Life, Death, and photography

For me the news this week includes two rather tragic events

The first involves the newly announced pregnancy of Kate Middleton, wife to the future King of England, and whose child will also be King or Queen of England in the future.

She was admitted to hospital suffering from morning sickness, unpleasant perhaps but not uncommon for pregnant women the world over.
As a joke an Australian radio show called the hospital pretending to be the Queen and managed to get some personal information from one of the nurses on duty.

The tragedy of the situation only becomes clear a few days later when the hospital nurse who answered the call was found dead, apparently by suicide.

She was married with two children, just imagine how stupid, desperate, and lonely she must have felt, a joke in front of the whole world where she was an unwilling victim.

I'm sure the radio show hosts who pulled this prank are also devastated by this outcome, but does the fact they started this joke also make them responsible for this suicide?
As their boss is quoted as saying - no-one could reasonably foresee this outcome as a result of a pretty common bit of radio comedy.

The second tragic event has been all over the news in the photography world.

A man was pushed off the platform in a New York subway station by a homeless mentally ill person.

A professional photographer took this photograph just before the train hit and killed the person who had been pushed. The big debate is whether he should have taken a photograph or tried to save the man. The photographer claims he was trying to attract the attention of the train driver with the flash on his camera. What would you have done?

For me I would like to think I would have tried to help, but the reality is that this all happened in a space of about 20 seconds, and in the shock of the moment none of us can know for sure what they would or could have done. 

You can also question if the photographer should have submitted the photo to a newspaper, or if the newspaper should have published the photograph, especially with this headline

But in the end neither the photographer or the newspaper are responsible for this death, that was caused by the homeless person, or the lack of provision of a guard wall commonly seen in this type of rail system.

And remember too that if the man had pulled himself back onto the platform in time,  the photographer would be in with a chance for a best news photo of the year prize.

On a brighter note I am preparing some of my photographs for a small exhibition in one of the shop windows in the small town in the Netherlands where I live.  The lady who owns the shop has a running exhibition of local peoples art - some good, sometimes not so good. Interesting to see what reaction I get to the show.

I am planning a mix of colour and black and white photographs, some taken in England and some taken in the Netherlands - a little taster of the images below.

Posted with Blogsy

Go out more, take less photographs

I am a member of "Images" an English speaking photography club in Den Haag in the Netherlands.

The club meets every month but I only attend occasionally as it always seems to coincide with some work commitment.

Last week was the first meeting after the summer, just before the meeting the chairperson asked for some volunteers to talk about a favorite photographer and show a few of their pictures.
I chose to talk about Joe Cornish and just showed a few pages from his website and talked a bit about why I liked his pictures.

You can see his web site for your self here  http://www.joecornishgallery.co.uk/

I spent a few days with Joe and another photographer called Richard Childs last year in the Lake District. ( http://www.richardchildsphotography.co.uk/ )

They taught me to think a lot more carefully about what picture I was trying to take, and to not get caught by the digital disease of taking 100 photographs in the hope that one will turn out to be a real winner.

So now I mostly have my camera on a tripod if I am being serious, and I take far less photographs.
(Although I do currently have about 65,000 photographs on my computer, covering a lot years.)

I could do with a good clear up but when I try this I only manage to delete a few hundred each time before I get fed up with the process but this hardly makes a dent in the total.    

Yesterday I was in the house and I became aware of a lot of noise outside the house - this turned out to be a massive flock of birds - starlings I think - there must have been thousands in the flock and they landed on the nearby trees and roofs.

Birds on the roof

I have seen this before at a nearby nature site, Kinderdijk, when the flocks get bigger and bigger as night approaches, with groups of birds flying in to join the main flock.

The site is famous for its large number of windmills - which are used as is common in the Netherlands for pumping water rather than milling grain

 

On nearly going to the Olympics BUT WHERE ARE OUR TICKETS

We're off to the Olympics - or maybe not.... 

I spent two days working in London this week- I have never seen it so quiet, the tube is empty, the roads are clear, there are many helpful people to tell you how to get around.

I luckily saw Bradley Wiggins win the time trail gold medal - but only on a big screen as we walked away from a business meeting

This weekend we should be going to the velodrome to watch the track cycling - BUT WHERE ARE OUR TICKETS????

More than a year ago we bought tickets to go to the Olympic track cycling - from a web site company called Euroteamtickets, being outside the UK this seemed OK at the time - we paid and the money has long ago left our account.  Unfortunately no tickets have been delivered and the web site seems a total scam with the UK Police, Podium Police and finally the Norwegian Authorities (where the company is apparently based) all issuing warnings about fraud.

The excuses are getting better and better
- Can only deliver in London
- Tickets may be late can we meet you outside the event
- Podium police have shut the web site so we cannot tell you where we will meet you
and finally
- Norwegian police have confiscated your tickets from FedEx
     but still don't worry there is a court case on Monday to release the tickets - shame they are
for an event on Sunday

Still they have 20 hours left before the event - needless to say we have not gone to London (yet)

I am not too hopeful now..... I think this is as close as I will get - looking down from the city jet back to Rotterdam

I also saw the site where they are secretly (apart from a few million people who have spotted it) practising the closing ceremony -just look out for the (censored) it will be really great.

Again not too much time for photos this week - i bought a new lens last week so still checking it out ready for holidays later in August.

I did get another shot out of the plane - you have to look closely - these are some of the off-shore wind turbines which are helping to rescue the planet from global warming - personally I cannot believe these contribute more energy than they consume to get built - a kind of negative perpetual motion