priscimon blog

I am developing the habit of making intentional photos to improve my photography. I plan my shoots by researching locations, analysing weather patterns, observing sun positions, checking events, and so on. But, as the saying goes, plans do not survive breakfast.

Last Sunday, I wanted to get a picture of a train crossing a railway bridge over the Basingstoke Canal. The weather forecast was good, and the sun would be in the right position to shine on the front of the train. I arrived at the location with thirty minutes to spare and walked the short distance along the canal to the bridge. Except that the bridge never came into view. Unlike on the photos from Google Street View, it was now hidden behind spring vegetation. Disappointed but not defeated, I made my way back to the car, trying to think of an alternative location.

Lesson learnt: Have a plan B.

On the way, I spotted a scrapyard, but intimidated by the signs promising prosecution for trespassers, I decided not to go in. Instead, I took a picture with a telephoto lens from across the road.

I wasn’t prepared yet to pass on this beautiful sunset. I drove to the bridge near Claycart Hill, hoping to get a picture of it in the evening light. Whilst waiting for the right moment, I saw a swan heading in my direction. This opportune scene looked great and totally saved the day.

There’s a bird couple building a nest under the eaves of our house. They make a racket as they row over the quality of the materials that the male gathers for the construction. The female shows her disapproval by picking the twigs and straws in her beak and discarding them in a rather violent manner. Then she starts to chirp loudly, presumably telling off the male and demanding that he finds better ones. The male chirps back but, eventually defeated, flies off to do as he’s told. Birds are not so different from us humans after all.

Yesterday, as I leaned out of the bathroom window to watch one such episode, this gorgeous sunset light falling on a tree across the road caught my eye.

I like Easter. It’s one of two days in the year (the other being Christmas) when almost all shops are closed. On this day, the town becomes very quiet. There are few cars on the roads and even fewer people in the streets. It’s good for introverts like me to go out and take pictures. This Easter was matched with great weather. I spent two hours walking around town in places that would normally be bustling with activity. Here are some of the photos that I shot.

P and I started hiking again at the beginning of March. So far, we’ve covered 115 km.

Just us two, outside in nature, is restorative, as the hours we spend walking side by side are time that routine does not afford us.

We still visit the same locations: woods on the surrounding military land, canal towpaths, and local country parks. But we’re also trying trails that are farther from home. For example, yesterday we walked a 10-km circular route two towns over. It followed the canal and cut across farms. On woodland and heathland, we could venture wherever we wished; on farmland, we had to follow public footpaths and bridleways. Despite this restriction, the wide-open fields were a welcoming change.

Being out and about again also gives me chances for photography, but I haven’t had much heart in it lately. Even though P teases me and says that I carry my hefty camera bag as an exercise weight, I continue to do so for fear of missing out. Here are the photos I didn’t miss out on.

It’s been four months now since P and I arrived back in England after our three-week trip to China. I’ve struggled to find words fitting enough to tell our amazing experience, which is why I put off writing this post until now.

I still cannot do it properly, so I’m sharing the same raw observations I did with my Discord friends whilst I was sitting on the Bund and enjoying the skyline across the river:

• It is a BIG country.
• There is a lot of food. Not just variety, but also quantity. It almost feels limitless.
• Things are not built cheaply. Nice things are not cheap. They coat [sic] less than in Europe but with better quality.
• People spend lavishly on experiences. Food, travel, nice expensive things, not on tacky things.
• People don’t give a fuck about what others think. As in, they do what they want.
• People are friendly. Language barriers are not a big thing. The young ones are cooler than in Europe.
• Everyone wears some sort of new age clothing, which is actually a jacket, to block the sun and also cool down. Literally everyone.
• Their fashion is out of this world.
• People spit. Squat toilets are something. And I said [sic] this as someone who grew up using a latrine. They’re clean, but they take some practice.
• Did I say food is amazing? And cheap?

It was also difficult for me take pictures as we wandered around Shanghai and Hangzhou, the two cities we visited. There were too many things screaming for attention, and it was easier for us to enjoy the experience than to try and capture it. On rare occasions, I came out of my daze and took snapshots.

Today is that kind of day. A day that makes you want to just close the windows, crank the thermostat all the way up, don a warm jumper, sit at the computer with an endless supply of oolong tea, and view old photographs whilst listening to chill music on speakers. The only thing missing is snowflakes coming down and painting everything white.

My mood dropped when I saw the new roof leaking after the first heavy rainfall since it was put up last week. Granted the problem is less bad than with the old disintegrating roof, its reappearance is still disheartening. As the job was paid for cash-in-hand, I have little recourse to seek reparation from the handyman. I could call him back, but I think he already delivered the best he could manage. Besides, the results of my online search showed that leaking roofs are common even for new sheds built by professionals, and therefore it would be rather unfair of me to expect perfection from the local odd-job man.

So, today once more I set to work on the shed. I inspected the inside, looking for gaps through which water could enter. Seeing no obvious pathways, I climbed on to the roof to examine the felt. It was mostly dry, except for a wet patch along the line where two pieces of the material were joined. It was nailed down securely, but the overlap of the sections was narrower than the recommended 150mm. Thus, it was possible for water to seep through and come down the joists in to the shed.

Luckily, I had some leftover felt from my first attempt at repairing the roof. I used it to cover the problem area, making sure to hammer enough nails to press the felt firmly on to the roof. The proper fix is to completely replace the felt, but until the longer summer days enable me to do that, I have to contend with this hack.

When we bought our sofa, almost a decade ago now, the salesman explained that the leather needed nourishing at every turn of the clock. I nodded knowingly and, for my foolishness, ended up buying a pack of overpriced leather wipes.

Anyway—

Today we turn back the clock, switching from British Summer Time (BST) to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). Like every year, my first task was to change the times around the house. Luckily, with other devices getting their times from Internet, there were only the clock in the kitchen and the radio alarm clock in our bedroom to adjust. Using as reference my Casio G-SHOCK watch, which synchronises with atomic time broadcast from radio towers, the pedant in me made sure that the times were precise to +/- 5 seconds.

Also as usual, P had forced me out of bed early, insisting that we should make the best of today’s extra hour. Her reasoning made little sense, but I knew it meant extra work for me.

First, I had to remove super glue off a switch plate, which in her unfathomable wisdom, P had chosen as the base for a wall hook to hang her bread bags. The hook had come off, leaving hard dried glue, and now I had to clean it so she could—sigh—do it again. Neither acetone nor WD-40 made the job easier, and I ended up using a sharp blade to pry off the glue millimetre by millimetre.

My next task was to attach stringed lights on to the shed, which we finally had repaired two days ago. That job was easy, and I genuinely enjoyed the outside chill. However, when it was all done, the lights did not come on. We’ll have to wait and see if they work after the batteries have charged up from a full day of sunlight.

As I was already in the garden, I decided to replace the rubber seal on the kitchen window. It had dried up and was falling apart, leaving a draughty gap. That job, too, was quick: remove the length of cracked seal, measure a length of new seal, and use the adhesive backing to fix it to the window frame.

I skipped lunch and had some jasmine tea and a piece of moon cake in the afternoon. Then, P coaxed me into taking a nap to recover from the early rise. As I said, unfathomable… Later, invigorated by another hot tea and more snacks, I opened an old laptop that we had found in yesterday’s attic clear-out and removed the reusable parts before it is recycled. Afterwards, I sent a payment and a thank-you note to the handyman who fixed our shed. And now, I’m typing this post whilst waiting to be called for dinner.

P bought me the book Stop thinking, start living by Richard Carlson. Perhaps I’ve been the picture of misery to her, but nevertheless I like the gesture and truthfully think I could do with a little optimism. Coincidentally, yesterday I saw one of those social media “top 5” posts about happiness. The item on the list that stuck was this: Practise gratitude. It isn’t just about being thankful to others but also about recognising one’s own efforts and accomplishments.

I’m grateful for today.

When I bought my Nikon D850, I ordered a 128 GiB CFexpress card to go with it, assuming that the camera’s high-resolution output would demand substantial storage. Yet, because of my approach to digital photography, I rarely fill more than a fraction of the card while I’m shooting. I seem to be as frugal with the shutter button as I am with a film camera.

For example, when these pictures were taken, I shot identical number of frames with my Nikon D850 and my Nikon FM2, resulting in similar digital and film images. Here are the scans from the FM2 for comparison.

With film, I am not only limited by the length of the roll—12, 24, or 36 frames—but also by the actual cost of each exposure. In comparison, with digital I can shoot as many images as will fit on the CFexpress card, only constrained by the time I’m willing to spend on post-processing. Still, I continue to take photos with the same intentionality with both systems.

The picture below is a good example of my intentional approach. On this occasion, I arrived on location 30 minutes before sunset, set up the tripod, and composed the shot. Then, I waited for the light to fall on the barracks. I took only four exposures: f/11 @ 1/30s, f/11 @ 1/60s, f/11 @ 15s, and f/11 @ 30s. These were the only four images I chose to capture on a card with a capacity for more than thousand.

Recently, I found an envelope containing film negatives with candid pictures of P, taken between 2008 and 2010 when I was beginning film photography.

Given the reset brought about by COVID, this discovery feels almost archaelogical—you can even see P holding a Blackberry phone.

The negatives were badly scratched from sitting at the bottom of a pile of junk. I somehow managed to get some decent scans from them.