Analogous

Back in the day I had a Pentax K1000 manual SLR camera. I shot a fair bit of black & white film and my brother processed it for me. No matter how many pictures I took, I didn't seem to get any better because I didn't really understand exposure, apertures, depth of field or any of the things I confidently manipulate in my pictures today. Ultimately, I found it all unsatisfying and frustrating mostly because I wanted to get better at it but was failing. Still I loved the feel of the camera in my hands. I probably should have stuck with it, or taken lessons, or taken notes...

We migrated to a compact 35mm camera, then to a good digital compact and all that time I used a camera for obligatory family occasions and holiday snaps only. Then there was the purchase of the first DSLR...for the man of the house...but I didn't take that much interest. At least not until one day I picked up the Nikon D70s to take a picture of the boy at his tiller. Instantly my hands remembered what it was like to have a "real" camera in them.

I took a few pictures and the instant feedback was intoxicating.

There and then I wanted my own camera. A few months later and I was bought a Nikon D50. Smaller, lighter and not quite as highly spec'ed as the D70s but a lovely fit in my small hands.

Took a fair few pictures here and there...started to get to grips with the technical aspects of the craft. Then 2007 unfolded in unexpected ways and I took refuge behind my viewfinder.

Looking at my pictures posted on Flickr over time I reckon that my pictures have improved over the last 18 months or so.

I think it's mostly the volume of pictures, combined with the ease of finding out what settings a particular picture has been taken with that have enabled me to learn quicker what works and what doesn't (at least in my eyes)

I think, however, I may be ready to dip my toe back in the analogue pool.

There's never been any doubt that film is superior to digital in many (but not all) ways and I know loads of people that still shoot film: exclusively or in combination with digital.

A couple of recent conversations, however have made me curious.

One guy sat and took all sorts of ribbing at a recent Flickrmeet. It's his camera at the top of the the page. He sat and smiled all the while and quietly countered every argument we gave him for giving up film. Seeing some of his pictures I can see why. I don't always have an instant affinity with the subject matter or composition but the smoothness of the tones is clear to see.

In another exchange, my previous blog entry was countered with this. So, if I'm trying to improve my photography in general does that mean that trying film again isn't such a stupid sounding idea?

I got thinking.

I've been a musician for far longer than I've been a photographer and I started with acoustic instruments...got rid of them all...replaced them with digital instruments (keyboards, MIDI Wind controller, synthesiser boxes, software etc) because they were easier to get a good result with. What do I use now? Proper guitars, my lovely wooden cello, a beautiful maple recorder, a real Kemble piano and a hand-crafted mandolin. Where are the synthesisers? Up on the shelf. Where's the keyboard? Borrowed and un-missed.

The immediacy of digital instruments helped my music making in lots of ways but the acoustic versions are more satisfying to me at the moment.

Will I go back to digital instruments? Probably when I have a project that suits the digital versions better.

I think it comes down to realising that maybe analogue and digital technologies are different but complementary.

So - will I switch back to film?

Switch...? Probably not.

However, I have a friend with an unused Nikon film camera which will fit my some of my Nikon lenses perfectly. He'll not mind if I borrow it for a bit. His wife will be delighted to stop it cluttering up their house.

There doesn't seem to be any harm in maybe buying a couple of rolls of Ilford B&W film and asking some of my film-loving buddies for advice on getting it developed.

Could I have a film and a digi body coexist in my camera bag?

I think I'm coming round to the idea that maybe I could.

In the meantime, I made an impulse purchase of my favourite sort of lens - fast and prime. In this case it's wide and will suit a film camera just as well as a digital one.

I'm fighting against throwing myself headlong down yet another slippery slope...but I can feel myself edging towards a little exploration.

Leap of Faith

Several people I know don't like heights. They say that when they get close to a drop they have an inexplicable urge to jump. They're not suicidal...they're just frightened they'll take the leap...just to see what it feels like.

I felt like that on the way to work this morning. An inexplicable urge to quit.

I don't normally work on Fridays so today was unusual and had messed with my perception of how the week works...but I don't think it was that.

I've got some interesting work to occupy me at the moment; some colleagues were coming to Bristol for the day and I was looking forward to catching up with them. So it wasn't the prospect of the actual work that faced me.

Since I was widowed some 22 months ago I've found it increasingly hard to see work as anything other than a means to pay my bills.

On Wednesday evening a friend and I went to a community meeting for the local carnival. We were offering our services as volunteer "official" photographers.

We were graciously received; we were made to feel welcome and valued; they were grateful we'd come and they fed us.

Some friends & I have dealt with community organizations over the last year or so and, without fail, we've been made to feel like we make a diference simply by turning up and taking a few photos. Often we don't consider our photos to be our very best work but they are probably better than most people would be able to achieve with your usual "point and shoot" camera.

Obviously, the fact that we volunteer makes us quite attractive. There is, after all, little cash to go around in the not-for-profit sector.

Nevertheless, I can't shake the feeling that they'd be this enthusiastic if they were paying for our services. It's about valuing people and their contibution, and about feeling like you've made a difference no matter how small the thing is you've done.

Do I get that at work? Not often, no.

Is it my boss's fault? No. He's one of the best people I've worked for.

I know they can cope without me, they showed that admirably when I was off work for seven weeks.

It's probably from a little higher up and driven from the beahviour of our customers. They expect more from us than they ever have before, and they expect to pay less. There's less time available for the niceties of life.

It's hard to criticise when most of us buy on price.

Nevertheless, business has definitely become progressively more soulless in the twenty-six years I've worked in the industry.

Could I afford to not hold onto this job? Not long term, no.

I like to think I'm pretty good at what I do but I can't really deny that it's not hard graft in the traditional sense. I'm reasonably well paid and I have decent enough conditions.

So, for me, it's a good balance of return for effort.

You know what, though? If I had to work a little harder in return for a little less pay but I felt like I was making even half the difference that I felt I might be on Wednesday then it would be worth it.

A little while ago I toyed with the idea of flinging the job in and going and doing photography for the Not for Profit Sector.

It would have required me to put some of my savings aside to pay the bills whilst I tried to persuade people they'd want to part with folding money for what I had to offer. I'm lucky inasmuch as I have savings that I could use in that way.

It was just before the bottom fell out of the FTSE and what little money the NfPs had got squeezed even more.

Various things stopped me at the time and it hadn't occurred to me again until this morning.

So will I do it?

I dunno.

If I have many more meetings with people who love what they do and think it's important to make you feel valued...and many more days at work when I wonder why do I f*****g bother then it's entirely possible I'll make the leap.

I think the trick may be to not look down.

Meaningful

When we hear the word "average" we know what it means and we know it's a good number to know because it tells us something useful, right?

Wrong.


I work in an industry where numbers are used all day, every day.

Still, we bandy average around far too frequently for my liking.

When we say "average" we generally use it to describe a common value within a set of data.

If we're talking about the number of days a service provider make take to do something for us, we might talk about something being turned around on average in 10 days.

As a customer, that gives us a measure of expectation.

In this example we'd probably calculate the "average" by adding up all the numbers of days that a sample of work took the company and divide it by the number of values we added up. That would be the arithmetic mean.

I don't have a problem with calculating the mean, per se ...but a lot of people forget that in order for them to be useful values the underlying numbers need to conform, more or less to what is typically called a "normal distribution"

The graph at the top of the page shows normal distribution. If you calculate the arithmetic mean of the numbers being graphed here you'll get the number in the middle of the graph - at the place the incidence is most frequent.

However, if the graph of the numbers you're looking at doesn't form this sort of shape then there's little or no point calculating an arithemetic mean.

Imagine for a second that graph is flipped upside down. Now the most frequent incidences of the numbers are at the beginning and end of the graph. If you calculate the arithmetic mean, it'll still come out as the number in the middle of the graph but now it represents almost none of the data in the data set. Ergo...it's just a number that doesn't tell you anything about what you can expect in the real-life stuff underlying the data.

Averages are OK but context is everything

The mystery of the mayonnaise

So...there's an advert for Helman's mayonnaise. It's voiced over by Anthony Worrall-Thompson. I think his cooking is m'eh but I guess he knows what he's talking about when it comes to food...right?

The ingredients for this gloopy, unpleasant, ubiquitous sandwich adhesive are eggs, oil and vinegar or lemon juice. A simple enough thing.

Still -given it's pretty much all fat it's high in calories.

So - there's a "lite" version. This is what AWT is advertising.

The gist of the advert is:

"We know it's important to keep the quality of ingredients high so we kept in the free range eggs, the oil (which is naturally high in omega somethings) and the vinegar. So all we removed were the calories"

Errrrr... so now calories are an ingredient?

I know they don't teach proper domestic science at school any more but is anyone really going to fall for that?

/rant

To the Far East

Head Office is in Potters Bar. I rarely have to go there but I've been twice in seven working days.

I might have to do it a little more often over the next 18months or so.

It's not hard to get to:
Home to Temple Meads. Temple Meads to Paddington.
Circle Line or Hammersmith & City to Kings Cross. Kings Cross to Potters Bar Station.
Fifteen minute walk to the office.
A few hours in the office, catching up with colleagues I usually only email or chat to on the phone...a couple of meetings then the journey in reverse.

I arrive home, completely knackered about 12 hours after I left in the morning...and in all honesty, I probably only do about 3 - 4 hours work all day. Today's journey had to be done during peak time so cost the company £157 plus paying me for the day.

I know there are many technological solutions to replace actual face to face meetings...and we've tried most of them. Sometimes they're good enough. Sometimes they're all there is.

I'm not really a "people person"...I'm a big fan of email...but today we started to build a project team relationship that would have taken far longer had we not sat around a table.

I guess I need to remember that next time I'm trying to keep project costs down.

The World Did Not End

Well...what a surprise!

I've been toying with the idea of installing Windows 7 Beta on my laptop for a few weeks now.

When I bought my laptop, it came pre-installed with Vista. Huge frustration followed as this not very high spec machine lurched and juddered trying to handle the bloatware beast that is Vista.

The picture above is the last time I tried to do a major upgrade of any of my software (in this case Potatoshop) without someone to hold my hand. It was a bad time.

Microsoft made Vista so easy to hate...so, not surprisingly almost everyone did (does)

It wasn't all that long before I'd ditched Vista and installed the altogether more spritely Ubuntu Linux distribution.

For basic surfing and stuff it was fine, but it didn't handle Flash content terribly well, and installing new applications that weren't part of the distribution was cumbersome.

In principle, I like Linux but the fact remains that unless you know what you're doing, it's harder to get things going on it. My days of wanting to be really geeky with my computers have long gone.

So - Win7 - why not? Microsoft typically get it right every-other major version.
I got it here

A couple of hiccoughs with the creation of a boot DVD (my bad, not Microsoft's) but it repartitioned and installed a clean new version in about 20mins.

I was initially disappointed that my laptop's widescreen monitor wasn't catered for, so the display was a bit blurry and the wrong aspect ratio...but after the first download of updates that's been miraculously fixed.

My pal suggests that I like aggravation in my life. He may be right...but it's possible, just possible Win7 will be less hassle than XUbuntu...

Watch this space.

Imposing some discipline

Photography is probably the thing I do most these days. Not well, but most.

A while ago I toyed with the idea of buying (yet) another lens. A prime, wide angle, fast lens (something like a 20mm f/2.8 beauty). I sounded out a friend to see what he thought. We don't always see eye to eye but I value his opinion. After some initial "what about this" banter (and a pint or two, I believe) he came clean and said what I really needed to do was look more and better...and to stick with what I had.

It kind of stung at the time but it he was doing what real friends are supposed to do and tell you the truth as they see it. More annoyingly, he was probably right.

More recently I got chatting to another photographer whose photos I rather like. We discussed what photography is about - whether it's the end result or the process of taking the picture. We agreed that the "looking" is the key thing.

As the year starts to unfold and I get out to take more pictures my aim is to look more and better.

To this end, for the trip out yesterday and today I have restricted myself to a single lens with a single focal length. My 105mm lens is my very favourite for a lot of reasons so that's the one I've chosen.

It's fast and crisp and it's a macro lens so I can't blame my lack of good pictures on its technical shortfalls.

It's an odd focal length - on my camera it's the equivalent of about 150mm on a traditional film camera. This makes it too "long" for my usual sort of architectural pictures and too "short" to take pictures of exotic birds on distant buildings. So...what does that leave me with?

Learning to look better and concentrating on what I can see.

Who knows. I might actually get better at it.

Drinks as a Gender Issue - Discuss

Never blogged before...don't know if I want to keep it up but I'm trying it on for size.

First post
Controversial subject.

Spent the better part of the day (in every sense) with a female friend. Drinking coffee, walking, taking photographs.

I'm not very girlie. I'm short, dumpy and shortish haired. I don't possess a pair of heels and have no patience for make up and little time for jewellery.

I am however, a middle-class, white, straight, woman.

My companion today has more attractive bone structure; the most lovely liquid eyes; makes far more effort with her appearance and is always better turned out than me.

I frequently look like I've been dragged through a hedge with my muddy jeans and all terrain trainers. Like Timothy Winters, my hair is an exclamation mark.

But it's my friend who was referred to as "Sir" the other day.

I get cross with the world on her behalf (she doesn't ask or need me to do it...but I do, nonetheless)

She's transexual. Reasonably openly so....and there's no doubt when you look at her she is SHE.

In various conversations with her today various aspects of gender identity came up.

I get cross when I'm patronised in a camera shop by people (men) who think that use of a reasonably good camera is only compatible with the possession of a set of X&Y chromosomes. Some of my friends understand and agree. Others think I over-react a bit (they may be right)

I sometimes have a lunchtime coffee with a male friend. Each time he orders a mocha, I order a strong black americano. Without fail, when the coffee arrives I am offered the mocha...he the black coffee.

Another male pal and I frequently go to the theatre together. He drinks Tonic (with or without gin, as occasion demands), I often drink a pint of (real) beer. Again there's always a swapping of drinks.

I really didn't realise to what extent even the food we eat and the drinks we choose in public are gender specific.

My TS friend is cautious how she behaves lest someone calls her sir.

I can stumble wind-blown into a pub with my muddy jeans and tatty tee-shirt; order a pint of Timothy Taylor Landlord and a burger and chips (don't really like burgers...or chips but you get the picture) and I will likely be called "Ma'am" (or just conceivably "Miss" if the landlord's feeling charitable). They might think "now there's an unattractive woman" but they'll not call me sir.

So today at least, I'm counting my blessings and trying my very hardest to remember that I have it easy the next time a camera shop assistant tells me that cleaning my camera sensor is "no harder than baking a cake".