Moss Lane School

An event that I look forward to every year is the Moss Lane School Fair. Moss Lane is the local school that my daughter goes to and son will in September - not to miss youngest son out who will be there in 4 years time! It's great to be able to give something back to the school for the wonderful education they give the children of Godalming. This years theme was Medieval and the sun seemed to bring out more people than ever before. As we'll have at least one of our kids at the school for the next 7 years I have a few more Moss Lane fairs to look forward too....

There are some great pictures from the fair, predominantly of kids from the school and I'm looking forward to handing them over to the school. I've posted a couple of images, one of my daughter and her best friends and one of a parent braving the medieval stocks! I'd love to post more but without school or parent permission I'm unable to do this.

Kit.....

I arrived back from Liverpool yesterday evening to find a box waiting for me in the lounge. In the box was a Canon EOS 5D MKII, though not a suprise I was delighted to see that it had arrived before a busy weekend. There's a great debate raging in the photography world regarding the importance of kit, digital v film, post processing etc. The underlying argument being that a good photographer can use any photography equipement as the skill is capturing 'the decisive moment' (Henri Cartier-Bresson) and composing the images correctly. For me creating great images is absolutely about capturing the decisive moment and composing brilliantly but I don't dismiss the argument that kit can help. I hate using flash and will avoid using it unless I really, really have to. Shooting weddings with 'standard' camera bodies and lenses without using flash would be virtually imposible - having fast lenses that can shoot f1.2 / f1.4 immediatley gives the photographer benefit in low light situations. Couple that with ISO 6400 that the 5D MK II delivers, I'm hoping that I'll never need to use flash again!! The MKII also comes with 21m pixels and video which though not the most important feature will be fun to try out.

Blue Eye...

This image of the London Eye was taken on a night shoot around the South Bank and Westminster. Through a post processing adjustment called 'invert' a black night is transformed to a strong blue backdrop to make a striking image . On first view it looks like a misty dawn in London.

Inspirations...

Robert Capa is one of my photography hero's, he was responsible for capturing some of the greatest images of the the last century.

The 6th of June 1944 saw possibly the most significant event of the 20th century - D Day, the allies landing on the Normandy beaches. The most memorable images from that day were taken by Robert Capa - the greatest ever war photographer and one of my sources of inspiration. At 22 Capa photographed the Spanish Civil War and captured on of the most iconic and controversial images in photographic history 'The Falling Soldier'. Capa's story is remarkable and best told through his memoir of Wold War II 'Slightly out of Focus'. On the 6th June 1944 he landed on Omaha Beach with the first wave of American soldiers, camera not gun in hand. In 'Slightly out of Focus' he commented prior to boarding the landing craft:

"What is the difference between the war correspondent and any other man in uniform. The war correspondent gets more drinks, more girls, better pay and greater freedom than the soldier, but that at this stage of the game, having the freedom to choose his spot and being allowed to be a coward and not be executed for it is his torture."

Yet with that choice he still went where no other photographer did, and documented the memorable images of that day. Seven days after the invasion Capa found out that whilst drying the negatives an over exited dark room assistant had turned on too much heat and the emulsion had melted. Out of one hundred and six images taken that day only eight images were salvaged.

Capa was killed on 25th may 1954 in China, stepping on a land mine in what was to become the Vietnam War.

These two images are striking and show Capa at the heart of the action living his own adage that "If the pictures are not good enough, it's because you're not close enough'