The Ring of Confidence

Confidence is a strange companion. With it, we can conquer the world yet, without it, the world conquers us. Take a tennis player for example: 2 sets up and cruising and then a silly mistake or a great shot from your opponent causes that little confidence worm to start burrowing into your skull and the thoughts change from I can't possible lose this to What if ......? Next thing you know, you're no longer fighting your opponent but battling with your own mind.

People often laugh when I admit to an excruciating lack of confidence in my own abilities. Good old Graham, always playing the fool and putting on this bumbling idiot act ....... erm, no, that is me.Yes, I'm extremely good at hiding it sometimes (which is a problem in itself) but I confess, confidence and myself are strange bedfellows who will sometimes engage in a joyous coupling but predominantly sleep back to back. I've really got no reason to be like it apart from Nature and nurture (mostly nurture!) and am fortunate to have had more than my fair share of success in my lifetime but it's not something I've ever accepted or been happy with and I've always needed to drive myself further. The irony of continuously striving for better is that I know I can never reach a point where I am happy with what I have achieved and therefore this undermines the confidence which has started to be built by those successes.

The reason I started thinking about all this was my photography. For a long time, I found it very hard to accept the plaudits of my friends and photographic peers but then one day, for reasons unknown, I experienced a true Road to Damascus moment. I was thinking about my Camera Club and the things I wanted to achieve there and realised that I had basically done them all in the 3 years I've been going i.e. move from Beginners to Advanced league, win an individual competition and receive a wider recognition of my skills. It was at that point that I suddenly knew that none of this really mattered. What DID matter was an acceptance in oneself of being where one wanted to be. I didn't care that I would never be the best, judgement by others meant nothing. All I knew that, possibly for the first time in my life, I was actually content with what I was doing and the standard I was at. It was an incredibly liberating feeling. I was doing something my way and I no longer had to judge myself nor worry about being judged.

It lasted about 3 weeks.

Confidence is about self-fulfilling prophecy and that can go two ways. For me, I've been looking at some beautiful photos taken by fellow photographers here in Eastbourne as well as photographer friends around the world and, like dirty bath water, that contentment I had slowly drained away. This was the tennis player's game-changing moment as I looked at my photos and irrevocably saw them turning from satisfying extensions of me and my way of interpreting Life to very ordinary snaps, devoid of feeling and clarity.

Oh, I know that this is a passing phase and to a degree, part of my own condition but, just for a short period of time, I felt contentment. I only hope that somehow I can recover it. There's a Chinese saying that goes something like It is better not to eat of the greatest dish at all than to eat it once and never again. To know the reality of contentment for a while and have it snatched away rather than merely dream of what it may be like is not something I relish.

Finally, why am I writing this and laying myself open?

“To share your weakness is to make yourself vulnerable; to make yourself vulnerable is to show your strength.” - Criss Jami

Alternatively, of course, I might just be being self-indulgent .......... or self-pitying ............ or just plain weird.

A Message at Christmas

I spend a lot of my time sorting my life into boxes. Fears, doubts, desires, memories, triumphs, hopes and aspirations all get tucked away in my head so I don't have to face them. It makes for an insular life in many ways but it also means I cope.

Emotions are something I long for and fear in equal proportions. The freedom to let go is something I cannot do - I dare not do - and Christmas is a time when I find it hard to subdue emotion. I guess I'm old-fashioned enough to still love the traditional Christmas of my childhood with carols and the story of the Nativity guaranteed to bring those dreaded emotions to the surface. Silent Night will invariably reduce me to tears and, along with the emotion caused by such memories, is a sense of something lost. Not lost as in no longer here but lost as in missing from my life. It's not a new feeling and has been there for many years but Christmas brings it to the fore, once more.

Maybe Christmas encourages a sense of belonging and that's something from which I shy away? Belonging means being accepted and being accepted means  belonging - something of which I don't feel worthy. That's not something which needs sympathy or reassurance so please don't offer it - it's part of me, for better or for worse and I absorb it and adapt accordingly. It'll never beat me either because there will always be that spark which says "never give up".

This Christmas is tinged with an awful sadness which must remain  private but makes it that little bit harder to keep the boxes locked. Equally, this year I have found even more people for whom I care and who care for me. To them, and all of you who have supported me in my photography and in my life, may I wish you a most wonderful Christmas and a year ahead full of peace and love, where your dreams become realities and your fears become the dust of history.

Water Drop Photography

A few weeks back I was out photographing one evening when, for no apparent reason. I fell over. It wasn't a faint, I just seemed to lose my balance and over I went. I was a bit shocked but otherwise unhurt and got up and carried on photographing. Well, it happened again a couple of times more during the next fortnight and so I toddled off to the doctor. I'm not impressed with my GP surgery at the best of times, I have to say, and unfortunately the locum I saw did nothing to enhance their reputation. I'm not sure if he had just read The Dummies Guide to Strokes but he seemed fixated on the idea of mini-strokes or TIAs and refused to be put off the theory irrespective of whatever I said. I was accordingly sent to the local hospital about a week later for tests. During this time, I wasn't allowed to drive so I paid vast fortunes to a licensed bandit in a cab and duly arrived for my appointment.

Arriving some 25 minutes early, I was seen immediately which is unheard of in the National Health Service. I surmised that this was a test and, if you didn't have a heart attack at such an event, then you were OK. As it happened, the consultant I saw was of foreign extraction and, whilst I have no problem whatsoever with this, it was quite apparent that English was not his first language. I went through what had happened (several times) and he eventually pronounced that there was no way that these could be mini-strokes. I had tried to explain that I had a lot of hearing problems lately and wondered whether there was something that might be affecting my balance but he either misheard or chose to ignore this. Anyway, next week I have to have 24 hour heart monitoring, followed by an echocardiogram and then 24 hour BP monitoring. I've only had a couple more episodes but spend quite a lot of my time feeling even more unbalanced than people already assume.

The reason I tell you all this is purely as a background. You see, I don't really go out much at the moment as     a) I am a tad concerned that falling onto hard pavement might damage either me or, more importantly, my cameras,  b) walking isn't overly pleasant currently and,  c) Spring has decided to pass us by in favour of another ice age.

One day, shortly after all of the above happened, I was browsing through Flickr (online photo site) when I saw a photograph of a water droplet and was entranced. I had a beautiful new Canon 100mm L IS USM macro lens and tried a little experiment of putting a piece of wood over the kitchen sink and, on this, setting a roasting tray full of water. I set the tap to a very slow drip , focused the lens on the surface of the water and tried a few shots.

This was one of the very first efforts that day; crude but sufficiently intriguing to make me delve further. The blue is merely a folder, leaned against the tiles behind the sink with a flash directed onto it which then reflects the colour back into the water.

That evening I spent a long time researching the different ways and means of taking shots as well being blown away by some amazing images. The undoubted guru of water drop photography is a lady called Corrie White who has spent several years honing her craft and who now produces images such as these:

Truly beautiful and  something to which I could hopefully aspire. In fact, there are many exponents of water drop photography out there and all have my admiration. After that first session, I just knew that this was for me and suddenly, my enforced incarceration didn't seem quite so bad.

The science of water drops is quite complicated in some ways. If you have ever seen a drop fall into liquid then you'll know that there is an opposite reaction insofar as the drop will effectively rebound up above the surface.To get an effect like the last of Corrie's 3 examples, you need to drop a second drop so that it collides with the first as it climbs up once more and it's this collision that can cause such amazing effects and is perhaps the starting point of many great shots.

OK, so there was my starting point. How did I cobble together a system which had the capacity to drop liquid at specific, regular intervals because, until I could sort that, I was leaving way too much to luck? Some people start with manual means such as an eye dropper but I wasn't sufficiently confident or steady-handed to go down that path. The obvious apparatus seemed to be an IV drip as that has the capacity to deliver regular drops and these could be made faster or slower in order to try and get the collisions to which I referred earlier. Oh, for the days when I knew lots of nurses socially as opposed to the professional contact I now seem to have; I'm sure an IV kit could have been liberated without much trouble at all. As it was, I found a supplier on the net and within a couple of days, I was the proud possessor of a couple of these babies:

It was a simple matter to drill a hole in the bottom of a squash bottle, superglue the pointy bit into it and Bingo! one adjustable drip set. Now, I had no stand on which to place this over the sink so a bit more improvisation took place and it ended up sort of jammed into a cupboard handle

Clumsy and crude, but it worked and my efforts started to look a bit better. I had realised that 2 flashes were ideal as a minimum and so I purchased a cheap wireless flash (YongNuo YN-560) to work with my Canon Speedlight and these were set, pointing at the background. Hopefully, my drawing skills give a rough idea of what I mean.

(and yes, to the geeks, I know it's a 60D and not a 7D like mine!!)

With this set-up, I was starting to get pictures like these:

OK, we were off and running. Next time, I'll talk about the next steps, building my own rig and the wonders of viscosity. If this inspires just one person to have a go, than I'll be happy. If you want to see more of my efforts then visit my Flickr site.

Thanks for reading and I'm happy to try and answer any questions :)

Quality Street - A Part of Christmas

Many of us have Christmas traditions. Most are fairly common ones like leaving out a carrot and some booze for the nocturnal white-bearded visitor although mine are somewhat more esoteric like driving 50 miles on Christmas morning trying to find a shop because some dickbrain bought the kids something electrical and forgot the batteries and you just know that 50 miles is nothing compared to whingeing kids for the rest of the day. Naturally though, as times change,  a lot of traditions die out due to changes of circumstance like, for example,  retirement means I can no longer participate in the great tradition of embarrassing myself totally at the office Christmas party.

I was pretty good at that one  and always knew I had reached the alcoholic point of no return when, every year without fail, I would tuck some mistletoe into my belt and wander round asking who would like to kiss me under the mistletoe? It did sort of work once although I had no recollection of the event: all I found was a load of lipstick on my trouser front the next morning. Oh, the hours I spent subsequently, gazing at the female staff and trying to work out who wore a similar shade!

As I say, traditions come and go but one will never change and I wonder just how this might resonate with any of my adoring readers? It concerns a sweet (or for those who cannot speak English, candy) assortment which goes under the name of Quality Street. These are they: a veritable cornucopeia of rainbow-wrapped sweets ranging from caramel to toffee to coconut, predominantly enrobed in chocolate

When I was young  and indeed,  even when I was an adult on fairly low wage with a wife, cat, children and a large piece of mistletoe to support, a tin of these at Christmas was considered a luxury. One could purchase smaller boxes but they tended to be used throughout the year as gifts for ageing relatives and schoolteachers. The tin was the Holy Grail and one of the first things one put on the Christmas list. One purchased it and, after you had peeled away the sticky tape sealing the lid, inhaled the aroma of chocolate and dwelt on the delightful prospect of all that calorific gratification,  this was where the tradition kicked in .............. they had to be sorted out!!! It's not an OCD thing, it just has to be done. The contents lovingly and carefully separated with the growing piles of noisette paté, toffee penny, caramel swirl etc forming a psychedelic pattern on the table. Naturally, when one had finished separating them, you had to count how many you had of each and this is where the first disappointment set in. 

Over the years, I must have sorted a good few tins of QS and, without fail, the varieties that always come out top of the quantity table are the creams. I HATE BLOODY CREAMS! I detest, abhor and loathe strawberry creams. I cannot abide orange creams. They are the arsehole of the chocolate world yet, every year, they are there in an abundance to boggle the imagination. Even worse, with one notable exception (who is mad as a box of frogs anyway *waves at Kitty*) nobody else I have ever known likes them either. We all lust for the crunch of a hazelnut, or the pleasure of getting bits of toffee out of your teeth for hours but do we see those glorious purple wrappers proliferate?  Do we fu ......... dge. Nestlé, the manufacturers even do giant versions of the most popular ones which are sold individually although strangely enough, not one of those larger offerings includes a cream. Hmmmm.

Now I think about it, the only cream of which I vaguely approved was a coffee cream and guess what? They withdrew it! In fact, for the aficionados and those of a more advanced age who might remember them, all of these have disappeared over the years:

• Purple One (the original 'Purple One' with Brazil nut, replaced with hazelnut version)
• Chocolate Toffee Cup (now replaced with Caramel Swirl)
• Hazelnut Cracknell (red wrapper)
• Hazelnut Eclair
• Chocolate Nut Toffee Cream
• Malt Toffee (replaced with toffee deluxe as a "new" flavour)
• Milk Chocolate Round (now replaced with Milk Choc Block in green wrapper)
• Peanut Cracknell (blue wrapper)
• Coffee Cream (brown wrapper, same size and shape as the strawberry cream)
• Gooseberry Cream (green wrapper light green fondant with a touch of Gooseberry Preserve covered in milk chocolate)
• Apricot Delight (blue wrapper, square chunk, apricot flavoured jelly covered in milk chocolate)
• Toffee Square (metallic pink wrapper, a small square of very hard toffee)
• Chocolate Truffle (brown wrapper, square chunk, a soft truffle filling covered in milk chocolate)
• Montelimar Nougat

Quality Street ( as well as their younger rivals like Roses and Celebrations) also seem to have this ability to transcend gluttony. By this, I mean that moment after one has finished Christmas lunch when you roll to the nearest comfy chair ready to snooze away the afternoon. You sit there groaning, more stuffed than the turkey currently residing in your stomach, and swearing that you wont eat again for about a week and then realise you need a wee. Slowly, with much gasping and puffing, you manage to lift your swollen, turgid and bloated body from the chair and wobble off to the bathroom. Then the magic of Quality Street kicks in when you return as, without even thinking, your hand reaches out and grabs one - they are irresistible!!!

Right, other QS traditions: it's obligatory to make earrings out of the wrappers as well as peel off the cellophane and look at the world through all the different colours. It's also obligatory, assuming you value your life to refrain from the green triangular ones as they are MINE!! I use the plural there in the vain hope that I might find a second one under the 382 strawberry sodding creams.

OK, Christmas is almost over. Most of the tree is now on the carpet and the only reminder of the mountain of food consumed over the festive period is having to pay for it all when the credit card bill arrives mid-January.  On the table which only a few short days ago was filled with nuts, nibbles, turkish delight, dates and all the other Yule-time comestibles sits a sad, almost empty tin. It no longer has a lid as Auntie Betty sat on that and it now resembles a reject Frisbee and all that remains of the contents are yes, you guessed it, a few creams. Eventually, even these disappear as their appeal grows relative to the disappearance of all the other food - proof of the adage "owt's better than nowt". 

So Christmas and Quality Street gradually fade away for another year apart from one final tradition - the ceremony of the retention of the tin. It goes something like this:-

Shall I chuck this empty tin?

No, it'll come in useful for something or other.

But you say that every year and then we finally get rid of it in November because we're sick of tripping over the damn' thing.

Look, it seems such a waste. Give it to me and I'll use it to put some odds and ends in when I tidy the garage.

Sardonic smirk

No, really, I AM going to tidy the garage

Other half retreats making sotto voce remarks about storing the flying pigs in it

I hope some of this struck a chord with you. 

Happy Christmas!

Aegon International 2012

One of the great joys about living in Eastbourne is its programme of public events throughout the year and, as   an amateur photographer, I'm provided with a constant source of subjects and inspiration. June sees one of the jewels in the Eastbourne crown when we play host to some of the world's top tennis players as a precursor to Wimbledon and it's a week that sees me practically living in Devonshire Park as I have been fortunate enough to obtain media accreditation as a photographer. This is my story of the Eastbourne Aegon International 2012.

Day 1 (Saturday)

At last, the week I so enjoy is here and today is 'pick up photo ID and generally wander round orientating myself' day. It's a day where the public can get in for nothing and generally sets the scene for the week to come. As I wandered in, I saw a few faces I recognised from last year and, more amazingly, they recognised me as well. Despite this, I was allowed in and duly approached the Accreditation Desk to collect my badge. Last year, they took the ID photo there and then which was not the most flattering. This year, however, I was a tad more canny and forwarded one I already had to the Lawn Tennis Association so expected my badge to be all ready for collection. Silly me! They had record of me but no photo so once more it was time for the photographer to suffer the agonies usually inflicted upon others! I stood against a wall whilst the young man pointed a camera at me and a myriad thoughts flashed through my brain: Shall I look mean and professional? Shall I smile in a winning but winsome way? Is my hair OK seeing as there was a very strong wind out there? As it transpired, all this trauma was unnecessary as the final shot was blurred and bore little resemblance to me anyway but at least the moment was done and dusted.

Now Eastbourne Tennis Week has a great record weather-wise but, given this years climatic calamities thus far, visitors were swathed in a variety of jackets, jumpers and determinedly clutching their umbrellas. After all, we're British, a few feet of rain aren't going to stop us enjoying ourselves. Matches were in progress on the outer courts and the various trade stands were attracting visitors a'plenty. As I gazed at the various young, lean, fit sportspeople strolling round, I was warmed by the thought that I was more than twice the person they were. More than twice the age, more than twice the weight, more than twice the size .......... you get the idea. 

One of the initial problems as a snapper of such people is that one isn't necessarily sure who's who at first. The top players I hopefully recognise but one is never quite sure of some of the others. It's a bit like when, as a kid, I would haunt the players' entrance at my local football team on match day and thrust my autograph book at anybody who entered or emerged who looked vaguely player-like. We would then hopefully decipher signatures and see who we'd got (I seem to recall an awful lot of players called Mickey Mouse!). Anyway, I digress, but hopefully, my copy of the WTA Media Guide will yield up information as to who is whom.

Sadly, I wasn't able to spend too much time there today due to other commitments but I wanted to go onto Centre Court and get some shots. Naturally, the pro cameramen tend to gather on the premier court and, as I slipped in during a break in the match, I was reminded that I am but a minnow in the  great pond of photography. It wasn't just the world-weary look, the focused attention or even the laid-back attitude of total comfort in their craft. These I fully accept and have rationalised. The worst part of being an amateur photographer is that dreaded feeling known as lens envy! Please don't get me wrong, I have some very nice kit and it does the job pretty well. My Canon 70-200mm L IS USM is perfect for such an occasion but ............... Let's just say that when the guy sitting next to you court-side has a lens which could double as a Saturn 5 rocket or a handy shelter from the rain if you removed the glass then inadequacy rears its ugly head. I tried to comfort myself with thoughts such as " ... why would you want a close-up of his left nostril?" but nope, it didn't really help. I was somewhat comforted by the slight stagger as he left the court under the weight of this beast but I'd give anything for a little play with it.

Really, any reasonable shots today were a bonus as it was predominantly just an exercise in checking out light, angles and re-familiarising myself with the environment. I did actually get a few but then the heavens opened and we got a downpour which delayed matters. By the time play resumed, it was time for me to go and so I said farewell until Monday when my shooting starts in earnest.

As I left, the sun was shining brightly and people were picnicking on the lawns and generally having a good time. The Pimms tent was beginning to do a brisk business and the punnets of strawberries were starting to disappear. All was right with the world and there was an air of genteel excitement at what was to come.