Posts from Supercargo

Visual exhaustion? Camera block?

nobody@ipernity.com (Supercargo) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 12:52:26 +0000

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Not sure what to call my recent state, but after a summer of intense photo activity (and not all of the pictures posted yet by any means) I found myself starting September with a feeling that I was exhausted with so much looking. This was particularly unfortunate for my May-time resolution to submit a new picture every day to the Sverige Suede Sweden group. I was doing quite well with that too, up until the middle of August.

I'd thought to pace myself by posting pictures taken and posted to Ipernity in earlier Septembers, but I found to my surprise that I haven't actually posted, or even taken many photos in September in previous years. (At least, not since the Digital Age when I got my first digital camera.)

I wonder if that means I normally get camera block at this time of year? Never thought of it before. I wonder if you've had this experience?

Anyway, after limping along for a while, I decided - rather than risk breaking myself - to take a complete break from using the camera and let my eyes rest. It seems to have helped.

Last week I started an album here (Sweden 365) of all the photos I've posted to the Sverige Suede Sweden group so far (78 at time of writing).

Travelling man

nobody@ipernity.com (Supercargo) — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 15:28:32 +0000

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Dear All,

Having made various promises about being social on Ipernity (http://www.ipernity.com/blog/supercargo/165241), circumstances have confounded me. I'm travelling in England at the moment, and despite having a fine, new (very nearly) state of the art netbook (http://www.ipernity.com/blog/supercargo/165917), the available technlogy in Britain to connect to the Internet has been less than satisfactory.

Here's a tip - if you want to buy a pay-as-you-go mobile internet connection in Britain, DON'T buy T-Mobile. Or if you do, get someone in the shop where you buy it to install it on your computer, because otherwise you risk finding yourself, like me, forced to make expensive mobile telephone calls to rings of automated answering messages round and around till you can find a human being to talk to. Then, if you are really lucky, it might be someone who speaks English in an accent you understand and who can actually help you with your problem.

But I don't want to complain. Really!

I've been here a week now, around in London, to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition among other places, and down to my home town (Brighton). A walk along the sea front in the face of a warm, pre-storm wind brought back happy childhood memories. Brighton beach (and indeed Hove next door) is made up of shingle - hundreds of thousands of small stones. Brighton tourist authority still has its publicity photos taken from far enough away so it looks at first sight like the beaches are sand!

I've met up with old friends and long-lost relatives, and I'm off to see my mother in Northampton later this week and down to Salisbury in Wiltshire tomorrow to visit the cathedral there. Some photos I hope to complement my recent pictures made in the Cathedral at Skara.

I've also been on the look-out for photos in England that I can reasonably add to the Sverige, Suede, Sweden group. I had planned to add a new photo there every day of the week for a year and I was managing quite well until I came to England and ran into the technical problems I mentioned above. Plus some others I can't blame T-Mobile for. Still, with the help of Léa d'Ipernity (Big THANKS, Léa! :-) ) I seem to have a functioning work-around now. So, I'm catching up ...

Last night - amazingly - the BBC broadcast a Swedish language TV film based on the Henning Mankell detective books about Kurt Wallander and Ystad. I snapped that and have added two pictures to the Sverige, Suede, Sweden group for yesterday and today. More Sweden-in-England pictures to come!

Well, enough of this rambling.

Cheerio for now!

John (aka Supercargo)

Photoshop or Gimp?

nobody@ipernity.com (Supercargo) — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 07:33:16 +0000

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I have recently become the owner of an ultra portable netbook. I'm going to be taking it with me in order (I hope) to keep in touch while I'm travelling in England and around Sweden in the coming year. The screen image doesn't seem to have a great deal of colour depth - so i am not planning to use it to do a lot of photo editing, but I shall want to do some - so what programme to use?

Normally, I use Photoshop and normally I don't do much in the way of tweaking the pictures I take. Mostly I do some cropping, some contrast adjustments, some colour adjustments and I alter the size of the photos down to approximately 96dpi for Creative Commons licensed pictures.

Photoshop is expensive to run (legally) on another machine, so I thought I'd try Gimp, which is open source image editing and image creating software available from the GNU Image Manipulation Project here: http://www.gimp.org

So far I've not tested Gimp extensively, but the tests I have run simulate the sort of things I think I'm most likely to use the software for. Of the pics I've used Gimp for, I've posted three pictures to one of my blogs and one picture here to Ipernity.Now I've published these four, spliced with Photoshop processed versions of the same pictures.

See what you think!

On being sociable at Ipernity

nobody@ipernity.com (Supercargo) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 12:09:02 +0000

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Dear fellow Ipernauts!

About a month ago I made the decision to try to be more sociable on this site. I joined Ipernity from the F-site-that-shall-not-be-named during the great censorship controversy of 2006, and I've not regretted it. Although I've built up a small network of people I like to think of as close neighbours, I've not made great efforts to use Ipernity as a social site. This summer I decided to try to change my ways.

My decision is linked with others: I am exploring other social sites (Facebook, Twitter, Friend Feed). and I've started blogging about my experiences - I'll add links here to those blogs in time.

Added to this, though, I've recently met a few different people, new on Ipernity, who seem to be asking about the site partly in terms of its social networking capacity. (I'm thinking in particular of Busterkeaton's blog entry ipernity versus flickr - he used the forbidden word! - and Albtraum's blog entry Netiquette.) Trying to answer them, I found myself thinking more about Ipernity as a social networking site.

Previously, what I've done here in terms of being sociable is to try to visit everyone who visits me, comment on a picture or two on their site, leave a message in their guestbook, favourite photos I really like. Occasonally I managed to visit some of my neighbours, and sometimes I browsed my favourites. But I have often not been on Ipernity for more than an hour or so, once a week or even once a month, so doing any of this has not been so regular.

As part of my new effort to be more sociable, from the middle of June, I have started a project to post one photo every day for a year to the Sverige, Suede, Sweden group. This means I have to visit Ipernity at least once every 24 hours, and I hope that will make me spend a bit of time here, so I can visit other people's sites even without being invited. If not every day, then at least every few days.

About the same time that I started posting to the Sverige group, one of my neighbours, Wickerl invited me to be a moderator on the No Limit group. I don't think I've ever posted anything to this group as I've not worked out what it's for yet. (Unless it just wants to break a record? Anyone who can enlighten me?) Anyway, just this group seems very difficult for me to fit into my scheme of things. I am trying, though, to post to the other groups I'm a member of, and to visit them more frequently too.

I've seen that there have been physical Ipernity meetings where photographers on Ipernity get together in a place and take a photographic expedition. I'd be interested to join in such a meeting sometime. I don't know whether there is any central planning for these meetings though. Can anyone advise?

Well, I written far more than usual here and probably far more than necessary, so I'll close here. If you've read through this, thanks. Please feel free to drop me a line, write in my guest book or visit my gallery! (Och du får gärna skriva på svenska om du känna dig säkrare på det språk!)

I hope to meet you soon, at least virtually!

John

Wet in Waxholm

nobody@ipernity.com (Supercargo) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 09:44:55 +0000

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That's a bit unfair as a title. It was only wet on the first day!

The first weekend in June, my wife and I spent a long weekend with our friend Efva visiting her home town, Vaxholm (also called Waxholm) on an island in Stockholm's northern archipelago. The day we arrived (to the left here) it was a rainy, wet and very off-season town that met us, but the weather improved progressively. (Much as it is doing now, today, out of my window.)

On the Friday we spent time visitng Vaxholmen Citadel, once the lock on the sea approaches to Stockholm. An imposing fortress built and rebuilt over about 400 years (In fact construction was still in progress. I think they're still converting it for civilian use. it was only decommissioned a few years ago.) A fine museum if you are into military history.

Saturday 6th June was Swedish National Day and I have one set of pictures and a bit of film that I'm still working on. I'll post them here soon. Sunday, the sun was bright, though the wind was still chill. We took a walk around the town - very small and in places very picturesque. In the afternoon: a boat trip on the veteran steam ship Norrskär (to the right here) to an island called Grind.

We travelled home again to Gothenburg on Monday 8th, stopping off in Stockholm for a walk round Djurgården island and a visit to the Thiel Gallery - fine collection of early 20th century Scandinavian art including the largest collection of pictures by Edvard Munch I've seen outside Oslo.

Many of the pictures from Vaxholm are in this album:

http://www.ipernity.com/doc/16669/album/132800

The Other Long Day!

nobody@ipernity.com (Supercargo) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 15:03:13 +0000

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There are four streets in Gothenburg called "Long Street" (Långgatan) and the second of these, Andra Långatan (= Second Long Street but also Other Long Street) held it's third annual street party and open day on Saturday 30th May.

It was a sunny day and attracted many people. I took a lot of photos deliberately sighting and focusing, but some also that I shot from the hip - literally. Even among these there were a few interesting results. In the end, I have uploaded 67 photos. I hope there is something here to please many different people!

The album is here.

Rörö at Easter

nobody@ipernity.com (Supercargo) — Tue, 19 May 2009 08:56:54 +0000

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Once more, a bit delayed with these pictures. (I'm only uploading them exactly now because of this competition I've got myself involved in. "Sveriges svenskaste jobb" - Sweden's most Swedish job.) Still, some of them are quite nice I think.

On Easter Monday Agneta and I took the public transport ferry out to Rörö. Our company was our friend Staffan from Östersund, down in Gothenburg to see relatives. Rörö is the northernmost inhabited island of Gothenburg's northern archipelago. (At least, the northernmost island with a settlement - I suppose there might be summer cottages on rocks further out.)

It was a still, sometimes sunny, sometimes slightly misty day. Very enjoyable. Walked on the rolling rocks of the western beach and saw how the grass and bushes (I think they were juniper) root as near as they can to the water's edge between the stones of the beach, but grow away from the shore, driven up the beach and inland in the face of storm winds and sea. We also visited the Englishmen under their cairn. The story is that the cairn covers the bodies of two shipwrecked and drowned English sailors (and that their ghosts haunt the spot, of course!)

Sweden's most Swedish job competition

nobody@ipernity.com (Supercargo) — Mon, 18 May 2009 07:51:49 +0000

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I'm taking part in a competition to find an Internet 'face' and 'voice' for the Swedish Youth Hostel Association (STF). It all started on Saturday and has been a crazy weekend. Now I've uploaded a voice recording of my first blog entry on the matter.

You can listen by clicking on the playback device here. You can also read the text at the same time by going here.

The first two videos (one in Swedish, one in English) are embedded in the blog at the above link, but you can also see them on YouTube here (Swedish) or here (English).

Your support would be very welcome! If ou want, you can also follow me on Twitter where I am also "TheSupercargo". I'll come back hjere soon with the Twitter URL.

The STF page that explains it all (in swedish) is here:

http://www.svenskaturistforeningen.se/sv/ssj/sverigessvenskastejobb/

Swedish Byways

nobody@ipernity.com (Supercargo) — Fri, 08 May 2009 13:49:57 +0000

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I've just uploaded a voice recording which is now to be found on my home page - not quite what I had intended but OK. I am trying out different options for including sound recordings on my home page www.thesupercargo.com and was thinking of buying space on a dedicated podcast storage server, when I remembered that Ipernity has this audio upload function with the possibility to embed on other Internet pages. So i thouhgt I'd try it out. And see! It works beautifully (at least, on Explorer - have to test it in some other web browsers too.) Anyway, in the meantime, dear fellow Iperniteans, you now have the pleasure (ahem) of hearing the sound of my voice as well as seeing my pictures.

To see the text that I'm reading, please go to this URL: http://www.thesupercargo.com/swbyway.html

Happy Easter to all at Ipernity!

nobody@ipernity.com (Supercargo) — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 11:21:32 +0000

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Just to wish all my contacts, everyone in my extended network and all at Ipernity a very Happy Easter!

Love from the Supercargo.

Song of a Sad Piano

nobody@ipernity.com (Supercargo) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 15:02:52 +0000

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Some people down the street were moving or renovating and turned this sad piano out into the street with the rest of their garbage. I imagine the piano had stood for years in an attic where rain water had dripped on the lid, causing the lacquer to flake and the wood of the keys and the hammers to warp. Inside, though, the piano strings were still wound tight, tensed, ready to play, but the hammers no longer reach them. The piano was silenced.

We don't live in such a bad neighbourhood: the next day the owners came by with a truck and took the piano away along with all the other junk that had been standing around.

These photos have been in my camera for a month. Finally I get them processed and posted!

Prora, Rügen: Kraft durch Freude

nobody@ipernity.com (Supercargo) — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 12:18:08 +0000

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Prora, on the Baltic island of Rügen, was not quite the world's first holiday camp, but it was the first large-scale camp in concept. Designed by the Nazis to be an integral part of their Kraft durch Freude (KdF - Strength through Joy) workers' indoctrination programme, Prora was to be capable of housing 20,000 people at any one time, all in rooms with a view of the sea. Each room would have piped radio, centrally controlled.

Today some parts of the sprawling building are used for a museum, other parts are occupied by a youth hostel, or rented out to local entrepreneurs. At the time this film records, most of the structure that was still standing was empty.

I visited the camp with a group of history teacher colleagues in February/March of 2008 and have been looking ever since for some way to use the photos and film I made at the time. The place was very empty, the beach very beautiful and the buildings rather prosaic and almost melancholy in their uncompleted dilapidation. At the same time the story of Prora, the reason for its existence, was intimidating, conjuring up associations in my mind with army camps and concentration camps, the Gulag Archipelago and 1984.

This music by Endlos seemed to fit the mood of the images I had - a mixture of electronic and rock with a driving rhythm and a minimalist quality. To me it suggests progress through time. Things change, it's true, but only slightly, and combinations of notes come back just as events repeat themselves. Children play, waves break, seagulls and people walk the strand. What are politics and human social engineering in the face of this?

All film and photographs, including photos of archive images, were made in or near Prora on the German Baltic island of Rügen between 29th February and 2nd March 2008. The sound of the sea at Prora was recorded at the same time. Music is by Endlos

http://www.endlos-toene.de/endlos.php

from "renne durch dein leben", track 2 on the album "kein grund, zufrieden zu sein". http://www.endlos-toene.de/endlos.php?link=tontraeger.html&sublink=tontraeger/kgzzs.html

For more information on Prora visit the virtual museum of the Prora camp: dokumentations zentrum prora. Go to this page: http://www.proradok.de/index.html Follow the links from here links to the German or English language sites.

The above is an abbreviated version of my Internet site's page on the film here: www.thesupercargo.com/pror_rug.html

Winter in Sundsvall

nobody@ipernity.com (Supercargo) — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 15:14:32 +0000

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My wife and I spent last week in Sundsvall in the north-east of Sweden. We lived in Sundsvall for 10 years in the 90s so it was fun to go back and visit our old haunts though a lot has changed since we moved away. We stayed with our friends Lena ("northofsweden" on these pages and on Fl*ckr) and Peter and their daughters. Saw lots of other friends and former colleagues. It was also nice to get a real slice of winter snow after months of Gothenburg rain (and occasional frost). If you are interested to read more about this visit, please come and look at my Commonplace Book.

One Misty Frosty Morning

nobody@ipernity.com (Supercargo) — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 10:13:27 +0000

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At 8 o'clock this morning with a heavy mist and a hard frost I thought it would turn out to be another cold grey day. Two hours later the sun was out and the views from my windows had changed dramatically!

A Cold Journey to the South

nobody@ipernity.com (Supercargo) — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 11:45:13 +0000

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It was cold but very still on the sea in Gothenburg's southern archipelago on 5th January. We used public transport - took the tram out to Saltholmen and then the ferry (part of the public transport system) to travel all the way out to Donsö and Styrsjö, and back. So cold on deck that we could only manage to be up there 10 minutes at a time.

The sun was low and bathed everything in a warm yellow light - so strong it turned the white-painted sides of the ferry yellow-ochre. But though it looked warm, it gave no warmth and the sea was so cold it was on the cusp of freezing. The ferry's passing churned up the sea immediately around, but the water seemed thick, like syrup, and the broken water quickly settled back into a bright reflective swell that caught the images of the surrounding islands or passing ships and distorted them as in distorting mirrors.

The moon was high and bright, the sun shone down by the horizon. Out there, beyond the outermost islands, the sea was so flat and reflective the islands, silhouetted, floated on their own reflections above the surface of the water and the horizon itself was erased. A magical journey.

Hard frost on the Ramberg

nobody@ipernity.com (Supercargo) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 10:39:46 +0000

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On 29th December, after several grey days and relatively mild weather, the temperature dropped, though the fog remained. It lifted about midday and the sun shone out on a world transformed by hoarfrost. I grabbed my camera and took a short walk on our local 'mountain', Ramberg. Every innocent straw of grass or birch twig sported a new coat of ice crystal prickles, and the oak leaves still clinging to their branches were turned into cactuses by the frost. On the ground, the crystals had not built thorns but frosted the leaf litter and made each leaf and fern frond stand out distinctly, saying: "Here I am. Take my picture!" So I did.

The skys were clear overhead, but clouded still over the city to the south. An atmospheric haze hung threateningly over Masthugget, but the industrial landscape west towards the sea and the harbour was softened and brightened by the frost, touched by magic.

Photo Safari to Marstrand

nobody@ipernity.com (Supercargo) — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 11:08:08 +0000

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Marstrand is a little island north west of Gothenburg. It has a castle and a harbour and is a summer sailing destination for many yachting obsessives. Off-season, it is worth a visit with a camera for windblown rocks and wind-whipped seas.

And the fun just kept on ...

nobody@ipernity.com (Supercargo) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 14:52:26 +0000

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So this is the second what is probably going to be three - or even four - entries around my half-century. I left the story with the day itself, and this week's upload of photos are all related to what happened fairly soon after, which was my annual trip home to Blighty to see my Mum and various other relatives, and inflict myself on my sister and her partner for a few days. They took it very well, considering they'd only just seen me in Stockholm a few days before.

Most of the uploaded pics are from London. I didn't take any when I was with Mum, though the cautionary notice was seen on the coach south from Northampton. I was actually supposed to be on a train, but there was a problem on the line and we had to take a coach to Milton Keynes. It didn't bother me, but some of my travelling companions were vocal in their pissed-off-ness. I was just fascinated by the grammar.

In London, my principle task (apart from being a nuisance to my sister - which is, of course, a fraternal duty) was to visit a lot of book shops and museums in order to gather information and ideas for the book I'm supposed to be writing. (I have taken a sabbatical year away from teaching in order to do this.) But I did manage to wander around with my camera doing some touristy things.

As you can see. Hampstead Heath, the Tower of London, Trafalgar Square, Whitehall, Charing Cross Road, the new Globe Theatre.

I was also shown around the allotment ...

My final day, I got taken for a post-birthday meal at Veeraswamy's restaurant on Regent Street. (Veeraswamy's is one of the first Indian restaurants in London - Veeraswamys would probably say the FIRST Indian restaurant in London. Opened in 1926.) So I was waiting to meet up with my hosts who were coming from their various places of work. I had an hour to kill and I had my camera and there was Piccadilly Circus ... I said long ago I wouldn't do any more street photography because I am uncomfortable about taking pictures of complete strangers without their knowledge. But, my resolve broke. So many people, so many cameras pointing in so many directions. So much temptation.

Home again. I just managed to get this lot set up to publish when I caught a cold. Desperate to recover from that, everything else got shelved. On 4th September my wife and I set off for Spain from where we have just returned, bearing a whole lot more pictures. So I finally publish this, and say watch this space - there's more still to come!

The Cyclops, here below, and I say "Cheerio for now!"

Half-a-century

nobody@ipernity.com (Supercargo) — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 17:07:40 +0000

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My 50th birthday, though anticipated without much enthusiasm, has been very enjoyable so far. This has been in large part thanks to my dear wife who knew I wasn't looking forward to it, and took steps to make it a positive experience. (I would otherwise have curled into a foetal ball and waited till it passed.)

The weekend before, we went up to Stockholm together. Our first visit together to the capital in a very long time. Well over 10 years.

On the 25th July, after a long train journey, there was a stroll through evening streets, a shooting star to wish on (left), and a surprise when my sister and her partner showed up to spend the weekend with us.

On the Saturday, which turned out to be Stockholm's hottest day for 20 years, we walked around the old town and then took a boat out to Björkö ('birch island') to visit the Viking museum of Birka. Once upon a time Birka was the largest city in this part of Scandinavia - 700 people at its largest - about a thousand years ago. Now the island has a permanent population of less than 10. I took photos, but it was hot and I was not an enthusiastic photographer. Besides, the sun was so bright the contrast in most of the resulting pictures is ridiculous.

But on Sunday, when we explored Söder, I had more joy of my camera.

Back in Gothenburg, on Wednesday 30th we went out to Gunnebo slott a manor house built for a rich Anglo-Swedish merchant (and namesake) John Hall in the 1790s. They have a restaurant - a very good one which serves food made, as far as possible, from the products of the gardens - and in the summer an open-air theatre. Excellent, front row seats, and a few photos to prove it.

The week ended with a quick visit to Gothenburg's Sjöfartsmuseet (Seafaring museum) which also has a little aquarium. The light was poor and the fish were quick, but I managed a few pics even so, and some of the poorer quality photos polished up very nicely in Photoshop (though I say it myself as shouldn't).

And the celebrations went on. I just got back from England. Haven't had time to look at the pictures I took there yet, so there's another installment of this yet to come.

Modern sculpture in the open air ..

nobody@ipernity.com (Supercargo) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:31:35 +0000

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... at the Pilane iron-age grave field on the island of Tjörn on the coast of Bohusland.

Twenty-eight new pictures uploaded today.