Brian Micklethwait's New Blog

Food photoing

GodDaughter2 works in a famed ice cream emporium. (They call it “gelato”.) When I met up with her there recently, I photoed a customer photoing her ice cream. For some reason she wanted an autumnal background, which was supplied by an autumnal plant, in a pot, right next to where the rest of us were eating:

As the above photo illustrates, when food is being photoed, others are usually doing the photoing of it, and I am photoing them.

But this evening, in (the?) Zeret Kitchen, which is the other side of the Oval from me, it was me doing the photoing, of my pudding. The light was a bit dim, but I and my Lumix FZ330 did what we could:

Very tasty. And also very visual, which is why I photoed it. People in places like this Zeret Kitchen prepare food to look good as well as to taste good, and I liked the look of this pudding, as well as how it later tasted. So: photo.

This was Boys Curry Night, and two of fellow curriers photoed me as I photoed the pudding. So it’s possible that there may be a bit below this, starting with “LATER”, and featuring another photo.

Tasting the sunshine out east last August

Yes, last summer I went on several exeditions to such places as the Dome, and beyond. Here is a clutch of photos I photoed in the beyond category. On August 11th, I journeyed to the Dome, then took the Dangleway across the River to the Victoria Docks, and walked along the north side of them, ending my wanderings at the City Airport DLR station:

There are two of these favourite sculptures to be seen, in Photo 7 and Photo 11.

There are 35 photos in all. I think maybe my favourite is 33, which includes an advert that says: “OH REALLY?” I like that, for some reason.

Photo 27 has a sign, on the side of the Tate & Lyle factory, saying “TASTE THE SUNSHINE”. It was a very sunny day. I count three that include shadow selfies (23, 24, 31).

It is so much easier doing this kind of thing than it was at The Old Blog. (My thanks yet again to Michael J, who did this new blog for me.)

My four most favourite London sculptures

All photoed by me, in 2015, apart from the last one, which was photoed by me earlier this year:

They are: the statue of Mercury on top of Telephone House (also featured in this photo); the Big Olympic Thing; Pavlova; and the Optic Cloak.

I have many photos in the archives of all of these four. All of the above photos show context, as well as the Thing itself. I love these sculptures for what they are, but also for what they do for their surroundings.

There are many, many other sculptures and statues in London that I like a lot, but those four are my current front runners.

Mother Nature’s a bitch

Here is one of the Highly Commended (Plants and Fungi) photos in this year’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, photoed by Real Photographer Frank Deschandol:

On a night-time fieldtrip in the Peruvian Amazon rainforest, Frank spotted this bizarre-looking weevil clinging to a fern stem. Its glazed eyes showed it was dead, and the three antennae-like projections growing out of its thorax were the ripe fruiting bodies of a ‘zombie’ fungus.

Spreading inside the weevil while it was alive, the parasitic fungus had taken control of its muscles and compelled it to climb. Fuelled by the weevil’s insides, the fungus then started to grow fruiting bodies topped by capsules that would release a multitude of tiny spores to infect new prey. Similar fungi are known to parasitize other insects.

Gruesome.

I made this photo 1000 pixels across, as is my wont. This made the up-and-down pixel count … 666. Very appropriate.

Pause over

I am happy to report that the transmigration referred to earlier has now, it would seem, happened. Because, I am now allowed to put stuff up here again.

The pause lasted longer (longer enough to break my rule here about something-every-day-however-insignificant) than had been hoped. Such pauses usually do, in my experience. But it would appear that Civilisation managed to stagger along yesterday in its usual imperfect manner, despite having had no input into into it from BMNB. Now, normal service resumes.

Hope for more stuff here today, if only to make up for yesterday’s silence. But do not assume it.

The other good news is that there was recently a comment here, from “Fred Z” about his preference for watching dogs trying to get big sticks through smaller gaps over the process described in this video, and this comment did not disappear. Comments here are welcome, but rare, so I am glad about this. Fred Z says that such video-caninery is the same but better. I think Fred Z is wrong on both counts, but that’s not the point. I rejoice that Fred Z’s mistaken opinions are still here, for all here to read and to correct.