Photos likes and dislikes

9 May

The full of cost of savings we get with our digital cameras was brought home to me yesterday when I had finished editing my shots from Saturday. Out of the 368 shots I took, only 32 are anything like keepers. That means 12 rolls of 35mm film at around £5 per roll plus D&P. At the end of all that I would less than one films worth of keepers. There is no way we could afford to do that these days, not counting the storage of all the prints/slides. This flat of ours is a nice place to live, but there’s limited storage. So thank you digital photography.

My copy of AP arrived on Saturday morning with its usual mix of great photos and great articles. But one photo on page 4/5 really caught my eye. It shows the physical after effect of an acid attack on a man in India, Gods know what the physiological effects are! The image shows the upper body side one well light against a black background, which shows the effect startlingly. This type of attack is growing out in India, down to honour attacks, cast differences and so on. Whatever the excuse that is used, there can be no excuse serious enough to do this to another human being. This image by Asghar Kharmseh,  is so good that it won the overall winner title for pro-snappers in the Sony World Photographer Awards. I’m not surprised about.   

Further on in mag (and the cover photo too,) is a full article by Steve McCurry about his trips to India and the photos he came away with. India is at top of my bucket list for places to visit. I say bucket list, but I’m never going to get there in reality. However, these shots from McCurry show just what can be caught out there, if that is, you are good enough snapper to do so. I’m not sure I am really.

What makes good photo really is a very subjective topic. I love high contrast B&W prints, but do not like the HDR images that were doing the rounds not so long ago. Others will disagree with both of these. Anyway … the last page of AP every week is penned by one of my favourite photo-writers, Roger Hicks. This series is about a chosen photo by other snappers and Hicks explains what he sees, like and dislikes about the chosen shot. A few weeks ago he wrote about a shot supposedly showing the point where a wall and a floor meet.

It was a blurred B&W (mainly grey,) shot with the wall being a lighter shade to the floor. If I hadn’t read the title I wouldn’t have known what is was about. The point of this one according to Hicks is that we should look at it not with a technical head on, but with like/dislike head on. Either way, it failed for me, and by the post bag it generated it failed for a lot of other readers, on both counts. Hicks is very opinionated writer, a style I like actually, and sometimes I don’t agree with him; that blurred shot is one where I disagreed. This week’s offering Hicks writes about an image from Libya in 2012. I shall read it later.

I’m a happy chappie today seeing as I’ve lost another 2lbs, now down to 15st 13oz. Hope it continues and I hope it will please the diabetic nurse when I see her next month.

Today’s photo …

Another from Saturday.

Today’s funny …

An idiot heard that a fortune could be made by working as a lumberjack in Canada.
So, off he goes. After some weeks, he arrives at a lumberjack-camp and asks the foreman for a job.
Foreman: "Okay sonny, but you'll have to do a test first. If you can chop down 100 trees tomorrow you're hired".
So, next day, the idiot gets his chainsaw and happily saws away all day. However, when trees are counted the idiot only has 98.....
"Oh well" says the foreman, "You'll get another chance tomorrow"
So, next day, same story, 99 trees. "I don't believe this" says the foreman, "A big strong fella like yourself should be able to cut down 200 trees in a day. You know what? You get one more chance, and I'll join you to show you the trick of it".
So, next day, the idiot and the foreman go into the forest. Upon arrival at a nice open spot the foreman puts the chainsaw on the ground, and starts the engine. Says the idiot: "What that! Where's the noise coming from?"