In an attempt to spice things up a little, I’m going to be podcasting a few blog entries — they’ll simply be an unabridged reading of the entry, possibly with a variety of retarded localised accents to make things interesting. I have no idea if it’ll work well or at all but I may as well give it a try — perhaps continue surfing the web while I read to you in the background? Forgive the vanity to your right… but I have to get my kicks somehow.

I can’t do a very good Italian accent, so don’t laugh! Fast forward to 3:40 if you want to just hear the ‘exciting’ bit with the shitty Italian accent, and a hint of Dan Brown-esque American storytelling…

Photographers have it easy compared to our painter comrades. We both deal in luminance and colour, tone, texture and saturation, but at the end of the day painters start with a blank canvas and nothing but the camera of their mind’s eye. Some painters will probably tell you that it makes their life easier, being able to create anything their imagination conjures up. Surely though, controlling the minuscule movements of mixing pigment and the brush itself is infinitely more difficult than raising the shutter on a camera. Then there are those that claim photography is harder — you can only work with what you’ve been given. There is some leeway of course: trickery of the eye and your ability to move props and pose models, but at the end of the day, that’s all you have: you can’t magic a dragon out of thin air.

Photography is all about working with what you’ve got. There is a small amount of knowledge that you need to know before you can operate a camera but we’re talking 3 or 4 simple equations — and the ability to push down a button. Point, and shoot. You can affect how much light enters the camera and that’s it. It’s because of this simplicity and the switch-over to digital cameras that we’re now swamped with thousands of photographers; you, your mother and her mother can be a photographer. It’s no surprise then that selling photos has also become a lot harder: there are more photos in circulation and thus it’s harder to be seen. You can still get lucky, but more than likely your only chance to make money today is as a stock or paparazzi photographer. Like almost every art form it’s one big labour of love: you pray that one day you’ll become the next Monet or Ansel Adams but chances are you won’t.  There are so few rich artists, it’s depressing.Whether it’s due to a lack of talent or saturation of the market I don’t know. What I do know is the one thought that courses through the mind of every person that’s made art their life-long dream: will I only be famous after I die?

To separate themselves from the pack, to stand out, artists try to be different. ‘Yet another photo of some daffodils’ isn’t quite as appealing as ‘Exploding daffodils in the bedroom of the woman that broke my heart’. Almost every photographer you’ve heard of or seen today will have been unique — that’s what it takes to not sink into the mire of boring, formulaic photographers, your voice forever unheard, your view of the world unseen.

It’s all about chasing the perfect photo. Like storm-chasers, train-spotters or groupies chasing the perfect tornado, rare train or celebrity photographers must try so, so hard to get the perfect photo.  Place yourself one centimeter to the left and you might ruin the entire photo. You might have to wait for a cloud to cover the sun to get the perfect light conditions, or even wait for the sun to be in the perfect position before you take the photo. A landscape could be completely average and nondescript at midday, but the most beautiful sight you’ve ever seen at 5pm as the sun begins to set.

Photographing people is another beast entirely: the merest flick at the corner of a girl’s lips might make or break a photo. A glint of sun refracting off her eye could change the meaning and the impact. Is she breathing in or out; are her muscles tensed or relaxed? Even the greatest photographers of all time might take thousands of photos of the same  setup — as the years go by, the ratio of good-to-bad photos will improve but you’re still searching for perfection, and sometimes that’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Fortunately I’m a landscape photographer. I’m quite good at portrait work, I just don’t have the experience — and being a good photographer takes a lot of experience. Landscapes don’t go anywhere: the sun continues to rise, the clouds roll on by — you can keep practicing and practicing, with landscapes. With people… it’s a little trickier. One day I’ll put in the hours and chain down one of my photogenic female friends, get the lights out and go to town! One day.

So there I was in Venice, up a clock tower. It was 3pm and sunny, not a cloud in the sky. Being the geek that I am, I phoned my dad and asked him what time the sun would set — 6pm, 3 hours away. Fine, I can wait 3 hours. I’ve got a book and a bottle of water. There are all sorts of pretty tourist girls swanning around that I can chat to, and take photos of (with their own cameras, of course!) Two hours pass, it starts to get dark, my pulse quickens. I dart around the tower, surveying how different Venice looks in the fading light, looking for the perfect angle for the perfect photo.

‘The tower will be closing in 10 minutes, please take the elevator back down.’

Shit. I smile and nod at the Italian, my mind quickly working through the available solutions: I wasn’t about to head back down the tower after waiting for two hours! It wasn’t a big tower, and there weren’t any obvious dark corners. I looked up and wondered if I could wedge myself inside the bell itself. Maybe in films… but not here in real life. I was out of time and only one option remained: climb out one of the windows and cling to the wall. They do it in films… they inch themselves along a thin ledge…

The Italian usher was slowly walking around the tower, shooing people into the elevator. I only had 30 seconds to decide — wuss out and waste two hours of my life, or… chase the photo. I jumped onto the windowsill and looked down — Shit — I turned around and inched backwards until my toes were on the ledge — Crap — I reach to the left and grab the edge of the next portal — Phew — I’m safe for now, but the pounding of my heart against the ancient brick wall would suggest I’m still in in a wee spot of bother. Finally, the sound of the descending elevator! I slide myself along the ledge, my feet now splayed like a ballet dancer’s and pull myself back inside.

There I am, all alone and king of the hill! I camped out for another hour, constantly assessing the landscape, sizing up the prey, waiting to strike. An hour later, I struck gold — a full moon! A total fluke, but completely deserved. I pulled out the camera, struck a pose not unlike a war-time sniper and… wait! A big ship too! Click. Bang!

That’s how I chased my perfect photo of Venice. It’s not a stereotypical view of Venice but I challenge you to find another like it.

It was getting cold and I had no food; I was out of water and thirsty. I packed up quickly and pushed the call button on the elevator. Nothing. I pushed it again. Still nothing. I looked out through a window and grinned in the darkness, wondering if it was possible.

To be continued…

Apparently artists need to be challenged. They need muses, they need inspiration. Without pushing boundaries an artist tends to wilt and wallow, churning out much of the same, day after day, year after year until… well, they die. Scant few become very, very famous, and the rest are forgotten.

So to combat that particular murky mire of artistic dullness, to stir things up, Abi (a talented friend of mine that paints and makes pretty dresses) and Sebastian (photographer and part-time purveyor of baked goods) will be doing a grand project entitled ‘52 Weeks‘.

There are very few rules to 52 Weeks — in fact the only real rule is that we must post one photo each every week for a year. In our case it will be every Monday from August 31st 2009 until whenever 52 Mondays have passed! Is that August 30th 2010? Somewhere around there.

We have no set theme and no limits on what we can submit, as long as it’s one photo, every week, every Monday. Our photos will be placed next to each other, perhaps with a little bit about the photo or what’s going on with our lives. We’ve also never met and live on opposite sides of the country, but might plan for some kind of ‘momentous meet-up’ (or ‘hideous break-up’ as the case may be) during the project.

The photos will be posted both to Flickr and to another blog I’ve set up: 52 Weeks by Abi & Sebastian. It has its own RSS feed so you won’t see my (or her) photos pop up on this feed or this page. If you’d rather follow it on Flickr, you’re more than welcome to — it will all be cross-linked together anyway.

Expect to see some kind of introductory statements from the both of us to pop up over the weekend. Now I’m going to go and work on some cheesy picture of us both together to serve as our ‘title image’… and also have a think about what the hell I’m going to do for Monday. Stay tuned — this could either be very, very good, or diabolical. Either way, it’ll be interesting.

There’s a nasty problem that afflicts most artists. Some would say it isn’t a problem, some would say it’s merely ‘perfectionism’ or something, but the fact remains: artists tend to be very critical of their own work. I don’t necessarily mean that they HATE everything they produce, though some surely do. I mean that the artist judges his work very heavy-handedly. A painter might hate a portrait simply because they got an ear slightly wrong. A photographer might hate a landscape for being just slightly skewed. A singer might think their performance was awful because they hit one wrong note.

But in all actuality, to the audience — those that look at the paintings or photos, those that listen to the singer — it’s still a beautiful piece of art.

What I’m trying to say is that for every single photo you see of mine on this blog or on Flickr, there are probably 10 others that are great, but not good enough in my opinion. But the sad thing is, history has shown that more often than not, it’s those hated paintings, those paintings that ‘aren’t quite good enough’, that become famous.

Because the artist’s viewpoint is heavily biased. It’s like… you can’t see the forest for the trees. You’re so immersed in your own art that you never really get to stand back and appreciate it. You get to enjoy my art more than I do. How lame is that?!

Anyway…

So, because these photos are probably good, even though I don’t think they’re PERFECT, I thought I would share them with you. Scroll through them, there should be something for everyone! The ‘Sebby Landscapes’ are towards the end, if you don’t like PEOPLE photos.

(Click for a slightly larger version of the blonde guitarist — she’s blonde, can’t you tell?!)

(You probably recognise this kid from the ‘peace’ photo I took of him. A whole lot cuter in this one, eh?)

(Painting with light and smoke! Just an experiment… turned out better than I thought it would be!)

(Aw! There’s a better portrait of her, but it’s not public… so this one will have to do.)

(From one of our ‘invigorating’ walks in the Faroes. From the same ’session’ as my ‘meet my Faroese hosts‘ post.)

And FINALLY, an over-exposed-but-deliciously-blue-and-cerulean-and-cyan landscape from the east coast of the Faroes. You’ll recognise this landscape from this Faroes post.

It’s funny how things go. I was reading something ‘on miracles’ recently — the general gist: we forget every moment that isn’t miraculous. Take this weekend for example — no less than five of my friends were in London, all for completely different reasons. We just… ended up there. All roads lead to London, or something. Most people would say ‘oh, what’re the chances?!?!’ but… think about it — think about all the times we haven’t all ended up in London. Are those miracles too? How about all the times we brushed our teeth at the same time, or watched a TV show?

It’s only special when observed. Miracles seem unlikely, but they’re just unexpected.

Sorry, that sounded a lot deeper in my head… it looks a bit trite down on paper. Ah well.

Wild weekend, anyway! Lots of walking, eating, and laying in bed. No sleeping though; I’m still not sleeping very well. Recently I replaced most of my bedding with really expensive Egyptian ‘300 thread count, long yarn’ cotton. I’d hoped it was something like that causing my quasi-insomnia… guess not. Turns out I didn’t sleep very well on a five-star super-deluxe mattress with an ‘OMG-this-is-so-lush’ (not my words) duvet. The breakfast though… the breakfast made up for the poor sleep. Seriously, check out a picture of the sitting room…

But it gets better — look at the ceiling above the sitting room…

Yeah… that ceiling is some 50 feet (15m) above you. I don’t think I’ve ever told you how much I love tall ceilings. There’s something about doors that are 15 feet high and fireplaces that you can walk under. Maybe it’s the being dwarfed that so appeals to me — a bit like the sensation when I see someone taller than me (very refreshing… and nice to not stick out quite so much…)

So I guess I owe you some bullet points, instead of some rambling thoughts from the weekend. Here goes.

• I finally got to wander around central London. Yeah… I live 30 minutes from the center of London, but I’ve never really got lost there. I used to traipse around it a bit when I was younger, with friends, but it’s not the same thing! I checked out all the monuments, and finally worked out how all the streets and parks connect around Leicester Square and Buckingham Palace. I had someone with me though, so I couldn’t get REALLY lost in the wending backstreets of old London… I must do that… soon.
• Finally, a five-star hotel… in LONDON! It’s not so impressive when almost every hotel in London is four- or five- star, but STILL! It was very, very posh. There was classical music genteelly oozing its way into the room when we entered. A card, written by hand by the manager, welcomed me to the hotel. There was even a little pouch of business cards with my name on them ‘Mr Sebastian Anthony, in residence, Threadneedles Hotel, direct dial number…’ – it was in the City of London, i.e. banking central. (Check the Google Maps imagery, so you get some idea of what the area looks like). As I said, I love big buildings.
• I saw Wicked… for the fourth time… Did you know there are now ‘premium tickets’? Or ‘more money than sense’ tickets, as the woman at the box office called them. £85! $130! Crazy shit, seriously. When I saw my first musical in the West End — ah, how fondly I remember thee! — it was only £40 for the top-top-top-mega-special tickets. That was only 10 years ago… — Wicked was great though. A black girl played Elphaba (Alexia Khadime) and she was awesome. Elphaba is classically a very souly part, kinda rocky (to contrast Glinda’s squeaky annoyingness), and damn did Alexia nail it. No one belts like a black woman, eh? The wizard aaaaan-aan-aand… I!
• The National Portrait Gallery is still very good. There are a lot of very good, free museums/galleries in the UK — the power of socialism, I guess — and the National Gallery (and its offspring) is probably the finest. The portrait gallery has some magnificent paintings, but more interestingly (at least for me), it also has some good photos. Only… I didn’t think the photographs were all that great… I was hoping to find inspiration, to improve my own portrait-shooting skills. No cigar. The paintings were probably more interesting and informative!

Darn, this was meant to be a short entry so I could catch up with other things. I have some photos (including a nice one of me naked, on a bed) coming up later today (52 Weeks), and tomorrow.