Silver (and orange and gold) Birches & Skirts, Knitwear, Coats

(Click each photo for a larger version)

Seb: I told you I’d be photographing Autumn (Fall)! I tried some oaks, some beeches… but none of them were quite autumny enough! The silver birches were the first trees to go truly ‘autumnal’ in our garden; beautifully golden and yellow, every gust of wind blowing yet another handful of leaves fluttering from bough to ground.

I almost took a photo from the ground up, so you could see the leaves amongst the grass, but this angle worked better. I love how the very bright sun is just dappled enough to make this photo possible (though you can see a gap where the leaves didn’t quite block enough sunlight to prevent overexposure… damn!) — and of course, once the light passes through the yellow leaves… the ambient light is GOLDEN!

England — at least the south — is beautiful right now. It’s warm, but the nights have an edge of chill just to remind you of what’s coming. I’ve started wearing socks again! And most importantly, it’s blustery. If you’ve never been in a British forest in the Autumn with the wind blustering all about you, head hunkered down into your jacket to keep your ears warm — if you’ve never done that, you really ought to.

Abi: Skirts, Knitwear, Coats: The last days of Summer. The colder months are just around the corner… I hate to say it but lately the air has been all “back to school” cold in the mornings and I have stopped wanting to sleep naked, covered only by a white sheet at night. Soon the leaves will turn and fall and we will be no stranger to socks and practical footwear. But I’m OK with that, I like Autumn.

I took this when I was out and about yesterday. If ever you wondered where “Women of a Certain Age” go to get their clothes, then I think this is it. I am not sure if this type of fashion emporium cater for seasonal change.. nor am I certain of the approximate age when women are supposed to offer these places their custom, but the handpainted sign got me and seemed somewhat appropriate for the coming season.

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Seb’s Flickr Stream — Abi’s Flickr Stream — you can comment here, or there!

… it’s because I’m busy playing video games.

If, for some Godforsaken reason, you still don’t play video games, let me tell you something: Winter is gaming season. The summer blockbusters have been and gone. The warm, hazy friend-filled nights spent outdoors have dissipated with the first chills of September. Slowly but surely we retreat to our warm, cosy caves, fall to our sofas, plump our pillows and… turn on the TV! Autumn is when most big games and TV shows are released — no big surprise, considering that’s when the biggest, voluminous-backside-on-seat audience is available!

Now, historically this time of year wasn’t a problem — far from it! There used to only be 2 or 3 big games a year. I could stagger them and start one every few months. But now with the industry ballooning and game budgets growing to the size of feature films — because they are that profitable — there’s simply too many games. There used to be one big FPS a year, one or two RPGs, a sports simulator and… that would be it. There’d be other oddball games that could entertain you for a few hours, but nothing big. Some years you might not even play a single stand-out game!

That’s not the case nowadays though, and I suppose it never will be again. Just in September alone, I have the following games that I need to play through: Guitar Hero 5, Rockband: Beatles (well, I might give this one a miss…) AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! (really a game), Murumasa and Batman: Arkham Asylum. That’s just on the PC and Xbox360. If I include the DS/Wii… well… you would probably never see me again. I’ve never been able to pull myself away from the Cake Mania series of games…

October’s even worse, but I won’t bore you with the specifics. All I’m trying to say is: if you’re the kind of person that keeps track of at least five TV shows a week (or four, if you’re a True Blood fan and you’ve just watched the finale — please don’t spam me with comments on how you want to have Cullen’s babies. Wait, that’s Twilight! Ahh, I can’t keep up…) — anyway… if you watch a lot of TV, perhaps you will now understand why it will almost feel like hard work being a games player this Autumn. Think about it: an average, big-budget game takes between 20 and 60 hours to finish. That’s the same length as a standard 24-part drama season on the short end, and three seasons on the long! And I have to play three games a month if I want to keep up with all of the releases this Autumn/Winter! That’s a minimum of 60 hours a month, or as much as 180 — or 8 solid days of gaming…

But the best thing? The caveat and saving grace? It doens’t even make me a nerd any more! Video games are now part of popular culture. They are as much a consumable commodity as movie DVDs or TV box sets. In fact, I laugh derisively at those people with LoveFilm or NetFlix subscriptions! HAH!

The point of this entry was actually to warn you that you may get an awful lot of games-related blog entries over the next few weeks and months. But that’s healthy. I’ve been ignoring the gamer side of me for much too long. And there are actually a lot of gamers that read this blog: so these months are for you, gentlemen (and lady).

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Incidentally, if you’re not a gamer, but you are interested in playing them, you should read my guide: A Beginner’s Guide to Gaming. It will walk you through from the very beginning (it doesn’t tell you how to hook up a console to your TV, but everything else!) Think of gaming as ‘interactive TV’, or ‘entertainment for the intellectual’, where you give a little of yourself to make it a much more interesting (and sometimes fulfilling!) experience.

There is a reason it’s the only growing segment of the media industry.

Autumn Bursts Forth & Twister

Seb: Hey, guess what, it’s AUTUMN. If last week didn’t make that clear, hopefully this does. I’ve never actually seen chestnuts still clutching onto the tree like this — normally they’re scattered about underneath the tree!

I was actually out to take some photos of the trees themselves — there’s a beautiful avenue of ancient chestnuts nearby which I thought would look good at sunset. We’re talking proper, thousand-year-old gnarled and twisted trees that have been around since England was invaded by the Normans. I’ll upload another one tomorrow, so that you can see what they’re like.

But anyway: I looked up, as I always do, being tall and all, and I spotted some chestnuts glinting in the warm, yellow sunset. That ‘golden hour’ has never been more obvious!

This photo is an attempt at staying true to my ‘landscape soul’, while still catering a little more for those that like interesting detail in their photos. And those that like bokeh, of course.

Abi: The fair has come to town- and when I say fair I mean a selection of rides manned by neanderthals, underscored by a lingering smell of fried onions and a soundtrack limited to dance tunes from the mid 90s.

I rarely take any photos at night, I set out this week with a vague idea of capturing light and movement (maybe some people) with no clear idea of what I was really doing. This is a bit of a departure for me so things can only improve.

When I was at school this fair was something approaching a big deal. It has dwindled in recent years but the sounds and smells are just the same as they always were. Only instead of cider the kids are most probably on Ketamine or something. Probably.

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[This photo contains a lot of pretty photos. Just scroll down if you don't want to read stuff.]

Before your very eyes the format of this blog is shifting. Tuesday will now be, ’til the day I die, the day I forget to charge my camera battery, or the apocalypse, ‘Photogasm Day’ (I reserve the right to change the name at a later date if it no longer suits the image I am trying to project…)

Let me tell you about the new format for Tuesday!

First, I’ll link to the new installment of whatever photography project I’m working on — which is 52 Weeks at the moment.

Then I tell you how my current photographic projects are doing. 52 Weeks is going well! I think Abi and I are both surprised that we are a) actually keeping to the Monday schedule and b) still friends. There have been a few touch-and-go moments when she’s got all diva, but mostly things have been plain-sailing! For next week, I have a great homage to Halloween planned. All I can tell you now is that it’ll involve a large pumpkin and my face. It could go monumentally wrong. Those self-portraits you see at the bottom of the page may turn out to be the last known examples of what my face looked like before the Pumpkin Incident.

Next, to excite and tantalise, I’ll tell you about any upcoming photographic stuff. Which currently… is not much. I’m pushing my boundaries though. Pointing my camera at things I wouldn’t even have glanced at previously. I have promised a few local girls (I know that makes them sound like prostitutes, but they’re not — at least as far as I know) some portrait work. Or at least photos of them. Not necessarily portraiture. And I actually want to get out on the STREETS and take some photos there, the cut and thrust, the back-alleys. I suppose I should go into London to do that, or Brighton. There’s this whoooole area of photography (photojournalism, candid portraiture) just waiting to be… shot…  and I’ve not done much of it at all — and I really should do more of it! You saw some stuff in the summer (the Ray Ban Kid), and a few last week, but other than that… not much. So you might see some pretty-local-girl photos in the coming days and weeks.

Talking of local, I also want to get some more of my photos hanging  in nearby cafes and cinemas, or galleries.

And finally, in each and every Tuesday Photogasm, there will be lots of juicy photos: ones I’ve taken in the past week, or shots I’ve dug up from the archives. Enjoy!

Note: Some of these haven’t made it to Flickr yet. Consider them an ‘exclusive’. Also, in the bird photos, are those crows, or something else?

(This one came out really red for some reason… not sure why. It’s over-exposed I think, and not perfectly-sharp. Not that I’m complaining… it’s cool! The leaves in the top right are almost the right colour, incidentally.)

This last one is the first of my ‘50mm landscapes’ — an entirely new concept for me. Landscapes… but with a telephoto lens. Makes things feel more… compressed? Compact? More detail, less negative space. Incredibly hard to take too… but I think this photo proves that the concept works, so I’ll be taking some more!

And that’s this week’s Photogasm.

You probably gathered from yesterday’s 13 of 52, that the photographic pickings are pretty slim at the moment.

It’s grey, windy, horrible — there’s about two hours of good daylight if I’m lucky, which makes photo-shootin’ pretty hard. I’m reduced to internal and low-light stuff now, unless the clouds clear and we get some nice, clear, wintry afternoons in the following weeks. But that’s OK — I haven’t done any night-time photography in ages, and trying to get the most out of overcast afternoons is my forte! (By virtue of living in overcast England…) That doesn’t mean the results are very good mind you — it just means that you get something rather than nothing. But you can see the photos in a little bit and decide for yourself.

Today, just to ram a nail in the coffin no doubt, it pissed down. Real rain — not the horizontal kind that we usually get. Just WHOOMPF, bouncing off roofs and roads and cars. The thundering pitter-patter that drowns out music and scares the cat. But who cares! Vertical rain meant I could get my camera and umbrella and go for a walk!

So in the name of art, and wanting to stretch myself a little, I give you ‘Catching Rain’. A series of images depicting England under the veil of cloud and assault of rain. If I’ve done my job right, you should feel like you’re being gently hit by soft, snow-like rain as you look at the following photos.

As always, hover over a photo to see my notes.

(That table is where I shot the pumpkin-on-face photos, incidentally)

(Look at the red and green droplets of water clinging to the branch! Depends what’s in the background. Cute!)

Which one looks better…? I’m actually torn between them. Both look great. Let’s just pretend there are two Vespas and this here is a diptych of them both…!