adetorrent; photography, lifestyle.

This year has come to an end. Before I go on, let me just take this opportunity to express my gratitude to whatever the mechanism is in existence that is responsible for the preservation of life. For indeed, I am incredibly grateful to be alive today. 2015 has not been a good year for so many, and, some people that were close to me have ceased to exist, but, I am pleased to be here. Reflecting on 2015 - what did I learn this year? Family is everything.  'Family' includes those very true friends too. Money is nothing. Well, I knew this before, but I was particularly reminded of it this year. Money is everything. In direct contradiction to the second point above, yes, but true. Long story. Life is short.  In light of the above, here are some of the tweaks I aim to make in 2016; Grow closer to family than ever before. Make more money than ever before. Care less about money than ever before. Take more photos of myself. Be more consistent with everything I ...

I recently met up with a friend to go shooting. It'd been a while since I'd gone shooting with someone. Can I say, it was tons of fun. Sure, I didn't get into the 'zone' as I usually would, but it was its own kind of fun. London already has its fair share of red things - phone boxes, buses, royal mail stuff, but being christmas, it's looking plenty red in London right now. I spotted countless red christmas 'ugly' sweaters, shoes and of course, hats. Santa hats, obviously, but my favourite for the day was this awesome red fedora this lady had on. The Helios-44-2 was really in its elements with the winter lighting conditions. I basically shot at f/2 the whole time. One thing's certain when you shoot f/2 on the helios - epic bokeh!

As the year draws to a close, I have started collating the photos I will be including in the 2015 edition of my annual photobook print. I previously talked about why I do this, and why everyone should . This year has been particularly eventful for me. I've travelled quite a lot. There have been weddings, milestone birthdays, etcetera, etcetera. And as the 'guy with the camera', I've found myself shooting a lot of it, so I have many photos to choose from.  There are, however, very few photos of me. The ones that do exist are hardly printable.  Why? Well, I'm the guy with the camera. I'm always behind the camera, hardly ever in front of it.  Even more troubling is the fact that looking back, this has been the case for a long time. My friends and family can all look back fondly at the great photos of them I've captured over the years, while I'm left with occasional reflections in mirrors and shop windows, silly iPhone selfies and other such. ...

I've never really had a problem approaching and starting a conversation with people randomly on the streets. Even more so, people apparently don't have any qualms starting a conversation with me. I'd be standing there for a few minutes and before you know it, someone would be talking to me - even in the mind-your-own-business metropolis of London. I do realise, however, that a lot of people are apprehensive of talking to strangers for whatever reason. I'm not talking about that shady looking character in the dark alleyway at night, no, I mean on a regular street, say, in the middle of the day. This could be a bit of a conflict if you're interested in doing street photography. Everyone has their own definition of what 'street photography' is to an extent, but most agree that it needs to have a 'human' element to make it truly street . Otherwise, it may well be urban photography, architecture photography or cityscape photography. Personally,...

It's obvious that I like old things. My affinity for analogue cameras sort of gives it away. It's not just cameras, however, it's many things - cassette tapes, old mugs, classic shoes, e.t.c,. There's something about what is now 'classic' design that pleases me greatly. My all-time favourite car for instance is the Mercedes 280 SL. I will buy that car one day, that's for sure.  The other day I found a bunch of books from decades ago. Most of them had aged gracefully - with the tanned paper and slightly faded cover. I was particularly struck by a copy of The Prince by Niccoliò Machiavelli. The grim looking illustration on the cover, the old book smell, the tanned pages and the classic fonts all together made the book feel a little, shall I say, creepy. I was curious, so I read the first page.  Days later (I'm a slow reader), I'd finished the book. I hate to read, but the thinness of the book served as encouragement that the end was nigh wi...

It was World Photography Day the other day.  I picked the Olympus OM-1 as my camera for the day  mainly because I had recently acquired it. I had also been reading a bit about some photographers of note, such as Jane Brown , that used the OM-1. I was immediately impressed with the size of the thing - so small. I later learnt that it was indeed Olympus' intention to make an SLR smaller than all the existing ones with the giant prisms.  Sound familiar? That is almost exactly what is happening today with the Olympus OMD series. To quote the oracle in Battlestar Gallactica "A ll of this has happened before, and it will happen again ". My copy came with the beautiful Zuiko 50mm f1.8 MC (marcro) lens. I am familair with the Zuiko quality, but when the photos came out, I was blown away. In fact, I commented somewhere that Olympus should have named it the "Olympus OMG!". That's how good it is. The above photo of the minibus was taken in relative...

I walked right past it at first, but for whatever reason, I turned back and walked in. It was an exhibition of 'high quality but affordable art' in Shoreditch the other day. It was incredible.  The artists were there with their work displayed. There were all manner of art presented and for sale at very affordable prices. My eyes were drawn to paintings of 'London Waterways' by the wonderful painter Zsuzsanna Pataki . We got into conversation about her art, and she handed me a postcard.  On seeing her surname 'Pataki', I commented on it's meaning in Yoruba - " Of great Importance ".  She found it astonishing.  She's Hungarian, as is the name.  She explained to me that it's derived from 'Patak', meaning ' Creek ', and is given to people born near creeks, or from her town which derived its name from it as well. We noted how fascinating it was that she's drawn to water, as expressed in many of her paintings. ...