All articles from May, 2009
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Spiez to Malpensa airport
Monday, 25th May 2009 • From the Road, Travel • 2 comments
This post was originally written whilst waiting for a flight to Sicily from Milan’s Malpensa airport.
We’re sitting in the marbled monotony of the departure gate at Milan’s Malpensa airport after the first leg of our trip, which saw us take the train from Spiez through the alpine tunnels as far as Domodossola. The new Lötschberg tunnel, which burrows beneath the mountains through to canton Valais, is both an improvement in terms of speed and a disappointment because it cuts out the need to go through the particularly picturesque scenery of the alpine stretch of the older Lötschberg line. Instead of the longer route which we’ve taken with the “Pendolino” (tilting) train to Milan in the past, which has been superseded by the newer tunnel, we sped to Visp in darkness in a little over 20 minutes and onward to the seemingly eternal grey and damp border area of Iselle and Domodossola.
Once there, we switched to the Comazzi bus service, which leaves from the bus area next to the main station. Althoug
Brent and Marta’s wedding
Saturday, 23rd May 2009 • Event galleries, Friends and Family, Travel • No comments
Starting with a long journey to the Aeolian Islands and pre-wedding drinks on a tempestuously windy hotel terrace, Jo and I had a great time at my oldest friend Brent’s wedding to his Italian sweetheart, Marta. From the baroque Chiesa del Porto church in Santa Maria Salina, a volley of the usual wedding photos and their trip back to the hotel in an ancient white Fiat Cinquecento, drinks on the terrace of the lovely Capo Faro resort, a fine dinner with the honour of sitting with Brent and Marta at their top table of friends and wedding witnesses, to drunken dancing and pool antics, we have a load of happy memories and a pile of photos with which to remember the weekend. The full set of my photos from the wedding and celebrations is also online in this set at Flickr.
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Off to Salina
Tuesday, 12th May 2009 • Travel • No comments
Time flies; it’s already two weeks shy of a year since my last trip to Italy with Jo. We’re off again on Thursday, this time to the tiny island of Salina, amongst the Aeolian group of islands off the north coast of Sicily. As is usual before a holiday, I have much to wrap up at work as I am quickly asked to finish off tasks and get projects to a certain stage before I go. Tonight, I will be ensuring that I am fully packed so that tomorrow evening can be spent relaxing before our long journey south. The trip will be quiet from an internet point of view – my Twitter and Facebook accounts, as well as the blog, will be pretty much silent as I’ve deliberately chosen a hotel with no internet access.
Jo on board the Cisalpino in 2007
Our trip begins on Thursday, when we’ll get a taxi to take us to the train station: an unusual luxury, but our bags will be heavy and the morning early. There, we’ll catch the Cisalpino service as far as the Swiss border station of Domodossola, meaning that I don’t
Get your portrait taken for free!
Friday, 8th May 2009 • Photography • No comments
Regular visitors and fans of my photography will be delighted to hear that I have added another level of pricing to my price listings: free!
Stay away from the “Delete” button
Thursday, 7th May 2009 • Friends and Family, Geek stuff, Photography • No comments
By whittling down pictures while you are still shooting, or when you are trying to assess their merits on a tiny little screen, you always run the risk of deleting a shot which later turns out to be one you really like.
CHOO CHOO, Bern Strobist day
Tuesday, 5th May 2009 • Friends and Family, Individual photographs, Music • 3 comments
This is the kind of shot that I hope to achieve more by continuing to work with CHOO CHOO in future. They’re a great bunch, not just musically but also fun and motivated; being around them infuses everyone with energy, once they get going! No setup at all on this shot: just a grab as Lili and Dan started fooling around, which has become one of my favourite shots from our day with the Swiss Strobist crowd in Bern.
Rahel, Swiss Strobist day in Bern
Tuesday, 5th May 2009 • Portraiture • No comments
I know, I know. It’s been ages since I last posted to the blog. I’ve been really busy these last couple of weeks organizing a meetup in Bern for friends in the Swiss Strobist group of photographers, who meet occasionally to learn from each other and share ideas relating to photography using off-camera flash. Between organizing the day, finding volunteer models, updating the Swiss Strobist blog and trying to have a day job and social life, time for blogging here has been scarce. But things are quietening down again now and I’ll have a bit more time on my hands.
The photos in this post are of Rahel, one of our models for the Swiss Strobist day with whom my group worked through the morning. We used the almost totally black interior of the Wasserwerk Club in Bern and that was a real test of lighting and photographic skill: a woman in a black dress, on a black sofa, in front of a black wall! The original idea was to fill the background with coloured light, but tests showed that the black matte curtains sucked i