FALLING SOMEWHERE AS RAIN

My annual visit to Yorkshire to stay with friends became a holiday within a holiday this time, as we all departed for a weekend to a small caravan in Marrick, Swaledale. Close to the river Swale and in the grounds of an old priory, the little caravan nestled under a stand of trees far from civilisation. The priory grounds were home to an outdoor pursuits centre, but aside from the odd party of ramblers and the occasional group of eager school kids crossing the field, the site was an oasis of calm.   The field next to the priory was home to a handful of sheep and two cows and the rundown buildings at the edge were patrolled by wary farm cats. Given my fascination with dilapidation and decay, the area was a gift to photography, with ruined walls reclaimed by wild flowers and a wealth of old storerooms and sheds next to the priory, full of junk and disorder.  Neither the cows or the sheep seemed at all concerned with my wanderings and I walked down to the storehouse behind the ol...

A recent change in my personal circumstances, being made redundant from a part time job, meant that A) I have a little more free time and B) I had a little free spending money! The first time I was made redundant from my main employment back in 2016, I spent a little of the payout on my first real digital camera, my trusty Samsung NX1000. Ten years on, its still a very reliable and useful workhorse, with immense adaptability and functionality and a sizeable 20 megapixel APS-C sensor. However, in the real world, technology had moved on at a rate of knots and even when I bought the Samsung, it was already obsolete compared to modern models. So it seemed fitting that I should use the second redundancy as an opportunity to buy a more up to date camera. Unfortunately, the payout this time around was meagre, so my options were somewhat limited. A colleague at work had recently bought a second hand Sony Alpha camera, with a full frame sensor and remarked on the amazing image quality he was ac...

 Many of the posts on this site refer to the poetry portfolio that I created for a MA dissertation back in 2017. The sequence of ekphrastic poems, which were titled 'Still', originated with the discovery of a box of colour positive slides at a yard sale. As previously discussed, the slides were taken by a very competant photographer and were a mixture of holiday snaps of a small family and lustrous landscapes taken in Scotland, Ireland and Europe. At the time of writing, the set which included the family grouping stuck a very poignant chord with myself and reminded me very powerfully of my own parents and my own beach holidays. After I eventually completed the poetry, I stored the slides with the family away from the landscape shots and did not really engage with them very much over the next few years. As the slides are 35mm glass, they are notoriously tricky to replicate or scan, without specialised equipment, so a lot of the landscapes went back in the box after a cursory ins...

Following a bit of a dry period photographically, I decided to cheer myself up with a quick surf on ebay for a cheap lens. As the Samsung NX series has been discontinued in 2015, there is often kit available fairly reasonably, due to its obsolescence. A quick look revealed two NX lenses - both 30mm pancakes and both starting at under a fiver. One was a black version, cosmetically sound, but untested. The other was the white version, in poor condition for parts or not working. The white one had clearly suffered a little and the front mount was missing. I decided to have bid on the black one, for a small amount, but was quickly outbid. So I looked at the white one again and made a cursory offer of £10.00. My offer was accepted and the lens arrived yesterday. Meanwhile the black untested one finished its run at £51.00! On receiving the lens, apart from the missing ring on the front, it seemed to be in good order, so I mounted it on the camera. It hummed, clicked and then the dreaded '...

One of my favourite and most enduring iPhone photography apps is ‘Hipstamatic’. It’s been around for many years now and has been updated into two versions, a subscription based version aimed at social media and photo sharing and a classic version, which originally had monthly updates with optional features that users could choose to purchase. The basic idea is to recreate an analogue experience on the phone, by using a film emulation, lens and optional flash, to turn the phone into an analogue style camera. In this, it works extremely well and the various packs can be interchanged endlessly to create combinations of the three elements, to suit personal tastes. Mostly, the purchased packs provide a distinct and interesting set of effects in the app.Since the second version was released a few years ago, Classic is still supported but on a less frequent basis, with new packs appearing around every two months. Generally, the packs are themed on a style, movement or a geographical area. The...