Veteran on Remembrance Sunday, Kensington War Memorial, London
I do not know your name, but I know you died
One of the most ingenious use of the inside of a subway train I have seen are these life-sized wall to wall photographs of jammed packed commuters in a Mumbai train on Line 53 of the Amsterdam subway. (watch a video here by Jorn van Eck) Just love the juxtapositioning (that damn word again!) of one of the most crowded and overused public transport systems in the world with a modern, clean and efficient European subway.
Volunteer harvester, Bothy Vineyard, Frilford Heath, Oxfordshire
Sian and Richard Liwicki runs Bothy Vineyard in the Oxfordshire countryside, a small specialist vineyard producing a variety of award winning wines from five and a half acres. I had the opportunity to visit a harvest this weekend and photograph some volunteers and friends picking the ripe fruit from the vine straight to press. The morning was cold, dank and foggy, just nice for saturated colours of the vine leaves, and no shadow. The misty sky became a large softbox.
“He does not know Wimbledon Common who is not familiar with its labyrinths of leafy glades, its tangled thickets of wild red rose, bramble, and honeysuckle; who has not often traversed its turfy plateau and had the perfumes of odoriferous herbs borne in upon his senses; who has not pondered over its rusty pebble, and wondered whence they came..” ~ Walter Johnson: Wimbledon Common; its Geology, Antiquities and Natural History, 1912
I love this stretch of coast on the south western flank of the Isle of Wight. From Compton Chine to Brook Chine, this is where you go to find evidence of footprints and bones of dinosaurs in the Cretaceous rocks that make up the crumbly sea-eroded cliffs. It is also the spot to view amazing panoramic sunsets.
I seldom make use of my tripod, but I wanted to finish off a couple of rolls of 120 film with the Rolleiflex. Got tempted to use the M8 as well for immediacy. I am pleased with the rendition of the M-lens. Not so pleased is the noise at 640ISO on the M8 though, so these were taken at 160ISO with -1/3 stop.
We have finally arrived in to Cerbaiola, a hilltop ‘agri-turismo’ group of restored farm buildings and outhouses where we are staying, in the Tuscany hills after a two hour detour in Pisa. I grabbed this shot of Cerbaiola from the heavy minivan, covering the last kilometres on a narrow unmade dirt track, with my smartphone. It’s s painterly, and reminded me of why I love photography. I remember the simply pleasure of just being able to make pictures, any picture, when I was young and my family to us to the seaside o to the parks.
Sometimes, we need to be exposed to natural beauty, a landscape, a waterfall, or an amazing sunset, to be reminded again of what photography and the making of a photograph really is. We get caught up nowadays with all the technical gadgetry, lenses, sensor sizes, megapixels, or perhaps we want to shoot like Bresson or be famous like McCurry, we loose sight of the basic principles and just the joy of taking pictures.
Diana, Princess of Wales died in a horrific car crash in Paris on 31 August 1997. 15 years on, her legacy continues, but there is not official memorial for her apart from a rather unsympathetic water feature in Kensington Gardens, a short distance away from Kensington Palace. Every year, during this anniversary, her fans lay flowers and tributes at the Palace Gates.
explorenation.net ~ photography posts, workshops, writings and thoughts by Steven V-L Lee 
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