No earth, just sky its so surreal
Jun. 6th, 2006 07:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaSaturday saw ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
spindlemere and I launching one of our Ambling Attacks on the nation's capital. I believe we had a vague plan to go to the Museum of London, but got distracted on the way. Instead we saw all manner of interesting other things.
Spindlemere has, fortunately, managed that amazing feat of joining the dots of London geography, meaning we had a pleasant and slightly picnic-y amble through parks and along the river bank before coming to rest at the South Bank centre. We'd gone there to see the exhibition of Press Photos of the Year, which I've put down below behind a separate cut, in case people don't want to hear me frothing about photographs.
We wandered off the river bank, and eventually came to rest in a pub called the Black Friar which, despite my apparent obsession with Southwark and its environs, I'd never met before. If you've any interest at all in architecural oddities, or Art Deco, it's well worth a visit just for its arched back room - the front bar is comparatively restrained, but the Arts & Crafts Movement just went bananas out the back and the result is strangely delightful.
Pintwatch was feeling the sun a little, and opted for a shandy gaff - half a pint of Pride mixed with a bottle Fentiman's Ginger Beer - conceptually it approved the nice little row of three handpumps. Although London pubs seem to have an odd thing going on at present whereby your choice of beer somehow indicates which year you believe England had the best World Cup squad. Pintwatch resents its fondness for Pride and Landlord being translated into approval of various managers about which it knows nothing.
On the way in to the Press Photographer's Year exhibition I commented that the trouble with award-winning press photographs is that they're always of bad news. No one ever took the iconic photo of a decade because something good had happened.
As we wandered round the exhibition, it did initially seem like I was going to be proved right - wall after wall of harrowing images from around the world. There were also potrait walls, walls of photos from entertainment and sport, and the odd celebrity or two. But on the whole, the images which people will remember from 2005 won't be the cheerful ones, they'll be the shattered aftermath of disasters everywhere.
I find I often gripe about photograph competitions - to me there are two kinds of good photos. Firstly, a photo of a good thing. The picture is a factual record of something good (or, of course, bad, but somehow an image worth recording), and you always sneakily have the feeling that had you just been there with a camera, you could have taken the photo yourself.
The winner of the press photography award shows prisoners being led across a desert. It is a good photo - it's nicely composed and beautifully presented - but what makes it is the subject material.
Secondly, you get a good photo of a thing. The picture may be of something crashingly mundane, but it is taken in such a way as to show that the person behind the camera is skilled. I'm afraid I forget who this potrait is actually of, but it is a beautiful photograph of what can really be summed up as bloke-sits-on-table. Anyone could have taken the picture, but in almost all cases it'd have been a boring snap of a bloke on a table.
Occasionally the two meet - you get a good photo of a good thing. This picture of soldiers putting out post-tsunami fires really caught my eye as something that I believe would have been incredibly difficult to shoot so well.
The skill of many pictures lies not necessarily in an intimate knowledge of cameras, but in just being able to spot something and realise it makes a good photo. The potrait of Brown and Blair was a split second of genius on the part of the person with their finger on the shutter. Sometimes, of course, it's all in the timing.
I'm slightly bemused by how the picture of the bombed London bus came to be taken. It's clearly moments after the explosion, and far too early for a press photographer to have got there. Was the photographer just "lucky" and in the area ? Presumably, if that's your job, being at the scene of a disaster is a real bonus.
Unexpectedly, I think my favourite photograph of the entire show was a potrait of Peter Ackroyd. He's not the most photogenic chap, but the amazing detail and texture of the ropes surrounding him made me stop and stare.
I'd thoroughly recommend the exhibition - or at the very least a watch of the slideshow online.
On Sunday, ChrisC and I popped out for a wander round Spitalfields market (with fiercely complicated vegetarian salad wraps for lunch) before I headed home to tackle the ongoing Tidying of the Augean Bedroom.
We paused for a drink on the Barbican's waterside terrace, it was all terribly civilised.
Suddenly, there was a beating of wings overhead, a vague quacking, and London's most incontinent duck strafed the pair of us thoroughly. I'm unsure if this particular duck had some major disorder of the lower intestine, but the result was greenish, utterly foul-smelling and completely pervasive. It's difficult to walk through the Barbican with any degree of dignity when one has duck shite dripping down one's face (and hair, and clothes).
And after I went out of my way to be nice to ducks last week, as well. Ungrateful gits.
spindlemere and I launching one of our Ambling Attacks on the nation's capital. I believe we had a vague plan to go to the Museum of London, but got distracted on the way. Instead we saw all manner of interesting other things.Spindlemere has, fortunately, managed that amazing feat of joining the dots of London geography, meaning we had a pleasant and slightly picnic-y amble through parks and along the river bank before coming to rest at the South Bank centre. We'd gone there to see the exhibition of Press Photos of the Year, which I've put down below behind a separate cut, in case people don't want to hear me frothing about photographs.
We wandered off the river bank, and eventually came to rest in a pub called the Black Friar which, despite my apparent obsession with Southwark and its environs, I'd never met before. If you've any interest at all in architecural oddities, or Art Deco, it's well worth a visit just for its arched back room - the front bar is comparatively restrained, but the Arts & Crafts Movement just went bananas out the back and the result is strangely delightful.
Pintwatch was feeling the sun a little, and opted for a shandy gaff - half a pint of Pride mixed with a bottle Fentiman's Ginger Beer - conceptually it approved the nice little row of three handpumps. Although London pubs seem to have an odd thing going on at present whereby your choice of beer somehow indicates which year you believe England had the best World Cup squad. Pintwatch resents its fondness for Pride and Landlord being translated into approval of various managers about which it knows nothing.
| We left there, and set out questing for the London Stone. This Guardian of the city is somewhat hard to track down, hiding out behind an innocuous little grille in a Cannon Street sports shop. As glorious resting places go, it isn't one. Currently, the building it lives in is to be demolished, and the Stone is to be rehoused in a museum, which I think would be a shame. Being able to wander the streets and find such incongrous reminders that London is an ancient city with a confusing history is one of the things which I like most about our capital. |  |
 | These natty little sheep hang around near the Stone, obligingly holding up bits of masonry. Although I do like many of the newer cut-glass-and-chrome buildings which have been built in London in recent years, I think they're the poorer for not having utterly useless architectural twiddles every now and again. |
| We continued to prowl for some time, enjoying The City's (as opposed to the city's) ability to throw up the utterly unexpected when you turn a corner. I also included a wild goose chase after something that wasn't there, just to keep things exciting, and occasionally prodded Spindlemere to make him translate bits of Latin for me. There's something terribly consoling about the streetnames in The City: Bread Street, Pudding Lane, Friday Street. You know where you are with them, and they're not trying to make any political or social statement. And I still enjoy finally locating places whose names have cropped up in novels and histories all my life. |  |
On the way in to the Press Photographer's Year exhibition I commented that the trouble with award-winning press photographs is that they're always of bad news. No one ever took the iconic photo of a decade because something good had happened.
As we wandered round the exhibition, it did initially seem like I was going to be proved right - wall after wall of harrowing images from around the world. There were also potrait walls, walls of photos from entertainment and sport, and the odd celebrity or two. But on the whole, the images which people will remember from 2005 won't be the cheerful ones, they'll be the shattered aftermath of disasters everywhere.
I find I often gripe about photograph competitions - to me there are two kinds of good photos. Firstly, a photo of a good thing. The picture is a factual record of something good (or, of course, bad, but somehow an image worth recording), and you always sneakily have the feeling that had you just been there with a camera, you could have taken the photo yourself.
The winner of the press photography award shows prisoners being led across a desert. It is a good photo - it's nicely composed and beautifully presented - but what makes it is the subject material.
Secondly, you get a good photo of a thing. The picture may be of something crashingly mundane, but it is taken in such a way as to show that the person behind the camera is skilled. I'm afraid I forget who this potrait is actually of, but it is a beautiful photograph of what can really be summed up as bloke-sits-on-table. Anyone could have taken the picture, but in almost all cases it'd have been a boring snap of a bloke on a table.
Occasionally the two meet - you get a good photo of a good thing. This picture of soldiers putting out post-tsunami fires really caught my eye as something that I believe would have been incredibly difficult to shoot so well.
The skill of many pictures lies not necessarily in an intimate knowledge of cameras, but in just being able to spot something and realise it makes a good photo. The potrait of Brown and Blair was a split second of genius on the part of the person with their finger on the shutter. Sometimes, of course, it's all in the timing.
I'm slightly bemused by how the picture of the bombed London bus came to be taken. It's clearly moments after the explosion, and far too early for a press photographer to have got there. Was the photographer just "lucky" and in the area ? Presumably, if that's your job, being at the scene of a disaster is a real bonus.
Unexpectedly, I think my favourite photograph of the entire show was a potrait of Peter Ackroyd. He's not the most photogenic chap, but the amazing detail and texture of the ropes surrounding him made me stop and stare.
I'd thoroughly recommend the exhibition - or at the very least a watch of the slideshow online.
On Sunday, ChrisC and I popped out for a wander round Spitalfields market (with fiercely complicated vegetarian salad wraps for lunch) before I headed home to tackle the ongoing Tidying of the Augean Bedroom.
| So nice of them to pay me tribute. |  |
Suddenly, there was a beating of wings overhead, a vague quacking, and London's most incontinent duck strafed the pair of us thoroughly. I'm unsure if this particular duck had some major disorder of the lower intestine, but the result was greenish, utterly foul-smelling and completely pervasive. It's difficult to walk through the Barbican with any degree of dignity when one has duck shite dripping down one's face (and hair, and clothes).
And after I went out of my way to be nice to ducks last week, as well. Ungrateful gits.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-06-06 07:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-06 09:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-06 12:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-06 08:34 pm (UTC)That's what we said - along with several other phrases the like of which don't usually echo round the civilised halls of the Barbican arts centre.
I didn't realise the museum proposal was temporary, thanks.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-06 09:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-06 08:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-07 11:38 pm (UTC)In general you're right. But how about an iconic photo of a century? Granted, it didn't become iconic until Che was dead and sainted (and the image redrawn).
Ultimately, though, it's to do with the way news works, and the fact that you can normally only care about a good moment so much if it ignores the overwhelming amount of bad stuff that goes on. Sport is about the only thing I can think of that consistently generates positive stories that aren't along the lines of "a bad thing was stopped, or somewhat opposed". Something like "I've invented a new kind of ice cream" can't usually be compared with "I had a go, but it didn't work out."