This afternoon I went on a really good photo-expedition, to Denmark Hill, as it happens.
However, today’s overwhelming photoing sentiment, for me anyway, is, for now anyway, regret. That I missed, until I heard about it about an hour or more too late, this, what would seem to have been one of the biggest flypasts that London has recently witnessed, and maybe ever will again. Damn.
So, no photos today.
Not even this one.
Yesterday I walked, in bright sunshine, along Victoria Street to Parliament Square, and then across along the river, ending up at the top of the Tate Modern Extension. In total, I took one thousand four hundred and seventy two photos, most of them at the top of the Tate Modern Extension, and most of those of my fellow digital photoers.
But here is just one of the photos I took yesterday, not of another photoer, and not anywhere near to Tate Modern:
That’s the statue of Oliver Cromwell, outside the Houses of Parliament. Read more about it here.
Usually, the background behind this photo is complicated Parliamentary architecture. But just now, work is being done on this architecture, so Cromwell’s background is unusually plain and unfussy, like Cromwell himself, I believe.
I like temporary stuff. And a nice variation on temporariness is when the temporariness is in the background behind something permanent, like a statue outside Parliament.
Here is a recent Scott Adams Dilbert cartoon, although Dilbert himself is not involved in this particular one:
I’ve always thought that one of the many things that won the Cold War for Civilisation and doomed Bolshevik Barbarism to defeat was stealth stuff. By its nature, stealth stuff is undetectable, and the better it is, the more impossibly undetectable it is. So, if you cannot detect it at all, it could still be there, and really really good at being stealthy. Hell, it could be anywhere. It could be right outside the Politburo’s front window.
Of course, it probably isn’t this clever. But, how would you be sure?
This was why, when the Americans had got these contraptions working reasonably well, they revealed their existence. They took lots of spooky photos of these spooky things, and made sure the whole world could see them. Where, at any particular moment, they were, for you to photo, they did not reveal.
How can you defeat an enemy like that?
Same with Star Wars. Shooting down all incoming nuclear missiles with all-powerful death rays. Bollocks, right? But, again, how could you be sure?
For over a year now, I have been thinking that Jordan Peterson is a fascinating individual. When he did that Cathy Newman interview and got truly famous, I thought that this was a significant historical event. Among other things, I started thinking that he will raise the birth rate in the West, by urging its young citizens to be more ready to undertake the responsibilities of parenthood.
So, I found this comment, buried in lots of on-topic comments about this rather good interview of Jordan Peterson by Radio 3’s Philip Dodd, fascinating. Fascinating as in: proves me right. Right as in: a bit more right than before, not a lot but a bit.
Totally offtopic: is there a Jordan Peterson dating site for people who know about him?
Know about him as in: like him, agree with him, are fans of him. But despite being a bit badly expressed, this is surely a highly significant question. Well, I think so.
I just googled “jordan peterson dating site” and got some related stuff, but not any actual dating site. But that doesn’t prove there isn’t one, and in any case, if there now isn’t one, there soon will be.
I have just fixed for my Last Friday of the Month meeting on July 27th to be on the subject of Jordan Peterson. The speaker will be Tamiris Loureiro.
The talk in question being this. I show this photo of my notes here more to remind me to keep thinking about this stuff, than to tell you what I was talking about. For that, maybe better wait for the video.
I spent most of my spare time today working on that, even though it may not look like it. In the end I had far too much I wanted to say, but I did manage to blurt out a decent proportion of it. The thing to remember in such circumstances is that they don’t know what you forgot to say. They only know what you did say. If that was okay, then it was okay.
There is one big misprint, towards the end. Where it says “Era 2 effects”, twice over, the second “Era 2” should be “Era 1”. This did not throw me. I only just noticed it.
Yes, in Piccadilly Circus, photoed at the same time as those hair-patting ladies. And this time, you know, just photoers, just photoing photos.
What strikes me is what a good camera I now have. The light was not good. I was there to meet up with someone, not to make the best of some sunny weather, because there was no sunny weather to be made the best of. In the bad old days, when their were two zeroes in the years, most of these photos would have been an unsightly blur. But now, the only thing I worry about is if there are recognisable faces on show:
Once again, I made the selection of what to show here entirely by me liking the photo and you not seeing recognisable faces. No thought was given to what sort of cameras were being used. Which means that what cameras were actually being used becomes interesting and informative, like a small scientific experiment.
Once again, we observe the rise and rise of the smartphone as the preferred way for regular people to photo. There are some Real Photographer cameras to be seen here. And I think there always will be, because there will always be photoers for whom the best possible photos are the thing they want, and the best that a big old clunky machine can do will always be better that what a smartphone can do.
But, thinking about that some more, is that right? Will there actually soon come a time when all photoing is done by little things the size of a biscuit?
And will there then be a Great Grumble from all the Real Photographers – a category which is maybe starting to include me – similar to the one when digital cameras first got going?
I was rootling around in the archives for something interesting, and this time I really went back, to the time of my very first digital camera. And in among lots of photos of my friends and GodDaughters all looking eighteen years younger, I found this photo, taken while on a trip around the Wheel, of the Guy’s Hospital Tower, looking just as brutally (because Brutalist) ugly then as it does now:
That’s right, no Shard.
But more to the point, it shows what a Big Thing that building in the middle there used to be.
And I’ve said it here before. This was London’s Montparnasse Tower. What Paris concluded from the Montparnasse Tower was: never again. But what London concluded from the Guy’s Hospital Tower was: we need to build lots of bigger towers, so that this one won’t be any part of the definition of London. And in particular, we need to put a really big Big Thing, right next to this big old thing.
So, in the photo: Guy’s Hospital, and no Shard.
And: without Guy’s Hospital, also no Shard.
Having spent a week appreciating the Frenchness of France, I now find myself especially noticing the Englishness of England:
1.1 (cricket in Vincent Square) and 1.2 (Prince Albert outside his Hall) were taken yesterday afternoon. 2.1 (Westminster Abbey plus Big Ben smothered in scaffolding (plus a tiny bit of Wheel)) was taken yesterday evening. 2.2 (a Handley Page Victor recently acquired by a friend) was taken earlier this evening.
Yesterday I recounted that, after climbing to the viewing gallery towards the top of one of the twin towers of Quimper Cathedral, I had hoped to see a lot of bridges, but I didn’t. I also said: never mind, because I am bound to see other things that I wasn’t even hoping to see.
Things like this:
That is the inside of the spire, above the viewing gallery that we climbed up to. You could just step into the space below that, directly from the viewing gallery. Amazing. I did not see that coming.
The medieval towers of Quimper Cathedral were rectangular, like those of Durham Cathedral. The spires were nineteenth century additions, as is explained here:
Building started in the 12th century and continued at intervals until the 19th century, when the two spires were constructed and new stained glass windows were installed.
I would say that those spires were inspired additions, ho ho. I like them in particular because they greatly increase the number of spots in Quimper from which you can see the tops of the Cathedral, which the spires made both much taller and much more recognisable. Thanks to these spires, the Cathedral is far more of a local landmark than it would have been otherwise.
I have been reading more of Leo McKinstry’s Operation Sealion, and very fine it is too. I hadn’t been keeping up with McKinstry’s books, but now learn that, among several other topics, he has written books about Alf Ramsey, Jack Hobbs, and the Hawker Hurricane (“Victor of the Battle of Britain”). Memo to self: read more books, do less internetting.
In the Sealion book I have already encountered two little nuggets that were new to me.
After the “deliverance” that was Dunkirk, Churchill apparently said (p. 86):
“We’ve got the men away, but we’ve lost the luggage.”
I’d not heard that one before.
And nor did I know about this, concerning another Ramsay, Admiral Bertram Ramsay, who masterminded the Dunkirk evacuation (p.81):
The genius behind Dynamo, Admiral Ramsay, rewarded himself on 4 June with a well-deserved round of golf, on the course at Sandwich nearby, and, liberated from the strain, proceeded to attain the best score of his life.
I find it interesting that McKinstry seems to divide his writing time about equally between war and sport. I wonder if he has developed any opinions about how these things relate to one another, along, for instance, lines like these.