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I took a burst of images, and then printed them sequentially all on the same sheet of paper to create this final image.

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River Avon, Bristol.

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Abandoned caravan, Bristol.

Starting today, lets see if I can post a photo every day for the longest streak possible.

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Closed until further notice.

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Having a good old relisten of this, part geniune enjoyment of the album, and part enjoying the pure nostalgia.

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I’m looking forward to making more mini prints using this thermal printer. I’m sure part of the reason I love it, is that it reminds me of the gameboy camera I had when I young (I wish I still had it), and those low resolution pixellated images. Plus these ones are self adhesive, so I can just stick them right in my scrapbook.

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I love this section of the podcast where Bob talks about his shyness, he really articulates that feeling of being on the periphery of things. But not through choice, just because you are far too shy to go up to someone and say hello.

Timestamped link here just in case case the embed doesn’t work.

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I made this gif from a series of photos, exporting it from procreate seems to be all or nothing when it comes to file size. It’s either a 30mb beast or when I select web ready, it’s <1mb.

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I’ve always been put off by HDR, I remember seeing a lot of really bad over processed photography back in the 2010s, when it seemed to be really popular. I’ve been to this spot under the M32 motorway a few times, and every time I come away with photos that aren’t quite right. Even on overcast days the contrast between the light coming through, and the shadows is too much. I find I’m having to drastically underexpose the photo to avoid completely blowing out the highlights. I was also shooting on my Fuji X100s which I love, but which doesn’t have tons and tons of dynamic range. My problem then is that the shadows slider is having to do a lot of the heavy lifting afterwards in Capture One, and it results in a lot of noise. This time I thought, why don’t I get over my fear of HDR, and give it a go. I bracketed the shots, I didn’t have a tripod so was trying to keep the camera as still as possible. Once I got home, I merged them all using Affinity, and even though I still had to pull up the shadows, the end result looked far cleaner than any of the single shot exposures. I’ve tried to keep some natural contrast in there to avoid it being completely washed out, but this has made me keen to try again. Below is the final photo and the bracketed exposures that I merged together.

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I’ve given the new National album The First Two Pages Of Frankenstein 5/6 listens so far and I’m really enjoying it. The Sufjan Stevens feature on the first track was a nice surprise. Between the band members I feel their network of connected artists is so massive, so there is almost no one that I could imagine is beyond the realm of possibility in getting them to collaborate (six degrees of separation for The National would be a fun game)

This long read in the New Yorker is great, it really goes into the details of the last few years of the band in the build up to recording the latest album.

Last fall, the National débuted a new piece of merchandise: a black zippered sweatshirt featuring the words “sad dads” in block letters. The band—which formed in 1999, in Brooklyn—was lampooning its reputation as a font of midlife ennui, the sort of rudderless melancholy that takes hold when a person realizes that the dusty hallmarks of American happiness (marriage, children, a job in an office) aren’t a guarantee against despair. For more than two decades, this has been the National’s grist: not the major devastations but the strange little ache that feels like a precondition to being human.