Camera Practise

Either I paid too much for my camera or too little for my car, for the first cost 2/3 of what the second cost. Now I really love the car, old as it is.

Not old enough to be an antique -- only old enough that I can afford it.

In order to get the same value in happiness for the dollars into the camera I have been tryng to read the manual and figure out how to use some of the features on the buttons. So I have been striking out in the morning around 7 am to take advantage of the sun in Trafalgar Square.

I was there early yesterday and saw a man with a falcon on his wrist. The bird would take off and land on a high light post, on top of the National Gallery, swoop down and nestle itself in a tree. I ran from one spot to another trying to catch the bird in my view finder. I was not successful. Reporting this at home, Glen asked me, why didn't you just follow the falconer around for the bird will always come back to rest on his wrist.

What a novel idea that was for me.

My main purpose was to try to use the Time Value nob on my camera to catch the water droplets in a fountain.

Amid all of those pictures that I was taking, most of which were essentially unsuccessful, I saw another man shooting a duck that was swimming in one of the fountains so I tried my hand at that.

Tonia ponted out to me that lines and grids sometimes make good pictures. Me getting the lines and grids into this picture was purely accidental.

The sun is what I was chasing in the square this morning. The glints from its rays move at about the same speed that hawk was moving yesterday. Just as I would think I had the sun at the right angle on the mouth of the statue of the lion, the glints would move elsewhere and so would I.

You would have seen me on the cement of the square, shooting upward, trying to get the most fiercesome look I could in my camera.

This lion looks like it would only give a gentle roar. It wouldn't scare one of my grandchildren with its tongue hanging out like that.

I was on tap to go get tickets for Glen, Laynie and Connor for Oliver tonight, so I slipped back through Oxford Square, passing first through Picadilly Square.

Yesterday I saw an old woman in black, smoking a cigarette in the square. I tried to get a candid shot of her. I was only partially successful with the old woman.

For some reason I identify with her -- everything except the cigarette.

Today I saw an old man in the same place in Picadilly Square early in the morning, so I tried the same thing again -- looking to capture both the red of the background sign, and the fact that there was a space there beside him ... for me, I thought, if I should choose to live a different lifestyle, one that would keep me in London.

The text on the sign seemed so much like a pastiche that someone had set up for a movie that I could feel the camera going up to my eye before I could really make sense of what I was was bothering me about the image of poverty on the streets of London.

The curve of Regent Street was glorious at that time of day, a beautiful blue sky ahead and the streets being readied for the day's commerce, something I didn't capture in the pictures.

One zambonie-like machine was moving along the gutters, essentially sweeping up cigarete butts.

Men with soft clothes were shining brass railings and doornobs.

Others had buckets of soapy water and were changing the brushes on the extenstion of their equipment, from soft sponges filled with suds to squeejees that deftly left a clean shine on the windows. I know how clean those windows are. I sometimes lean forward into them, trying to get a closer look at the merchandize in the windows and crack my skull on a too clean window.

Mary asked me how the lectures were that I went to, purportedly to celebrate Richard Johnson's birthday. Any excuse for pleasure on my part.

The first talk at the National Gallery went well. Colin Wiggins was giving a lecture called "Avant-Garde, Picasso: Last of the Masters, First of the Moderns.

Because we were at the Gallery already, we took the introductory tour again so both of us were tired from being on our feet for an hour before we hit the lecture theatre.

Wiggins is a popular lecturer -- the room that probably holds 350 people was packed by the time we got there. He peppers his lecture with so much humour that I sometimes wonder if he just shouldn't change careers and do Comedy Theatre. It is easier to sit in a lecture theatre and have the presenter project pictures on a screen, than to try to follow him around the gallery -- and especially in this case where the works discussed are held in museums around the world.

The second lecture was called "The Female Nude and the Victorian Art World" and we ran for the Underground to make it to the next venue on time. I was looking foward to what I would hear there.

Unfortunately I thought it was at the Victoria and Albert Museum -- but no -- it was at the Queen's Gallery. Glen asked a question at the information desk, one he had heard the woman in line before us ask. "If I were just to see one thing here, what is it that you would suggest." The answer was, "The New Medieval and Rennaisance Collection."

"No," said the woman. "Just one thing."

Glen was laughing at the idea that you can go to a museum and be told what it is -- that one thing you should look at if you only have time for one thing. When he interacted with the people at the information they asked him if his tastes were catholic. We had to come home to read up on the world catholic. Everyone should know if their tastes are catholic or not.

Ours tastes are.

Love,

Arta