Texture#6 Poverty

If there is a sight that instantly conjures the thought 'poverty' in my mind it is this sight. Corrugated iron sheets bent round each other, wrapping their dented and busted 2mm thick hands around a single room, squeezing the life out. They are painted happy colours but the corners peel back where rust sets in, decay eats at the edges of the flimsy walls, dispelling the skin deep veneer. This house is broken, these walls are failing, sagging with age, succumbing to the will of time.

The hot air inside is thick, close and heavy with the smell of old cooking. Holes in the ceiling let through pin beams of light that reveal the dust that sticks to the single bare incandescent bulb, the only source of light, that leaves corners darkened in a permanent vignette, no one sees what hides in the darkness of those corners.

Each shack stands alone, though there are thousands upon thousands each has its own story, its own prisoners. The walls remember different pains the bulbs highlight different atrocities and the memories change them. They cannot hide it, try as they might, the scars of history bleed through from the background if only we take the time to look closely enough to see.

Peeling paint and crumbling mortar, time pushes through the cracks. That which was once strong becomes enfeebled, brittle and bent. This wall remembers that it was once dust and tries to resist its inevitable return but time heads no one. Neglect hangs heavy on its face, each layer is laid bare and its history is an open book to those who care to see. It's former days of strength are all but forgotten a shadow blown away by the winds of time.

But this house is not left to its own end. It does not belong to itself for it was purchased at a price higher than its own value. One stronger and wiser than it is at work within, he is creating a masterpiece, breaking off the old and dilapidated and replacing it with the new. He has a vision that looks beyond the possible and deeper than the skin.

He cries:

 'O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done? declares the Lord. Behold, like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.'

the response:

"Let me hear joy and gladness;

let the bones that you have broken rejoice."

Title font: 'Sketch Gothic'

Abstract

It's been too long - Hello internet! I recently bought myself a new lens, can you guess which one? Anyway these abstracts were taken with it because I had to christen the latest addition and there will be plenty more to come in the near future - though unlikely before Christmas.

As per - best/favourite 'til last... Merry Christmas and to quote tiny Tim 'God bless us, every one!'

Title font used 'Neogrey'

Chip

I saw this graphics card and instantly knew I wanted to take pictures and post them here. That was about 8 months ago so naturally I just got round to taking pictures of it yesterday.

Microchips do make me think of a miniature city, what that thought tends to lead me to the Tron movies, which is pretty random so I will move on now...

Taking these pictures made me really want a macro lens - quite a specific one which I have made a lot of mention in this space about before. having limited focussing distance with my current I actually only took 5 photos which means I have only the title picture and this one:

I will probably come back and add more later if I can find a good angle in a second attempt.

Updates - here we are ...

Title font used 'Atari Kids' 

Spirals and Palms

So as I am still undecided as to where these series is going - here are some more photos from both the hand and shape categories...

 This would be an appropriate time to mention the watermark designed for me by my brother who has a flair for these kind of things.

Yes just to be annoying I had 2 pictures in each category leaving me annoying balanced between the two.

Though now that I look at them I am already slightly bored of the hands ...

O.K it's decided - here comes a series on shape! this posts' shape: spiral

Also big news on the photography front - I have an exhibition coming up! so for all of you in Bristol from  the 3rd - 10th of July come and pay me a visit in Room 212 Gloucester Road (next door to sage) and check out some of my photos as I launch into the commercial market.

The main event (which is genuinely worth a visit if I say so my self) will be on the Friday Night/Saturday day 8/9th featuring live music, free drinks and maybe even a BBQ.

This will be a joint effort - I am joined by a work colleague Matt Crawford who will be laying down his talent in the form of travel photography. Unfortunately we both have to keep up the day job so the shop will not be open during the day (though we may make the effort at lunch times) so early evening will be your best bet to catch us if you can't make the weekend.

Stay tuned for more info - Oh and you can now 'like' my photography on Facebook down at the bottom left of this page, while your there if you could take the time to like Matts photography that would help as it turns out a minimum number of fans is required before Facebook will allow you to have a reasonable domain name. Enjoy!

Shapely Hands

I'm thinking of doing a series on shapes or hands - haven't made my mind up yet. Hands are apparently one of the hardest things to draw realistically, I think they can be quite tricky to compose well in a picture as well - It's  hard to get an accurate sense of shape.
Alternatively shape is quite a loose definition for a series, everything has shape. though I have a fair Idea of what I mean when I say shape- the series would probably be an ongoing definition of 'shape according to Ben'
Then again I could perhaps combine the two - or even run them side by side. I guess you and I will both just have to wait and see.

Anyway here is the self-made inspiration for the idea of doing something with shape/hands

I'm still not sure which of these I prefer ...

Texture#3 Bricks & Stones

I spent last weekend in a converted barn in Bideford, a lovely place in North Devon. It was among other things old and I am finding that age and texture often correlate or should I say decay and texture? That aside it was a beautiful place to capture, rich with texture.

Practice makes perfect

though in all honesty it rarely is ever perfect and that's why the practice is in no short supply!

Having recently changed my setup once again in an attmept to get better waterdrop shots I finally stumbled upon (I have been looking for it for ages) out most illusive turkey baster - for the purposes of this project essentially a large capacity pipette. I took around 1500 pictures in this set and got loads of collision shots  but alot of them were pretty messy and visually alot of the non collision shots turned out to be much more appealing.

Pretty Smoke

I mentioned quite a while ago that I wanted to capture 3 different things because of their ever changing nature, these were fire, water and smoke. I have taken thousands of photos of the first two and now to finish the trio, here comes smoke:

Dragon

Collision

If you think that taking over 2000 pictures of the same subject means that you have done it to death then think again because your two-thousand-and-first picture might just be one like this:

So after an awful lot of practice and patience with dropping water I managed to get my collision rate to around 1/100 which makes it workable.

If you look closely at this next one, you can see there is a complete drop inside the crater produced by the previous one.

I love the reflections in the water made with crowns  in these next few ...

This is the hardest to achieve - the mushroom: