Our Wood

Fall at least in my area is almost coming to an end with the leaves having changed colour dropping on to the wood like a vast carpet of vivid colour so I thought I'd share with you this week this picture of Wild Berries taken in my local woodland.

As well, the acorns are falling which is great news for Squirrels, but not so good if you get several underneath of your feet  which happened to me on Tuesday when I was out walking!

New compact camera

As you might know photography and me were film based with things around that being the backbone of this blog but for a long period I have been without a pocket or compact camera as my old trusty Halina I had from the eighties died.

Recently I got this discontinued Canon Powershot A470 digital compact with a 3.4 times optical zoom that covers the 35mm film equivalent of  38 through 105mm which is handy from modest wide angle through short telephoto and has captures images at 7.1mp using its sensor.
Although it's program only, it takes good images aided by the much better than it needs to be optical zoom lens and accurate auto focus.It uses regular AA cells that are easy to find too.
I also got a Sandisk 16gb SD card for it to store images to as they're cheaper now.

The end of a photographic era

One thing that cannot be ignored is how changes in the photographic market have effected traditional photo retail with this weeks announced closure of Jessop's of Leicester who have branches here in North Staffordshire and also in Wolverhampton that I regularly visit ever since first getting into photography all those years ago.

The thing is a combination of many people using smartphones as cameras and the ascendancy of digital photography has cut the repeat custom as today a person can get a phone or even a digital camera and apart from maybe getting another lens, that is it.

In the past of course we came in week after week to buy film, hand films for processing, get enlargements done and while doing that we saw things that may expand on what we were taking.

You developed a relationship with the staff who tended to be experienced amateur photographers too so they were able to advise you on problems or where an idea may not work so well. 

In Jessop's case they even run photo courses for people who wished to up their photography featuring many experts.

R.I.P Jessops

Christmas 2012

I thought I'd use my Canon digital camera I've had for a few years to take a picture of something I Had for Christmas this year.
Part of what I mentioned  a little about in March shows in that I like the sorts of things I had as that junior boy for Christmas and this year like a few others it is that I had the Beano comic's annual whose regular weekly comics I read past my eighteenth birthday my folks buying them for me.

Fun at Weston

This was a picture I took recently using the Canon compact digital camera on a trip to Weston Super Mare enjoying myself looking at buildings and visiting the kinds of places I loved as a boy.
Just doing that felt good for me.

Pictures and stuff

What might be called vintage photographs around childhood do interest me such as this well observed shot. 
Sometimes though I do feel like talking more about myself which is in more than one respect I remain a very much child and very much in and of that world never at one with the world of grown ups never feeling even really teenage when my peers were.
That was always the thing, being the 'youngest' member of the group by years even if chronologically I may of been one of the older needing to be treated more as their younger kid brother.
Thus I'm still the the junior school boy in his jersey and grey shorts who while being happy to play and share with girls having the odd interest more in common with them never really wanted to be one, happy to be called and treated as the boy I am.

The Beach Boys: The SMiLE Sessions

Well after all the gloom of the last few weeks which is still rumbling around us, I felt like talking about something that would make some of us SMILE, Namely the fact this Beach Boys album or perhaps more accurately "The SMiLE Sessions" have after 44 years finally come out in an authorized form.

There's that much and sometimes one-sided stuff written about smile that I don't feel like going into it but in essence it was a projected follow up to the Pet Sounds album of 1966 involving collaboration between Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks dashing off fragments of music and lyric and stitching them together as a kind of audio collage a process that would involve many fragments per song.

The year 1966 it has to be remembered was one of the most important in popular music with many lyrical, musical and technological innovations all coming together revolutionizing what was thought of as low class transitory music for kids and making it into high art with such albums as Blonde on Blonde, Revolver, Paisley Sage Rosemary & Thyme and singles like Good Vibrations.

Good Vibrations really was the stating point for this album - listen closely and you'll here all the edits and overdubs - with Brian Wilson in the studio conducting session musicians making all the backing fragments ready for the beach Boys to return from touring to add their voices.

At the same time there was much interest in what was going on with even a news team filming Brian at work at Leonard Bernstein's bequest and yet these sessions never officially saw the light of day until now.

The first thing to say about the sessions and what has been issued is it's as far away from fun in the sun car and beach songs as you could ever get very few number lend themselves to the concerts you had back then with instrumentals like Holidays and even Wind Chimes as beautiful as they are to hear anew in their original form being too challenging for the concert audience of the day.

This lead to some friction between the touring band and Brian and was a bigger issue for Capitol Records who required a record to sell with potential big hits on it and Brian launched a royalties dispute with Capitol to upping the stakes.

Brian also had his demons - it's testimony to how he is today he's happy to even talk about this period - and the competition between him and the Beatles, the disagreements in the band over the session material, the fractiousness relationship with Capitol took a heavy toll on his nerviness and increasingly erratic state of mind and so the the project got put on the high shelf 90% completed with dozens of snippets left.

Parts were re-used, songs featured in other albums Surfs Up from the 1971 album of the same name, Cabin-Essense on 20/20 and re-recordings on that half hearted replacement Smily Smile like Vege-Tables and Wind Chimes and Heroes and Villains (a favourite).

I bought the two lp version with bonus tracks on side 4 because for me at least I don't have a use nay a need to be able to re-assemble any number of fragments to make my own version as Brian's version based on approximation of 2004 he did as a solo project is good enough for me.

It's also true I appreciate greatly the physical product so something as tactile as an lp sleeve with a beautiful colour art book and easy to read lyrics is appreciated and what's more this 180 gram lp pressed here in Europe sounds superb with no one click or pop.

I also find the small gap when you change discs over helps giving you time to take in the compositional delights.