Here:
The best comment I can think of is another photo, one of the many that I took in the Churchill Dungeon, this one being an item for sale in the gift shop:
I love words. I sometimes I fail to think of the right ones, but they never fail me. It just that I am sometimes not worthy of them.
But I found some good ones this time, I think.
I like to take sneaky selfies, with other amusing things. I have a file full of such selfies with other amusing things, from which I extracted the photo below. This sneaky selfie has something very amusing in it, besides me. So much so that I rather suspect I was photoing it (back in March 2010), and that I only got in the picture by accident.
Why I like to take sneaky selfies will have to wait. My concern now is the other amusing thing, the gymnasium I was photoing, through its big front window. This was in Warwick Way, where another doomed enterprise, Blockbuster Video, used once to be.
The particularly amusing thing, to me, about this gymnasium was that throughout the few short months of its woebegone existence, I never once, despite going past it every time I ever shopped in either my local Sainsbury’s or my local Tesco, ever, saw anyone in it. Nobody exercising. Nobody doing anything.
My theory is that the big front window put people right off the idea of doing what for spectators would have been dance routines. Besides which, Warwick Way is not really a gymnasium sort of locality. People in the Warwick Way area get their exercise by doing such things as going to their preferred supermarket and then lugging their numerous carefully chosen purchases, maybe to their cars, but more probably straight to their homes, in big bags. Special places set aside for taking exercise happen only in places where life itself does not supply enough exercise to all those present, or so goes my theory.
LATER: It now occurs to me, eight years later, that maybe this was not a gymnasium, but rather a place for selling gymnasium equipment. But whatever, I never saw anyone in their, either exercising, or trying out exercising equipment with a view to purchasing it.
The view from on top of my block of flats is jot quite high enough to be really great, like, say, the view from the top of the Tate Modern Extension. Plus, there is the great lump that is Hide Tower, right outside my front window, which blocks off a huge chunk of London.
But if the light is playing games, things can get entertaining. While grubbing back in the archives looking for a shot, from my roof, of the now deceased New Scotland Yard building just off Victoria Street, I came across this shot, taken just under two years ago, looking from my roof along Chapter Street, towards Battersea Power Station:
Cranes, roof clutter, vapour trails. Lovely.
I find that I can best photo a sunset, not by photoing the sunset itself, but by photoing it with and behind buildings, and showing what it can do to buildings. In the right light, the most commonplace of buildings can be transformed into something far less commonplace.
I have spent my day fighting against infrastructure overload and now I am tired.
Here, instead of nothing, is a selfie that I took, on a train, exactly one year ago:
That reminds me: I could now use a haircut.
But I wasn’t really photoing myself there. What interested me was yet another of those London logos, in this case in aid of all this, with a random selection of Big Things, this one featuring the Gherkin, the Wheel, and St Paul’s. The Shard, oddly, didn’t make the cut.
After a hard afternoon yesterday, exploring Churchill and his wartime government’s subterranean lair, I was, in the evening, in no mood to do much else. But Christian Michel had one of his 6/20 evenings (yes I know, on the 5th (there was a reason but I have forgotten it)), and I forced myself to attend, knowing that I would not regret this. And I didn’t.
The highlight of my evening was undoubtedly getting to talk with an artist and art teacher by the name of Elina Cerla. We spoke about how we were both fascinated by the difference between how two eyed people see things, and how one eyed cameras, or camera-like gadgets used by artists, see things. Summary: very differently. Also about how she is more concerned to help people solve the artistic problems they consider important, rather than to shape them all into her preferred sort of artist.
She gave me her card before we went our separate ways, so I’m guessing she will have no problem with me linking you to that website.
You could become one of Elina Cerla’s pupils by doing what this says:
Having already wandered about in the website, I was particularly struck by that naked figure when I came across it elsewhere on the website, so I was intrigued later to find that she chose it to illustrate her teaching advert. I think you will agree that this image inspires confidence that the time of pupils will not be wasted. This is someone with definite skills to impart.
I am presently listening to this YouTube interview. Refreshing absence of art-speak bullshit and political infantilism, of the sort commonly emitted by those who practice (or who are attempting) shock-art.
Today me and GD2’s Dad, who will return to Brittany tomorrow, visited the Churchill War Rooms and the attached Churchill Museum, underneath Whitehall. Very good, and a lot bigger and more elaborate than we were expecting. A lot of time, trouble and expense has been passed, taken and spent on this show, with its tiny and insignificant looking entrance in King Charles Street, just off the right hand side of St James’s Park.
I took a ton of photos, most of which came out pretty well.
I was also out this evening, so I’ve time to present only one photo now:
I was fascinated by the war, of course, but also by the numerous items of peaceful technology that were also also needed to fight that war, like telephones, fire extinguishers, standard lamps, electric fans, chairs, and the three pin power sockets they used then. And the cooker, above.
A lot of these devices looked very familiar to me, me having been born in 1947, and the Cabinet War Rooms having the sort of kit that regular people often only got a bit later.
Indeed:
At the top of the Shard, Aug 2017.
A terrific photo-op for someone with a really powerful zoom lens. (The sort that looks like a giant … never mind.)
Once more I find myself at tomorrow morning, without a posting here. However, as luck would have it, I was photoing Pavlova today, my two favourites being this … :
… , and this:
The sign.
The clock.
My friends Perry and Adriana now live a short walk away from South Kensington tube. I can now get to them in about half an hour, compared to over an hour when they lived way along and just off Kings Road, and a solid bus ride away from any tube station.
And just as good, every time I now visit them to collect the Amazon purchases that they receive for me, as I did today, I get to see one of my favourite statues in London, the one of Bela Bartok. When I walk past that, I know I’m going the right way.
Trouble is, when I go past Bartok, the sunlight usually arrives on his back, and I get a photo like this:
Nice windows. Shame about the face.
So, inspired by the example of 6k (see below), I cranked up my photoshopclone and redid the photo so that I could see what the face consisted of:
Nice face. Shame about the windows.
You could probably combine the two, and make it: nice face, nice windows. You. Not me. That kind of thing just does not interest me enough to want to know how to do it. I wanted to see the face and I did. Mission accomplished.
I like my photo:
But I also like what 6k has done with it:
So, which is better? There’s only one way to find out!
Compare the two by looking first at one, then the other, and back again, and so, until you are able to decide.
Did you think I was going to say they should fight each other? That would be ridiculous. Photos can’t fight other photos. (Nor is it wise to fight fire with fire. Just found out about that one.)
I think I prefer the 6k version. Which is why I shamelessly stole borrowed it for here. That big 2, bottom right, is much clearer. But, not sure about the greeny-yellowy colour. You decide.
Ain’t the internet amazing?