Ben Dobson | Photography blog » macro

notebook scrawly wittering

Ben — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:11:37 +0000

In a vain attempt to organise myself and refine my approach to photographing things, I decided to keep a notebook, which I will henceforth refer to in a snooty manner as my
journal.

In my journal, I use something called a pen to write down words, it’s all very primitive and makes me feel like some sort of Victorian toff, what is all posh and that. With my whizzy fountain pen swooshing across the page, I imagine myself penning some sort of literary classic. My thoughts flow in a raging torrent onto the page, insightful and full of witticisms, recorded for future generations to marvel at, and learn from.

In practice, instead of creating a literary masterpiece, I’m literally scrawling gibberish, as my words spew out onto the page like sick out of a drunk cat, with smudged ink everywhere and ineptly scribbled diagrams that wouldn’t look out of place gracing the pages of a workbook of a five year old.

Exaggeration? I wish.

By writing down in advance what I hope to achieve, and how I will approach a shoot, I hope to be able to improve my output by setting goals and working towards them instead of frenziedly firing off frame after frame and hoping something good results.

Will this work? Who knows, but it can’t hurt to try. Plus I get to cut things out and stick them in, I always wanted a scrap book when I was a youngard.

Crash!

Ben — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 20:11:48 +0000

Why do a lot of photographers think anyone will be interested in a photograph of flowers? It’s a flower, what’s the big deal? I find these things interminably boring myself.

Ha! IN YOUR FACE!

See how I confound expectations by saying I don’t like pictures of flowers, then post a picture, of flowers!

It’s like that film Crash where that actor Matt Dillon plays a caring son of an invalid father, and we like him. But then, oh no! It turns out he is a horrible racist, we definately don’t like him. Then worse – he sexually assaults a woman – we hate him! Then suddenly, BAM! The storytelling confounds expectation, as Matt Dillon’s character risks his life and helps the very same woman he assualted when she is involved in a car crash, so how can he be a bad person, we should like him again surely?

No, because he’s a racist, and a disgusting pervert. I’ll shut up now. Still at least we are treated like total morons by the writer and director. To think they won an Oscar too, reedickularse.

After my foray into critiquing films that have been out for ages and no-one really cars about, I’m back on safer ground posting photos. This was taken with a 50mm lens reversed onto the camera body with a reversing ring, focused manually at f/22 and shot with flash.

ooooh.

Macro, Blue Peter style

Ben — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 14:49:49 +0000

Another huge gap since the last update. This time because the wonderful folks at Sky took my broadband down and then took 87 days to get me reconnected. 87 days. Eighty… Seven…. days… Anyway here are some pictures I made last November using this home made macro lens, blue peter style:

Grooves on a record:

Some speaker wire

A bit of my hair

Some nylon string

Grains of sugar

The edge of a door key:

how exciting.

Flowers, woo.

Ben — Sat, 04 Mar 2006 20:09:51 +0000

Continuing my theme of taking pictures of stuff other than just cars and dogs, here’s a little selection for your viewing pleasure. Macro photography remains firmly on my list of things that nerdy photographers do, since I’m not a nerdy photographer I don’t usually do it, I must have been feeling the call of the macro lens today though.