A day in London

While Caron was busy working I took the opportunity to take a trip into London to see some sights which I've been keen on for a while. First stop was the Photographers Gallery near Leicester tube station which turned out to be a real disappointment. It really only shows the work of a couple of photographers and even then, not anyone that is known so it was hardly inspirational.

Next stop was the Tate Modern about which I think the best that I can say is that the building and exhibition rooms are magnificent. There is obviously something about modern art which I simply don't get. If art is about communication then it is in a language I don't understand but I think I'm in good company because nobody else seems to understand it either. By way of example:

377ABCAF271C00024754319830000000
000000007D0000000000000084612B1B
27DD21B3222095FCE7DD53EB2367201A
3A42C41757219281AA7D467E5F6820D4
4C72118FDE0DFDA074D721D8BF347A07
0104060001093000070B0100022406F1
07010A5207ADC0048188ADB5E8230301
01055D0000010001000C241F00080A01
DF59D28B00000501112D004E00650077
0020005400650078007400200044006F
00630075006D0065006E0074002E0074
00780074000000140A0100B602F36064
BAC80115060100200000000000

Has real meaning and a message that I, as the artist, would like to communicate to you. I promise you, it really does. Don't get it? Well neither does anyone else but that doesn't mean that it isn't art - you just don't understand the message.

If art is about aesthetics then we all have different tastes but lets not confuse the issues and try and make art to be more than it actually is.

While I was pondering I ended up watching a mother and her children playing far below on the expanse of concrete that forms the entrance to the Tate. Taking the example below


Aesthetic? Probably - depending on the viewer. Meaning as in a message from me, the artist to you the viewer. None! I could make up some bullshit about waiting at the crossroads of life and pondering which direction to go but no, it is simply a picture of a little girl which I found aesthetically pleasing.

Moving on. From the Tate I walked over the Millenium bridge which I found particularly aesthetically pleasing, to St. Pauls cathedral where I handed over 10 GBP of Caron's money to go inside. I like this kept husband thing! As I handed over the money the cashier told me to take off my cap and not to take any photographs because it is a place of worship. I wonder if they see the irony of paying to go into a church. St. Pauls is pretty damn impressive once one gets past the ghoulish aspects of bodies everywhere and just looks at the actual building. Comparing St. Pauls with the cottage below which is almost certainly of more recent vintage one would conclude that standards are going down here but like everywhere else that probably isn't true.

You get what you pay for and in St. Pauls case the cost must have been plenty - kindly provided by the colonies conquered by some of those interred within. So while some are feted here, they are more than likely hated elsewhere.

After St. Pauls I went to the prison that gave it's name to prisons worldwide when they are referred to as 'the clink'. Interesting but pretty brutal back in those days. I'm glad we have moved on - at least I think we've moved on. Sometimes I wonder though.

I finished the day off with a meal in a pub on the edge of the Thames while I waited for peak time to be over. When I had lunch at a sandwich bar quite close to the pub there were dozens of joggers running during their lunch hour even though it was decidedly chilly and they were wearing almost nothing. Judging from the figures that went past me I don't think that jogging is adequate to make up for the food consumption here.

Floekography

I finally took the plunge after many months of vassilation and bought myself a new camera which is a Panasonic DMC-FZ50 and I am currently alternating between feeling like I have bought a lemon and feeling like it takes fantastic pictures.

I thought I would be clever and use a high quality test photo of which I have a high quality photo print and take a photo of this with the new camera and compare this with the original. Very bad move, left me quite depressed as the photo is quite unlike the original and it doesn't seem to matter how much I tinker around with it in UFRaw or RAWStudio I just can't get it right and the focus is awful, the noise is awful. Really just very disappointing. Then I took a photo of my cat, the male one with no balls in both a figurative and a literal sense.



It doesn't show up in such a low resolution shot but the camera actually handled the shot reasonably well. The eyes were about as sharp as I could reasonably expect and there is nice detail everywhere and the blue cushion really is about the right shade so now I have one good and one really poor experience.

This camera has introduced me to a whole new sub-culture within the photographic world. The world of RAW which only serves to strength the maxim that if you need an acronym to describe it - watch out. One of the reasons I am and have been keen on digital photography is that I don't have to waste time with developing and printing. You should just point the camera, shoot, print - that should be it. I have been sadly misinformed - there is indeed a digital equivalent of developing a photograph which is what RAW is all about. That and sounding really sophisticated and pretentious of course. The other thing RAW is really good at is taking up unbelievable amounts of disk space - by the time you have the original (20Mb), the thumbnail (2Mb) and at least one or possibly two GIMP images at 20Mb each one is looking at between 50 and 100Mb per photograph. Suddenly my 120GB hard drive and 500GB backup drive aren't looking so big anymore.

Very unsure of what to do about the camera at the moment so I'm going to have to shoot for a while and see how it goes, I doubt if I could return it to the shop in any case.