I stopped the car when I saw this scene. It’s just some dry weeds in a field beside the road, but the colours against the autumn blue sky screamed out to me. I’m not sure what the floodlights in the distance illuminate, but I deliberately included them because they added a sense of mystery, or at least they did in my mind.
It’s another one of those photos that I just like without really being able to define why.
Canon Sure Shot Z135 & Kodak Gold. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted using Negative Lab Pro.
It’s one of those days where I’m having a bout of writer’s block so, rather than try to force something, here’s a picture of a suburban scene. I liked the light, the colours, and the composition with the back of the red car peeking out beside the bungalow.
Canon Sure Shot Z135 & Kodak Gold. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted using Negative Lab Pro.
One of the things I’ve decided I’m going to do this year is to broaden my experience of music. I tend to fall back on the same genre’s and artists that I know I like (and have liked since I was old enough to have an interest in music). I do like music outside this range, but it’s rare that I’ve bought (or listened) to any albums that fall away from my usual tastes.
So, to do something about this, I’ve compiled a list of albums that I have (mostly*) never listened to before – currently standing at almost three hundred strong – with the plan to choose one at random each week. I built my list by aggregating several “Best Albums of All Time”-type charts, removing the duplicates, and then adding in some other stuff that wasn’t on these lists but which I fancy listen to (I’ll probably keep adding extra titles as they occur to me). The full list covers a pretty wide range or genres and artists.
I set up a random number generator in Excel and assigned each album a number, and I’m using this method to choose each week’s selection so hopefully I’ll get a good mixture of stuff.
For week one of the endeavour the wheel of fortune certainly delivered, giving me an album in a genre that I’ve never considered listening to before: Gangsta Rap!
So week one’s album choice has been Straight Outta Compton by N.W.A.
Turns out that I actually like the album. There’s a real power to it, both in the emotional impact, and also the excellent production. There’s a lot of violent language, and quite a bit of misogyny (and some homophobia) in there too, which I’m not going to condone (although the profanity doesn’t bother me particularly and it’s easy to see how the music’s angry driving force was brought into being), but I’ve listened to the album several times during the week and even sought out the biopic movie too. I don’t like every track on the album (but that’s the case for most albums, if I’m honest), but the ones I do like are pretty great. Off the back of this, I’ve added a bunch of other rap albums to my list.
Tomorrow I’ll spin the wheel again and get another set of songs to consume. Who knows what I’ll get next time?
I chose today’s photo as it felt (very loosely) connected to the contents of the post, albeit not photographed in Compton. 🙂
Canon Sure Shot Z135 & Kodak Gold. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted using Negative Lab Pro.
Not far from where I live there are lots of remnants of the coal mining that was once a major industry in the area. Some of these are gradually becoming subsumed into the landscape, but some are more apparent such as the bridge seen in today’s pictures.
I went out on this day with the hope of getting some autumnal colours lit by the setting sun, but as I walked the sun dipped behind a bank of cloud on the western horizon and the bright glow disappeared. I thought about heading back home but, having been caught out in the past by a sudden resurgence of good light when it was too late to take advantage, I decided to wait a little longer.
After a while the sun descended below the cloud and cast some dim but pleasant light across the scene – enough to cast shadows from the bridge’s ironwork. I didn’t hold any great expectation for the photos, but I was pretty happy when I saw the scans emerge. The colour is more subtle than it might have been had the sun been un obscured, but the warm tones work really well, I think.
Canon Sure Shot Z135 & Kodak Gold. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted using Negative Lab Pro.
The end of my first day back at work after Christmas and the New Year and, being honest, I feel I’ve achieved vey little. I have a piece of work I’m involved in that’s really dragging, primarily because I’m not sure what I need to be doing (and nor does anyone else), which is resulting in a somewhat aimless way of working.
Once I’ve figured out a way to pull it all together, I’m sure it will become easier, but for the moment it’s quite stressful and not really what I wanted to come back to after the break.
Hopefully storms are not brewing, as they appeared to be when I took the photo featured in today’s post.
Canon Sure Shot Z135 & Kodak Gold. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted using Negative Lab Pro.
This was a very quickly grabbed shot while I was out with my wife. She doesn’t mind me taking pictures while we’re out, but I never spend the same amount of time setting up a picture or waiting for the right moment as I might do if I were out alone. Anyway, the light was nice on these two brightly painted takeaway restaurants and I had my Canon Z135 in my pocket, so I made a picture while I had the chance.
I need to start my planned diet in the next week, so takeaways are more likely to be the subject of my photography than my custom for a while.
Canon Sure Shot Z135 & Kodak Gold. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted using Negative Lab Pro.
Just a couple of pictures of unusual stuff today. The first is a shot of a giant micro-organism – an e-coli bacteria to be specific – that was lurking within Sheffield’s Winter Gardens. This larger-than-life model is 90 feet long, apparently making it five million times larger than it’s actual size. At this scale you’d have no problem spotting if your food was contaminated, I guess, although I tremble at the thought of the chicken that it might have inhabited!
The second picture is of another sculpture, a steel willow tree commemorating the victims of Covid-19 and the unsung workers of the pandemic. It was unveiled in March 2023 and stands in Balm Green Gardens, close to Barker’s Pool in Sheffield.
A new year has arrived, so it’s traditional to come up with some resolutions you intend to follow in the coming twelve months.
Mine are, in no particular order:
Lose weight
Get fitter
Become more focussed at work
Try not to procrastinate
Listen to more music (I aim to try and listen to a new (to me) album each week
Try to go on more dedicated photography outings
Clear out some of the stuff I’ve hoarded
Let’s see how I get on with them…
Today also marks the start of my sixth year of daily blog posts. I sometimes think about stopping posting every day, but I guess I’m not ready to give it up just yet.
I don’t tend to celebrate New Years Eve. I haven’t gone out on New Years Eve since before my eldest son was born three decades ago and we’ve never hosted or gone to any New Years Eve parties either. I generally stay up until the year turns, wish any of my family members who are awake (my wife has usually retired hours before midnight) a happy whatever year it is to come, and then go to bed. Some wine will be drunk and some snacks consumed.
Ideally there would be something entertaining to watch on TV but, it would seem, there is rarely anything other than middle-of-the-road music and entertainment programmes being broadcast on the main terrestrial channels, none of which hold much appear. I think that TV schedulers must assume everyone is out at parties, or wants to see the New Year in with the blandest programming available. There will be a short break at midnight when everyone sets off fireworks (although only the ones in London tend to be televised and, let’s be honest, watching fireworks on TV loses some of the impact anyway. At 1pm local time today the news showed the fireworks in Sydney, Australia which went on for TWELVE solid minutes). Then the shows continue.
I might see if I can find a movie to watch.
I looked through my recent photos but couldn’t see anything that particularly suited a New Year’s Eve theme, so instead here’s a picture of a vintage bus that I spotted after I visited the My Brutal Life exhibition a couple of months ago. Someone was getting married, so the bus was bedecked with ribbons, as was a similarly vintage VW Beetle parked just out of sight to the rear of the bus. Hopefully the happy pair will enjoy their first New Year as a married couple.
A Happy New Year to you all, and I hope 2024 is a good one!
