I think I have found the polar opposites in terms of directness versus inderictness in social situations. The winners of the prize are Finland (direct) and Japan (indirect).

Finland wins due to exchanges such as:

Situation 1:

Me: Would you like a lift to that event at the weekend since your car is being repaired?
Finn: Yes. Does your car have air-bags?

Situation 2:

Us: Arrive at appartment in Finland
Finn: Hello. We take our shoes off in apartments in Finland.

And now on to Japan, the indirectness capital of the world.

Situation 1:

Person 1: That is a cute puppy, isn’t it?
Person 2: Sō desu nē…

Here, person 2’s phrase means “Yes it is, isn’t it?”

Situation 2:

Person 1: Shall we go to the cinema?
Person 2: Sō desu nē…

Here, person 2’s phrase is a place-holder, like “Hmmm…” buying time while he/she decides.

Situation 3:

Person 1: Shall we go for a coffee?
Person 2: Sō desu nē…

Here, person 2’s phrase means “no”.

There was me, listening to situation three, thinking it meant “maybe” or “yes” when it meant “no”. The Japanese will go to any lengths to avoid saying “no”.

On the 29th of July, Sarah broke her ankle. It’s been in plaster since the 9th of August. Seems I totally forgot to mention this information and several people have been confused!

Hopefully, she’s having the plaster taken off again this Thursday - so in fact, if you wait a couple more days you might not need to know at all.

(She’s OK, by the way)

I don’t know if film shorts are coming back into fashion, or if it’s just that we now have a nice videobox and an observant and lovely wifey, but I’ve been viewing quite a lot of them lately, as you will have noticed from previous blogs.

Well, I saw another gem at the weekend, entitled Belly Button. It’s impossible to say anything about it without spoilers really, but the beauty of the calm, nonchalant narrator as he tells the ten-minute story is just wonderful.

Another film I watched and enjoyed immensely played like a short, but was in fact, a full-length feature. The film is 101 Reykjavik and focusses on an unemployed 28-year-old chap who lives with his mother and never - where possible - ventures from his suburb which gives the film its title. Large parts of it are in Icelandic with English subtitles so it requires concentration but some parts are spoken in English (without Icelandic subtitles!).

You know you’re onto a winner when you get the following quote in a film:

Lola will be his mum, and my mum will be his dad. And I’ll be his brother, but his father too, and the son of his dad and of his grandmother and his mothers ex-lover.

The photographer has a tough job - to capture an instant in time. What’s difficult is that the view through the lens is changing constantly - in fact you will never see the same scene twice. Sure, it could be similar, but there is so much detail in there, changing in almost imperceptible ways that even if you delay a shot for a fraction of a second, what you capture may not be what you saw when you decided to take the photo.

The good news is that we can use these fleeting views to our advantage, as all the best landscape photographers do, and we’re going to do it in a very simple way using one of the best lighting systems available - the sun and clouds.

A windy, cloudy day is an absolute godsend to the photographer hoping to capture an interesting landscape scene. As the clouds move past the sun, the shadows on the landscape move also. Given the right mix of light and shade, it’s possible to pick out your subject in a pool of light, while the rest of the landscape is subdued into the background. If you’re very lucky, atmospheric conditions will create a shaft of light from the sky to your intended subject, but that requires a lot of patience!

Below are three examples of a not-too-interesting subject. There’s a piece of farm machinery, a viaduct and a field in the background. They are all taken within the space of a few minutes and apart from cropping and resizing, appear exactly as they came out of the camera…

I was standing in a large field, quite a way back from the subjects and could watch the shadows travelling along the ground, with each of the objects becoming lighter and darker as the shadows passed. Photo A was taken at a point where the background field and foreground machinery were in shade, but the bridge was brightly lit. B is perhaps the worst of the three, with the background field distractingly bright while the foreground subjects are in shadow - this is the sort of accident you will avoid making once you’re aware of transient light. Picture C has the field and viaduct subdued and the machinery brightly lit. Obviously, if this was the intended subject, there are many better compositions than the one shown, but the timing is still ideal for that natural ‘pop’ factor where the subject jumps off its background.

Your challenge this week (weather permitting) is to find yourself in a wide open space where you can watch the shadows of clouds fleeting by on the ground - it needn’t be hilly. See how the light and shade interact with objects in the environment and if possible take a series of photos showing the differences.

You spend ages trying to convince non-locals that this place…

is pronounced GOAT-um and absolutely NOT like GOTH-um yeah yeah like in Batman, yeah we all know, we’ve all heard that one.

And then you catch sight of the clock at the bus depot…

Kinda cool, but they’re not helping matters!

I went for a walk. It was nice. AND it means there’s a new Tuesday Challenge for tomorrow morning.

However, after the five-mile walk, I now need to jump in a hot bath, which is what I shall do now. Sorry I haven’t blogged for a bit. I couldn’t be arsed

(And since Sarah asked for pictures, I’ll add a picture of a crab-apple which had fallen off its tree straight onto some barbed wire. What a futile existence…

click for full-size
)

What’s the world coming to? I’ve received several sample packs from printers recently. Some of them have had slightly dinged corners, or scrapes across them but today’s just took the biscuit. I went home for lunch and picked up the sample pack, opened it and was initially impressed by the print quality and gloss.

Unfortunately, I then noticed that there was what looked like baked-bean juice on the back of the postcard I was looking at. Going through the other samples, price list and covering letter revealed even more instances of bean juice. How could these people possibly expect me to part with my money if they can’t even keep their samples free of contaminants? It wasn’t even as if it was dried on, it was fresh and quite liquid still.

What’s most strange is the huge coincidence that I was, while viewing the samples, preparing jacket potatoes with baked beans for lunch.

Incidentally, they were the best I’ve seen yet, so depending on price, I think I might have found my supplier of choice.

A little Finnish humour… a ten-minute short which is maybe a little gruesome in places, and quite sparse, but also pretty funny in a WTF type of way…

Rare Exports

In my research of the last few days, I’ve come across several incredibly powerful photos which I would love to share with you. Unfortunately, whenever I’ve found an image online it’s had nowhere near the impact of the printed version. I had never realised the difference would be so great.

One photo which I seem to have missed for a good 26 years is Hands by Michael Wells. (The Photo Book)

Another, showing the incredible power of nature and man’s struggle to keep on top, is Steve McCurry’s Monsoon (20th Century Photography)

Finally for now, an image which is closer to home, but still sad in a way. The family in this image from Martin Parr’s series GB. From A to B. Tales of Modern Motoring seem more interested in their ice-creams than each other - a theme taken to extremes in his series Bored Couples.

But getting back to the point… computer screens are rubbish for viewing photos - which is a shame.

Anyone got any good suggestions for events to go to over the bank holiday weekend? I’ve had a look at the local what’s on guides but nothing has really caught my eye.

I was vaguely thinking of Notting Hill Carnival, but I’m not sure that’d be a good place to take an expensive camera. I’d always thought the talk of crime there was exaggerated, but when the official site suggests you only bring disposable cameras, and don’t take your phone, and keep money in different pockets, well it doesn’t sound such a great idea.

Next year (when Sarah hopefully doesn’t have her leg in plaster), we’ll travel down and just go with the flow - take a bare minimum of stuff and plan toilet breaks carefully. As the site says… “be prepared to lose your dignity in an emergency, yes, the girls too. Just another reason to have tissues with you and mates who don’t mind shielding you from the crowd. “

So, I think I’d prefer to go to something a little more tame this year. We’re talking open-air, free events with lots of people and interesting stuff. Suggestions on a postcard - preferably 148×100mm, 400gsm, 4-Colour CMYK with gloss laminate finish on the front, 1-Colour greyscale back, matt finish Aargh! Does anyone think I’ve been talking to too many printers recently?

Where was I? Suggestions on a postcard…