Icelanders can resign themselves to 10 days of even more miserable weather than usual, as I prepare to set off tomorrow. I don’t have a habit of bringing good weather with me, and I’ve never seen an aurora in Iceland.

I actually have no expectations at all for this trip. It will bring whatever it brings. I’m not even sure I feel much like 9-10 days of concentrated photography. As mentioned in a previous post, I dropped the idea of taking the Hasselblad supercamera with me. I’m not 100% sure this was a good idea, but whatever may be, I will still have some pretty competent camera gear with me. Actually it will be something of a reality check: if I don’t feel disappointed that I didn’t take the Hasselblad, it will be a strong sign that I should divest myself of it.

My last photographic trip to Iceland was in 2016, and at that time I was using the original Olympus OM-D E-M1 (alongside the Sigma Quattro dp0). I recently published a set of Sigma photos from that trip on Flickr. Here below are some shots from the Olympus. Nothing terribly exciting, but probably pretty much the best I can manage.

Let’s see if I can do any better this time. Let’s see if I can bring good weather for once.

It’s been a very long time since I posted anything new here. Despite that I’m still getting more than 0 visitors, so thanks for that. I have very limited time to devote to this, and recently what time I have has been fully dedicated to maintenance and redevelopment.

Over time I’ve received feedback on various points, such as the difficulty of leaving comments, overall design and adaptability to non-desktop devices. So, I invested a lot of time and indeed money into a project to transfer everything to a Squarespace site, where all these issues are taken care of. Actually the Squarespace migration is almost completed, but I’ve decided not to go ahead with it. Although there are a lot of positive points, and while it does offer a certain level of flexibility, finally it is all “cookie cutter” and I’m having to compromise far too much on how I want to present myself and my photography. Not to mention my opinions. And Squarespace is expensive.

So I went back to the drawing board, and now I’m actually well advanced in completely reworking my existing hosted site to use modern adaptive methods, as well as making use of some more advanced features of Expression Engine. It won’t look all that different, but behind the scenes it will be almost all new.

As for when it will be done, who knows. Now, it’s summertime, and tomorrow I’m off on vacation. Real vacation, not photography hell. It will be done when it’s done.  Thanks for watching.

I post photos quite regularly on Flickr, and have been doing so, with the odd gap or two, since 2006. There is an element of curation in this, but frankly the underlying reason is to have some community involvement, and of course to be showered with praise. 

For whatever reason my popularity on Flickr is pretty poor: 471 followers from 15 years of activity is not very impressive (although it’s by far the best “social media statistic” I can claim). This might be explained by my photos not being very good or very interesting. It could also have something to do with my poor engagement - I’m only following 163 other members - although I do try to find time at least once a week to explore other people’s photos and leave comments.

I usually get a few “likes” per photo, sometimes even the odd comment. But some photos disappear without trace, often ones I expected to draw some attention (while a few outliers that are, by my standards, wildly popular, really puzzle me).

So anyway. Last week I slipped out for a quick photo-ramble to a nearby wood. The area I went to is at the bottom of a quite shallow valley. On the way down I noticed a quite striking tree stump covered in iridescent moss, and decided to stop by on the way back up. There certainly seemed to be some photographic potential there.

I also noticed the small tree in the background with pale, dead leaves, I thought I might be able to make something of that.  So I had a few attempts.

Actually it wasn’t so easy to line things up in a satisfactory way, but anyway, I felt I had something. I only had a few minutes to spare, needing to get home for an appointment, so maybe I was too rushed.  Eventually, looking at the photos on my computer screen, it seemed to me that one I took facing in the other direction was more successful.

So I posted that to Flickr. And up until now, it has got the sum total of 0 likes. 40 people have looked at it, and not one was even impressed enough to click the little star. Give me praise! I want praise!!!

Perhaps it needs processing more. Perhaps it really isn’t in the slightest bit interesting, or perhaps I wasn’t able to unlock the potential… ok, I can live with that, but then why is a boring photo I took of a ship so (relatively) crazy popular?  I don’t get it. De gustibus non disputandum est.

So I finally made it to one of today’s most over-exposed photographic locations, the Lofoten Islands. Very, very late to the party, but then again, most of the party seems to happen in the depths of winter, rather than late August / early September - which, in Lofoten, also apparently counts as winter.

It wasn’t a dedicated photo trip, more a combination of tourism and hiking with a camera thrown in. So I didn’t bring the big guns, just the Olympus E-M1 Mark III, the super-flexible 12-100 f/4 lens and the 7-14 wide angle zoom.  I did also bring the 17mm f/1.2 and the 14-150II, but used neither of these. The vast majority of the shots I took were with the 12-100.

The weather was miserable. Either frequent violent squalls with brief interludes, or unrelenting rain. These combined to create really unpleasant muddy hiking conditions, so the amount of hiking we did was less than planned.

The locals were also miserable. Oh, I get the whole stoic, grim, independent Nordic thing (although it sits uncomfortably with the huge SUVs, huger flat screen TVs, and hot dog convenience food culture which seems to dominate). You get a similar vibe in Iceland, but Norwegians, in particular in Lofoten, have taken it to a whole new level. They’ve also taken schadenfreude from the Germans, turbocharged it and made it entirely their own. The general attitude of disdain and extreme passive aggressiveness towards foreign tourists is not only unpleasant, but really rather sad and pathetic. Basically they want the money from the tourists with the inconvenience of actually having to do something to earn it. Of course, there are exceptions. But the more friendly people inevitably turn out to be foreigners, or from Oslo (which appears to amount to the same thing to the local trolls).

The landscape is impressive, but on a people level, I cannot think of a more unpleasant place I’ve been to.

The photography didn’t work out too well either. Apart from the weather, which really was not inspiring, I never got into much of a groove and ended up with only random snapshots.

Grim up north

Certainly there is photography to be done in Lofoten, and actually I’m sure there must be some very good stuff I’ve never seen. But so much is dominated by the leaden clichés of winter shots taken from a bridge near Reine, featuring snowy peaks, stormy skies, and the inevitable red “rorbuer” fisherman’s huts, which are of course almost always nothing of the sort in 2021.  Rather they are expensive tourist accommodation, part of a rapidly encroaching Disneyland version of Lofoten which has switched fishing for cod to fishing for tourists, and can’t wait to get started again.

Pah!, basically.

Over the coming weeks or months I may try to salvage some kind of photo set, but right now I’m heading off to Puglia for some heat therapy.

My ongoing lack of any significant new photography is having the side effect that I’m able to spend some time revisiting and evaluating my ridiculously large archive.  The latest result from this is a new gallery of photos from Provence (and adjacent regions) taken at various times between 2010 and 2019.

I’ve more or less restricted the selection to towns and villages. With one exception (below) they are devoid of people - this is the result of careful framing and patience, as the reality was quit different.  I’m not sure why I don’t like people… but I do like the photo below, and I remember being very careful with the framing and timing.

Everything is in colour. I know “street photography” is supposed to be in black and white, but I see the world in colour. I’m much more a follower of Harry Gruyaert or Franco Fontana, rather than HCB et al.

** elle est dans le mouton!