The art of seeing
Using whatever camera you have, an iPhone will do just nicely
This post is a real ramble of words and images and it came about as the result of a walk I took around my own town of Farnborough last week. I was struggling on this particular day, not feeling satisfied with how things have been going recently. I needed air, to stretch my leg muscles, to purge my mind of worry and pain. Above all else, I wanted to learn how to see my own town in fresh ways.
Photographing your local patch is strangely hard. I don’t know why. It could just be because Farnborough is not the most exciting of towns but it’s a safe, pleasant place to live. It does have history, a lot of major developments took place during the War years and since. It’s the home of aviation and we shall come to that in a bit.
First off; I love a good door. I know lots of photographers do. But why? None of us know, other than to say, well, they make great subjects. What more of an explanation do you need ;-)
A lot of doors nowadays, even really old historic ones like this that have survived for centuries, come with the now obligatory Covid warnings. Signs of the times, quite literally.
So on this particular day, all I had was my iPhone 11 and the fabulous app Halide 2. Later many images you see here were edited with Darkroom, kind of Halide’s companion app, developed by the same company at least.
Nearby I spotted this wonky fence and loved the abstract nature of this composition and the colours. You really can turn the least obvious subject into something that just somehow works. Composition is almost everything. I found myself looking for subjects that other people would just ignore. I think that is important, to be unique, occasionally bonkers - it s all worthwhile.
The above three images could make up some form of Triptych as they all follow an idea that I had. The museum has been closed for a long time now. I don’t think they have opened since the original lockdown in March. So as such, the only way you can view some of their exhibits is through the fence. I felt that this reflects on our own lives right now. We are seeing our world through restricted apertures. The final image of the three is a bit tongue in cheek but of course has nothing to do with the kind of testing that we’ve all read about all have had to go through with this year.
At this point in the issue you won’t be wrong in thinking that the pandemic is playing on my mind, it is and many of the photos are connected in some way. It is all relative.
I had walked for an hour by the time I reached this point and a couple of miles from where I had started.
Another set of 3 that feature different angles of just one building and it’s external features. The building in question is one of Farnborough’s wind tunnels. All taken with the iPhone.
Halide is a powerful app as it allows you to take control of things such as manual focus. Very handy when you want to take more control of your images.
Coming up next
Hope you’ve enjoyed today’s rather late in the evening photo ramble? Over the next couple of weeks, so long as the tier system allows, I shall be exploring more areas to see what I can find.
I have also found some great archive photos from way back, including some of my music photos I shot in the early noughties. I will fish them out and tell you about those heady days at some point…
Just in case I don’t get the time to write before the year is out - Have a great Christmas and do be careful guys. Stay safe!
Have you read John Berger?
Hi Mary, thanks for stopping by. I’ve not read John Berger, no, any particular book? Or substack?