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A SECOND IRON AGE

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 Ten years ago, I was working for the Communications Team in the NHS in Sefton and we took delivery of a new camera to use for press coverage. A Canon EOS 550D with a 55mm lens arrived in the office and it was the first opportunity I had to examine a professional level digital camera. Although, not exactly a high end, studio quality model, compared to the tiny compact point and shoots I had been used to, it was a very capable device. Previously, we had been using a small Fuji camera with a fixed lens, which was quite good, but nowhere near the quality offered by a Canon. Making up an excuse to put the camera through its paces, I took it home one evening to look it over and then the following morning, stopped off at Crosby Marina on my way into work in Merseyside. In 2005 Crosby had been chosen as the location of an art installation by Anthony Gormley, consisting of 100 cast iron figures, distributed along the beach a kilometre into the tideline. 'Another Place' consists of full...
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PRACTICAL MAGIC

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With my interest in vintage and antique images, I have collected a number of glass magic lantern slides over the years, predominately as the fragile decorative squares are interesting curios on their own, but I did entertain the idea of projecting them in a magic lantern projector. I have managed to acquire two homemade devices, neither of which are fully operational and missing parts, so in the interim, I have been trying to get a good capture of the images on the slides themselves. Scanning proved problematic, as the flatbed scanner I borrowed would only run on Windows XP, so I had to resort to a simpler method. By placing the slide against a window on a bright day, I re-photographed it with my phone. Importing it into Photoshop, I straightened the image, and trimmed off the frames. Then I dropped them into Lightroom, to adjust the tonality and spot out a few major blemishes. I could have removed every spot or mark, but a completely pristine image would not have the same sense of age...
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LONDON CALLING

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Just before Xmas, I found myself back in London for a weekend, staying in Watford, in order to visit the Harry Potter Studios nearby. To make the most of the weekend, we did the usual tourist trip into the city, with a view to visiting some favourite locations and some new ones. As my grandchildren are  big fans of Paddington Bear, it made sense to see where he arrived in England and pick up some souvenirs. The hustle of the station on a wet Saturday evening, meant that camera photography was awkward, although I did see quite a number of expensive cameras in evidence over the weekend. Personally, I opted for my phone and the Fimo app again, with the X-Red film, that I really enjoy. The earlier Hipstamatic app with its hundreds of film/lens combinations came into play in Chinatown, one of the busiest parts of the city. Getting around was problematic, having a four year old in tow and a toddler in a pram, especially on some of the older, deeper Tube stations, with lots of stairs and ...
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