure control in terms of f-stops and shutter speed (and film ISO of course) in about an hour, the frustrating thing being that I more or less knew all the answers anyway as I’ve been reading photography books like they were going out of fashion. Knowing these things does not mean though that I’m able to put them into practice though, while was the whole opint of doing the course… but back in track, the second hald of the evening was much more interesting as we went off to a large room and split into groups - each group had one big studio light and we had to take pics on the theme of disguise. We’re shooting on Black and White film and the plan is that next week we won;t actually be taking photos, we’ll be developing our films. Since I spent a large part of the lesson excitedly rummaging through my box of bits, I only shot 10 photos from a 36 roll film, so I need to take plenty of pics this coming weekend!
On the plus side, I used my long lens for a portrait (somewhat like this image but with a strong side light on the opposite side of the face from the gun to cast shadows), I used my extension tube for an abstract portait, and I used my Hoya multi-filter to get a weird effect. If the photos turn out half way decent I’ll see if I can get them sanned (or even better scan the negs as I’nm hoping to pick up a scanner off a fellow Cheekyrider)
In the words of Porky Pig then, that’s all folks. More next time.