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Walking Commentary

Thoughts while waiting to walk from Manchester to Rome in 2022

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henri cartier-bresson

Photo Challenges and Stories

October 10, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

I’ve been taking (and storing) photographs since about 1970 and I’m unsure when my eye for photography first began to be a dominant force in my life. All I recall is that many adults around me were very good photographers and I was encouraged by their interests. I grew up in a world where having a camera to hand was as normal as holding a cigarette and perhaps a glass of malt or a glass of wine. In fact, a third hand might have been useful to many of the adults I knew.

[Read more…] about Photo Challenges and Stories

Filed Under: Fake Memoir Tagged With: george formby, henri cartier-bresson, kodak instamatic, photography, prakitca, private eye, regal rooms cinema, roland barthes, the screen, theatre royal

SLR and JLR

August 25, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

I took a photo in August 2012 with a telephone camera whose depth of field and field of view are neither much different to those obtained by whatever device was used by one of my great-grandfathers in July 1888. We’ll call him JLR because it’s easier than John Loftus Robinson. This shot was taken when visiting Hardwick Hall with my father FRR on an excursion following ancestral footsteps documented by a series of photos taken by JLR between 1880 and 1893.

And while we’re abbreviating, so you don’t get confused between JLR, FRR and SLR, I’ll say that SLR is a standard acronym for the single lens reflex camera.

Hardwick Hall : Front View
2012: iPhone 4S 2.28mm f/2.4 1284/s ISO60 © Simon Robinson
1888: unknown camera by John L Robinson ARHA 1888 held in RSAI
[Read more…] about SLR and JLR

Filed Under: Fake Memoir Tagged With: ansel adams, hardwick hall, henri cartier-bresson, jlr, photography, photos, rsai, signal to noise, travel

A Week In Three Photos

July 30, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

The summer weather has not been kind here in Dublin. In a mock despair, we ended up doing a jigsaw puzzle on the kitchen table while it lashed rain. The puzzle took several days and it made an interesting photographic challenge once completed. How do you make a jigsaw interesting but different to the picture on the box? There are hundreds of ways but I wanted to do it with a tilt-shift adaptor on a 50 mm manual lens. I really like this photo with a focal emphasis on two tourists in front of an iconic London bus. It was raining there too.

[Read more…] about A Week In Three Photos

Filed Under: Fake Memoir Tagged With: birds, comet, dun laoghaire, henri cartier-bresson, jigsaw, leonardo da vinci, moon, photo, popular, street photography

Thursday Smiled

May 28, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

I mentioned ‘the decisive moment’ in yesterday’s post. The Decisive Moment (1952) was where Henri Cartier-Bresson formalised his idea of capturing an event that is ephemeral and spontaneous such that the image represents the essence of the event itself.

The mere memory of the concept had me thinking of capturing a decisive moment of my own. I wondered if a walk along Dun Laoghaire pier might be the place to search out some moment among the boats, birds and the folk taking their constitutionals. I thought to take 4000 steps to find documentary shots with a personal expression of the things I saw.

  • Gannet Arrow
  • Cast from afar.
  • Trucks Collide

And Thursday smiled on me. I found myself on the pier chatting to another photographer who chose coincidentally to also bring a Sigma 150-600mm lens, just like I did. I noticed a few simple juxtapositions that almost qualify as decisive, two relying on the distance flattening of extreme magnification. The gannet enters the water. A rod flexes in the cast of a fishing line a kilometre from my camera (the red Poolbeg Lighthouse is more than five kilometres distant). Perspective misleads as two identical ships pass near the mouth of Dublin port.

[Read more…] about Thursday Smiled

Filed Under: Anchoritism, Fake Memoir Tagged With: bird watching, booklink, henri cartier-bresson, pandemic, photography, photos, thomas pakenham

Wednesday’s Hump

May 27, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

‘Don’t you like landscapes?’ someone once asked during a Tadaa challenge in 2012. Tadaa was an Instagram kind of app very popular with iPhone users in the time before Instagram took off.

Of course I like landscapes. The question came at a time when I was learning how to capitalise on the tiny lens in a phone. I spent several years on an iPhoneography mission while learning how to spot ‘the decisive moment’. Things have changed but here are five iPhone photos from 2009 that were ‘published’ on Tadaa in 2012.

  • Tree Spotting
    20091010 iPhone 3GS
  •  Paris Smile
    20091010 iPhone 3GS

  • Another Fluffy Souvenir
    20091010 iPhone 3GS
  • Hotel Des Invalides
    20091010 iPhone 3GS
  • Sea Walking
    20091107 iPhone 3GS
[Read more…] about Wednesday’s Hump

Filed Under: Fake Memoir, ManRom2021 Tagged With: centre culturel irlandais, henri cartier-bresson, instagram, iphoneography, landscape, photos, tadaa, travel, walking

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