Chris Allan

 

I did my time in the dark room. I felt what it must be like to be a newt, spending way too many hours in a room with blacked out windows, with nary a UV ray in sight. I smelt like a freshly embalmed cadaver and developed skill with clothing pegs and drying lines.  

I spent good student cash on the best photographic paper. On fresh chemicals. On Illford film. It was all worth it, when I graduated with distinction. And then the whole world went digital. Sigh.

So I sold some things, begged borrowed and begged some more, and started from scratch again. I was set up, and I earned a living with the Nikon D70. Not a good living mind you, there was many a 2 minute noodle meal, but it felt good. The dark room was substituted for the PC and I discovered the joys and frustrations of Photoshop. Good times.

Within a year and a half the D70 was a dinosaur, and my heart was set on the D200. Surely this would be the answer to my noise and small image size woes? 

For over 2 years we cared for each other my D200 and I. Slowly however, I realised that I didn’t know my camera as well as I should have, before gettng into the relationship. Too many times I would arrive home after a shoot to find the dirty dark secret she was hiding. In every dark corner it lurked. Mocking me and my photograpic skill. It was dirty, ugly and unnavoidable. It was excessive noise.

We decided to ignore each other and operate as well as we could, while our nemesis mocked us from the other side of the tracks, with its full frame sensor. The Canon 5D was everything I needed in a camera and more, and it killed me to admit it.

Then suddenly there was something in the air! A fresh scent that reminded one of new beginnings and hope. From over the horizon it came, trumpets heralding it’s arrival. It was a cool customer, with the maximum ammount of digital splendour that could possibly fit into its lean build. It had a power to weight ratio that Lance Armstrong would quiver when hearing about. And best of all, it had a full frame sensor. It was, it is……….THE D700!

In short I am probably going to take the plunge and buy this beauty of a camera. So if there is anything of mine you would like to buy, (equipment, furniture, body, soul?) just say the word and I will happily sell it to you. The outlay of cash is substantial. Like a second hand car substantial. Gulp.

Hopefully, this is the beginning of something beautiful.

 

The Post-it note

I am newly, and happily, married.

I leave parties early and dedicate a good portion of my weekend to “my relationship�. I even put the toilet seat down. Most of the time.

Okay, some of the time.

I can’t lie. Life is good and I am not afraid to be put into that nauseating newlywed box.

Here is why.

My wife is an overachiever. She was head girl at school and hates it when I tell anyone. She now bosses people twice her age around for a living as she creates great TV.  Her colleagues  are happy for her to do it as she is a director. The downside is that she travels the country from top to bottom, regularly  leaving me trying to decipher the controls on the washing machine and experiment with different combinations of fillings on brown bread toasted sandwiches for weeks on end.

She left again the other morning, psyched about the new project and a week in a hotel room where the toilet seat would remain the way she left it.

But before she left she took 20 minutes and some post it notes, to tell me she loved me. (Pause for “Awwww” from the girls and retching sounds from the boys).  I came home to discover notes on the bread-bin, on the fridge, on my computer screen, on my pillow, on the music system.  The little yellow notes were everywhere. I am not totally naïve, and realize that it was also an opportunity to remind me to pay the bills, buy some groceries, water the plants etc. but at least she took some time to disguise it.

Half an hour later, I was in the middle of a post shower, “nobody is around, naked flexing session� in the bathroom mirror, when I realized there was a little yellow note slightly obscuring the view of my Clint Eastwood impersonation. On it were the words, in capital letters with at least two exclamation marks, “YOU ARE HOT!!�

Well I couldn’t deny it. She was right. I had a good chuckle, asked myself if I was “feeling lucky, punk,� and carefully put aside the note on my pillow with another more private message scribbled on it before falling into a happily married slumber.

It could have been worse. Check out this You Tube Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPl00okSv-g

I have been paying for this site for about 2 years. In that time I have posted once and changed photos once. Not a great track record so far. Lets look hopefully into the future however, and hope that there will be new photos, some ramblings and some interesting links on a fairly regular basis.

The First link:

I love this blog. It is sometimes serious, sometimes not so, but always interesting. Cool images, cool people and when I got hold of them to ask about internet providers, they got back to me and then did a post on the topic the next day.

 www.ideate.co.za

Nothing to do with photography. All to do with interesting people and professions and whatever else occurs to them.