Brian on photoing photographers

Brian has been photographing photographers for a long time now, and when you do something for a long time, your ideas around the subject tend to evolve:

At first, my photos of photographers were just photos of photographers. But soon I was subdividing that huge category, into photographers taking selfies, photographers looking at the photos they’d taken. Recently I have found myself making further subdivisions, often of photos I have been taking for some while but which I had not been putting into a separate category in my head, if you get my meaning. So, above, in addition to all the photos of photographer’s camera screens, we see contributions to the photographers taking selfies category (subdivision: couples taking selfies), to the photographers looking at the photos they have just taken category, but also a good addition to the bald blokes taking photos category, and two for the photographers with interesting hats category.

Those photos mentioned above are here. And (much like Brian, as it turns out) I was immediately drawn to this one:

Nov29Photogs12

That’s near professional composition right there. The guy with the phone has spotted something in the London dusk, but then Brian has added the extra elements of photographer and phone screen and made it very special.

Great shot. The only thing missing is an interesting hat.

Ched Evans Oldham deal off

Three short quotes:

BBC Sport:

Oldham Athletic have decided against signing convicted rapist Ched Evans following threats to the club’s “staff and their families”.

Comment on twitter:

Me, earlier this week:

The problem comes when their minority point of view is immediately assumed to be the correct and rightful standpoint simply because of their loud and threatening behaviour.

What a shocker.

UPDATE:

The Irony Is Strong In This One:

Utterly disgusting.

“The paper tells the full story”

And boy oh boy, do I want to read the full story on this one?
Yes. Yes, I do.

It’s the synopsis of what’s in today’s Manx Independent newspaper: and, as ever, there are a number of cutting edge issues affecting the Isle of Man:

Three established ferry companies are interested in providing services to the Isle of Man, the Manx Independent reports this week.

Given that the ferry is the Island’s lifeline, this is important.
There’s some light-hearted road news:

After the Christmas and New Year lull, there seem to be roadworks everywhere. We ask why.

And some vexing questions about why remedial work “down north” is falling short:

We also look at Laxey, which is undergoing some regeneration work and point out some areas that could do with improvement but which which won’t be touched.

None of that really matters though, because then there’s this gem:

The main story on page one is about a company director who went missing, has been found and has appeared in court. The mystery of his disappearance was the front page lead story two weeks ago.

He was found by police crouching in his bedroom. The paper tells the full story.

The paper had better, because there are a lot of gaps in that story. Who is he? Which company is he a director of? Why did he go missing? Why did he appear in court? Why hadn’t the police considered looking for him at his home previously? Look, I’m not a police officer experienced in searching for missing people – I recognise that – but I’d have to say that “at home” would probably have been the first place I’d have tried looking. It would certainly have been in the top three.

But then there’s quite a bit of random detail too: “He was found by police crouching in his bedroom.” As if the body position was important in some way. Not sitting or kneeling, certainly not lying, but then nor was he standing or even slightly stooped – this was definitely a crouch.
But then there’s me presuming that it was him and not the police who were doing the crouching: and when you read it again, it’s actually not absolutely clear if that is the case.
Perhaps that’s what’s got me intrigued.

This story alone is a whole lot more provocative than their usual round-up of the newspaper content.
If this marks a new, more interesting approach to the Manx Independent’s synopses for 2015, then I for one fully welcome it.

The best bits of a bad job

I’m not going to get into the Charlie Hebdo thing. I don’t have the time or careful articulation to express my feelings accurately. I even had to call it a “thing” to avoid using a term that might be considered inappropriate by one side or the other. And therein lies the problem: people are taking sides.

An incident which should perhaps have the power to be either divisive or uniting seems (disappointingly, but maybe unsurprisingly), being used exclusively as the former, rather than the latter. An opportunity (albeit a difficult one) missed?

There are about a million (I counted and read them all) different “thinkpieces” about the whole thing already, but here are a couple of them which I found most interesting, with a nice passage from each:

From Jacques Rousseau, on free speech:

…it’s a glib, and oftentimes lazy, inference to draw that it’s “religion” that causes these things. I would think it rare that religion per se makes you homicidal, but that instead, folk who are capable of such things will find religious inspiration for doing them.

If your religion allows you to be led to such barbarism, there’s barbarism in you to be exploited. That doesn’t mean that religion X (or ideology X) cannot be a causal factor in barbarism more often than religion or ideology Y.

and:

Other issues are perhaps not as easy or unambiguous as we might prefer. For starters, the right to express a view doesn’t always mean it’s a good idea to do so.

Yes. Just like Julius and his “Shoot the Boer” song:

What does it achieve when role models sing Dubul’ iBunu?
And yet these individuals make a conscious decision to do these things. Why? Where is the value in that?

It’s more than just the lack of any positive worth in these actions that depresses me. It’s the fact that these things are divisive and harmful and yet they are completely avoidable. Julius Malema, Councillor Greyling et al. simply need to make better decisions.
So, rather allow Malema to sing Dubul’ iBunu and then rejoice when he chooses not to.

And then this, on the possible deeper motives for the attack, from Informed Comment:

Al-Qaeda wants to mentally colonize French Muslims, but faces a wall of disinterest. But if it can get non-Muslim French to be beastly to ethnic Muslims on the grounds that they are Muslims, it can start creating a common political identity around grievance against discrimination.

Most of France will also remain committed to French values of the Rights of Man, which they invented. But an insular and hateful minority will take advantage of this deliberately polarizing atrocity to push their own agenda. Europe’s future depends on whether the Marine LePens are allowed to become mainstream. Extremism thrives on other people’s extremism, and is inexorably defeated by tolerance.

It’s an interesting theory. And already, there are reports of “grenades being thrown into a mosque” near Paris.

So what can we take from this?

1. The preservation of the right to free speech is imperative, and
2. One cannot and should not conflate the views and actions of (religious) fundamentalists and extremists with those of everyday followers of religion.

But then there’s this sort of thing:

…rendering those two ideals completely and immediately incompatible. (And angering me quite a lot, as an aside. I’m not about to depict Muhammad, but that’s only because I don’t see any value in doing so (see my wish for Julius above), and most certainly not because Farah says I’m not allowed to.)

So, here’s a third thing we kinda all knew anyway:

3. This isn’t going to be sorted out any time soon.

Clever Norwegian Airline ad

This is very nifty, especially if you are vexillologically inclined. A simple print ad, with prices and destinations highlighted as part of the airline’s national flag:the_flag_of_flags_aotw

Simple and effective, although comparing prices to distance traveled is (as ever with airlines’ fare structures, it seems to me) less straightforward.