Tag Archives: black and white

Apr 21 2024
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Daily Post, Landscape

The Hitcher

Saturday 20th April 2024, 4.50pm (day 4,622)

Damaraland Hitcher, 20/4/24

This is a hell of a place to be waiting for a ride — then again there is no public transport this far out. I did feel sorry that our tour vehicle didn’t stop, but we didn’t carry on very far past this point so at best would have taken him another two miles nearer his destination. In any case, he might have been Rutger Hauer.

Going monochrome here, as is often the case, conceals the colour balance sins: this was taken through the dark green sun filter at the top of the windscreen.

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Mar 16 2024
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Daily Post, Interior

Enigma

Friday 15th March 2024, 12.30pm (day 4,586)

Enigma machine, 15/3/24

Found another excuse to leave home for a while and come for a weekend in Milton Keynes, which may not sound the most immediately glamorous destination, but it does have the significant draw of Bletchley Park. It was here that World War 2 was won, arguably, when a (largely female) staff of thousands worked tirelessly to crack German ciphers, mainly produced by the now-famous Enigma machines, of which the museum still has a few dozen, out of about 450 surviving ones apparently.

Do you know that if Enigma had ever enciphered a letter as itself, the code would have been near-impossible to crack? But this was its fatal weakness, giving just enough indication that particular strings of gibberish might just be commonly-used phrases like “Wetter für heute” [‘the weather for today…’] and allowing each daily machine setting to be worked out.

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Feb 18 2024
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Daily Post, Transport

Haworth station

Saturday 17th February 2024, 12 noon (day 4,559)

Haworth station, 17/2/24

Anywhere in the vicinity of the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway and I seem to have an irresistible urge to whack on the sepia filter. It’s appropriate, at least. A steam train would have been nice to add to the shot but one’s just departed, and anyway, it would have got in the way of the nice curve of the track.

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Feb 06 2024
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Daily Post, Family Member, Portrait

Self-portrait with injuries

Sunday 4th February 2024, 10.30am (day 4,546)

I was going to go out of Toronto for the day but last night I managed to slip on a wet floor and bash my head against something that was harder than it: the evidence is not graphic on this photo (I’ll spare you the gore) but it was evident enough. I will live but there was no way I felt like spending two hours each way on a bus. Instead I hung around and recuperated. So there will be no ex-Toronto moments on this trip: 12 days straight through, in which I won’t even have got on a vehicle of any kind, unless elevators count.

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Jan 30 2024
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Daily Post, Landscape

Base for the next 11 days

Monday 29th January 2024, 2.00pm (day 4,540)

Monochrome Toronto, 28/1/24

Unable to secure my preferred window seat I was reduced this afternoon to craning the camera past the head of my neighbour (with her permission I would add), kicking in a long zoom and hoping for the best. The colour balance was destroyed, but in black and white I just about get away with it. If you count my couple of hours of stopover in 2017, which nevertheless produced a shot similar to this — the blog’s third visit to Toronto.

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Dec 27 2023
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Art and architecture, Daily Post, Flora/Fauna

The Kelpies

Tuesday 26th December 2023, 1.30pm (day 4,506)

Kelpies.26/12/23

The Kelpies are sculptures a hundred feet high that sit beside the M9 motorway in Falkirk, Scotland. They are certainly impressive although I don’t quite see the point. Yes, it would be nicer if the pylons weren’t there, but never mind, you are meant to be distracted by the penetrating stare of the one on the left, while the other does that whole head-tossing thing, all in tons of steel. 

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Dec 18 2023
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Daily Post, Family Member, Portrait

My granddad, in Egypt

Sunday 17th December 2023, 12.25pm (day 4,497)

Grandad's Egypt pictures, 17/12/23

From a fake old picture to some real ones. These were taken in around 1945 when my Granddad, Harold Whitworth — my father’s father — was serving in Egypt towards the end of World War 2. He’s the chap with the dapper moustache sat down next to the guy in the turban; and the one on the left of the other shot. (Mildly dubious it might be to dress as a native stereotype, but I have photos of myself doing much the same in Fiji.) Anyway, these are the kinds of family references that now seem obligatory when visiting my parents for the annual-Xmas get-together — last year it was the family tree; in 2023, the box of very old photos.

I don’t honestly remember Granddad ever saying much about his experiences in the war; he was certainly not one of those ex-soldiers who go on about it to anyone who will listen. In these pictures it all looks like an extended holiday, but I’m sure it wasn’t. 

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Dec 17 2023
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Daily Post, Urban scene

Castleford, c. 1962

Saturday 16th December 2023, 2.10pm (day 4,496)

Castleford alley, 16/12/23

Castleford is a biggish place (45,000 residents) and I’ve lived not far from it for 30 years now, but today was the first time I had visited. (Yes, it was for football.) I was struck by how unreconstructed much of it was, rows of terraced houses and back alleys like this one. Most now filled with cars, spoiling the ambience a little, but this alley was clear, and with a bit of post-production I think this is not a bad facsimile of how it probably looked 60 years ago. There’s only one anachronism — the wheelie bins — but even those I will let pass.

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Dec 12 2023
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Daily Post, Friend, Portrait

Last class for quite some time

Monday 11th December 2023, 3.45pm (day 4,491)

Last ETC class, 11/12/23

The last class of the semester, and as I’m on sabbatical for several months next year, the last one for me until late September 2024. And that’s just fine by me. I do — generally — like teaching but it is tiring, time-consuming work and if I want to do some proper thinking I can do with taking a break from it. The last class of the semester also gives rise to the annual ceremony of ‘having pictures taken with one’s professor’ — I make people upset if a 20-minute window isn’t offered up at the end.

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Dec 08 2023
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Daily Post, Urban scene

Being watched

Thursday 7th December 2023, 7.20pm (day 4,487)

CCTV cameras, 7/12/23

Watching them, watching me? Actually it’s very unlikely anyone is actually ‘watching’ at any given moment, but that’s Michel Foucault’s point about the surveillance society — people discipline themselves anyway. What I’d really like to know is why someone felt two cameras, pointing in the same direction, were really needed to monitor the ‘forgotten footbridge‘ at Manchester Victoria station. Why buy only one, when money can be wasted on two to do exactly the same pointless job?

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