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The fires of Up Helly Aa
At the end of January we went to Lerwick in Shetland to see the famous Viking fire festival called “Up Helly Aa”. There are several Up Helly Aa festivals in Shetland, and the Lerwick one is the largest. The festival involves various groups of Shetlanders called squads, and the main squad, the “Jarl Squad”, are dressed as Vikings. Their costumes are all made by them on the island, and are different every year. The festival culminates in a huge torchlit procession and the ritual burning of a replica Viking longship. Everyone else in the procession is in fancy dress, ranging from the sublime to the very ridiculous. On the morning…
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Tripping the Light Fantastic in Worcester.
One of the things that’s great about living in Worcester is the active arts scene. It sometimes manifests itself as “Light Nights” events, where there are various art installations all to do with light. Recently there was one called “Bridges of Light”. Whilst not as extensive as other “Light Nights” it was still fun. One installation used three very bright single colour projectors; red, green and blue, to throw multi-coloured shadows of folks in front of them. Some times people danced, so here’s a multi-coloured twirl. One installation inside a church consisted of a large rotating drum with cut-outs of stars and cut-out wording. Using my phone camera on “Long…
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A midweek miscellany
Today’s post does not have a single theme. It’s a mixture of images, each of which has its own story to tell, each of which shows an area of my photographic interest. Here’s a shot from a town’s bonfire night celebrations last year. They had fire-eaters as a diversion before the main fireworks event. It was hard to get into a good place to have a clear view of the fire-eater, and also hard to choose the right moment to press the shutter. I was pleased with the flame on this one. A nice tight crop to the corner and editing out some background distractions made the composition work better.…
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Helios – and a sunflower
A few weeks ago we went to to Coventry to see the Helios art installation. To quote from the National Trust’s website, “Helios, a seven-metre sculpture of the Sun, has been created by artist, Luke Jerram. It’s been made from 400,000 photographs of the Sun’s surface and observations by NASA to replicate swirling solar winds and sunspots.” This installation was outside in the garden of Charterhouse, Coventry, and it was fascinating to see how people interacted with it. I used the wide-angle lens on my Pixel phone to get a good view of the differences between those who chose the sun and those who chose the shade. There’s a bit…
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Pick up a penguin.
There is a sculpture trail in Worcester at present. It’s called the “Worcester Waddle” and consists of lots of penguins that have been painted in imaginative ways. It’s to raise money for St. Richard’s Hospice, and there will be an auction of the penguins later in the year. The auction of the previous sculptures, of elephants, raised a lot of money. One went for £36,000! One of the penguins represents a tourist, and it has a camera painted on it. Being a photographer I had to record the camera. I know that’s a bit meta, but there we go. It’s interesting seeing the juxtaposition of the penguins and the people…
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May miscellany
No real theme this time, though you could argue it’s a people picture sequence that goes; close-up, full length, multiple figures. The close-up is of a person’s eye shot with my super useful Bauhn clip-on mobile phone macro lens. The lens has a built-in ring light, so it’s great for adding light to areas when the phone shadows the available light. I like the reflection of their eyelashes in their cornea. This is a bit of street photography in the delightful Pitville, a part of Cheltenham. This Barbie mural on the side of a building in Pitville Park, was really long. It’s a bit of an odd subject, as it’s…
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Signs of the previous Leap Year.
OK, so 2020 was the previous leap year, and we all know what started happening then. Those days though are already starting to seem like another world; one with real restrictions and real fear. One thing that happened in the UK during the Covid epidemic and lockdown was the sudden proliferation of signs telling us how we should behave. Lots of those have completely gone now, and I think it’s important that the traces of those remaining are recorded. To that end I am making sure I photograph Covid signs whenever I come across them. This is on a bus shelter in Ledbury, Herefordshire. It’s a plastic film telling us…
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Reflections on a trip to Birmingham
Living in Worcester means I am not too far from Birmingham. It’s just half an hour on the train from Worcestershire Parkway to Birmingham New Street. That station has a lot of glass panels all over it, and they make for a useful source of reflection images. I was lucky enough to be there on a cloudless day with lots of sunshine. The colours of the surrounding buildings against the blue of the sky were fabulous. Isolating just a small section of the reflection made the image into an almost painterly abstract. Above one of the entrances there’s another lot of glass panels, and the sunshine gave strong shadows. The…
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A 21st century icon
At a recent trip to Shelsley Walsh for a motorsport hill climb event, I was struck by this marshall’s face against the red circle. The marshalls, all volunteers, do fantastic work making sure the event is safe for all the competitors and for the spectators. He was relaxing for a moment while the hill was cleared to remove a car that had broken down. With his head against that red circle I thought he looked like one of those icons from medieval or Orthodox Christian art. I just loved his contemplative expression, so I used my telephoto lens to isolate him. This was what I thought he looked like; uncanny…
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It’s a sign of the times.
One of the visitors at my Worcestershire Open Studios exhibition last weekend asked how long a walk took me. They asked because they reckoned I was always looking for things, and looking AT things in an unusual way, and that this must slow me down when I am walking. They were right of course, my walks do tend to take longer than most people. One thing I look for is signs. They are supposed to be put into the world to offer passing people information that is helpful, or to commemorate other people. Take this sign is a local churchyard. I could say that Charles is only half the man…