Some impressionistic views of Milano Centrale train station using the OM-mount Zuiko 85mm f/2.0 on the Olympus E-P3. According to Mark Thackara, marketing manager at Olymous UK, it’s a classic. Wasted on me then…

For over a year I’ve been promising to add a “recent work” section to my photo galleries, and I’ve finally done it. Of course, this is totally out of kilter with the hip new thing of showing some endless, constantly updating stream where the viewer is left to do the editing, but, as Frank put it, I did it my way.

So, without further ado, do please visit my photography page, and follow the carefully formulated, hand-crafted instructions. Or go straight there.

Here’s an appetizer:

Some poppies overlooking Manarola, Liguria. Olympus E-P3 and kit 14-42 lens.

I bought a camera bag today.

The trickle-like pace at which I post stuff on this blog has recently reduced to a drip feed without the drops. It’s not that I haven’t got anything to write about. I’ve got plenty of ideas in my head, but the effort to actually set anything down in words seems to get harder and harder, and the constant questioning of the actual point of it all regularly resurfaces.

I’m not sure where blogging gets us all really, either as readers or writers. Some blogs have a clear objective, like the fascinating and eminently readable One Hundred Mountains.  But most seem to be mainly about self-promotion, openly or under a thin disguise. Being good at self promotion is pretty much a pre-requisite for being a successful professional photographer, or a well-known amateur. But being an interesting and compelling writer probably isn’t, at least not on the evidence I’ve seen.

I’ve given up on photography bloggers who are basically in it to market their book / ebook / workshop and generally build up their business. Good luck to them, but I’m not terribly interested in endless repetitive marketing wrapped up in tidbits of recycled wisdom. Yes, I know, I should use a tripod. Thanks. Got that. I’ll shortly be updating my blogroll to publicise bloggers who actually inspire me with their words, images, or both. Although I’m open to offers to provide paid marketing links…

WARNING: you are now approaching The Point. Please do not undo your seatbelt until this rant has exhausted itself to a complete standstill

So, a certain prominent blogger recently wrote what presumably was a tongue in cheek, opinionated piece on camera bags. It can be summed up quite easily: anybody who has a Domke bag (or apparently a Leica branded sack… whatever) is a way cool dude, anybody who uses a camera backpack is a mindless, unfit moron who couldn’t tie his own shoelaces.

Well that makes me a cool, mindless moron (etc) because I’ve got both. A Domke F803, which is fab for leisurely wandering, say, the coastal paths and villages of Liguria with an Olympus PEN and a few lenses, but pretty ******* stupid for hiking across a glacier in Svalbard with a DSLR, several heavy lenses and a large tripod (to fight bears off with, you understand). For that I’ve got a pretty good huge, ballistic nylon, super-size-me bag LowePro backpack. As have several million others. I’ve also got a smaller but remarkably flexible Kata backpack for less rugged outings (sadly Kata is apparently in the “super crappy camera bag” category. Oh well.). Of course, if I were a studio photographer, carrying my gear in my big fat SUV to my next air-conditioned gig shooting flawless models in Downtown, USA, I might well use the Domke. Equally if I were to wander the streets of Laredo, coolly dropping in to photograph a perfect cappuccino with the camera I just bought, then, yes, the F803 would do nicely. But if I also had some perspective, I might realise that other people have different needs and compromises to make, and maybe, just maybe, their choice of a LowePro backpack doesn’t make them a total dongle. Or indeed an engineer.

Anyway, the author does of course state in his article that this is all just his own opinion, he doesn’t expect anybody to share it, bla bla bla. Which brings me to the real point. If it really is of no interest or relevance, why bother writing about it? This kind of article might make me question why I dedicate time to reading that particular blog, and whether the author is actually worth my time.  And indeed, what the sum total of this shouting from our metaphorical little islands is amounting to.  One might hope it is in part a building of relationships, and exchange of ideas, a conversation even, but when certain (other) A-List bloggers decided that reading and managing comments is just too tiresome, one must really wonder how relevant they are.

Rob Boyer has a far more convincing blog in praise of Domke bags, by the way.

I bought a camera bag today. It’s small and black, and lets me carry my PEN around on workdays without looking like a total tourist. It’s made by Crumpler and didn’t cost very much.

A small, brand new Crumpler bag, some flowers and a bit of my thumb

Marmalade! I like marmalade!

The latest edition of the online landscape magazine, On Landscape, features an article by Julian Barkway on challenging yourself to climb out of the rut of playing to the gallery and trying to create that perfect, wildly popular Flickr masterpiece. What he has to say certainly resonates with me, although I’m probably several miles further up Cynicism Street than he is. Although I might well see things differently if I were myself a wildly successful babe magnet on Flickr, based on a certain amount of observation and quite a lot of behind the scenes knowledge on content-sharing social websites, I’d say being popular on Flickr (or most other photo sharing sites) has more to do with who you are than what you photograph.  I could - but won’t - name a number of highly talented, successfully published photographers who maintain a presence on Flickr and get almost no “action”.  I could also easily link to others who’s mundane shots regularly gather 3 or 4 hundred comments.  And of course there are talented photographers who are very popular.  The dynamics are complex.

I am going somewhere with this ramble, and it is sort of related but different. Every now and again I dig out old photos, especially those on film, and re-evaluate them, whilst gradually building up archival scans of as many as I can.  And I come across more than a few shots which I’d discarded when they were fresh, because they didn’t fit the template I was looking for. It’s clear that I had a strong bias towards photos that were closer to those from photographers who’s work - and indeed lifestyles - I aspired to at the time. Since I was, even unconsciously, trying to emulate somebody else’s style, basically it rarely worked.  On the other hand, I’m beginning to discover a series of photos which I’ve always been conscious of trying to make but have never been satisfied with, which tend towards a subdued feel with delicate colour and just a touch of ambiguity. 

A bit like this.

The way the land lies: central Iceland, 2006