This has been a strange week. Illness, recovery, grappling with new photo software and reaching a milestone. It's all going to be rather rushed.
A fair part of the week has been spent dealing with the (to be coy) tummy upset that struck on 7 March, my daughter's birthday (again, bother it). The bug proved to be persistent debilitating and disturbing, once again keeping me from the office, if not completely from work, for three days—it has been the third virus I have had inter months and I get the impression this has been a tough winter for a lot of people in that way.
Added to this, I have been moving forward with a decision—and here it gets a bit nerdy—to use different software for managing and editing my photos. Apple is abandoning the software it brought out some years ago for those who want to go deeper with cataloguing their photos and tweaking them than is possible in the well-known iPhoto application. The company has recently announced—after months, no years, of keeping its loyal customers in the dark—that it is introducing something simply called Photos, which may well turn out to be super-wonderful in time, but which in the short term is not sufficiently fully featured to satisfy either enthusiasts (such as, ahem, moi ) or (well, we can but dream) professionals. A strange decision and disappointing for those of us who have been kept hanging around waiting for a much-needed update for their Aperture software, which is excellent and still usable, but going progressively brown at the edges. So, while the media and most Apple fans are beginning to lust after the new Apple Watch and the simply gorgeous looking new Macbook laptop, a relatively small number of all the photographers in the world are feeling rather (no, make that highly) disgruntled and jumping ship to other companies for their software needs.
The market leader in this field is Adobe, with Lightroom for cataloguing and more basic editing and—the oh-my-goodness-it's-powerful—Photoshop for complicated edits and a multitude of digital trickery and manipulation. The learning curve is considerable, but I am now an Adobe user, so there, and ya boo to the folks in Cupertino California, at least in the matter of photography.
Getting to grips with all of this and feeling weak, poorly and sorry for myself means a delay in getting this latest bunch of photos to you. I have not until the last couple of days felt like picking up a camera, so ere are a couple more Evangelists from the archives before we get to the new shots. Thank you for your patience and here are the photos...
A fair part of the week has been spent dealing with the (to be coy) tummy upset that struck on 7 March, my daughter's birthday (again, bother it). The bug proved to be persistent debilitating and disturbing, once again keeping me from the office, if not completely from work, for three days—it has been the third virus I have had inter months and I get the impression this has been a tough winter for a lot of people in that way.
Added to this, I have been moving forward with a decision—and here it gets a bit nerdy—to use different software for managing and editing my photos. Apple is abandoning the software it brought out some years ago for those who want to go deeper with cataloguing their photos and tweaking them than is possible in the well-known iPhoto application. The company has recently announced—after months, no years, of keeping its loyal customers in the dark—that it is introducing something simply called Photos, which may well turn out to be super-wonderful in time, but which in the short term is not sufficiently fully featured to satisfy either enthusiasts (such as, ahem, moi ) or (well, we can but dream) professionals. A strange decision and disappointing for those of us who have been kept hanging around waiting for a much-needed update for their Aperture software, which is excellent and still usable, but going progressively brown at the edges. So, while the media and most Apple fans are beginning to lust after the new Apple Watch and the simply gorgeous looking new Macbook laptop, a relatively small number of all the photographers in the world are feeling rather (no, make that highly) disgruntled and jumping ship to other companies for their software needs.
The market leader in this field is Adobe, with Lightroom for cataloguing and more basic editing and—the oh-my-goodness-it's-powerful—Photoshop for complicated edits and a multitude of digital trickery and manipulation. The learning curve is considerable, but I am now an Adobe user, so there, and ya boo to the folks in Cupertino California, at least in the matter of photography.
Getting to grips with all of this and feeling weak, poorly and sorry for myself means a delay in getting this latest bunch of photos to you. I have not until the last couple of days felt like picking up a camera, so ere are a couple more Evangelists from the archives before we get to the new shots. Thank you for your patience and here are the photos...
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| 9 MARCH 2015 St Mark the Evangelist with his symbol, the winged lion, as shown on the wonderful pulpit in the Elisabethkirche in Marburg, Germany. The lion is a symbol of courage and monarchy, but there also may be a reference to Christ's resurrection, because lions have in the past been thought to sleep with their eyes open (thus in a half-state between sleep—itself s figure of death—and wakefulness). |
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| 10 MARCH 2015 St Matthew with his symbol, an angel. This is also from Marburg. The angel possible represents the Saint's inspiration in writing his Gospel, as in the 1602 painting by Caravaggio, The Inspiration of Saint Matthew. |
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| 11 MARCH 2015 A view up through some tangled trees by the Thames in Twickenham. Taken on my first walk after falling ill and rather mirroring my mood of fogginess and frustration. I was with my daughter and we were snapping away with our cameras. When I showed this shot to her, she said it was like tangled neural connections, which was exactly what the branches had suggested to me in the first place. |
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| 12 MARCH 2015 Back to work today and one my way to the office I took a detour past the church of St Mary le Bow. This most elaborate of all Wren's steeples is the glory of Cheapside and it was looking particularly beautiful in the mild hazy light of early (yes!) spring. My dear father, God rest him, was very proud that he had been born within the sound of Bow Bells and was, thus, a Cockney. |
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| 13 MARCH 2015 I was born in Queen Charlotte's Hospital in what is now Hammersmith on 13 March 1955. This number is engraved on the wall of 60 Gresham Street in the City of London, a short hop from St Mary le Bow, and the characters are about 3 feet high. They are the work of Lucy Haugh, who has also done work for us in St Olave Hart Street. |
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