Alasdair Watson

The first of well, I don’t know how many (until I think you lot will probably be bored) shots from White Mischief, a club night put on by a friend of mine where I took many, many pictures.

This is Mademoiselle Fifi, one of the burlesque performers that was on. You’ll see more of her. (While I think of it, can I just check: is there anyone reading this that’s going to be freaked out at the sight of a little (and really, it is just a little) blood? I’m not willing to place pictures under a cut in this blog, so if I get objections, I’ll have to think about skipping one of my planned pics.)

This short has not been altered for colour except as part of the general process of adjusting the RAW file – the blue is what I got from the available light and the natural adjustments I made. I have a black and white version of the same shot on Flickr – I genuinely can’t pick between the two, so I’ve gone with blogging this one, just because I think it’s more my usual style, but I’d love to know which other people prefer.

One from the archives – I clearly meant to blog this, as it’s been sitting public on my flickr account for months, but I just never got around to it. So, here’s a huge lump of some crystal or other, from the Natural History Museum. Not perfect – the crystal isn’t quite pin-sharp – but it’ll do for on-line, even if it wouldn’t hold up in print.

I was so close to titling this “OMG Racecar!” but I suspect that the shelf life of a daft lj meme is even shorter than a normal pop culture reference.

One of these trees is not like the others. Another from the lights exhibition at The Pool of London last month. I don’t really have a lot to say about this one – I’m a city kid, and one of my earliest memories is of watching The Triffids, so I regard trees with a certain healthy suspicion. But I liked this one.

A fountain at Greyfriars, near St Pauls. Or, three strange beasts emerging from concrete, only to be caged by these strange arcing bars…

One of the first photos I took that a number of my nearest and dearest expressed the admiration of was this one, Light Of Knowledge. This, then is my attempt to refine the shot a bit, with the addition of a couple of years practice, and a rather better camera. I’ve deliberately excluded any people from this shot, where the pervious versions contained humans. I’d be interested to know what you think of the change.

I went out last night with some friends, with the intent to spend all night wandering about London. Sadly, I am a big jessie, and packed it in it time to get the last tube. Nevertheless, I got a few photos – in fact, I actually went out with a specific idea of what I wanted to do with the night – produce a series of photos of “London through the looking glass” – images of a spectral city, heightened and unreal.

I’ll be spacing the photos I took on that trip out, because they’re all going to be cross-processed, like this one, and I don’t want to bore you all by repeating the same trick for a week.