Alasdair Watson

I’ve spent a large part of the evening messing about with more of the photos from Dublin[1]. Mostly, I’ve spent the time kicking myself as I’ve come away from almost all of them thinking “If only I hadn’t cocked this detail or that detail up that’d be a really good shot”. One of them, I blew almost completely but I liked the whole idea far too much to abandon it. Had I the time and resources, I’d go back and re-shoot it, but I don’t so I shall put it on-line botched as it it, thus destroying what tiny shreds of photographic credibility I have.

Anyway, the point of this isn’t that I’m bad, it’s a) that I had a really relaxing and pleasant evening, and b) I’m struck (and pleasantly surprised) by how much more I’m shooting to capture an idea. Sometimes the idea is an abstract notion, sometimes it’s just a pretty image, but my shots are getting much more constructed. (And correspondingly more heavily post processed.) It feels like I’m actually starting to evolve something of a style[2]. Slowly, very bloody slowly, but I can see it moving on. At the moment, I’m at the stage of regurgitating my influences, trying for effect X or Y that I’ve seen other photographers produce, and sometimes I get there, and sometimes I don’t, but I feel like I’m starting to make progress again. Like I felt about writing nine or ten years back – I knew I hadn’t got to my own style yet, but I had some sense of where it would wind up. It’s the first time I’ve really felt like that about photography. Which isn’t to say I haven’t enjoyed it up to now, or anything, because god knows, there’s nothing like it, just that one of my problems was that I felt like I had no style or voice of my own. I still don’t think I have, but at least now, I feel like I know what direction I’m heading in – like I’ll get there at some point.

Which is nice.

[1] Yes, I know I’ve been back a week. I’m not fast, OK?
[2] “Oooh look, blue neon lights!” does not count as a style.

Saw “An Inconvenient Truth” at the weekend.

Everyone’s been saying “wow, this is a really important film”. It is. Go and see it. If you’re halfway aware of environmental issues, you’ll probably know just how fucked we are anyway, but still, go see it – it’s got some interesting trivia (but by no means trivial) items that are very sobering examples, and might be of use to you in trying to articulate how fucked we are. And issues aside it’s really quite interesting to see what kind of man Al Gore is, and to think about what we might have had, if Bush hadn’t stolen the white house.

If you’re not aware of environmental issues, then you absolutely have to see this movie. If you’re uncertain about anything to do with climate change, global warming, and what needs to be done or what can be done, then go. Now.

Yeah, I know: everyone you know who has seen the movie has said something like this. Fucking Kool-aid drinkers, the lot of us. Swayed by propaganda. Gore’s just pushing his angle, same as the other side of the debate does theirs.

If you are thinking thoughts like that, then I’d ask you to please leave the planet now via your preferred exit. The rest of us would like to survive the next fifty years or so, and you’re in the way.

Go and see the film.