Wai Kroo Tattoo Festival: Wat Bang Phra, Thailand
It’s been a case of going from the sublime to the ridiculous this week. I left the tranquility of Ko Samet and returned to Bangkok in order to photograph the annual Wai Kroo Tattoo Festival at Wat Bang Phra. Devotees gather at the Wat, about 90 km outside Bangkok, every year to pay respects to [...]
Catching up with e-mails and other news
Trawling through several hundred e-mails and over a thousand RSS news items has been a time-consuming task but I’m almost up to date now. I thought I’d share a small selection of things that caught my eye: After the recent closure of the PhotoShelter Collection, it seems that Digital Railroad is very likely to close. [...]
Hey Jude
Hey Dude, it’s the weekend. You should be having fun. Time for a quick check on the fun-o-meter and if your weekend is looking lack-lustre then it’s not too late to change your plans. See if you can get to Monday morning with something really satisfying to look back on.
Stephen Fry's Podgrams
I don’t think I’ve heard anything funnier for a long time than Stephen Fry talking about his loathing for dancing “I hate that slovenly mixture of sexual exhibitionism, strutting contempt and repellent narcissism that it involves” in the second of his recent podcasts, or “podgrams” as he uniquely calls them. So it was with great [...]
I adore Thé Adoré
There simply have not been enough tea-related posts on this blog of late! One of my long-term goals is to compile a book about tea. I have in mind a series of photos that follow the tea making process from the green slopes of northern India and China to the tea-drinking establishments of London, Harrogate [...]
RSPB Bird Watch
This weekend was the annual RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch and inspired by Nic’s annual report I decided to participate myself this year. In an hour our garden welcomed the following: Blackbirds: 2Blue Tits: 2Chaffinch: 2Collared Dove: 2Great Tit: 2Great Spotted Woodpecker: 1Long-tailed Tit: 2Robin: 3Starling: 1Woodpigeon: 2 Clearly the instinct to be part of a [...]
Crowded House Live at Bournemouth International Centre
I saw Crowded House in concert at Bournemouth last night. There are, in my experience, few things more uplifting than seeing your favourite band on stage. Fewer still, the number of things more uplifting than hearing music that’s become so much a part of your life being performed so expertly, so enthusiastically and with such [...]
Le Manoir
For a birthday present earlier in the year I received a voucher for lunch at Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons restaurant in Oxfordshire. We finally took the opportunity to go recently and I must say that it lived up to all expectations. Usually, the merest hint of unnecessary flamboyance or showy pretension is [...]
OK Commuter
It’s been a while. How are you? How have things been? Me? Oh, I’ve been pretty busy with one thing and another. Thanks for asking. Unfortunately, the .Mac web site, from which I’d hoped to see great things, has been experiencing “some speed issues in Europe”. I liked being able to update my site from [...]
Shibboleth
After a very pleasant lunch with young Tewfic on Friday, I took a leisurely ferry ride down the Thames to the Tate Modern to see the giant crack that has been made in the floor of the massive Turbine Hall. The crack forms an artwork, an installation by Doris Salcedo called “Shibboleth”. Now, whether or [...]
Genius of Photography
The BBC start airing a new series about Photography on BBC4 next week. ‘The Genius of Photography’ is a six-part series that looks at the history of the art. Programmes include a look at how Kodak brought photography to the mass market, Editorial photography, Travel, Documentary and Photography as Art. Nice to see the my [...]
Is the Tate Modern all that it's cracked up to be?
Not according to my friend Masher it’s not. And if Modern Art leaves you bewildered then the latest installation at Tate Modern is probably unlikely to bring you any further into the folds of the Modern Art community. After giant spiders, slides, white cubes and a massive solar installation, the Tate is, like The Jam, [...]
Geocaching
Armed with expert advice from Masher, I have finally taken the plunge and purchased a GPS unit. Until now, I’ve been a determined luddite on the subject of GPS, insisting that a map and compass is sufficient and that GPS really is one gadget too many. Then I remembered that there’s no such thing as [...]
