Archive for May, 2009

Photography And All That Jazz

General Bloggery, photography | Posted by leica
May 18 2009

Last Sunday I trundled up towards East Croydon to catch the weekly lunch-time jazz gig at The Green Dragon. This week featured a brassy jazz-fusion veteran Derek Nash and Sax Appeal.Derek

I knew the local music scene shifted from The Ship to The Green Dragon a while back, after the Hogshead sold up and the facade was painted green, but never managed to check it out until yesterday.

Though a recent convert, I like jazz. Live jazz works better than listening to it solitarily on an mp3 player — I don’t know why really, maybe because the intensity and dynamics of the music doesn’t translate well in recorded form generally.

Though a budding fan, I went with an ulterior motive: I wanted to try my hand at gig photography. I thought a small local venue might be an easy start, so armed with nothing more than a Sony 50mm/F2.8, a borrowed Tamron 90mm/F2.8 and my little Sony A200, I gave it a go.

A few things challenged me, as would anyone photographing gigs. The lighting leaves something to be desired - like light mainly. So I cranked the ISO to 1600, the aperture opened slightly wider than a medium-sized volcano but still had slow shutter speeds!

I managed to get a table right in front, so a good vantage point. The front of the stage was a line of tables in front of a line of tables, with a few supporting beams in between tables to ensure complete lack of movement.

Stage design included roll blinds, black curtains, ducts, vents and mains sockets. The lights were quite good all in all, and the lighting guy did a good job. But the stage lights failed to reach the back of the stage for the most part so the drummer and shy keyboard player stayed mostly in darkness. I lost a few shots to the limitations of a cheaper camera - the sensor just can’t do strong red and green lights properly and the noise required quite a bit of post-processing fu in order to make them acceptable.

For all that I had a fantastic time, I loved the music and felt completely at ease. I tried out some ideas which worked well. I think all things considered I feel pretty happy about the experience.

Pictures here.

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Flight of the Conchords on BBC4 Tonight

Media | Posted by leica
May 12 2009

Just a quick reminder for fans of “Flight of the Conchords.” BBC4 start showing series two tonight at 10:30 p.m.

As an aside, I don’t know why the BBC started using hashes instead of the actual program names in their URLs, but b00kgbcx is a small but hilarious comedy about a Kiwi two-man beat combo with an uncanny knack of using familiar musical stylings with quite funny plot-appropriate lyrics. Worth a watch if you’ve not seen it before.

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Mojo 101

General Bloggery | Posted by leica
May 08 2009

“Take your power back!” my therapist often counsels me during our sessions. Whenever she says it, I find myself thinking of Austin Powers trying to find his lost mojo, man. Fitting, as in the tribulations of the last few years I feel like I lost my mojo.

I understood what she meant to an extent. I tend to hold things in for months or years for fear of reprisal or rejection. But repressing righteous indignation - for lack of a better term - turns justifiable anger or annoyance into depression. These days I think pretty much everyone accepts that anger turned inwards causes depression. The other side effect is when anger gets bottled up it eventually explodes at the worst moment - like an old unopened pop can, I’m likely to spew foul words when suddenly shaken up.

Being able to express my grievances assertively would also go a long way from slipping back into that victim mentality that makes me an easy mark for bullies.

I started to put that in practice in a few things at work and online in the last couple of days. I stated my grievances with the full courage of my convictions and kept my cool. In both cases I felt imbued with a lot more confidence than I’ve had in months, if not years.

The key to the confidence kingdom is one thing I’ve always known but never really taken to heart: If I present my anger or annoyances in a reasonable way and the response is indeed reproach, rejection or reprisal, it’s not my fault. Adults act very differently - they work out differences in the confines of a safe, productive conversation. A bit of emotion or heated debate illicits a greater need for compromise perhaps, not anger, tears, running away or other non-adult behaviours.

So my first lesson in being an adult. Result: I feel like I got some of my mojo back.

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Taking Stock

General Bloggery | Posted by leica
May 07 2009

On Saturday I grabbed a train into central London and headed up towards Fleet Street to attend a “Fotogym” one-day course in shooting stock photography.

I learned quite a bit about what constitutes good stock photography. I feel pretty confident I can upload some of my work to one or several “microstock” sites. I also now know I probably couldn’t make a living doing it unless I decided to spend at least 40 hours a week at it. If I do wind up jobless this summer, might be something to think about doing, though.

Also taking stock of my life right now. I guess it’s no secret I’m on a bit of a dip of the pendulum. I keep thinking about last year. I know that’s silly, and I understand, and agree with the frequent-but-well-meaning advice to “just get over it.” I do try and keep on trying. But I continue to struggle with deep psychological scars and lack of closure, in spite of my best efforts.

In the meantime I just keep focused on photography (okay I had to go for the obvious pun), keep learning to “take my power back” as my therapist says, to stop being the victim and realise I’m probably having a lot more fun now than I was then, even if it takes a long time to get rid of that “something’s missing” feeling.

Temperate House, Kew Gardens Okay enough emo-tainment. In other Kews….

The previous weekend saw me on another photo walk, this time solitarily spending a sunny Sunday in Kew Gardens. The bluebells had just begun blooming and the rhodedendron was in full bloom and quite stunning. If you managed to miss Kew when the bluebells are in season make the effort next spring. First week in May is usually when they’re in full glory.

Pictures here.

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Meeja

General Bloggery | Posted by leica
May 01 2009

On the odd chance you’re not out playing in the sunshine in the coming days…

TEA!
“For All the Tea in China” - Radio 4’s Book of the Week this week. If you worship tea, or maybe just like history listen to this. This explains how tea ended up the national drink, complete with political intrigue and occasionally racy.

Canny Satire
“Down the Line” - Fast Show’s Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson’s spoof of the more ridiculous aspects of radio phone-in programmes.

Hot Men in High Drama
“ER” - More4 are showing two episodes from the final series of ER. The second of the two features John Stamos, Noah Wyle and George Clooney in an aging-but-still-very-sexy actor near-implosion.

For Music Lovers
“Blues Britannia: Can Blue Men Play The Whites?” - After a fantastic season of 1959 Jazz, BBC4 continues it’s musical explorations with a look at Britain’s musicians love affair with American Blues.

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