England vs The World (Cup)

So there have been a million column words written about how poor the England performance against both Wales and Australia were.  A few dodgy decision by the referee in the Wales match lost us the game, along with our inability to keep out of our own half.

A weak first half gave Australia the win (has anyone ever come back from a twenty point deficit in a world cup game?), despite a thousand line breaks and half chances.  We weren't clinical enough, we have no finishers.  We have no threats, no pace setting players.  England is a team of average players, working above their collective abilities.

Stuart Lancaster will probably get fired, but I would like to see a new backs coach, and another forwards coach to supplement Rowntree.  I doubt they have the money to hire two dedicated forwards coaches, so he'll probably get axed as well, which is a shame, because he's done well, bringing us from where were were, to where we are.

Anyway, I wasn't surprised to see the ribbing on facebook and the internet by the Australians, we do the same thing once every six decades when we beat them at a sport, but the vitriol from entirely unrelated nations is eye opening.  Everyone knows kiwis have no sense of humour, but the dog dirt they come out with on the internet - what's the antonym of classy?  Because that is them.

The islanders I can understand; they are the whipping boys of the IRB and their relative paucity of resources makes us a target for contempt (fair enough, I can't argue with that), so they're obviously laughing at our expense.

One or two Australians have gone overboard, relating the victory to death, cancer related death and  pope death (I don't understand either), but most have been cool about it.

The surprise winner in the humanity on the internet awards, the one nation you would never expect?  South Africa.  A lot of well thought out, insightful discourse about why we failed, and not a single comment relating our loss to school shootings or gods retribution.  Stay classy guys!

The Return

We start this special 'returning home,' edition of the blog with my grandparents 60th wedding anniversary.  Needless to say it's a pretty impressive number, and having everyone down at dads site (http://www.topevents.gb.com) to try out the events.  This is an extremely long blog, so let's move on.

This is one of my friends from from uni, with whom I ventured into a geek festival.  It was pretty good fun, and there may well be a couple of pictures from the very same convention.  Things like steampunk fashion shows, red dwarf appreciation, board and card games - a real smörgåsbord.  Nineworlds, in case you are interested.

This is a cousin.  We ate at great expense in a garden, nothing but cakes and family.  It was interesting to see what everyone is up to nowadays, what with the years difference since last we met.  Some are headed to Dubai, some to other parts of England.  One to Japan.

I couldn't help including these two gems.  They're funny because they are, the combination of lettuce and confusion (or is it annoyance?) coupled with the following memory of brussel sprouts (I can only assume that is the cause of the following expression).

To be fair, no one likes brussel sprouts.

I managed to head out to a couple of RSPB places with grandad.  One a reserve (who has two thumbs and saw a pair of kingfishers (#)), the other an exhibition.  I have mixed feelings about this picture, the combination of Grace smiling and grandad not is pretty jarring.

After the rain fell in Simons garden, these little flowers were covered in raindrops.  Unfortunately I forgot that water is rather difficult to photograph on account of it being see-through; and therefore taking the colour of whatever is behind it.  As such, you can't really see the water droplets.  Take my word on the beauty of the droplets.

This is a hideously tacky coffee shaped plant pot mum bought.  It really is that colour.  Actually, if you modify your monitor so that it only shows red, and make that red the reddest red that can red a red, you'll approximate the actual colour.

This is the outdoor clock.  As with the above image, I set the camera on a tripod, set it for 30 seconds on a relatively low ISO with a small aperture (about f8 I think) and shone a light on the parts I wanted to show up in the picture.  As you can see, the brick on the right hand side is also lit up because the torch beam wasn't very focussed.  If I were to do it again, I'd project the clock further from the wall, have a more focussed beam coming from the torch, and use a more sturdy tripod.  With the weight of the camera and the very slight vibrations coming through from walking around, it's ended up being rather blurred.  Either that or the focussing was pants (it's quite difficult to get the focussing right when you can't see anything).  Another must would be a large floodlight for the very reason of initial focussing.

Using the same technique as above, I lit this lantern with the plants in the background.  By their very nature, flowers tend to move around and as such, they were never really crisp.  It's interesting because on the back of the camera this picture looked absolutely amazing.  It left a bit to be desired when blown up to full, however.

I personally prefer the darker shot as above, but some people find this kind of lighter image more interesting.  One thing I do like about this picture is the plant life on the right, just fractionally appearing in the shot before entirely disappearing.  It hints at a block of light creating the scene, rather than the small torch that was actually used.

This is one of my favourite species of photogrpahy.  Sitting a camera on a tripod and leaving it open while fast moving, lit objects fly past.  In this case it was a car.  The colour image is nice, but the vignetting coupled with the noise, give this black and white image a special interest in my eyes.  Even without the red lines inherent in nighttime car photography, I feel this image works quite well.  The contrast between the road and its dimples really strike me as appealing, what could be a dull surface (especially in black and white) has a texture that can be felt just by looking at it.  The lines are well framed, drawing the eye all over the picture.  That's probably what I love about black and white - a full quarter of the picture is absolute black, but that creates interest.  Whereas a colour picture might contrast bright shades with the shadow, this uses shapes.  An altogether separate phenomenon, and the reason (I think) why black and white survives despite the shinier, newer technology (unlike betamax).

This image is extremely rough.  There is a photograph to be had somewhere, I just couldn't figure out quite where it lay.  I didn't want to keep relying on black and white, so I ventured into colour while trying to emulate the interest some of the others piqued.  The road still has that amazing texture, but nothing else really works.  Honestly, I thought the hanging trees would frame the shot better than they did.  Then again, nothing is in focus which detracts as well.

This is from the nineworlds convention, showcasing the bizarre world of steampunk.  Their whole outlook is one of frivolity and rube-goldberg outlandishness.

This is one of exactly two photographs I am willing to share; the others are rather bland, out of focus or just plain boring.  It's a shame because the event was anything but.  I did learn a fair amount about simple aspects of photography - setting up the camera properly always helps for example.

This is another one of my mate.  I can't remember what he was talking about, but it looks fairly serious.  I think this picture could actually use a little more contrast.  It's interesting because the current (common) train (wreck) of thought is that more contrast is absolutely the goal with all b/w photography.  It basically results in every single picture looking like a charicature, or like the stereotypical 80 year old 50 a day smoking Puerto Rican.  If you don't know what I mean, google that last sentence - I'm sure something will come up.

What does this cloud look like to you?  I thought it looked like a plain old boring bird, but I recently spoke to someone who thought it looked like a much more romantic phoenix.

The fool from university again.  Not all pictures have to be serious - I'm certainly not.  It beats the typical snaps where people are giving the duck face.  Again, google it.

This is the bird watching grandad.  I thought I was fairly observant, having taken something of my dads ability to observe around an area, without ever actually looking.  For example when driving, he notices everything but the road he's driving on.  I'm sure it's dangerous, but he's never crashed with me in the car.

This formation flew overhead when we were talking to a lovely lady about all sorts of things.  It was difficult to tell whether she was extremely friendly or on behaviour altering medication, but either way it was pleasant.

I messed this picture up.  Only half of grandma is present.  I was focussing too heavily on the cutting, which is the most interesting part of the picture (it's where grandma and grandad merge, so the eye tends to be drawn to the knife) but it looks kind of strange when your eye goes back up to the downturned faces.  I don't mind they're looking away from the camera, but some people do find that off-putting.

This is one of my absolute favourite pictures from the trip.  It would be absolutely perfect if the glasses were taken off, and once again, maybe a fraction more contrast.  I might take it back to the editing suite and play around with it some more.  That's THE great thing abotu digital as far as I'm concerned - not that you can take shots ad infinitum, but that you can edit ad nauseum.  Cor, fake latin.

A cousin bouncing around, doing a passable impression of Cleese or Dr. House before he was House.  I forget his name.

The problem I am having at the moment is that the kinds of photography I want to indulge in, require rather specialist lenses.  I'd love to do street photography.  People strongly recommend smaller Leicas and assorted rangefindery, but I don't have a spare 10 grand.  With what I've done so far, a really fast 50mm (like the 1.2 50mm canon make) would seem to be perfect, even with a big body.  That's still a grand.  At least it's not ten.

The other stuff, like macro, I'm not particularly fussed about.  The other end of the extreme, the ultra telephoto (400mm plus) is absolutely appealing to me.  I adore the wildlife shots you can get with these lenses.  I don't like the 5k pricetag much though.

The reason I bring this up at this point, is that the hoverfly is ridiculously small in this picture.  Even with a simple 200mm lens, it would be appreciable.

This is a picture I was playing around with in photoshop.  I spent five minutes mocking this up, not paying much attention to edges, with the intention of seeing whether the shot worked.  I'm still not sold because I find myself being something more of a purist than I'd imagined.  I'm not opposed to digitising and digital workflows, but I do find myself disliking the garishness of what flows out of the internet.  This picture borders on the obscene for that reason.  If I end up flip-flopping, I'll spend a while fixing the edges and making it presentable.  I mean, I don't hate the picture...

If I cropped the blue out of this one I think it would work well.  Maybe straighten the edges a bit.  I really like the digitally altered contrast employed here (having just slagged off the high contrast kids of today).  I quite enjoy the disproportionate use of pink too.

This one is exactly the opposite.  This is washed out and dry feel of all the colours somehow suits the minute insect as it bumbles around. 

I've always like the shots where someone is looking back at the camera while obviously walking forwards.  It's compelling because you assume a connection with the person in the picture, a dialogue.  It helps if there's a beauty in shot.  Imagine just about any romance you've ever seen in a film where there is a dream sequence - the leading lady will always do this on screen.  That kind of shot is always on the face, to give a romantic, close feeling to the sequence.  This one is more of a jolly stroll through the woods.

There was an old burnt stump in the woods.  Black and white lets the contrast do the talking, showing the texture quite successfully.  I love the detail shown here.

The bark on this tree was also quite interesting, but keeping the colour means it's more difficult to emphasise the texture over the colour.  The narrow focus helps keep the eyes on the bark, and as such, on the texture.

It turns out that my aunt is wearing camoflauge gear when converted to black and white.  This is one of the many 'nearly,' shots I take, where everything seems to line up nicely, but one distraction makes the photo much less appealing.  In this case, the lack of distinction between her shirt and the bush on the right.  Annoying.  I might take it back into colour and see how it looks.

I had someone holding my hand while I leaned over to take this picture.  Butterflies never seem to rest, so to find one warming up in the sun, or chilling out in the shade is quite rare.  As such, I put the lens into macro and leaned in over a ditch of nettles.  I wasn't keen to go for a dip, so I had someone hold my hand while I leaned over the stingers.  It's not exactly the most stable way to take a picture, so I took a few to make sure the odds of at least one being acceptable were improved.

A bit further along was this, a common butterfly around England, but one I don't know the name of.  Again, if I had a full-time macro lens I might have filled a larger portion of the frame. 

I quite like the frog peeking out from behind the leaves.  The colours were surprisingly drab considering the green camo they sport.  It doesn't really work for a number of reasons, chief among which is fully half of the picture is obscured by a bloody great big plant.  Whoops.

This is an equivalent picture to the b/w one above.  The goggles are extremely annoying, which is another positive when shooting black and white, because if a highlight is blown it usually adds to the contrast with another aspect of the picture.  With colour photography, it just looks bad.

 

(#) with that joke, you have to imagine me standing there pointing my thumbs towards my chest, as if to say me, along with the...  it's funnier in person.

Some Photos From England

This is part of the ropes course.  I can assure you, it's far more uncomfortable than it looks.  Sitting in that harness for a couple of hours is painful enough; the added fear of knowing that it's your own setup, that's a killer.

Terrifying.

 This will be some kind of traversing wall, when the handholds have been completed.

I was only there for one day, so I couldn't help with much more than the cargo net.

 This is the bespoke cargo net.

Hand-crafted in England, guaranteed for at least one use.

I hope it doesn't fall apart - there are a lot of screws in there that I don't want tighten again!

 I would like to point out that I had no hand in building this; it's on here purely because it looks cool.

An alternative angle of the traversing wall.  I'd love to give this a go when it's finished.

Next time I'll have a couple of rifles slung over my back, one shotgun in each pocket and a short axe in each hand.

Zombie survival plan complete.

An Absence of Posts

You may have noticed (or you may not have) that there have been significantly fewer posts as of this month, than you might normally expect.  This is due to a number of factors, not least of which is my ever uninteresting life, that warrants no additional comment.

I am, however, sitting in the airport, ready to travel back to England for a few days.

I'm hoping to take some marmite back with me.  Luckily, it's not particularly popular beyond the shores of England, so I get to keep most of it for myself.  I'm in the process of thinking what else I should buy, but I'm not really sure at the moment.

A Shrine to my Travels

A collected all the items I had acquired during my all too brief stay in Japan and made a little shrine out of them.

I feel kind of strange putting all these things together, because they take up hardly any space at all; and far from epitomising my trip, it sits on my desk mocking me, whispering in my ear that it's an inadequate grouping of insignificant items.

Ok, so it doesn't whisper to me, because that would make me certifiable.  But this small collection of items is only a small gateway into the experiences of all those decades ago.

Wait, I only travelled there... How many days ago was it?  And I guess this is my worry.  Like my (minor) Japanese language skills, I feel the experiences and memories will wane over time; I don't know what will be left after the lighter, less significant memories evaporate.

And here is the travels corner of my room.

The swiss made, chinese, swiss army knife from chenzi; the sphinx head from Egypt, the chinese dolls from the budding doctor I met in america, all those years ago.

And now the Japanese accoutrements.

It looked a little bare before, but the Japanese elements, with their personal touches, make this corner of my room all the more inviting.

Time to Leave

So I leave on the 8th of next month, that's roughly (thinking...) a short time away.  But it's only a holiday, nothing particularly life changing or interesting for that matter.  I'll stay for however long my money lasts, or 90 days, whichever comes first.  Hopefully I'll find a job teaching while I'm out there, but obviously that's unlikely.

Two weeks and counting.

I've tried keeping blogs before, but my life is so boring that I never have anything worthwhile to write on them, so hopefully this will be worth checking out!  I wonder if I can add photographs and whatnot...