Calling Mr Bezos!
“Hello, is that Mr Bezos?”
“Ah yes, good. Glad I caught you. It’s me again. You know me - the one who’s always buying coffee and cat food from you. I bought a new compost bin last January, remember?”
“Yes, that's the one. Now I wonder whether you can help me. I’m in a bit of a spot you see. I need a new polarising filter pretty quickly. One of the circular magnetic ones, seventy-seven millimetres. Have you got any in stock?”
“Brilliant. Could you rush one over to me please? This afternoon if you can. Preferably before the golden hour.”
“Oh you can? For an additional postage and packing fee, well that’s ok in the circumstances I suppose. Yes, two hours is quite short notice I’ll admit.”
“Well yes, the only thing is that I’m not home to sign for delivery right now you see. I’m standing on top of a sand dune in Iceland.”
“Yes I did say Iceland. Can I put that down as a temporary address please? Nice compost bin by the way. The fruit flies love it.”
Ok so that conversation didn’t happen. I believe Mr Bezos doesn’t take sales orders in person - well not mine anyway - and they have an app for this sort of thing. The app that I was browsing as I stood on top of said dune, cursing myself for having failed to learn from past errors. You see the trouble is I’m forever stuffing my filter case into a coat pocket and then forgetting about it as I crouch and stoop to examine compositions from different heights in an attempt to work out what to do with the tripod. And now for a second time in recent months, the polarising filter at the front of the pack had taken the strain one too many times, bruising and fracturing inside the case without me realising. Without a backup, I was going to have to manage the final six days of our trip without one. Not ideal. If any of the ND filters had succumbed, I could have worked my way around whatever shutter speed I was after, but you can’t replicate a polarising filter.
It didn’t take me long to find a replacement that was in stock, and I felt slightly happier in the knowledge that it was currently on sale at a ten percent discount. An order was rapidly placed, and Mr Bezos duly trousered another few pounds. The new filter would be lying on the doormat the next morning - over a thousand miles away. Maybe I should have bought two for when I repeat my blunder, as I inevitably will. But for now I had a problem. And maybe a solution too. Not a very good solution, but worth a try at any rate. Shooting at the sort of aperture I’d normally select here was out of the question, but perhaps if I opened up wide I might just get away with it. And so I tried a focus stack at f5 with a broken polariser. Desperate moments sometimes call for daft measures. And when the golden dunes are doing their thing, you really need a polariser. A large rake to smooth away the footprints in the sand wouldn’t go amiss too, but I didn’t have one of those with me either. Maybe we’re all missing a trick there. Especially us coast dwelling togs. Essential photography accessory number four hundred and sixty-five - a garden rake. I don’t suppose Easyjet would allow that in the cabin would they?
If it were somewhere I could get back to easily, this picture would never have seen the light of day. It’s as flawed as the process taken to create it was. Soft corners, areas out of focus because three exposures evidently weren't enough. If I called a recent image “Best Viewed Large,” this one should be named “Best Viewed Tiny.” But the golden glow on those dunes was worth the effort as far as I was concerned. Just don’t go pixel peeping into this one, or you’ll be hitting the “unfollow” button about four seconds later. I didn’t even have the sense to take one without the polariser at f11. Brain failure on a scale as grand as the vista in front of me. Just allow your eye to wander across the glow to Vestrahorn if you will. Despite the drawbacks, it’s still an image that makes me stop and smile at the memory. Far from a special image, but a very special time at a place that’s never too distant from my thoughts.
Nowadays I mostly do exactly what I should always have done, especially bearing in mind that the tripod has a ring onto which the filter case is easily clipped. Why did I never do this before? And of course at times I still find myself casting around for the filters before feeling for and finding them in my coat pocket. Absent-mindedness often comes at a cost. So far the latest polariser has remained intact, but you can be sure that at some point it will happen again and I’ll be wishing I’d bought that spare in the event of emergencies. With fools like me around who are too lazy to look anywhere else when the app does it all in a couple of minutes, Mr Bezos won't starve in his dotage, even if he doesn’t yet deliver to sand dunes in Iceland.
Calling Mr Bezos!
“Hello, is that Mr Bezos?”
“Ah yes, good. Glad I caught you. It’s me again. You know me - the one who’s always buying coffee and cat food from you. I bought a new compost bin last January, remember?”
“Yes, that's the one. Now I wonder whether you can help me. I’m in a bit of a spot you see. I need a new polarising filter pretty quickly. One of the circular magnetic ones, seventy-seven millimetres. Have you got any in stock?”
“Brilliant. Could you rush one over to me please? This afternoon if you can. Preferably before the golden hour.”
“Oh you can? For an additional postage and packing fee, well that’s ok in the circumstances I suppose. Yes, two hours is quite short notice I’ll admit.”
“Well yes, the only thing is that I’m not home to sign for delivery right now you see. I’m standing on top of a sand dune in Iceland.”
“Yes I did say Iceland. Can I put that down as a temporary address please? Nice compost bin by the way. The fruit flies love it.”
Ok so that conversation didn’t happen. I believe Mr Bezos doesn’t take sales orders in person - well not mine anyway - and they have an app for this sort of thing. The app that I was browsing as I stood on top of said dune, cursing myself for having failed to learn from past errors. You see the trouble is I’m forever stuffing my filter case into a coat pocket and then forgetting about it as I crouch and stoop to examine compositions from different heights in an attempt to work out what to do with the tripod. And now for a second time in recent months, the polarising filter at the front of the pack had taken the strain one too many times, bruising and fracturing inside the case without me realising. Without a backup, I was going to have to manage the final six days of our trip without one. Not ideal. If any of the ND filters had succumbed, I could have worked my way around whatever shutter speed I was after, but you can’t replicate a polarising filter.
It didn’t take me long to find a replacement that was in stock, and I felt slightly happier in the knowledge that it was currently on sale at a ten percent discount. An order was rapidly placed, and Mr Bezos duly trousered another few pounds. The new filter would be lying on the doormat the next morning - over a thousand miles away. Maybe I should have bought two for when I repeat my blunder, as I inevitably will. But for now I had a problem. And maybe a solution too. Not a very good solution, but worth a try at any rate. Shooting at the sort of aperture I’d normally select here was out of the question, but perhaps if I opened up wide I might just get away with it. And so I tried a focus stack at f5 with a broken polariser. Desperate moments sometimes call for daft measures. And when the golden dunes are doing their thing, you really need a polariser. A large rake to smooth away the footprints in the sand wouldn’t go amiss too, but I didn’t have one of those with me either. Maybe we’re all missing a trick there. Especially us coast dwelling togs. Essential photography accessory number four hundred and sixty-five - a garden rake. I don’t suppose Easyjet would allow that in the cabin would they?
If it were somewhere I could get back to easily, this picture would never have seen the light of day. It’s as flawed as the process taken to create it was. Soft corners, areas out of focus because three exposures evidently weren't enough. If I called a recent image “Best Viewed Large,” this one should be named “Best Viewed Tiny.” But the golden glow on those dunes was worth the effort as far as I was concerned. Just don’t go pixel peeping into this one, or you’ll be hitting the “unfollow” button about four seconds later. I didn’t even have the sense to take one without the polariser at f11. Brain failure on a scale as grand as the vista in front of me. Just allow your eye to wander across the glow to Vestrahorn if you will. Despite the drawbacks, it’s still an image that makes me stop and smile at the memory. Far from a special image, but a very special time at a place that’s never too distant from my thoughts.
Nowadays I mostly do exactly what I should always have done, especially bearing in mind that the tripod has a ring onto which the filter case is easily clipped. Why did I never do this before? And of course at times I still find myself casting around for the filters before feeling for and finding them in my coat pocket. Absent-mindedness often comes at a cost. So far the latest polariser has remained intact, but you can be sure that at some point it will happen again and I’ll be wishing I’d bought that spare in the event of emergencies. With fools like me around who are too lazy to look anywhere else when the app does it all in a couple of minutes, Mr Bezos won't starve in his dotage, even if he doesn’t yet deliver to sand dunes in Iceland.