Photographs and thoughts on photography and camera collecting
I was attracted to the bright colors (mostly red, orange and yellow) of the vine (especially the leaves) contrasted with the darker shades (mostly dark grey, green and blue) of the rock. It was an overcast day and I liked the even, non-contrasty light.
Spirit photograph of Arthur Conan Doyle taken by the ‘spirit photographer’ Ada Deane in 1922, the same year in which Conan Doyle’s The Coming of the Fairies was published via The Public Domain Review
In the winter of 1920, readers of the popular British magazine the Strand found a curious headline on the cover of their Christmas issues. “FAIRIES PHOTOGRAPHED,” it said. “AN EPOCH-MAKING EVENT DESCRIBED BY A. CONAN DOYLE.” The Strand’s readership was well acquainted with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; most of his wildly popular Sherlock Holmes stories had appeared for the first time in its pages. The great man’s claim that fairies –real fairies – had been photographed in the north of England by two young girls wa
Source: Sir Arthur and the Fairies | The Public Domain Review
The first fairy photograph, featured in Conan Doyle’s The Coming of the Fairies (1922) Via The Public Domain Review
The fairy pictures seem to me to be obvious fakes, but perhaps when photography was young this was not quite so obvious. Maybe in those days people we more willing to accept the veracity of photographs than they are today when we all know how easy it is to manipulate a photograph. Although he doesn’t seem to have been a very active photographer himself, Doyle had 13 articles on photography published by the British Journal of Photography. He also wrote a book called “The Case for Spirit Photography”.
And now to the real reason for this post. I’m feeling quite pleased with myself at the moment. Of course I’ve seen Sherlock Holmes movies and the various TV series. And I have a vague memory of having to read some Holmes in High School (as I recall I didn’t enjoy it much at the time). I can’t remember ever reading Sherlock Holmes just for the fun of it. So I’ve just worked myself through the complete Sherlock Holmes: 4 novels and 56 short stories. Phew!! For the most part I enjoyed the experience even though some of the stories were fairly ordinary.
In an earlier post (see: Down the Roaring Brook Trail) I mentioned coming across an old, abandoned vehicle in the woods. Here are some more pictures of that same vehicle, this time showing closer in detail.
© William Eggleston / Steidl. Source: 10 Lessons William Eggleston Has Taught Me About Street Photography
A couple of recent articles related to William Eggleston.
The first is from the New York Times: William Eggleston,the Pioneer of Color Photography
The second is from Eric Kim. I share his initial thinking about Eggleston:
I didn’t “get” the photographs. What was Eggleston photographing a bunch of random stuff for? His photos seemed to be like a bunch of random snapshots, photographed without much thought or conviction. Just the ordinary and banal things of everyday life. I wanted to punch myself in the gut for spending 300 USD for a photographic book collection that I had no interest in.I then sent Charlie a message and asked him why he enjoyed Chromes, and that I was a bit disappointed. I remember him telling me simply, “The colors are just lovely.” He didn’t say much after that. Source: 10 Lessons William Eggleston Has Taught Me About Street Photography
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I’ve not quite come to terms with Eggleston yet. I bought a copy of William Eggleston’s Guide to see if that would help. It did to a certain extent. There’s certainly something about his photographs that makes me want to look at them again, even though I’m not entirely sure why. I’m not yet a fan, but I’m starting to warm to his work.
I just took this picture. My work area is down in the basement of our house. It’s only partially finished so we get a few bugs down there – especially spiders. Since I was a kid I’ve always liked spiders so it doesn’t particularly bother me when there are a few around.
This one was right in front of my desk. It always seemed to be in exactly in the same position so I began to suspect that it was dead. In any case I decided to take a picture of it. I tried using my DSLR with a zoom lens on a tripod, but I didn’t much like the results. So I reached for my RX-100 and moved it really close to take this picture.
Of course it’s not all that clear and it’s quite noisy, but I still like it – especially the way the spider stands out against the white wall.
Incidentally, when I moved in close to take this picture the spider scuttled away. I guess it wasn’t dead after all.