An inky Blinky

Return of the tache

Filed under other people’s art/reinterpretation.

What? What warship?

From 2007

This is an ongoing project to record the faces around St Alfege, Greenwich.

They are worn and pockmarked with age. I don’t think they were ever meant to look like this.

This should be seen full size when complete, hopefully 1.5m x 3m or something outrageous. I’ll probably redo it with film.

Statement of the bleeding obvious or what…

Lets debunk a couple of things quickly:

<curmudgeon In one day 15 cms of snow achieved what Hitler and the nazis failed to do in the second world war – bring London to a halt. Outrage! />

<analyst We need to know what what the failures were that prevented people from getting to work. />

Just one word. Bollox. Londoners woke up on Monday morning to a fairy-tale winter-wonderland and from personal observation most were embracing not being able to go to work. Those sitting at home grinding their teeth because they couldn’t get in need their heads examined and perhaps ask themselves why they could not participate in one exceptional day.

I understand about loss of pay etc but even people who had lost pay were phoning Radio London in the evening saying that it was worth it. This is Central London. Last time this happened was about 20 years ago. One day lost productivity in 20 years because of snow…?

Get over it.

Stuart Jeffries in The Guardian puts it eloquently:

“For a day at least, Londoners returned to a forgotten innocence. Yesterday the headlines howled about how £2bn would be lost yesterday thanks to public transport disruption. Two words: So. What. We’re in the middle of a credit crunch and £2bn is the sort of money a hedge-fund trader might find in the lining of his Armani suit. Yesterday we stopped measuring our lives in coffee spoons, overdrafts and balance of payments deficits. It felt good.”

Also, much as I loathe Boris Johnson he was amusing in a very British way: “This is not the wrong kind of snow, just the wrong amount of snow”. You have to suffer our shite London transport system to see the nuances of that one.

Phoning sick?

Wonderland:

Greenwich Park is lovely at the worst of times. Today, cloaked in newly fallen snow it was truly beautiful. Not in some crappy Victorian throwback to a false Dickensian winter ideal but in a very modern vibrant way. People were having such fun and not being backward about it. It was noisy and busy, and most of the noise was shrieking laughter and squealing, children and adults.

Antipodean madness:

We were out of the house by about 08:30 and by the time we got to Greenwich Park it looked like most of the borough’s population had the same idea. Blackheath Common, which even on a normal day has an extraordinary sense of space and remoteness despite being bordered by busy roads seemed to stretch forever.

By this time both of us had been reduced to a childlike state when faced with the snowfall. Some of us were even behaving like we’d never seen snows before

More from the park:

Around and about:

Quaggy centre

Blackheath Common

Early morning (approx 07:00:

These were views from the window

Colour! WTF? Just to prove some trains were running…

My one regret for the day is that I did not photograph the dogs in Greenwich Park. Two particularly. First, an Airedale with a floor length jacket. All you could see was that long Airedale snout poking out at the front and tail at the back.  Second was a Highland Terrier with a mackintosh and hood. Really bizarre. All of the dogs were having immense fun. White dogs on snow are the best!

The majority of these photos were shot on the Bessa-R with the CV 28/1.9 Ultron using FP4+ rated at ISO 100. Because of the snow, I deliberately overexposed +2 or +3 stops to compensate. Don’t rely on meters in the snow. Developed the film in APH09 (Rodinal) 1+40 for 11 minutes, 10 seconds initial agitation, 2 gentle inversions every 30 seconds subsequently. I’m getting gentler & gentler with the rodinal and I think the results are showing in improved grain and sharpness.

The B&W images from the flat were taken on the Nikon F4S with the Nikkor 35-70/2.8 plus mid yellow filter, using up a roll of Neopan 1600 developed in DD-X 1+4 for 5 mins.

Colour photos are from the Nikon D300, Nikkor 24-70/2.8, ISO 200

Full gallery (note, several pages!)