Grand Emptiness

[See this picture at a larger size in the Empty Places section of the gallery.]

I'm starting to think I should have called this blog "Stray Light Foto(s that look better as prints, honest)" ... but, hey, I like this one even in its diminished state. It sort of looks like the desert, but this is in fact the seabed on the two mile walk out to Hilbre Island off the Wirral coast ... feels like a bit of an adventure going out there, in this landscape temporarily vacated by the water. Huge feeling of openness and space ... and hardly a soul to be seen on the blustery day I went out, except for the two lovely Polish lasses I met in the abandoned lifeboat station on Hilbre who shared their thermos of tea - cheers ladies!

Listening this week: the new Do Make Say Think LP - they were fantastic when my band played with them several years ago, and they seem to be continuing in their all-round greatness with this new record.

Unfettered Capitalism

[See this picture at a larger size in the gallery and the shop.]

As some of you might have already noticed, I've added a shop page to my site - and up now are a first few platinum / palladium prints. After a lot of experimenting I've decided to be very selective about which pictures I offer in platinum - partly because it's a lot of work making them (!!), but mostly as I think it's best to only do only those that really benefit from the particular look that pt/pd offers.

I'll be adding some more to the page over the weekend - I'm going to try and write a little background info for each picture I select as well.

Pynchon progress update:- there's a very fine chapter early on in Against the Day about photography around 1890/1900 - plates, pyrogallic, magnesium flash lamps, the lot - and there's a line ("redeeming light from the inertia of precious metals") that I keep coming back to as I play around with my tiny brown glass bottles of sodium chloropalladite...