Paris Catacomb Escape & other stories
You WANT stories?
But I took a camera to Europe with goal of ceasing to tell stories. "Shut up and take pictures." I don't know if I've been told that here on dGrin, but over on DPreview.com every time I post Phil Askey gets email.
Of course, I couldn't stop my tattling right away. My smugmug site -- http://rivertext.smugmug.com/ -- is full of European travelogues, and the story of my first night in Europe and the photographs like the one below that I took that night I just released online as a 3 minute film. I'll link to it at the end of this journey trip for those who don't think I've told enough of a story here.
The gleam of Berlin's Reichstag renovation...
Why was it so important that I stop telling stories? Well, for one thing I promised myself that no way, no how, was I ever going to let myself buy a DSLR unless the stories stopped. I want to be content someday with mere photography. Images for images sake.
My first real digital camera was a Sony 717 that I bought after seeing what Andy Williams had done with it. I want to try my hand and eye at one of those fancy DSLR's that Andy uses now. Well, maybe one of those that he used 5 years ago... All the pictures shown here were taken with a compact point & shoot, a Canon a620.
I just put an overview of my pictures into a story-less iPhoto book. And stepping back from individual cities and doing the greatest hits thing enabled me to stop tattling. Here I want to show some of those best pictures from the trip along with others that fit into whatever stories pop into my head now:
I had two goals in Paris. One was to get a good photo of a Parisian kiss and the other was to get ______. You be the judge of the first goal, the second, well, maybe next time.
Ah, this was taken in a magic moment at Chartres Cathedral. I was nearly alone in ambulatory (behind the altar) when mass started and those French catholics -- I don't if there language is just that musical -- but I recall them singing the entire mass.
This chair for kneeling was my tripod. I clamped the little plastic tripod to it and moved it all around the ambulatory -- then I realized that it was really my subject.
So I blundered through a series of awkward attempts at sign language in a French department store to buy the flashlight that you see in my hand. Tested it. Researched the Catacombs... you've heard those stories...
islands in underground lakes where they still practice Satanic Rituals unchanged from the Middle Ages... real underground cinemas where they have tapped into the Parisian power grid.… intact and still in use hideouts of the French Resistance...
AND THEN two minutes into the catacombs my flashlight's brand new xenon bulb burns out. Anyway, at least it burnt out when I was still on the straight and narrow path.
The sign above me reads, "Halt! You are about to enter the empire of death." Apparently, that sign was enough to stop the Nazis when they first searched these catacombs for resistance fighters.
To take this shot I had to borrow some idiot with a DSLR's flashlight and fill it with my batteries. I held the light for him to take his shot and then he was gone. One picture! My batteries!
Obviously, I made it out of the catacombs and over to one of the Queen's London palaces. This is an attempt to answer the question, how do you photograph a cliche in a fresh way?
answer: Just barely let it slip into a corner of the picture.
Sunday Afternoon -- Hyde Park -- Speaker's Corner, what a disappointment. No one denouncing anything, but religion (in this man's case) or sin (in the case of all the other speakers). And I tried to change the subject. "Just for 5 minutes can we all turn our attention to the monarchy?"
What never ceases to amaze me is the DSLR photographers who, like, try to photograph the Rosetta Stone only BEFORE and AFTER the school children clear out.
Or who, on the St. Charles Bridge in Prague, go to great lengths to aim their DSLR's away from the torch wielding protesters so as to get the stereotypical postcard shots that everyone else gets. And, yes I'm jealous because I'm freaking out trying to figure out how to hand hold shots like these with a point & shoot.
The unforgettable green of the Grand Canal was nearly my final stop in Europe. I had to brace the camera against a pillar high above my head, and use the time delay feature to get this shot. What I was thinking in Venice was IF I had a DSLR and image stabilization could I have taken photos on the night time water bus trips?
Oh, the lamp post in the glittering canal shining with as other worldly a glow as the lamp post in the forest at the entrance to Narnia.
But, enough of pictures I didn't get. (If you got pictures from a MOVING boat in the Venice Canals at night please post them in this thread.)
If you want to see a real travelogue, a fine demonstration of what you can do with photos and the Ken Burn effect:
You can see it stream from YouTube with just about any computer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80428qJp9SY
Or a high quality version of the film that requires Apple Computer's free Quicktime 7 is available here:
http://portland.indymedia.org/media/media/2006/11/349326.zip
So, thanks for reading this, and, seriously, Andy -- if you had to do all it over with, wouldn't you rather do it with a Pentax? ;-)
Next year I have to stop bashing DSLR's and decide which one to buy next year for my story-less old age...
Brian
http://rivertext.com/
But I took a camera to Europe with goal of ceasing to tell stories. "Shut up and take pictures." I don't know if I've been told that here on dGrin, but over on DPreview.com every time I post Phil Askey gets email.
Of course, I couldn't stop my tattling right away. My smugmug site -- http://rivertext.smugmug.com/ -- is full of European travelogues, and the story of my first night in Europe and the photographs like the one below that I took that night I just released online as a 3 minute film. I'll link to it at the end of this journey trip for those who don't think I've told enough of a story here.
The gleam of Berlin's Reichstag renovation...
Why was it so important that I stop telling stories? Well, for one thing I promised myself that no way, no how, was I ever going to let myself buy a DSLR unless the stories stopped. I want to be content someday with mere photography. Images for images sake.
My first real digital camera was a Sony 717 that I bought after seeing what Andy Williams had done with it. I want to try my hand and eye at one of those fancy DSLR's that Andy uses now. Well, maybe one of those that he used 5 years ago... All the pictures shown here were taken with a compact point & shoot, a Canon a620.
I just put an overview of my pictures into a story-less iPhoto book. And stepping back from individual cities and doing the greatest hits thing enabled me to stop tattling. Here I want to show some of those best pictures from the trip along with others that fit into whatever stories pop into my head now:
I had two goals in Paris. One was to get a good photo of a Parisian kiss and the other was to get ______. You be the judge of the first goal, the second, well, maybe next time.
Ah, this was taken in a magic moment at Chartres Cathedral. I was nearly alone in ambulatory (behind the altar) when mass started and those French catholics -- I don't if there language is just that musical -- but I recall them singing the entire mass.
This chair for kneeling was my tripod. I clamped the little plastic tripod to it and moved it all around the ambulatory -- then I realized that it was really my subject.
So I blundered through a series of awkward attempts at sign language in a French department store to buy the flashlight that you see in my hand. Tested it. Researched the Catacombs... you've heard those stories...
islands in underground lakes where they still practice Satanic Rituals unchanged from the Middle Ages... real underground cinemas where they have tapped into the Parisian power grid.… intact and still in use hideouts of the French Resistance...
AND THEN two minutes into the catacombs my flashlight's brand new xenon bulb burns out. Anyway, at least it burnt out when I was still on the straight and narrow path.
The sign above me reads, "Halt! You are about to enter the empire of death." Apparently, that sign was enough to stop the Nazis when they first searched these catacombs for resistance fighters.
To take this shot I had to borrow some idiot with a DSLR's flashlight and fill it with my batteries. I held the light for him to take his shot and then he was gone. One picture! My batteries!
Obviously, I made it out of the catacombs and over to one of the Queen's London palaces. This is an attempt to answer the question, how do you photograph a cliche in a fresh way?
answer: Just barely let it slip into a corner of the picture.
Sunday Afternoon -- Hyde Park -- Speaker's Corner, what a disappointment. No one denouncing anything, but religion (in this man's case) or sin (in the case of all the other speakers). And I tried to change the subject. "Just for 5 minutes can we all turn our attention to the monarchy?"
What never ceases to amaze me is the DSLR photographers who, like, try to photograph the Rosetta Stone only BEFORE and AFTER the school children clear out.
Or who, on the St. Charles Bridge in Prague, go to great lengths to aim their DSLR's away from the torch wielding protesters so as to get the stereotypical postcard shots that everyone else gets. And, yes I'm jealous because I'm freaking out trying to figure out how to hand hold shots like these with a point & shoot.
The unforgettable green of the Grand Canal was nearly my final stop in Europe. I had to brace the camera against a pillar high above my head, and use the time delay feature to get this shot. What I was thinking in Venice was IF I had a DSLR and image stabilization could I have taken photos on the night time water bus trips?
Oh, the lamp post in the glittering canal shining with as other worldly a glow as the lamp post in the forest at the entrance to Narnia.
But, enough of pictures I didn't get. (If you got pictures from a MOVING boat in the Venice Canals at night please post them in this thread.)
If you want to see a real travelogue, a fine demonstration of what you can do with photos and the Ken Burn effect:
You can see it stream from YouTube with just about any computer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80428qJp9SY
Or a high quality version of the film that requires Apple Computer's free Quicktime 7 is available here:
http://portland.indymedia.org/media/media/2006/11/349326.zip
So, thanks for reading this, and, seriously, Andy -- if you had to do all it over with, wouldn't you rather do it with a Pentax? ;-)
Next year I have to stop bashing DSLR's and decide which one to buy next year for my story-less old age...
Brian
http://rivertext.com/
0
Comments
Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam
http://www.mcneel.com/users/jb/foghorn/ill_shut_up.au
love this one-
to me it has a norman rockwll quality to it-
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