Doubletake
by Nigel Hargreaves
I am planning to make this a regular contribution to Skylight. I do a similar column
for the Lancia Motor Club’s Viva Lancia publication and, in the same vein, it is
not necessarily about photography.
As the person who used to edit Skylight when it was an old fashioned magazine, I
would like to say how pleased I am with the result of the current electronic version.
I know how difficult it all is, and Ray and Marie are doing a cracking job.
I gave it up because I was using some very old software I inherited from a company
I bought in 1997 – and sold in 2000! Furthermore, it only works on Windows 98, and
the computer I was using was getting very unreliable. I remember one evening putting
the finishing touches to an issue when the computer crashed and I lost the lot!
3 o’clock the following morning I had done it all again.
Sure enough, that computer has now died, but I have bought a cheap version of Adobe
Pagemaker called Serif Page Plus (£70 instead of £700), and it works pretty well,
if not really up to the professional standard of the proper job.
As, also, the person who won the colour prints one year, and the person who won
the black and white print of the year, I am embarrassed to be languishing at 10th
this year. I don’t quite know why, except that those now at the top do seem to manage
to find subjects I can’t. I’m a simple soul - really a landscape photographer –
and landscapes just aren’t de rigueur these days. I had thought about packing it
in, but I’ve just printed off a couple of gooduns, so I’ll see what I can turn out
during the summer.
My great passion is travelling on the Continent, and most of my photographic work
is done in France and Italy. I try to make at least 6 trips a year, and have already
been twice in 2009. Unfortunately on both of these trips the light was as flat as
a pancake, although it was dry. However, I was snapping a ship’s propeller outside
a Tourist Information centre in St Vaast when the shutter went off accidentally
as I composed the picture. As it happened a yellow France Telecom van went by at
that moment, and I finished up with a great shot. Wait and see.
Shaft of light in Turin church
I thought I might mention that the shaft of light picture (seen here) which got
me a 9 and a half, was taken in a church in Turin. I had gone there last July to
meet up with a very old Australian friend, John, who used to live there, and who
went back down under in 1979. He was visiting for a world architectural conference,
being as he is now a Sydney property developer. John suggested I took a picture
of him in the shaft of light, so I have to own up to not really being the author
of the shot. I even used his Pentax because I only had my compact Panasonic with
me.
Cartoon by Charles Adams
It was only later that he emailed to tell me that the idea had come from a cartoon
by Charles Adams, the creator of the Adams family TV show.
By the way, I called the shot “Genesis Chapter 1 verse 5”, but I wonder how many
know that passage contains the “let there be light” quote. Not that I am in any
way a religious cove – I asked a churchgoing friend of mine.
So all in all not really my work at all. Will I be drummed out of the Club?
STOP PRESS. Well at least it didn’t win the print of the year competition
That’s all for now folks. Hope you enjoyed this bit of nonsense. Editors permitting
I will cobble together something for the next issue.