People and shadows in a gallery

April 2, 2020April 5, 2020 fishyfisharcade1 Comment

It’s now been a week-and-a-half since the COVID-19 lock-down measures were put into place here in the UK. So far, things are ok – as a full-time home-based worker, I’m used to not leaving the house to commute to work, and social-distancing from my colleagues is the normal state of things anyway apart from when we have face-to-face meetings (which are all stopped now in any case). As a result, the lock-down measures are not inducing any sort of cabin-fever at this stage.

I must confess however, that I’m missing being able to go out where I want. I’m taking walks most days to get some exercise and fresh air, but even places that would be just a short drive away are starting to feel like slightly exotic destinations. The thoughts of driving out into the countryside (or even just into the city centre) are tantalizing given the “so near, yet so far” forced remoteness of even relatively mundane destinations. I’m estimating that the current lock-down will last through to the end of May at the earliest, so a good eight more weeks of this yet.

Still, things could be worse – returning home from my walk this lunchtime one of our neigbours, who has two young children, was out on his drive cleaning the paving. I said “Hi” (from a safe distance) and enquired as to how they were all doing. “I’m sick to death of watching Frozen” was one of his responses…

Another photo from The Hepworth today. I didn’t have high hopes when I took this picture as it was very dimly lit in this part of the gallery (to protect the prints and other artwork on display), so I had to shoot it wide open at f/1.7 at 1/30sec. I was expecting camera shake, but it’s nice and sharp, even if the shallow depth-of-field has rendered the man slightly out of focus.

Minolta SRT 101b, Rokkor 50mm f/1.7 & Ilford HP5+ (@800).

Taken on 14 March 2020

35mm · Film photography · Photography

Not thinking things through

March 31, 2020 fishyfisharcadeLeave a comment

I was paid today, so decided to combine my exercise with a trip to the cash machine at the local shopping mall. Knowing that cash machines are a pretty high-risk vector for transmitable viruses like COVID-19, I decided to protect myself by wearing a plastic glove. I bought the gloves recently as a means of avoiding physical contact on surfaces that others are likely to have touched – they’re just the thin plastic type that you sometimes find at petrol-stations to avoid getting fuel on your hands, or in sandwich-shops to allow the person preparing the food to avoid touching the ingredients. I would have felt uncomfortable buying surgical-style gloves (even had I been able to find any) given the recent shortages in PPE that have been encountered by frontline healthcare staff.

Sadly, I didn’t think through the process of withdrawing the money in a contactless fashion, and it quickly became apparent that next time some greater consideration of the process will be required.

I decided to wear a single glove, thinking that I’d only be touching the buttons with a single hand, and removed my card from my wallet, entered it in the machine, and then replaced my wallet in my right pocket (as I had nowhere else to put it). I could then enter my pin, select the amount I wanted to withdraw, and remove the cash with the gloved hand. All good so far.

However, I now realised that I would have to reach over into my right pocket with my left hand to get my wallet back out. I also realised that I couldn’t open my wallet with just my left hand and insert the cash without risking scattering it all over the floor. Also, and possibly key – I was holding the cash in the gloved hand that had touched the potentially compromised buttons on the machine, thus transferring any contamination onto the money I had to put in my wallet anyway! In the end I touched the outside of my wallet with the “gloved hand of contamination” in order to complete the task too.

Short of (literally!) laundering the money to clean it of anything harmful, I’m kinda stuck with the situation. Thankfully I can avoid touching the money again (at least until any pesky viruses might have been rendered harmless) and will certainly refrain from rubbing it all over my face or anything, so I think I’ll be ok (plus it’s probably absolutely fine and uncontaminated anyway).

Given that many places are dictating card-only transactions at present, it might have been better left in the account…

Unrelated to all this, here’s todays picture, a bingo hall in Sheffield city centre – somewhere else (along with the cinemas, theatres, gigs, bars, retaurants etc.) that’s likely to remain dormant for the next few months.

Canon Sure Shot Supreme & Lomography Color Negative 400.

Taken on 1 March 2020

35mm · Film photography · Photography

Eleven flights

March 28, 2020 fishyfisharcadeLeave a comment

As I briefly mentioned the other day, the skies are currently almost empty of aircraft, something noticeable on clear days. Today not so much as it’s mostly cloudy (and considerably chillier!) so the sight has been lessened somewhat. To mark the lack of flights, today I post a picture of eleven flights.

Of stairs.

As I type this I’ve not checked the news for today’s pandemic updates. I’m not planning on burying my head in the sand over the situation, but dwelling on a constant 24-hour news-cycle of reports on the pandemic are probably not great for mental health, so I’m going to try and get on with things as normally as possible, dipping into the news only when appropriate.

Today’s previously mundane, but now suddenly “interesting” activity was to go to the local supermarket for some things we needed. I only posted the other day about only going to get provisions once a week, and that seems to have fallen through straight away as my wife was unable to get all the things we needed yesterday. So, this morning, I drove to the local Sainsbury’s to get the things we were missing.

The branch of Sainsburys is attached to a shopping-mall close to where we live and there were plenty of car-parking spaces as most of the other shops in the mall are closed at present. The supermarket has implemented a queueing system that allows twenty people in the store at a time, which requires people to stand in the car-park outside in a zig-zag queue. The parking spaces make handy markers for keeping apart, and the was a gap of three or four metres between each person (or family). Everyone was behaving and, despite it being colder today, seemed in good spirits – chatting with their fellow shoppers and sharing news of what was open, where the treasured items (pasta and toilet rolls) might be acquired, and being generally good-natured. Despite the queue seeming quite long, I got into the store in the third block of people.

Stock on the shelves was pretty plentiful apart than a few items I noticed (pasta and dried rice), and I was able to get the things we needed, plus a few other items that we were running short on.

Canon Sure Shot Supreme & Lomography Color Negative 400.

Taken on 1 March 2020