Hat-flipping escapologist

I caught about 20 minutes of this guy on The Lawns yesterday. His main act is escapology but the real shtick was his humour, which was irresistible. There must have been 200 or 300 people watching him and I reckon everyone there had a continuous chuckle going on throughout his act. He was effortlessly amusing - appealing to toddlers, drunks, grandparents, families and passing cyclists equally it seemed to me - a genuine entertainer. Not half bad as an escapologist either. The only thing he wasn't so great at was catching a hat flipped from his foot while in chains at the top of a ladder. It took him at least four attempts to catch it.

Tweaked subway family

I won't make a habit of this, promise, but I'm reposting a picture I used on here just two posts ago because I'm so gobsmacked by the effect a few Photoshop tweaks have made to it. I'd taken the colour out of the original shot on a whim. Then I tweaked the levels a bit and reposted it on Flickr. My mate Dave (the legendary Disco Dave 2000 that is) saw it and made a few suggestions: clone out this, tweak that, add a shadow here... And I thought he might have a point, so I went ahead and made the changes. This is what emerged - suddenly I think I have a new favourite photograph (of my own I mean...let's not get carried away). I particularly like the converging curved lines, the texture on the walls and the mystery that lies beyond the bright light...

Monochrome beacon

This was very ordinary until I took the colour out of it and tweaked the levels a bit. I really like it now - especially those crazy cloud shapes. I'd like something eye-catching in the foreground but you can't have everything can you?

If I'd managed to get my act together sufficiently to capture this shot of a touring tandem couple properly I'd have used it instead of this one, but I still had my aperture shut right down for the landscape and forgot to check it so they came out all blurred. I wish I could say that'll teach me but the disappointing truth of the matter is that it won't. I guarantee I'll make that mistake again.

Subway family

This is what you want from a point & shoot: the confidence that you can just point it and shoot without stroking your chin for ten minutes over white balance and ISO settings, and still get something serviceable at the other end. I'm sure the D90 could have handled the challenging light conditions just as well on auto mode, but then so it should being twice the price and all that - and that's without a lens. So all told I'm pleased with the Ricoh so far - even though I'm still half convinced I should have gone for the RX200. But then I may have just got tied up in the purist photography options it offers and missed this shot altogether.

Eating dad's face

The inestimable Nigel Bailey has his left cheek chewed by his son Nicky on Hove lawns this afternoon. After weeks of nothing but dad-on-dad action the two tribes finally got together today and I think I can safely say it all went very well. The highpoint had to be Nigel's 15-hit keepy-uppy display, which left Oskar's mind well and truly boggled. I didn't like to upstage my new friend so I feigned incompetence - rather successfully I think. Too successfully perhaps...

Marni bounces back

Just eight weeks after breaking her arm in a nasty fall from this very trampoline - and six weeks after it was reset rather excruciatingly - Marni is back doing what she does best: risking life and limb. We waited three hours for the privilege of seeing a consultant for all of five minutes yesterday. It was infuriating but there's no point in complaining is there? Or maybe there is...perhaps I should fire off a stroppy letter for a change. Do you know what? I think I will!

More aerial shenanigans

It's not every day you get the chance to take some photos from a basket hanging under a crane nearly 200 feet above Brighton beach so I'm sure you'll forgive me for using one more from the weekend's bungee shoot (get me, I'm calling it a 'shoot'). In fact I reserve the right to use more of these if the mood takes me and I don't find anything fresher to offer. I very much look forward to spending some time really getting to know the new camera properly and then practising with it. Right now I feel somewhat out of my depth - both with the camera and the new wide-angle lens - but I'm seeing this as an opportunity to learn stuff, once the pesky job is behind me.

One Giant Leap...

I took something like 450 pictures of a sponsored bungee jump on Saturday, which sounds a bit excessive until you realise that I was there in a semi-official capacity at the request of the organiser. It felt strange and quite nice to be referred to as 'Martin the photographer' but it reminded me of my early days as a newspaper reporter when my toes used to curl with embarrassment whenever anyone referred to me as a journalist. Eventually that became as natural as breathing. Perhaps the photographer thing will too eventually.

I was never going to do a jump myself, obviously (sometimes a dodgy back makes life nice and simple) but I did go up in the crane to watch a few brave souls hurl themselves into oblivion at close quarters - like the one pictured. It's a very brave thing to do I reckon - there's a moment where you just have to swallow the madness and the fear and do the most counter-intuitive thing in the world... Except I'm not sure it is. I was talking to the chap in the basket who does the encouraging and, ultimately, if people agree, the pushing, and he reckons there's something in us that really wants to hurl ourselves off tall things. It's the same impulse that makes vertigo so sickeningly irresistible. And I know what he means...kind of.

By the way, yesterday's craziness was all in aid of an interesting initiative. The Thinking Men's Project is a charity geared towards helping men who need help, in a nutshell. There's a much more sensible explanation on this web page.

Messing about with DoF

This isn't a terribly exciting image I grant you but I've never had a lens that'll do this before so you'll have to bear with me while I play around with it a bit. This is the new 35mm f1.8 (on the D90, natch), wide open in the gloom to get a nice shallow depth of field. I love this effect - now all I have to do is find something a little more interesting to practise on.

Boy in field

More wide-angled madness from the weekend. I can't decide if the sun streaks on this photo add or detract from it. I think on balance the latter, but when I showed this shot to Oskar (our model) he said he thought it was the best thing about it. Perhaps he's right. Those hills in the background are the Malverns, which are apparently delightful walking country - would love to test out that theory one of these days.

New toy!

It's not about the camera or the lens, we all know that. It's about the moment captured and the memory saved. Sometimes it's even about the art (although rarely in my case). Nonetheless it is a happy day when one finds the wherewithal to add some shiny photographic kit to the small but growing pile of slightly less shiny kit. Despite my intellectual side pouring scorn on the idea, the childish insecure sad side of me thinks 'This [insert camera/lens/widget name here] is what I needed! Now, at last, I can fulfil my artistic potential! Etc etc'. So it was with some excitement that I stepped out on Friday with my new Nikon D90 complete with a new Sigma 10-20mm lens. Both will take some mastering I think - I ended up feeling much more comfortable using the (also new) Nikon 35mm lens instead, but I saw glimpses of what's possible with the Sigma and I'm very excited about spending some time trying to pursue it.