iPhone 13 Mini

[degrub]

Nice !

[Rob C]

Thanks, I’m getting quite some mileage from this yacht club location. Today, though, it's been pouring, and as cold as it gets - or so I feel - but numerical, it’ll be a lot colder before spring shows its pretty face again!

Rob

[Rob C]

Storm, as in gathering.

[degrub]

Interesting shot. Just curious, do you know what that rack is used for ?

[Rob C]

Interesting shot. Just curious, do you know what that rack is used for ?

Yes, they stack various types of small hulls or boards on it for transportation, sometimes, or just temporary storage.

[KLaban]

Went to an event last night alongside several thousand others. We were there for a couple of hours, everyone shooting images and video on fones (sic). Didn't see another camera.

Felt like a stranger in a strange world.

[Rob C]

I wish that I had been more realistic in my own life, especially at the end of the career. If I’d accepted that I’d had a good run, achieved many of my objectives, and had just settled back and enjoyed life with Ann at the level I could, then I would have saved one helluva lot of money swapping from one goddam film format to another and then back and forth again, just trying to find the best route via which to make better use of my time in stock. Interesting just how easily photography giveth then taketh back that which it gave, without one really noticing until too late.

Yep, with nothing but the Internet as visual window, an iPhone is more than enough; very much more than enough.

Time has left many whales beached. I saw a video today, an interview with Anna Wintour, about her moving aside - and above? - as editor of the Vogues. Not a whale, but I saw a lot of racing to avoid confronting reality. At least, that’s what I thought that I saw.

[Rob C]

That sinking feeling that something's not quite right.

[degrub]

ahhhhh, my life in a dingy !

[Rob C]

ahhhhh, my life in a dingy !

If I have nothing more pressing to do, then it becomes all too easy to share that sentiment you’ve just expressed! Frankly, avoiding those empty moments is why photography takes up so much of my time.

Watching yet another video about Tatsuo Suzuki makes me wish I lived in Tokyo: so much activity, so many people rushing from here to there… absolutely the opposite of where I live. I think he must be the photographer I most admire in the genre of street: it doesn’t matter that some of it is made using models, because at the end of it all, what matters the most is the chemistry that makes the finished image. Just being able to put it all together is success enough. Fuji must have been nuts. Oh well, many of us are.

All that said, Tokyo might be fun for a month, but from a permanent perspective, I kinda wish it had been possible to settle in Rome during the 50s/60s: all those movies being made; the Via Veneto alive and swinging every night with stars being naughty or just imprudent. What a city it was. It even gave my website its name. 

[degrub]

did some of my best bay fishing in a dingy ! 

[Rob C]

Bad for your eyes, darling.

[Rob C]

From a time when cars were designed to allow you to park, years before parking aids became a tacit admission of design flaws.

Just to prove, as it were, that things can improve without getting any better.

[degrub]

Like it a lot !
Full manual steering to boot !
Do you know what the conical object is on the hood ?

[Rob C]

Like it a lot !
Full manual steering to boot !
Do you know what the conical object is on the hood ?

Yes, it's the external rear view mirror.

We used to drill a hole on each wing, rustproof it and put in the mirror, hoping we had the right distance. There was also a normal mirror inside the cabin, of course. If you could find extra long, three-section Motorola aerials, finding a way of attaching them to the rear of the car was cool, too, and only one had to be connected to the radio. We all wanted fishtails, but British cars weren't made that way... you can blame it all on Hollywood and Rock & Roll. Wannabe ain't nuttin' new!

[KLaban]

Yes, it's the external rear view mirror.

We used to drill a hole on each wing, rustproof it and put in the mirror, hoping we had the right distance. There was also a normal mirror inside the cabin, of course. If you could find extra long, three-section Motorola aerials, finding a way of attaching them to the rear of the car was cool, too, and only one had to be connected to the radio. We all wanted fishtails, but British cars weren't made that way... you can blame it all on Hollywood and Rock & Roll. Wannabe ain't nuttin' new!

I must have been about 11 years old, playing football on the green outside our house with my mates when we were gobsmacked by what we thought was an American car coming up the road. Imagine my excitement when it turned into my driveway and out popped my mum and dad. As it turned out not American car at all, but a Vauxhall Cresta in pink over white with wings. Sadly it rusted away within a few years.

[Rob C]

I must have been about 11 years old, playing football on the green outside our house with my mates when we were gobsmacked by what we thought was an American car coming up the road. Imagine my excitement when it turned into my driveway and out popped my mum and dad. As it turned out not American car at all, but a Vauxhall Cresta in pink over white with wings. Sadly it rusted away within a few years.

Remember them well, and the Velox too; also transatlantic in hope, the Ford Zodiac and Zephyr… Don’t mention rust! Within three years of buying my brand, spanking new ‘74 Humber Sceptre (vinyl roof!), I was painting the sills black. My first proper car was a ‘59 Ford Popular (mini version of the Consul) and surprisingly, was of very thick metal and never gave me rust, even after five years. That went for an Imp, bought because Ann’s mum had one of the very first of them (people raced them at Ingliston), and it came as a bit of a shock to discover that Rootes, in their wisdom, had detuned the Coventry Climax engines that had made them so attractive in the first place. Oh well, at least one could transport a roll of Colorama background paper in them.

I remember that one of the versions of Sunbeam had a tiny suggestion of fins, but I’m not sure of the year.

With the US cars, I liked the fins on the ‘59 Coup de Ville best, and also the very different, more horizontal cat’s eyes that graced one of the Chevrolet Impalas. They more or less grew out sideways from the centreline of the trunk. Ann and I were in Amalfi (during our ‘57 Rome holiday) and I remember leaning over a small harbour railing with one of the Chrysler fin tails parked nearby, in the care of an African American. I was so envious! It was emotionally a very mixed trip: Roman camera shops all had stacks of Rolleiflexes for sale at low prices, but even those I couldn’t afford at the time. I tried to get my mother, who was living in Rome at the time, to spring for one, but she was too smart for me! Just as well: I can imagine the tragedy awaiting me and the camera at UK customs! You couldn’t find them new in the UK because there were post-war quotas… in reality, I wouldn’t have been able to buy one even if they had been available. ;-(

[degrub]

Ever see the Studebaker Hawk ?
Grandmother had a '58 V8 and loved to pile all the grandkids in the back seat and go screaming across the swamps of Louisiana on those long bridges.

https://studebakermuseum.org/1958-studebaker-hawks/

[KLaban]

We are currently binge watching the whole seven series of Madmen and loving every moment of it, particularly the fashion, the women and the cars. By the time I started in advertising in the 70s much had changed, the agencies were inhabited by long haired cool dudes like me!
;-)

[Rob C]

Ever see the Studebaker Hawk ?
Grandmother had a '58 V8 and loved to pile all the grandkids in the back seat and go screaming across the swamps of Louisiana on those long bridges.

https://studebakermuseum.org/1958-studebaker-hawks/

No, Studebaker wasn't such a common US brand during my years as kid in a post-war India. My recollection of the brand is that the cars looked as if they could be driven from the front and also the back; a sort of two-way look. I had to spend some years in a boarding school about 8000 ft up in the Nilgiris, and I remember that somebody we thought was the governor of that part of India was chauffeured around in a Lincoln Capri in what, to me now, seems to have been painted in metallic red. It must have been between ‘49 and ‘52, as I was liberated and left that school the following year, so not sure metallics had arrived yet.


Another fairly common car at that time was the DeSoto; the belief, shared by us car kids but probably wrongly, was that it was a Chrysler brand only sold as export. There were some Hudson Hornets around (similar to the much later Jaguar Mk 10: pregnant cigars, both) but mostly Fords and Chevrolets, with a few big Buick Eights for added flavour. Pontiacs all had about seven chrome bands going down the middle of the hood… they looked heavy, even then. The British cars there were all pre-war models; it was very difficult to get new ones in the UK for quite some time after that event. I suppose the thing to remember about India in those days, just before and after Independence in ‘47, is that it was a country of massive extremes of wealth and poverty. I guess that the wealthy Indians preferred large Americana; new Rolls-Royces were hard to source, but lots of old ones existed.