Skyroad

By Skyroad

Bar Code

I'd be delighted if I'd thought up this title/pun all on my own, but I've actually stolen it from a short imagist poem by Peter Fallon. It's perfect for the photo though, tigerish bars of light and shade, a feast for a pattern-junkie like myself. That's what much photography is about after all, the codes of patterning and contrast the eye is primed for, as the ear is tuned for rhythm, that recognisable pulse we can pick up in a washing machine, a stick dragged across railings, a footstep.

Too much blipping today, with too little payback. I began by trying to capture the pattern I had noticed before on a visit to my mother's nursing home. There has been some recent roadwork done on the grounds, which may be related to the huge building project next door. I thought the No Parking (No Patterning) cones and the thin, new grass pushing through the new concrete pavement might be interesting, but I'm not thrilled with the shots I got.

Then, later in the afternoon, I went upstairs again and tried out my new telephoto lens on a rear window shot; the neighbours had covered one of their floors in dropsheets for a painting job. I liked the way the sun just caught the edge of the draped table.

Then I decided to go for a drive before the light disappeared and found this old walll I'd noticed ages before, painted in faded warning stripes. Nearby there was an oddly neat boarded-up bungalow, old before its time.

I was tired, so I figured that was that. My wife and I had booked a restaurant (our favourite 'Thai House' in Dalkey) for 9.p.m. To celebrate a little holiday we're taking tomorrow for a few days, a much-delayed honeymoon, in Paris (a city I've never been to!).

I had taken my camera, but hadn't bothered with a tripod, unfortunately. So of course on the way home, driving past Dún Laoghair's East Pier, I saw something worth stopping for: the scene above. The place was busier than I'd expected, dotted, by skaters, lovers dog-walkers... I used the telephoto but had to shoot on 800/1600 ASA, with shutter speeds of just an 8th or 4th of a second. Pattern was very much in the fore today, a dominant motif. Interesting to see it emerge so clearly.

Hopefully, Paris will offer some of Cartier-Bresson's 'decisive moments' (if I manage to find time). We're booked into a central hotel, in the 'opera district', not far from the Louvre etc. Should be wonderful.

PS
Just arrived in Hotel Queen Mary (Opera District), which has internet access. First impression. Paris is fabulous. Warmer than Dublin (which is very springy at present), laid back, shabbily continental, full of dropped fag-butts and heavenly smells. The hotel has a marvelous, narrow, enclosed courtyard where you can sit for food or drinks, like sitting at the bottom of a generous well, roofed by an angular wedge of sky. And our window looks over the street. Everything is somehow up close and intimate, a strange new city breathing in my face. This holiday is going to be something else!

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