Toy camera in Tuscany
It seems that every landscape photographer who visits Tuscany shoots these locations. Not always through choice, but clients love the layouts of cypress trees, isolated rustic buildings and rolling renaissance landscapes.
Once you are familiar with them you start to see these iconic scenes popping up all over the place in ads. The two farmhouses above are currently featured on the lids of rival brands of Olive spread; Bertolli and Tesco.
You will never be alone in these locations. At dawn and sunset it can be like door stepping a celebrity with the press pack. Professionals and groups on photo holidays jockey their tripods for a decent spot. The rising sun melting the mist or golden sunset lengthening shadows doesn’t last for long, so once the commissioned shots are in the bag there is time to experiment a little.
These 4 shots were taken on a Holga – a plastic toy film camera that leaks light, goes soft around the edges and vignettes the image darkening the corners.
Lovely
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Graffiti – A wall and a thought
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When does graffiti become art ? – or vandalism a celebrated historical artefact ?
The Aboriginal people of Australia were drawing images on rocks 20,000 years before the word ‘art’ was invented. These Dreamtime paintings told the story of their creation and were a visual history book to pass down thegenerations. The depictions could also impart powers to the tribe. Paint a picture of many animals and a good hunting trip would surely come your way. These nomadic tribes are long gone but on the walls of caves and hollows in Kakadu National Park many of their pictures survive.
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There is little evidence remaining of where the Berlin wall once stood. The wide scar that
bisected the city at Potsdamer Platz has been filled in and built upon and the former wasteland is now home to major international corporations. A monolithic slice is all that now remains, surrounded by towering new offices. Its coat of protest that once shouted is now reduced to little more than a sanitised whisper.
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The quiet Belgium town of Poperinge was a much livelier place a hundred years ago. At any one time there were a quarter of a million British soldiers transiting to and from the front line trenches nearby. For some of them though the town was their final destination. They had been accused of cowardice or desertion in the face of the enemy and for the sake of morale and discipline, had to be made examples of.
Military courts were held in the town hall and following a brisk trial and an inevitable guilty verdict, they were consigned to a cell in the building. At dawn the following morning they were shot in the courtyard. The names and messages they scratched into the plaster walls of the cell still record their last thoughts.
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Edward Elgar may have been the first musician to work at these recording studios in London’s Abbey Road, but it was the Beatles who made the place famous. Not just for making several of their albums there but also for using the zebra crossing outside for an album cover. Its association with the band eventually helped the building to become protected against future development.
The permanent webcam shows a stream of tourists antagonising motorists as they re-enact the Beatles march over the crossing. They can also be spied upon as they scrawl messages to their musical heroes on the Grade 2 listed property. Sadly few of them to Elgar.
The real life ‘Rocky’
I have regularly photographed Darren Hamilton ever since he restarted his boxing career two years ago. Down on his luck he was broke, homeless and sleeping on the couch of the gym I go to. Last night he won the British title.
Harry Andrews was a promising boxer whose career was prematurely ended by an injury. After his dreams of becoming a champion were thwarted he became a trainer at a London white collar boxing gym. The sort of place that caters mostly for financial folk wanting to work out in-between spending their bonuses.
One day a ‘washed up’ boxer came in to exercise and punch a few bags. Harry could see that Darren still had the potential – but first had to persuade him to believe in himself. So they teamed up and began the long journey that starts on the bottom of the bill at small halls in provincial towns. After a fight most boxers have down time for a while before preparing for their next bout. A chance to enjoy themselves, to relax and eat and drink and do all that’s forbidden when they are training. Harry wouldn’t allow that, he wanted Darren to train every day. To be permanently fighting fit so that whenever the break came, they would be ready.
Five days ago the phone rang. British champion Ashley Theophane’s televised defence fight was in doubt. His opponent was ill and had pulled out so they needed to find a last minute replacement. Someone who they thought wouldn’t trouble the champion too much…
It sounds like a corny film that’s been made too many times before.
Substitute boxing for horseracing, athletics or motor racing and it’s an all too familiar screen tale. The thwarted career of the mentor, the self doubt of the protégé, together they realise their dreams.
Sometimes though, it’s a true story.
Darren Hamilton – British Light Welter Weight Champion
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A good view was important to Lee Harvey Oswald
Oswald travelled to Russia in 1959 and renounced his US citizenship, but his defection did not go quite the way he planned. Instead of a rewarding place at the Moscow University he was given a job as a factory lathe operator in Minsk, the capital of neighbouring Belarus. Housed in a large apartment building the only consolation was the view onto a shabby old railway workers cottage.
The cottage has been spruced up in the half century since he looked down on it and is now enclosed in railings carrying the hammer and sickle motif. It was preserved not long after a secret meeting was held there in 1898 when, after an apology for absence was read out (Lenin couldn’t make it), an early manifesto was drawn up for what became the Russian Communist Party.
Its open to visitors – if you can persuade the sullen babushka inside to leave her small electric fire and unlock the door. Faded photographs show hundreds of eager comrades queuing patiently outside as they wait to pay homage to their doctrine. Today you will almost certainly have the place to yourself.
In 1962 with a new wife and family, Oswald returned to the United States. The following year he hid on the 6thfloor of a book depository overlooking Dealey Plaza in Dallas as President Kennedy passed by. Soon after, he was himself assassinated.