View From The Roadside

Robot Dancers, originally uploaded by Liam O’Neill.

These guys were just one of a number of street performers to be found outside the Pompidou Center in Paris. They had little trouble finding an audience amongst the many students, tourists and people there just to hang out.

They had a backing track that would alternate between whirring motor sounds and music. They would “dance” in this strange robotic slow-motion way into various arrangements, the backing track would change, and they would perform a chain-reaction type dance for a bit before the backing track changed again. It must have taken a lot of planning and rehearsal before hand.

I’ve dug this one out of the archive to enter it in a competition on a non-photography web forum that happens to have a photography competition every month. This month theme was a combination of movement and black and white (i.e. a B&W picture of movement)

With disk space cheaper than ever, it’s never been easier to simply save all your shots, not just the good ones. Often, when you go back and look through these shots a few months later you can find pictures that you somehow overlooked the first time through.

The voting on our little 2 hour challenge event is over, and my picture, Muddy Boots, won!
The point of the exercise was more to see what others saw worthy of a picture rather than the competition, but it’s still nice to win. I’ve since had the picture printed, and it looks very nice on paper. It’s currently at a local framers being framed. You’d think a simple frame for a black and white photo (black frame, single plain white matt) would be easy to find in the various home furnishing shops, but it seems not.

Snow At Hursley, originally uploaded by Liam O’Neill.

It snowed across the UK last night, but while the rest of the country ground to a standstill, we down south had mearly a dusting in comparison. By the time I made my way to work the sun was out and the snow was melting. I knew there wouldn’t be much left of it if I waited until lunchtime, so before I went to my desk I took the camera for a little walk.
This is part of the huge field that borders IBM Hursley. The Estate people had ploughed it only a day or so ago. That the snow hasn’t even managed to fill the furrows says a lot about how heavy the snowfall was. I noticed the lines first, and then the little clump of unplowed stubble. It was only as I was taking some shots that the cloud moved away and let the sun light up the field. It was just what the snow needed to give it that white glow.
I had a graduated ND filter positioned with the split somewhere around the trees, to keep the sky in balance with the snow. I knew the camera’s meter would be fooled by the snow and try and underexpose the picture, and that I would need to compensate for that. I also knew that the overexposure needed to keep the snow white would wash out the sky fully. The grad ND was there to prevent that happening.

Detail from Marc Chagall Window, originally uploaded by Liam O’Neill.

Last weekend I went to Selsey hoping to take some long exposure pictures of the waves on the beach. Unfortunately the sun was quite strong, and even with a polariser I couldn’t get anything like a long enough shutter speed. The idea was to turn the breaking water into a ghostly misty fog over the stones. All I got was stationary foam. I’ll have to try again on an overcast evening, when there is less light about.

Giving up on the beach, I went to Chichester to see the Cathedral, somewhere I hadn’t been before. The bright sun was causing problems here too though, creating dark detail-free shadows along with the brightly lit cathedral that made taking pictures outside fairly pointless. Inside, after the wedding party had left, the bright sun finally became useful, as it streamed through the stained glass windows, throwing lovely coloured patches on the stonework. Chichester has a feel far more like a working church than the more touristy Salisbury or Winchester Cathedrals. While it has some fine decorative touches, and a fine collection of religious art, it’s still a good deal plainer than the other two. The picture above is a part of a window painted by Marc Chagall, a very well known artist famous for his stained glass windows amongst other things.

Winchester High Rise
Originally uploaded by Liam O’Neill.

The competition at the end of the Winchester 2 Hour Challenge allows up to three pictures from those we took to be entered. This is my third picture, to go with the two from the post below. It’s of a sculpture called “Luminous Motion” by Peter Freeman that is in the grounds of the Cathedral. The lights on it can be controlled via text massage, which means it’s always changing colours. I think it’s one of the more interesting pieces of modern art you’ll find in a city center.
Ideally, I’d have waited until it was a bit darker to allow the individual lights to be seen shining, each of the black dots on the sculpture is a light, but by 4pm it wasn’t yet dark enough for that. I’ll have to go back another time to get the lights.
Instead the sculpture does a good job of reflecting the overcast clouds and the hint of the setting sun that broke through near the end of the challenge. I like the unusual perspective, making it look like a sky scraper rising from the street below and vanishing. Taking the picture was awkward enough as the camera had to be placed on the edge of the column meaning it wasn’t actually possible to look through the viewfinder when taking it.