adetorrent; photography, lifestyle.

Olympus 35RC / Agfa Vista 200 I've had to let go of a lot of things lately. While renovating my place this spring, I took a long look at many items I'd be hoarding for years and decided to break the emotional link with them. It has been hard, but very liberating. Finally I have the room for that creative working space I've been dreaming about for ages. For some reason, I'd also been holding on to a few things that didn't make any sense. I had been paying for Internet access in multiple ways. Like many people nowadays I love and rely on the Internet. I, however, have been on the Internet for a long, long time, since before it was a thing . Back then, you had to take special measures to get fast, reliable connections from home. I found that I had been holding on to some of these old ways of thinking about the Internet and technology in general. I had accumulated a lot of obsolete technology that though still worked, were now either unnecessary or inefficien...

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 have a lot of respect for artists, especially painters.  Painting is a slow and meticulous process. Often you already have the image of what you're creating in your head, but you are just taking your time in bringing it to life.  I do a bit of painting myself, but nothing of the quality of the stuff I see around the streets of London.  Sometimes I'd see a piece of artwork and wonder who created it, how, when, why, and so on.  This is why I was extremely pleased to catch Desi Civera in the act. Well, actually, she'd just finished this work when I arrived. I was totally blown away by the work. I was also impressed by her kind polite personality.  What an awesome artist. Check out her work here: Instagram Tumblr

It took long enough, but I finally got to try out the famous Olympus Trip 35 . Having used the Olympus 35 RC, RD and SP, the Trip felt both familiar and strange at first.  Familiar because of the form factor and size of the camera - it felt just like the RC in the hand.  It has the classic metal and black 1970's compact camera/rangefinder design.  The 40mm f2.8 lens also sits somewhere between the RC and RD range. That's about it. I took the Trip on a, er, trip to picturesque Eastbourne sometime this summer to test it out.  The first thing I missed was the rangefinder - there is none. Instead, it is a zone-focus camera with icons to guide you, or actual distances if you know what you're doing. I used the icons. I had problems nailing focus at first, especially just after shooting something closer up, and then forgetting to adjust the focus for something far away. Yes the camera is fully auto, but it is NOT focus-free. I often forgot that and treate...

I'm sure I'm not the only one that loves taking photos of coffee cups, preferably with coffee in them. I don't know why this is. Something about coffee just wants to be photographed. Is it because a lot of photography lovers (creatives generally) spend a lot of time in cafes?  No idea. For me, it's one of the subjects for testing out a new lens, or a new camera. Here is the one I took with the Spotmatic and Super-Takmar f1.4 lens.

Teguise.  It's a tranquil, charming little town in the middle of Lanzarote.  Six days of the week the town is a peaceful, extremely quiet place.  On Sunday it becomes one of the busiest market towns in Europe. Thousands of traders, tens of thousands of visitors and a few animals descend on Teguise from around 9 am to 2 pm - The Tequise Sunday Market. I learnt that in fact Teguise was the old capital of Lanzarote. It made sense to me as it has some of the oldest buildings on the island.  Apparently it is also referred to as "la Villa".  The architecture is also really beautiful. Intricate carvings can be seen around the doors and windows of many buildings dating back to the 17th century. Another thing that happens on Sundays is the town becomes extremely colourful. Like everywhere else on Lanzarote, most of the buildings are whitewashed with either blue, green or unpainted wooden doors and windows. On market day however, you get pink, red, lilac, i...

Where has summer gone?!  Apart from it being mid-August already, it seems this summer has really zoomed by.  Time is moving so quickly. I was looking at my photo books I've made so far this year, and realised I hadn't shared any of the actual Lanzarote photos with you the awesome folk of the Internet.   Many of these photos are in the Blurb book I spoke about in this post .   The camera I had with me was the Olympus 35 RD. I opted for this camera because of it's size and versatility. There was going to be a lot of cycling and walking, so I needed something light and portable, while having a nice sharp lens that renders colours well. The photo below was shot wide open (f/1.7) indoors. Who can resist a mirror selfie?  Lanzarote was one of my summer travels, and boy has it stuck with me. It's a volcanic Spanish island in the Atlantic ocean off the western coast of Africa. It's such a unique place that one can't help being carried away at times with...

Can you believe it's almost mid August?  Before you know it, Autumn will be upon us. Like many people in the northern hemisphere, I've been doing some travelling, and taking lots of photos. Consequently I've got a bit of a backlog of rolls to develop.  I do also have many photos developed but yet to be sorted out. Many of them are from the plastic film point and shoot cameras I've been playing with all summer. Some have been total disasters, but some have really surprised me. The Olympus cameras are really kicking butt with their Zuiko lenses. Meanwhile here are some photos from the Asahi Pentax Spotmatic with the legendary Takumar f1.4 lens taken while casually walking from Holborn to St. Paul's Cathedral in London.  I really love the handling of this camera now.  I'm usually a rangefinder style guy, but the Spotmatic, and the Zenit-E before it, have really kept me loving SLRs too. Thanks for reading.  Please help support my hobby by click...