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London Science Museum, August 30th

The London Science Museum, like most museums, doesn’t have an anti-camera policy. Art galleries on the other hand, even ones holding our “national treasures”, have men in balconies armed with rifles ready to blow the heads off anyone who points a light-sensitive recording device anywhere near their copyrighted works of art. This is one of the many quite refreshing things about the Science Museum. For example, you’re welcome to bring your own lunch and eat it in the many areas between galleries. Most edutainment centres would have a deal with their catering contractors banning such things but not here. But back to the photographs. I’d seen a couple of people taking photos with film SLR cameras along with the usual mass of digital compacts. I guess I notice these things more these days. Struck me it’d be neat to do that with some grainy black and white film to try and capture the exhibits as they would have been seen back in the day so I may do that at our own museums in Birmingham. And it turns out there’s a Science Museum Flickr group which looks fairly popular and active, not just with photo of the exhibits but of people interacting with them. That’s nice to see. I bet there isn’t one for the National Portrait Gallery where I was once stopped from photographing their escalator.

London, August 30th

Sister needed to go to the Austrian Embassy in London’s West End for a reason I’m actually unsure if I can reveal come to think of it so I won’t and since Bro-in-law was out of the country she asked me to come along to help with Niece and Nephew being, as they are, 2.93 and 1.66666… years old respectively. And I agreed. And it was painless and fun, especially as the embassy bit only took 10 minutes leaving us the rest of the day to do a bit of London.

Initial plan was to do the Natural History Museum for Dinosaur Action but the Bank Holiday factor (which I always forget about not being someone who notices Bank Holidays) meant every other bloody family in the South East had the same notion so we gave up on that. However there was no queue whatsoever for the Science Museum next door, which must piss off the Science Museum people no end. How can we get in on this Dino Action, they must be asking themselves, regretting they day back in time when they let Natural History go off on it’s own. Plant and animals - pah! Who’ll be interested in that? They’ll be back in no time. We’ve got steam engines and airplanes and space stuff! They’ve just got stuffed rodents, a bunch of bones and some rocks! Never underestimate the power of the dinosaur…

The great thing about children at the ages of 2.93 and 1.666666… respectively is they can be entertained by pretty much anything, especially if it’s an airplane hanging from the ceiling. And the great thing about the Science Museum is it’s perfect for letting small children run around pointing at things. As usual I was depressed by the stagnant Space Exploration exhibit, especially the tatty Apollo Moon Landings mock-up which really should be taken away as it’s kinda embarrassing, but at least the Apollo 10 command module is still standing proud. That’s something.

And then it was a walk back across Hyde Park (no Tubes were involved in this outing - do you think we’re mad?) stopping off at a play area (that rubbery concrete stuff is weird!) before four tired persons aged 2.93, 1.666666…, 30.86 and 33.95 got the train home.

The Jeffrey Lewis gig on Thursday was superb. New York Howl were the touring support and were hugely enjoyable. The singer was very tall and they had a bass saxaphone, which is always a pleasure. Faceometer, the local(ish) singer-songwriter, was also tremendous and certainly someone to watch in the future. I bought all their CDs, which is not something I do very often.

And if that’s the level of gig review writing I’m capable of these days maybe I’d better not bother repeating Going Deaf For A Fortnight this November as I’d been pondering doing. Thankfully the mighty Russ L emailed out of the blue asking if he might take the baton and in my usual convoluted way I said why the hell not.

So I’ll be looking for a new challenge this winter. I expect one will just pop out of the blue at me as they tend to do that. I wonder what it’ll be?

Regarding the above photo, this was the first time I took the D70 to a gig and while shooting at 1600 iso was useful it was very clear that the kit lens (18-70mm 1:3.5-4.5) isn’t very useful for gigs. Thankfully, with the money from the sale of the S7000, I’ve got a 50mm prime lens on order that goes down to f1.8 which, if you’ve no idea what I’m blathering on about, is a good thing. Though after the success of the Supersonic photos I’m thinking I might just go with b/w film at gigs from now on. We’ll see.

Five photos made the cut. Here’s the other four:

Central Birmingham, 26th August

Saturday night was a Flickrmeet, one of the new impromptu ones we’re starting to do. Organised by Matt it was tripod-centric consisting of a walk from the Mailbox to Brindley Place at night with long exposures and high speed films. While personally my results weren’t radically original it was nice to have a couple of hours to practice this stuff with the protection of being in a group, especially as we approached Broad Street which, as anyone who’s been there against their will can attest, is the circle of Hell that Dante was too scared to include.

Birmingham Noir: my set, group thread, tagged photos.

I’ve mentioned Through The Viewfinder before on this blog but this morning I took the £3.50 Duaflex camera scored on eBay and built my own TTV Contraption…

And in the afternoon I took it out on the bus for a test drive…

It’s all terribly exciting!

(If you’re not already aware, the Duaflex is one of those old box cameras where you look through the top and through the upper lens via a mirror. The film itself is exposed through the lower lens but we don’t worry about that. Instead we point a digital camera down onto the viewfinder and shoot that. The contraption is necessary to hold the digital in place and keep any stray light from reflecting off the viewfinder. This weird combination of lenses trying to work together creates unique effects and colors not to mention being great fun to use.)

Home, August 2006

Got a roll of Ilford HP5+ 400 back from Gareth today. Pretty pleased with the outcome considering the actual shooting was a bit aimless. Much more grain and contrast than I was expecting for a 400 speed film. I suspect Ilford is going to open up a whole new can of worms to investigate…

Had a nice long chat with Andy Konky Kru on the phone last night. After our talk I checked my feeds and was delighted to see his Evolution of Speechballoons (he insists it’s one word but that’s probably because he’s German) visual essay had been picked up by Waxy who, thanks to the tradition of via, got it from Kempa. This’ll be interesting, I thought to myself. Sure enough the link later popped up on Drawn and then, today, on Boing Boing. It’s currently on del.icio.us/popular thanks to 155 262 people and Technorati has 41 links.

The irony, if that’s the right word (I never know these days), of this is Andy’s currently in Germany nursing an infected toenail with no internet access so he’s got no idea this is going on. I might call him tomorrow.

Still, considering his site has been active for a good 5 years now (I forget exactly when we gave him the bugpowder.com/andy directory) it’s about bloody time.

For context, see this post I wrote about the monster than is Konky Kru last year.

(Jez, can we get stats for that page or what?)