The Scourge of the Pull-Up Window

Bjørn and Chloë‘s wedding was a truly fantastic day in the arms of friends and friends of friends, regrettable only for lasting a mere single day, not nearly enough under such circumstances.

Now, coming back from the mid-lands, we’ve stopped in London for the weekend, figuring it would be a waste to not lay down our hard-earned cash here, when we passed so close by. As it happens, I’m typing this on my brand-new 13” MacBook Pro, which marked a good ending to a great first day.

It’s been about a decade since we were last here, and to be honest it doesn’t stand particularly clear in either of our memories, which has made our visit that much more enjoyable, as we’ve already come to fall in love with this city (as we do with all the major cities we visit… With the exception of Rome. Sorry Romans).

To this day however, there are things that boggle the mind about England. First of all, what’s with the windows? Here we are, seventh floor of the otherwise very nice Hotel Russel, wonderful room, approaching what one might term Scandinavian in its design choices, and then the windows… I believe a large part of the US actually have the same twisted concept of windows; the kind you unlatch and then pull up?

Not only do they almost always require the strength of a well-built man to open (I struggle), but to counter that horrible design flaw, they’re about as air-tight closed as they are open. And not being air-tight, you’re right to question their sound-proofing; because there is none.

And this isn’t merely an issue restricted to the posh Hotel Russel, the otherwise fantastic Westfields Private Hotel we stayed at near Endon had the exact same windows (though with a second, newer layer of glass over it). It’s as if this country hasn’t figure out that windows serve purposes other than stopping the major elements from rushing in and killing people; that there are in fact some ‘subtlety’ to be ironed out of their 16th-century design.

To think of the heating cost and noise pollution a building the size of Hotel Russel could abolish, were they as meticulous with their windows as they (or their predecessors) have been with their marble-covered lobby.

If nothing else, it would save us from having to use ear plugs to sleep…

Je Ne Sais Quoi

Even as an experienced photography-enthusiast, people remain the hardest subject for me to capture. Not only do I rarely find myself in a situation where I’ve brought my DSLRLet’s face it, it isn’t really photography if it isn’t an SLR. In my case, it’s a Sony α100, usually with my favorite Sony 50mm ƒ/1.4 lens or the all-around Sigma 17-70mm ƒ/2.8-4.5. And every once in a while, when I can be bothered lugging it around, my Konica Minolta 75-300mm ƒ/4.5-5.6 ‘you can run, but you can’t hide’-lens., the social conditions have to be right as well, for me not to be considered borderline rude. And when the stars align, I pop out the camera and…

Well, we’re all a ‘cheese’‐conditioned lot, who look into the camera, smile and wait for the ‘I release you from this spell’‐click. Sure, you get people drunk, it’s another story—rabbit-ear-fingers, cheek licking and funny hats—but the basic premise remains the same; namely ‘acting’ for the camera. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it yields nice in-focus photos of happy people who’re willing to hold still long enough for me to adjust the focal length and take it up an f-stop or two to get the shot right.

But the ones I really want and the ones that stay with me, are the stolen ones. And I don’t mean paparazzi-style 1500mm gyro-mounted zoom objectives from a hilltop 2 clicks away and down into your garden where you frolic around in your birthday suit. Just friends and family being themselves, unaware of the CCD ready to reach out and snatch away their soul.

Those shots are elusive. Real life doesn’t stop while I switch from auto to manual focus; which in turn means that when they once in a blue moon do happen, they’re that much better. In fact, out-of-focus snapshots are often even better than cheese-shots by pure virtue of the intimacy of the subject(s).

When people know they’re being photographed they stiffen up somehow, suck in what can be sucked in, squint, go from ‘listening’ to ‘listening, intellectually’I do all of the above. I have checklists for it. And procedures. and lose that spark of the unexpected, the serendipitous. You could go so far as to say that they lose their ‘soul’. But that’s just silly, so I won’t do that.

Then again, maybe it’s really the other way around. By virtue of my understanding of the construction of ‘cheese-shots’; that little else is happening between the portrayed than what meets the eye, which is what makes even the most pedestrian stolen shot unexplored and unexplained territory.

What I’m driving at, is that in the end, when all else fails, a chimp will never give you the cheese-look and that’s why chimps always work.

Silencio

Ah, Rome.

Today I met a woman named porn. She was a cleaning lady in the airport…

Our room here, is with the exception of the window, a panic room. You’re not coming through the door, your best bet is the wall…

Ellipsis…

We’re doing well, send more money.

Love.

Salut de la France

Parisian Fountain

Just uploaded a batch of 16 more photos from Paris. I like this one in particular.

Invasion!

Sometimes the timing of events in the world is just impeccable. You may recall that Rikke and I were recently in Paris. While there I took a shot of three invaders, from the classic game, on a wall in Montmatre.

In nature it seemed like modern nerdcore streetart, but the care with which it looked to have been made was almost too intricate.

Then, a few days ago, the ever verbose Kotaku posted another invader, this one from Amsterdam! What the?!... And then today, yet another from Switzerland.

I had in other words stumbled onto a public secret, the work of an artist called Invader, present in cities across the world and with more flickr groups than you can shake a small colored tile at.

Well, now you know.

Little Palace Hotel

For our trip to Paris, I booked a room at the Little Palace Hotel.

It was a quite pleasant stay, though a bit on the expensive side for our tastes. The bathroom however almost made up for it. Unfortunately I don’t have any shots of the bathroom itself, but I did manage to cover the rest of the hotel quite well.

Check out the flickr set.