Shit!

Sorry it's been so very long I know. You must have all missed me.
I will be back with something at some point soon. Pictures or poems perhaps.
I suck I know.
It will come.
Be patient.

Reaganing.

I'm not going to be a dick today.
I have been Reaganing all day long. If you are unfamiliar with this term you will need to watch more 30 Rock. In fact I am going to have to insist that you do. It's very funny.
Today started with an appointment I did not really want to go to. It turned out fine.
On the way home we stopped into a little antique shop in town. We have passed it many times but it has not been open on any of these occasions and we are far too disorganised to make a special trip.
"What did I find?" you ask with baited breath.
Well it's going to be a typewriter you know that much!
Today I became the proud owner of a 1927 Corona 4 in Channel blue. The machine is in very good condition and even came with the original manual and paraphernalia all typewriters were sent on their merry way with all those moons ago.
The pictures if I manage to post them will speak wonders. I have pissed about with them and used HDR on them just for fun.
The wonders of the little paradise of old wonderment did not end there though. The young girl running the shop had in her lap a tiny baby Bull Terrier. Well already emotional at my wonderful find I could not resist; I gave this puppy my face which she seemed to enjoy as she poked and prodded it with her tiny puppy hands and wonderfully ridiculous bull dog nose.
At home my 8 stop ND filter had arrived. Lots of shots of milky seas to come.
Then I won an Underwood 5 on ebay for £5.50. An item I placed a very low bid on a week ago and forgot about. Now I have to simply make it to Maidstone to collect it. Any one up for a mini road trip?
It does not end here though my dear friends.
I was worried that I had missed UPS delivering an LED panel for a dell laptop that is in for repair. As soon as I started to worry there was a ding and a dong at the door, the kind hearted UPS driver had come back to try again.
Wait, no stop wait its not over, my raging Reagan of a day just continues to flow.
I made an amazing roast dinner for my dear Wheeze and it was of course: lovely.
If only Reagan could see me now, I'm flying daddy, I'm flying!

Words; words.

I am still finding it hard to post. I think I am expecting far too much from myself. Rather than being happy with a short anecdote badly written containing a happy dog and a disgruntled Arab as a lot of people may be; I am pressuring myself for more. Looking at my sub title though I feel I should just tap away and hope for the best. So with this in mind I shall begin.

Firstly I would like to briefly mention two programs I have watched. Both live comedy performances.
Bill Baileys' "Tinsel Worm" and Tim Minchin Live.
The former I was hoping to be pretty good. As it happens I found it not only dull and unfunny but offensive too.
 "Bill Bailey offensive!" you all cry. And I reply simply "Yes"
You see our Bill seems to think that self harm is funny. That it is an act performed by teenage girls who listen to Marilyn Manson  in an attempt to look cool and special. This kind of ignorance just makes him look like more of a tit than he clearly already is. Without a basic level of understanding of your topic making fun of whatever it may be is a stab in the dark. Equally ill informed people may laugh along with you; however anyone with a sense of compassion would approach such a subject in a less "kick the door down and piss in everyone's faces" style as Mr Baileys offensive song. Add to that he has to resort to saying "Badger" or "Weasel" when he feels his audience is drifting off. Oh and neatly rounding myself up he is a crap musician. If anyone tells you he's good they cant play for shit.
Now to Mr Minchin: a performer with Musical talent, sensitivity, intelligence and above all; who is actually funny.
I will say that he would be considered more offensive by many due to his language; but if you are among those who think every word has its place then I think you will be OK. I don't want to say too much as I would like you to see the program if you have not already. I think perhaps I can relate to a comedian that takes his own issues and thoughts onto the stage rather than taking the piss out of depressed teenagers.

Another thing I would like to talk about is a wonderful book: "Eats Shoots & Leaves" A book about punctuation and language.
I didn't go to school. Not like some motorcycle riding greaser out to stick it to the man; but like a sickly duck with no friends. I missed out on a lot of information I would most likely have found terribly boring at the time.
Coming to it latter in life could well be a blessing in disguise. A disguise shaped like a moron.
Language I'm sure you will agree is pretty important. The spoken or written word is a powerful commodity; and though both helped and hindered by the digital revolution I hope can remain as it once was: a tool used to clearly show an idea, story, emotion or whatever. My worry is the decline in spelling and punctuation on social networking sites. That makes me sound like a crunt. On facebook, on fucking facebook. The text speak evolving out of lazy or busy people rushing information into mobile phones had no place on the internet.
Look at your keyboard. It has every fucking letter you could ever need right there!
Spelling mistakes and typing errors don't bother me at all. I have some pretty poor spelling and do rely on the spell check in Firefox to help me out (It doesn't  think Firefox is a word, ha ha.) when I make a mistake.
Punctuation is almost dead on the internet. Even the capital letter is often absent. These things are important.
The best thing to do is read the book as I am probably simply repeating a lot of it here as I have just read it.
One thing the book hits on briefly but I would like to take a bit further is the emoticon. You know? This :-)
I have used them in the past but am making a stand here. If I can't express my feeling with words and without resorting to a little picture of a sideways face then I have no business sharing my thoughts in the first place.
The first person to use punctuation marks to make a little face must have felt pretty clever. And you know? The Egyptians probably felt the same way about hieroglyphics. But we moved on. We now have a plethora of words and marks to accurately describe almost anything you could care to imagine. So don't be lazy. Express yourself. Use your real face for smiling. Don't drag the Egyptians out of the ground and parade them about on Facebook.

I need to paragraph more I know. Also I need to use semicolons more.

Happy new year all.

X

Sorry.

I'm rubbish at updating this I know. I apologise to anyone who is still reading it.
I have not been very well and despite spending a lot of time at home have not really felt like sharing much.
I have been taking some more photos and have been adding them to flickr, though there is little of interest other than the magnitude of Mr B. If you are interested the page can be found here.
If I had something to rave about or complain about I would. Nothing very interesting has been happening nor have I thought anything of value to anyone but myself.
Identity and death have been on my mind. Both I need to spend some more time with before I can begin to understand what it is I am trying to work out. If I do I will be sure to let you all know.

As ever take good care of yourselves and don't forget to ask your old Auntie if I can have that typewriter.
X

This will be my last post for a while as I am going into hospital again.

I want to share my admiration for a young photographer I came across on Flickr.
Her name is Cari Ann Wayman and she goes by the handle yyellowbird.
All I was doing was looking for pictures of typewriters and stumbled across one of her self portraits. It's hard to put into words the feelings her images evoke for me.
I will do the best I can.
Though nostalgic in tone a lot of her shots are provocatively posed and framed in a fashion not unlike early Dazed and Confused (before it became shit) Though her work lacks the pomposity of a lot of fashion photography.
Her use of muted tones adds a seventies feel as well as her diverse wardrobe.
I also love the post processing she uses. The light bleed adding a red glow to the edge of certain shots is one of my favourites. It subconsciously adds a sense of naivety to images that could otherwise become rather too competent looking and loose a little of their charm. Sparkles of light and lens flare add more to her already dreamlike images.
For me they feel like images from a book. Just how one might imagine a scene described in the most poetic of language. Such detail in composition and content, such emotion in pose. She makes me what to be a young girl exploring the US with my camera.
Please have a look at her photostream here YYELLOWBIRD

At my worst her work has given me a place I would like to be.
I explore the abandoned houses in my head and look for the beauty that she has found.

The lump they call life.

Depression is no fun. Its not just a clever name.
The weather wont have helped I'm sure but when you just can't seem to find anything to hold on to where are you left? Waiting. When you don't have the drive to work towards any sort of progress you just wait and see. Not even hope. Just see what happens. And this is how I roll all the way down to the bottom of the hill.
I have been told to write 3 things every day that make me happy or that are at least good in some way. I tend to just ask my Girlfriend what they are and she seems to be able to come up with them for me. I can't feel them myself though.
Issues around my father have been at the forefront of my mind grapes.
Its not an issue that is easy to deal with nor one that I have the means to do so.
So again. I wait. How do you take action when you have no strength?
It always feels like a struggle getting back up the hill. They say its not like starting again but it fucking feels like it.
Anyone that has suffered from or is suffering from depression or any mental health issues know that I am with you. Swimming in the murky shit at the bottom of the lump they call life.

First try with HDR.

I have my new Nikon DSLR now and have been having a lot of fun playing with it.
There are only a couple of things it lacks which is a shame.
Auto bracketing and depth of field preview. To be honest I would have probably gone for the next one up had I known about the lack of DOFP.
The bracketing is something anyone into photography would have done many times but manually. And of course it can still be done that way. The advantage of the auto bracketing is for HDR photography. (High Dynamic Range)
This is a relatively new technique which uses 3 or more exposures and puts them all together in one image.
The basic idea is that you take a number of shots all at different exposures. So one properly exposed and then one or two each way +1 +2 and -1 -2 stops.
This allows the camera to get detail from every tonal range. Lots of shadow detail and lots of highlight detail as well.
The problem without AEB is that you need to touch the camera to change the shutter or exposure compensation between shots. This can move the thing and also allows clouds etc to move in the frame which will prevent your shots from lining up properly for the final shot.

Now there is a clever way to make a semi HDR out of a single RAW image!
This Is what I have done with the image below. It is not a true HDR but you would be hard pressed to tell the difference. And unless anyone wants to buy me a better Nikon body its the best I can do for you for now.
Hope you like it.

Larger version here on Flikr.

Just a couple of pictures of my Typewriters.

Floating Shift

Box Brownie 2