Snaptophobic
I began this blog to natter about photography. As the mood takes me, I happily photograph anything, learning all the time. I specialise in scale model photography. I’d like to be a pro at the latter, but it’s proving a hard business to break into. As time goes on, however, I find I’m writing more about much that amuses, bemuses and causes me concern. I hope you enjoy my wander through life as I try to find some meaning.
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Hanging around
Perhaps it’s a combination of these things, and the dull weather at the moment which is neither one thing or another, but I feel out of sorts. I feel in a kind of limbo. Hanging around.
As you know, I have been looking for full time work. Vacancies have been pretty thin on the ground in my area for a while, and I had more or less given up any prospect of firing my CV off into the void for the foreseeable future. This morning, though, two likely vacancies arrived in my email. I took a look, but decided it simply wasn’t worth my while even applying for them.
What? Have I gone completely mad?
Well, no. Not really. I just had a dose of reality. Both were jobs for which I have the skill sets. Both were well-paid. Both were in a part of the county fairly difficult to get to from where I live.
I have a mental block about travelling to that part of Kent known as Tonbridge and Tunbridge Wells. It is a lovely part of the county, but it is more than an hour’s drive from here, on single-carriageway A roads for the most part. I’m frankly getting too old for trekking across country to work eight or more hours, then trekking back again.
What is the point in me even applying for such jobs? The descriptions were worded in such a way that it was clear they didn’t really want anyone of maturer years applying. They wanted younger, fresher people, or so it seemed to me. Why waste my bandwidth in applying when I won’t even get past the delete key of the agency’s in-box?
My confidence has taken a real knock in the past year or so, and I just can’t see the point in applying for jobs only to never hear from them again. It has happened so often now there seems no point in trying to carry on looking for jobs in my line of work. I have been here before, and I am unable to find work in any other sphere. Stuck in limbo. Again.
I am having no success in finding work in the model photography. I’m going to keep battering at that door until one of us gives. There are hints of some freelance design work, but currently it’s all ifs and maybes. They don’t pay the bills, but who knows? It may turn out differently in a while.
Until I get over this funk, sort out the health problems and get a decent idea of what direction the rest of my life needs to take, I guess I’ll just have to contine hanging around.
Pass Along Your Best Stories | A Lesser Photographer
Pass Along Your Best Stories
Images corrupt and apps are unreliable. Your backups may not be backing up what you thought. Websites suffer neglect.
A few years after you die, your files may not even be readable, if someone even cares to look after them.
The truth is, there’s no such thing as an archival digital format. There’s nothing wrong with that necessarily for the photographer. The photographer’s enjoyment is in the moment.
Once a year, put your best images (stories) in a book. It’s not for you. It’s for anyone who enjoys a good story, even long after you’re gone.
A thought-provoking idea. One I shall seriously consider, because there won’t be anyone to care about my digital archives when I’m gone. At least a book might find a home somewhere, and may well outlive the digital images that it contains.
Kodak files for bankruptcy | Business | guardian.co.uk
Kodak has filed for bankruptcy in a bid to survive a liquidity crisis after years of falling sales related to the decline of its namesake film business as digital cameras have taken over the market.
Eastman Kodak Co, the photographic film pioneer, which had tried to restructure to become a seller of consumer products like cameras, said it had also obtained a $950m, 18-month credit facility from Citigroup to keep it going.
BBC News - Queen's jubilee yacht proposal rejected
A suggestion by Education Secretary Michael Gove that the Queen should be given a new royal yacht to mark her Diamond Jubilee has been rejected by Downing Street.
The cabinet minister made the proposal in a letter to Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt, obtained by the Guardian.
But a spokesman for the prime minister said it would not be "appropriate to use public money at this time".
Labour said the idea showed Mr Gove was "out of touch".
Good. Now, back to getting the education system working properly, Govey.
Give Queen a new royal yacht for diamond jubilee, says Michael Gove | UK news | The Guardian
Michael Gove has brushed aside Britain's economic problems to propose the public donate a new royal yacht to the Queen as a mark of respect during this year's diamond jubilee celebrations, according to a confidential letter to fellow ministers.
In the letter, which has been sent to Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary and minister overseeing the celebrations, and to the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, Gove at one point comes close to suggesting that Britain's dire economic climate means that a large-scale celebration is required to lift the country's spirits.
The education secretary writes: "In spite, and perhaps because of the austere times, the celebration should go beyond those of previous jubilees and mark the greater achievement that the diamond anniversary represents."
The Liberal Democrats privately expressed surprise at the proposal, which is likely to cost at least £60m, at a time of national austerity.
What? What? WHAT?
Of course, I am forgetting. They’re all completely barking. They just say this stuff because they can’t help themselves.
Full story at The Guardian. Read it and weep.
7/366
Seven days of breakfasts. Only 359 to go. There is a mild sense of achievement at having made it through the first week of the year, but then that daunted feeling that the year has only just begun.
From now on I won’t post daily updates. Instead I will post at the end of each month. That way, it won’t get too boring for everyone!
New Shiny Announced!
World goes bonkers!
Anyone with even just a passing interest in digital photography can’t have failed to spot the rumour mills and industry monitors grinding into life this past few weeks. New DSLRs are very much in the news, if you care about such things.
Canon announced a new professional flagship model, the EOS-1D X, back in October 2011. Aimed at replacing the current top-flight DSLR models they produce, it’s slated for release sometime in 2012. I won’t bore you with the technical details. If they interest you, they’re on the press release and everywhere else!
Nikon, meanwhile, has just unveiled their D3 series replacement, the FX-format D4. I can’t immediately find official release dates, but again, if you are sufficiently interested in the technical stuff, it’s in the press release and everywhere else!
These press releases are timed to hit the CES 2012 shindig in Las Vegas, Nevada, US. The Consumer & Electronics Show is one of the biggest international gadget-fests going, and everyone who is anyone in the technology world will be there. Except Apple, but there you go. That’s an entirely other story.
So why do I bring you this earth-shattering news? Am I being sucked into the technolust vortex? Will Snaptophobic end up as just another technoblog, regurgitating press releases about every new gadget or software without even pausing to breathe?
No. Not a chance.
If I am completely honest I have never been free of the vortex, but I find the effort needed to get incredibly excited about new gear has waned in proportion with my age and bank balance! Yes, I am interested in it, but only in a peripheral kind of way. Being a Canonista, the new EOS-1D X is interesting, but it’s so far beyond my budget that I can effectively ignore it. It’s a camera that may be of interest to me if I were a professional photographer and it was to be my key tool, but as I am not a professional and I already have a camera that’s more than adequate for my needs, I won’t be letting myself be sucked too deeply into the vortex.
With Nikon’s announcement, there will now be an inevitable increase in the Cankon/Niknon fanbois crowing over features that trump their arch nemesis. This is partly why I haven’t bothered you with the technical features of each new camera, because they are really irrelevant to you and me. The kind of people who will find that sort of information at all of real interest are those who are not—in my opinion, I hasten to add—real photographers.
So, while the baying over megapixel counts, burst frame rates, astronomical ISO levels, focus points and other geeky stuff begins to inexorably grow in volume, remember this: it’s not about the gear.
The camera is just a tool, a means to an end. Some of my best images were taken using a 35mm film camera that cost £20. Learn to use the tool you have, and make great pictures. If you can afford one of the new shinies, or can justify one for your work, go to it with my blessings. If you just want to leave it in idiot mode, slung round your neck as techo-jewellery … words fail me.
No, really, they do.
New Toy
That’s why I have acquired a neat little 7in widescreen HD compatible video monitor. It attaches to my EOS 7D by an HDMI cable, and lets me see the LiveView screen without getting a crick in my neck.
Of course, adjustments still have to be made on the camera, but it’s a lot simpler when you have a larger, clearer screen to look at.
This model supports all manner of pro level features, such as component video as well as HDMI. What attracted my attention was the use of battery adaptors that will let me use the Sony camcorder batteries we have about the place. That means I don't have to rely on mains power or lugging the laptop on location if I don’t want to.
I am very pleased with it. Best Beloved bought it for my birthday—which isn't until later in the year, but we do silly things like that sometimes!
Expect more fun short films to appear from my fertile brain over the coming months!
