All the fun of the Fair

Between November and December I have managed to take lots of photographs of fun fairs. I think I have unintentionally made fun fairs a bit of a motif in my photographs, which is rather nice really, as who doesn't love a day at the fair!

I shot my first funfair photos with an Lomography ISO 64 film, a very slow film and the photos, I think, show this. They have come out really red and dark which works well with the neon lights but I'm only half pleased with them, not enough definition. I then changed film to an Lomography ISO 800 which is my favourite film but I forgot to change my ISO on my camera so they didn't turn out well at all. After changing however, they came out good I think.

This was shot in ISO 64. I like the effect but the definition of the neon lights is very poor, as you can see on the stripes on the helta skelta. The red bulb feel of this film makes the photograph seem a little oppressive, like when you are in a dark room for too long and on returning to the outside world everything looks funny colours and grainy.

This is ISO 800. The lights have much more definition and shadowing.

I am most pleased with the 3 below because the balance of colours is much more pleasing to the eye and the scene looks more open.

The last photo is my 'best shot' (so far). I saw the steam and smoke coming from a hot dog stall with the the big wheel in the background and couldn't resist. I was aiming to focus on the 'Hot and Fresh' sign.

I would like to take more photos of funfairs, I think this new year I will try and make that my mission.

Sunday the 18th of December

It is 10 o'clock in the evening on the last Sunday before Christmas and I have had One of Those Days.
When I say 'One of Those Days', I mean one of those wood smoke and open fire days; curling up with a fat cat purring and a good book days; a halcyon day.

I'm now listening to the rugged but comforting tones of Bon Iver with a satisfyingly full tummy.
I have basically spent the day cooking after a pootle around the Christmas exhibition at the Geffrye Museum (http://www.geffrye-museum.org.uk/).

The aperitif: Egg Nog, a delicacy I was not jumping at the chance to try but one that turned out to be delicious. For any one who hasn't tried "nog" it is made from whipped egg whites, whipped cream and beaten egg yolks with whisky or brandy. We made ours with brandy and the result was a thick, sweet and creamy concoction with a lick of brandy. Truly scrumptious.
We then proceeded to make Toad in the Hole with vegetarian sausages, stewed red cabbage with apple and vinegar, carrots, peas, broad beans and gravy. My Toad in the Hole was a great success, we added thyme to the batter which to our joy cooked perfectly with just the right amount of rise.
I also threw together a tea loaf, steeping dried raisins, currents and sultanas in Earl Grey tea over night then adding one egg, self raising flour, nutmeg and cinnamon. Unfortunately, the Earl Grey didn't come through after the loaf was baked but for my first fruit cake I am very pleased. I am looking forward to a buttered slice with a nice cup of tea and a sit down after work tomorrow evening.

After filling our stomaches a little too full, we indulged in Julie and Julia; the Nora Ephron film about Julia Child, of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and Julie Powell, a cooking enthusiast blogger who attempts and succeeds cooking all 524 of Julia Child's recipes in 365 days.
I have to say I think that film is one of my favourites. I've never eaten or made any Julia Child recipes but Meryl Streep is certainly entertaining and enduring and as far as I can tell very accurate to the original lady. Amy Adams brings a good dollop of modernity and urban frustration while unashamedly shouting her love of cooking and more importantly FOOD from the rafters of the blogesphere. The film leaves you with a warm, fuzzy feeling likened to that (for me, anyway) of Pride and Prejudice, Amelie and The Grinch.
It also made me want to tell everyone what I cooked for dinner!

This week in PHOTOGRAPHY I remembered WHITE BALANCE on my digital camera. I haven't been using my digital much these days, preferring the dreamy world of film. But, in order to better myself I dug out the old Pentax K100d and played about with the menu and settings. After using a manual film camera for the last few months I have had to really think about what I am doing and how the mechanics of the camera work. At first this was really difficult because I was used to just pointing and shooting. However, I'm now almost a fully fledged filmling. I have started treating my SLR with the same technical mind set as my Olympus OM-1 and the results have been quite pleasing.

This is our small but perfectly formed Christmas tree. Taken with a f.11 and manual exposure, 18 to 55mm lens.
Merry Christmas one and all!

I'm going outside, I may be some time...

Although Oats or Scott were actually talking about the South Pole my recent trip to Norway felt almost as adventurous as the Antarctica, maybe...

I had been looking forward to this trip for months, I booked it during what felt like a long endless summer in London and thought it would be the perfect Autumn get away. Oslo did live up to its expectation, especially seeing my close Norwegian friend. However, I did not live up to anything at all because I caught the flu on the second day of my trip. What luck!

I subsequently spent the rest of my short trip in a confused, blurred and muffled state. My limbs were aching, head pounding and ears popping constantly so sight seeing became more of an endurance test than a jolly day out.

The extent of my illness is shown in the extent to which I tried to take photos. I managed to take fewer than 20 but here are the fair few to make it through the fluey haze....

All taken on my 35 mm Olympus Om-1 in ISO 200 Fuji film. I took some more on another film which was ISO 64 so the results of that film should be interesting. All the photos were taken in the city park in Oslo where there are loads of naked statues. The angry baby statue is the most famous as it keeps getting stolen, perhaps that's why it is so angry!

I have been trying to work on my night film photography, candle light and neon lights. The results have been ok, I'll post them at the weekend...

Driving Slow on Sunday Morning...

It's Sunday morning, more or less (12:15) and I am reading a very interesting article about nostalgia in museums for my MA. It's all about shared and private individual memories, my kind of anthropology. However, the noisy neighbours are being noisy, as usual, and distracting me so I have resorted to listening to music with my big headphones and doing a spot o' blogging.

These headphones are the bees knees, I got them last week, they are Panasonic Rp-hyx7 Retro Style headphones. They do them in really nice colours but when I bought mine they only had completely black or pink and cream. Unusually I went for pink and cream. Anyway I bought these ones because when I was a teenager my friends chipped together and gave me some seinheissers which I dearly loved for years, they were so durable and reliable. I took them all over the world Morocco, Tanzania, India, Europe. Unfortunately a certain house rabbit chewed through the cable and so I have been headphone-less for months. I've been waiting and researching till I had enough money and so got my Panasonics. They are not the best ever but good for a high street purchase.
The only thing about closed full ear headphones is that they block out other sounds going on, which is swell for the tube but when one's in the house people can very easily sneak up on you, scare the life out of you and then you end up swearing profusely for about 5 minutes until your heart stops beating really fast, but some people might like that!

I just got a really good film developed last week. I'm really pleased with it. The film was a lomography film with a blue/green bias so for this beautiful crisp autumnal weather it is perfect, the greens are like the grass in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the blues are those of Faberge egg. The film is ISO 800 and even to the untrained eye you can see the difference between that and the standard ISO 200 of the Jessops variety.

http://uk.shop.lomography.com/films/35mm-film/lomography-color-negative-800-pack-of-3
This is the said film. They also do a lovely Redscale ISO 100, it's pretty intense.

Here are the results of my ISO 800 film (Apologies for the size of photos, I didn't scan them myself) -

Venezia

Last April I went to Venice for a week. I took both my digital (Pentax K100D) and my Olympus. It was the first time I took proper thought through film photos and I am very pleased with the result.
Here they are, helpful tips are always welcome

35mm and beyond

So, this started as a cycling based blog about 2 years ago when I was 20. I'm now 22 and this is the first time I've posted anything for ages, months.

Anyway, my interests were changing course and although I dearly love my bike and cycling, I'm not really cycling as enthusiastically now. So I have changed the direction of this to the photographs I take and writing about them.

Since I last posted I have moved to Peckham, finished and graduated from my BA degree, started an MA at night school and started working in an architectural archive
I have also discovered film photograph...

I use an Olympus OM-2 Spot/Program with a Tamron 50mm lens. I'm also on Flickr http://www.flickr.com/people/56939224@N02/

As time goes by. 35mm Fujifilm ISO 200.
When you get film developed at Jessops you get a free film back. In the early days of taking film photos I didn't think about what type of film I was using, didn't think about lighting, apeture or shutter speed; which is probably why most of my early photos were so poor. But for a first go this isn't too bad... what do you think?