Priory Stones

“I find that if I look too far into how facile my existence is, I find myself staring into the abyss and realize that every aspect of my existence is an irrelevance.”

Gwarizm sounding well goth… but still, that doesn’t mean I don’t agree entirely.

Thing is I don’t crave relevance; I suppose I’d like to take the leave only footprints philosophy to the Nth degree.

My life has been shaped by the fact that I have no idea what it is that I really want and that I have a natural aversion to wanting what I am expected to desire.

Contrariness is the purest thing to me.

Given the current zeitgeist of self improvement and optimising one’s profile (whether in real life or online) the idea that you aim not to matter seems absurd, which consequently is exactly why I like it.

I will always be stumbling through one rabbit hole into the next.

Delays

Imagine I’ve written something witty and self-deprecating here…

This is getting a bit silly now; I’ve had draft posts saved and ready to go since September and the only thing stopping their being published is thinking of something to write in this here wordy bit.

So I’ve been trawling the archives. This mix of photos is from from every season, Wales and England, arranged in the pretence of a narrative.

Hopefully someone still checks this site since I have so much better stuff to come (I just wanted to through something up quickly for now).

Sabre Skull

This was one of those rare instances where the final image completely matches the idea I had before I’d even started out.

This was despite the fact that it wasn’t immediately obvious where to find a Sabre Tooth Tiger and that when I found said beastie he was trapped behind glass.

Side note: London’s museums have wonderful collections but suffer from awful lighting (except for the V&A Jewellery room which is superb).

P.S.

I will do my best to regularly update this blog again, I just need to get reacquainted with Lightroom.

Infrared

More experimental stuff.

These pictures were shot using an infrared filter which means that visible and ultraviolet light is completely blocked.

I’ve forgotten all the science behind it to be honest but the result is the sort of otherworldly B&W landscapes which remind me of Terry Pratchett’s descriptions of Death’s abode.

My images are out of focus because infrared focuses at a slightly different point than visible light and I was clever enough to work out the disparity.

These were very long exposures (a few minutes each) because the filter is very dark and very thick (it looks like a solid black disc at first glance). Hence the watery, flowing clouds.

I’ve often felt like I’m making the same picture over and agin so sometimes it’s good to go completely leftfield and try something completely different.

Sky Fire

So I happen to look over my right shoulder, out of the window and see that the garden is glowing. Like someone’s shining a giant red spot light on the world.

I slipped my shoes on, grabbed my camera and ran out of the front door. All it took was a matter of seconds, it was totally instinctive.

As I headed down the road, everything was bathed in soft red light. I’d never seen anything like it.

On the horizon I could see that just as the sun was in it’s final few minutes of setting, the giant cloud bank that had been soaking us for hours had moved inland enough to act like a giant reflector so that all the light and colour of the sunset was bounced back down to earth.

I accept that photographs can often make a scene look far more dramatic than the actual event but in this case it really was quite magical.