One I Almost Missed
You may remember a story I posted at the beginning of the year called “Tales of a Fifty-Five Inch Telly.” No? Well there have been a lot of stories passing in between us since then I suppose, but back then I was only vaguely considering upgrading our twelve year old TV set with a brand new, much larger one that we both might actually be able to see. Now I know some of you don’t watch television that much. Ali and I do. We’ve never been ones for playing music around the house, but we do love a good drama series. She watches far too many bake offs and sewing bees and dancing competitions, both with and without ice skates and goodness knows what else. We both watch the news each day, no matter how grim things are, and if I’ve been especially good, I’ll get clearance to watch a live football match now and again. And then there’s YouTube. Apart from the photographers, I’ve been enjoying the adventures of an intrepid Norwegian yachtsman who has spent three summers attempting to get from his home in Haugesund to Scoresby Sound in Greenland, via the Shetlands, the Faroes and Iceland. Not that I’m particularly interested in the finer points of sailing, but Erik Anderaa is a man after my own heart - a lone adventurer doing remarkable and deadly dangerous things in places that set the imagination into overdrive. Spoiler alert: he still hasn’t managed to make it to Greenland in his forty-six year old Contessa, but he keeps on trying. Among other things, Arctic pack ice, Covid and a developing case of Crohn's Disease have flawed his plans. I just hope he doesn’t come to a sticky end in the process. He certainly has some hair raising moments. In his last attempt, one episode returned me to Grundarfjordur and Kirkjufell. It was quite something to see somewhere that’s become such a big part of my fibre being approached from the sea.
All of this means the big square rectangle in the corner of the room plays a significant part in our lives during slow mornings and dark evenings. And finally, over the last few months, the old one began to fail us, a dark flickering patch appearing in the top right hand corner that became increasingly distracting. On further investigation I learned that a brand new model, much larger, and complete with internet gubbins could be acquired at a lower price than the one we bought twelve years earlier. And when the new improved non flickering set arrived, it didn’t take long to discover that I could use it as an enormous picture frame and run slideshows from my Amazon Photos app. Imagine how much fun one could have, boring the life out of visitors with an endless loop of holiday snaps, complete with accompanying commentary about the price of the sunbeds in Torremolinos? Even your Great Auntie Nellie would be able to see every last thing on the giant sized plate you photographed before piling into half a ton of calamaritos in the beachfront bar at Benalmadena.
So I pulled together a collection of shots from my adventures in Cornwall. It would be fun to see them on a large screen and pretend I was famous. What I hadn’t bargained for was that I’d see things in some of them that I hadn’t spotted before. After all, many of our images are only ever seen on a six inch screen. Suddenly, a number of shots I’d never considered sharing seemed worthy of an audience. In a few cases, I only vaguely remembered taking them at all. At least I’d edited them - there are far too many untouched folders on the external hard drives, and even in cases where I have waded in, often only one or two of the many have been worked on. I could probably spend a couple of years creating new images without taking the camera from the bag. But sitting behind the viewfinder on a quiet clifftop or stamping my feet to keep them warm on an empty winter beach is the bit I love most of all. It’s the bit where I escape.
Take this one, a winter escapade in the first days of 2022. I don’t remember the outing, nor the shot. It was only when I went to the folder of images I took that day and found the one I did post here that I remembered the soft sunset glow that pierced the blues and bounced off the wet sand. It had evidently been a good afternoon on the mostly empty beach and the handful of images I’d worked on were all full of dreamy yellow winter light.
Some of those other stories are still under wraps, waiting to be told. It won’t surprise you to learn that quite a lot of them were taken here in the place that I keep on coming back to. Somewhere in between the images I take tomorrow, I’ll try and return to them, but it’s an ever growing backlog. Maybe I should watch the telly a bit less often then.
The Light Fantastic (the original post from that day): www.flickr.com/photos/126574513@N04/51848746522/in/dateta...
Tales of a Fifty-Five Inch Telly: www.flickr.com/photos/126574513@N04/52646308984/in/datepo...
One I Almost Missed
You may remember a story I posted at the beginning of the year called “Tales of a Fifty-Five Inch Telly.” No? Well there have been a lot of stories passing in between us since then I suppose, but back then I was only vaguely considering upgrading our twelve year old TV set with a brand new, much larger one that we both might actually be able to see. Now I know some of you don’t watch television that much. Ali and I do. We’ve never been ones for playing music around the house, but we do love a good drama series. She watches far too many bake offs and sewing bees and dancing competitions, both with and without ice skates and goodness knows what else. We both watch the news each day, no matter how grim things are, and if I’ve been especially good, I’ll get clearance to watch a live football match now and again. And then there’s YouTube. Apart from the photographers, I’ve been enjoying the adventures of an intrepid Norwegian yachtsman who has spent three summers attempting to get from his home in Haugesund to Scoresby Sound in Greenland, via the Shetlands, the Faroes and Iceland. Not that I’m particularly interested in the finer points of sailing, but Erik Anderaa is a man after my own heart - a lone adventurer doing remarkable and deadly dangerous things in places that set the imagination into overdrive. Spoiler alert: he still hasn’t managed to make it to Greenland in his forty-six year old Contessa, but he keeps on trying. Among other things, Arctic pack ice, Covid and a developing case of Crohn's Disease have flawed his plans. I just hope he doesn’t come to a sticky end in the process. He certainly has some hair raising moments. In his last attempt, one episode returned me to Grundarfjordur and Kirkjufell. It was quite something to see somewhere that’s become such a big part of my fibre being approached from the sea.
All of this means the big square rectangle in the corner of the room plays a significant part in our lives during slow mornings and dark evenings. And finally, over the last few months, the old one began to fail us, a dark flickering patch appearing in the top right hand corner that became increasingly distracting. On further investigation I learned that a brand new model, much larger, and complete with internet gubbins could be acquired at a lower price than the one we bought twelve years earlier. And when the new improved non flickering set arrived, it didn’t take long to discover that I could use it as an enormous picture frame and run slideshows from my Amazon Photos app. Imagine how much fun one could have, boring the life out of visitors with an endless loop of holiday snaps, complete with accompanying commentary about the price of the sunbeds in Torremolinos? Even your Great Auntie Nellie would be able to see every last thing on the giant sized plate you photographed before piling into half a ton of calamaritos in the beachfront bar at Benalmadena.
So I pulled together a collection of shots from my adventures in Cornwall. It would be fun to see them on a large screen and pretend I was famous. What I hadn’t bargained for was that I’d see things in some of them that I hadn’t spotted before. After all, many of our images are only ever seen on a six inch screen. Suddenly, a number of shots I’d never considered sharing seemed worthy of an audience. In a few cases, I only vaguely remembered taking them at all. At least I’d edited them - there are far too many untouched folders on the external hard drives, and even in cases where I have waded in, often only one or two of the many have been worked on. I could probably spend a couple of years creating new images without taking the camera from the bag. But sitting behind the viewfinder on a quiet clifftop or stamping my feet to keep them warm on an empty winter beach is the bit I love most of all. It’s the bit where I escape.
Take this one, a winter escapade in the first days of 2022. I don’t remember the outing, nor the shot. It was only when I went to the folder of images I took that day and found the one I did post here that I remembered the soft sunset glow that pierced the blues and bounced off the wet sand. It had evidently been a good afternoon on the mostly empty beach and the handful of images I’d worked on were all full of dreamy yellow winter light.
Some of those other stories are still under wraps, waiting to be told. It won’t surprise you to learn that quite a lot of them were taken here in the place that I keep on coming back to. Somewhere in between the images I take tomorrow, I’ll try and return to them, but it’s an ever growing backlog. Maybe I should watch the telly a bit less often then.
The Light Fantastic (the original post from that day): www.flickr.com/photos/126574513@N04/51848746522/in/dateta...
Tales of a Fifty-Five Inch Telly: www.flickr.com/photos/126574513@N04/52646308984/in/datepo...