Using a film camera reminded me once again of how much things have changed in just 10 years! Yes, that's all it's been since almost everyone in the WPF relied on film cameras and were just experimenting with the new-fangled, poor image quality digital machines. I don't think anyone believed that "digital" would take off so fast that it's still causing some of us problems that we just can't get our heads around. Of course the problems are not really with the photography but with the quantum leap in digital technology and paraphenalia required to produce a picture.

OK, enthusiasts (digital photo nerds) like us are perhaps attempting to climb a digital photo Everest, often with limited kit, experience and training and that's maybe why we sometimes have problems. A good pal of mine, who isn't "into" photography, uses his digital compact on Full Auto (never anything else), takes his memory card with unmanipulated images to Tesco and is very happy with the prints he gets - no problem. He and his like are probably the reason for the digital photo revolution and not us, the "non enthusiasts" vastly outnumber us "enthusiasts" and that's where the money is being made. Kodak realised this very early on and true to their historical background of "photography for the common man",  they pulled out of the enthusiast market to cater for the mass market with sales of $14.3 billion in 2006 (remember that the USA is a huge market for Kodak).

Anyway to get back to my day out. I took four hours in scenic surroundings to use up my 10 frames. At one time I happened to be standing next to a chap who was trying to photograph butterflies on a bush with a digital camera and I'm sure he must have taken 50 or 60 images in five minutes. I didn't even attempt Butterflies with the Leica, it's the wrong tool for that job.

What film photography, with it's limited number of available exposures and the constant awareness that uneccessary EXTRA exposures cost money, does, is make you far more thoughtful about what you're taking, why you want to take that picture and is it the best viewpoint, timing etc etc. OK you might miss  a cracker of a shot from the " freebie digital extras" available with a digital camera, but it does make the taking of the shot more meaningful. It's like using a "film rifle" rather than a " digital machine gun".

The other huge difference is that I have no idea whether I actually got the good pictures I thought I was taking, I'll have to wait for the film to get developed and I actually quite like that anticipation of success or failure sometimes.

Next time though I'll probably take my digital camera - and maybe a film camera too just for fun.

Before photography, pictures had to be drawn or painted, and over time this led to an extremely wide variety of styles in visual art. Some depicted what they saw as realistically as possible (Rembrandt) whilst others just gave the impression of what they saw (van Gogh) and let the viewers interpret the image and some produced their own unique and very unusual vision of the world (Dali).

When photography first came about, it's strength was it's ability to record reality with all it's detail, a high-fidelity visual medium. This was something new and quite different from any drawing or painting, there was no artistic interpretation, the camera just recorded what was there (warts an' all) with no visual addition or subtraction. Early photographers quickly adopted the compositional tricks of artists and soon some art critics declared that "Painting is dead"!

That was over 150 years ago and for some kinds of photography very little has changed. Realistic and true-to-life photographs are still required to record scenes and objects for legal evidence; and natural history regulations insist that the photographs be true and un-manipulated.

Many photographers enjoy producing such realistic images and I admire their skill, and in the field of natural history, their patience and knowledge of the subject too. But it's not for me.

Yes, of course I make realistic photographs. I probably shoot about 50% realistic images to record holidays and family events etc. The rest of the time I like to move my photography into an area with more freedom of expression, where reality no longer exists. Here, I'm free to interpret what I see and make images that, whilst still grounded in the real world, are my interpretation of reality. It might be just producing a monochrome image where reality is in colour, or something far more extreme, there are no rules!

These days I tend to find "realistic" photographs not terribly interesting or inspiring, even though I can appreciate the immense skill needed to produce them. Reality is all around us and it's out there to see, so why bother making a photograph of it? (answers please).

Unfortunately our competition judges usually demand "reality"; good focus, sharp detail, true colours (no casts), full tonal range, etc etc etc . They're often judging technique and there seems to be very little room for creativity; indeed some judges readily admit to being completely flumoxed when presented with " creative and unusual" images. I'm looking forward to our "What is it?" competition, it should be a hoot and a breath of fresh air!

I've always admired the work of photographers that "broke" the rules and produced images that were a bit different and less "real". Their photographs reflect something of the photographer and not just the subject or scene in front of the lens.

So where do you fit in? Real, unreal or plain weird?

Could any tell me if we are going down to Cardiff tonight if so has anyone got a contact number so i can call to arrange to me you all there as it is easier for me to go direct to cardiff

Cheers Kevin

Kevin (Hunt) posted a great close-up of a Teasel which I discovered is called
Llysieuyn y cribau (comb plant) in Welsh and Dipsacus fullonum is it's Binomial scientific name in Latin.

I wondered what or who the "fullonum" refered to and went on to discover that it links the teasel to it's industrial use in the woolen cloth industry. The teasel is sometimes called Fuller's Teasel and a Fuller is a worker who cleanses wool through the process of fulling.

Fulling is a step in woollen clothmaking which involves the cleansing of cloth (particularly wool) to eliminate oils, dirt, and other impurities, and making it thicker. The worker who does the job is a fuller. The Welsh word for a fulling mill is pandy. This is used in several place-names, e.g. Rhyd-y-pandy, Ton-y-pandy.

Process
Fulling involves two processes—scouring and milling (thickening).

Scouring
In Roman times fulling was conducted by slaves standing ankle deep in tubs of human urine and cloth. Urine was so important to the fulling business that urine was taxed. Urine, known as 'wash', was a source of ammonium salts and assisted in cleansing and whitening the cloth.

URINE TAX (Brilliant idea, could solve our national financial crisis!)
Imposed by the Roman emperor Nero, around A.D. 60. Why urine? The contents of public toilets were collected by tanners and laundry workers for the ammonia, which was used for curing leather and bleaching togas. Nero slapped a fee on the collectors (not the producers) and it was such a money-raiser that Nero’s successor, Vespasian, continued the tax. When his son, Titus, complained about the gross nature of the tax, Vespasian is reputed to have held up a gold coin and said, “Non olet” (“This doesn’t stink”). As we all know, where there's muck there's money!

In France, the street urinals (pissoires) were called vespasiennes (after Vespasian). Few remain these days having been replaced by the space-age SANISETTES.

Access to Latrines
Ancient Rome: City Planning and Administration, there were 144 public latrines in Rome in the later Empire. Apparently most were linked to public baths, which makes sense as they could share water and sewerage. There may have been a token payment (to spend a penny) if they were separate from the baths. The latrines were comfortable places, where one might sit and read, or otherwise "amuse oneself sociably," hoping for [dinner] invitations.Here's a ditty from that time by Martial:

Why does Vacerra spend his hours
in all the privies, and day-long sit?
He wants a supper, not a s**t.

Catchy innit'?

Thickening
The second function of fulling was to thicken cloth by matting the fibers together to give it strength and increase waterproofing (felting). This was vital in the case of woollens, made from short staple wool, but not for worsted materials made from long staple wool. After this stage, water was used to rinse out the foul smelling liquor used during cleansing.

The teasels are used to fluff the wool somewhere in the process.

Now isn't that interesting?

Boy, did I feel silly when I discovered that bokeh is a Japanese word that clever-dick photographers use to describe out of focus blur.

Actually it's not really the blur itself, that's just blur, but the quality of the blur and you can have good bokeh, bad bokeh and downright ugly bokeh.

The out of focus blur happens for all kinds of optical reasons involving lens construction, lens quality, aperture shape (number of diaphragm blades), depth of field, circles of confusion, distance between subject and background, nature of the background etc, etc etc. the list goes on and on - yawn.

However, after all factors are taken into consideration the viewer ultimately has to make a qualitative judgement as to whether the bokeh is good, bad or ugly.

Good bokeh should be non-distracting and smooth; bad bokeh interferes with the viewer's enjoyment of the image; and ugly bokeh is just plain awful.

So, remember to check your out of focus blur or someone is bound to say that you've got an ugly bokeh!

If you want more science try here:

http://www.bobatkins.com/photography/te … bokeh.html

Thanks Dai

So I sat down and set myself some "clean-up" criteria. This is what I came up with:-

1. To keep my gallery divided into FOUR albums, three digital and one film; i. A Miscellany, ii. People, iii. Monochrome, and iv. On Film. The Miscellany will be for all sorts of stuff that can't easily find a place in the other albums. I've kept my "On Film" album for somewhere to exhibit pics taken on my classic film cameras, that I still love dearly.

2. To set a hard limit of 25 images in each album giving me a nice round number total of 100 images max. This means that when I get to 25 in any album and want to post new pics then some "oldies" will have to make way. I think this will help keep the images fresher and maybe make me more critical of those I keep.

3. I've also decided to place an age limit on my images and to not include any pics more than FOUR years old (this may get altered to THREE years  )

So, I've made my clear-out and now have a total of 67 images in my gallery (Misc =20, Peop=15, Mono=12 and Film=20).

Now I look forward to filling some gallery spaces in the coming season. 

Thanks Dai

This compact studio kit is ideal for producing good quality shots for your sales. It is big enough to shoot items of the size of

wine bottles downwards and comes with 2 x Lights, Lightbox, Tripod, Blue Red White and Black Backgrounds and all contained

in a stylish case. Camera not included. it looks ideal for what you need. Unless they are big Trophies?

p.s. try this :-Portable Camera Photo Studio Set TENT/LIGHTS/BOX/TRIPOD, same price