CameraDave.co.uk

As I mentioned yesterday I wasn’t planning on being Camera Dave last night and I kind of managed it, as I only took about 100 photos instead of my usual 400 or so.

My first mistake was getting a camera out to take a photo of some friends as once people saw me with a camera they quickly did the maths and came up with Dave + Camera = Camera Dave. It has to be said though that my new camera doesn’t seem to be anywhere near as good as my Fuji judging by the photos from last night.

It seemed to have a real problem focusing and gave a lot of people red eye which my Fuji rarely does (in fact the Fuji is so good at avoiding that I have never even bothered with teh red eye reduction setting). Further evidence of how bad the camera is is presented above, as you can see the camera made me look hideous!

Last week when I saw Emilie Autumn she was not alone on stage, she she some rather delectable company in the form of Lady Joo Hee playing the cello.

According to her MySpace page she repaid her teachers by murdering them and now only plays with people who cant read music as it, “makes her feel smarter”.

Thanks to the wonders of Facebook old friends and acquaintances can easily get in touch and one such person I have renewed contact with is the woman pictured above, who I knew when I was at uni and asked me to do some photos of her.

At the time I did have a bit of a crush on her and so being asked made my day. I might not have tried taking proper portrait photos before and not have had much in the way of equipment, but who needs a studio set up when you have a manual camera twice as old as you are, a single camera mounted flash and a few items lying around the room where the photos were taken.

I took the photos one afternoon in a condemned building on campus and we were supposed to organise another shoot once we had done some testers and I had a little bit more of an idea how to work with a model, but sadly the opportunity never arose thanks to busy schedules and her moving away upon graduation - I was both disappointed and relieved by this though, as she had asked me to do some more ‘glamourous’ shots of her and whilst on one hand I would have relished such an opportunity to photograph her nude, I was also rather shy and nervous about the idea.

I still recall my response to the idea when she broached the idea to me. I laughed, thankfully she raised the idea in a txt message and didn’t see how embarrassed I was. I mean having a girl you are attracted to ask you to photograph her in such a manner is a dream come true, unless of course like me at the time you were rather shy and awkward towards women.  Add onto that the fact that I used to hate the comments I used to get (and still do occasionally) about only doing photography for such opportunities, claims I vigorously denied and I knew that I would never hear the end of if anyone found out I had actually done it and I was mortified - Even if I knew that in reality, although there would be a lot of jokes there would also be quite a lot of envy towards me as well.

So sadly because of my nervousness I never quite managed to make time for our second shoot, something I do still kind of regret - Although since then I have had a few similar offers from girls I have known to photograph them in various states of undress, but it hasn’t been the same as after the first time of being asked it’s nowhere near as surprising - Besides when it’s a woman you aren’t actually attracted to asking, it’s a lot easier to deal with.

If you see a member of security wearing this necklace, feel free to point and laugh as it means that they’ve done something wrong as it’s the necklace of shame - However if you do point and laugh and then get thrown out, don’t blame me!

To have the chance to laugh at how drunk people looked last night however (without fear of recrimination) just head on over to the galleries.

…I only take photos to pick up chicks, may I present to you exhibit A.
Because of politics* my photos were never going to be up before 6pm today (although to be fair when was the last time they were up before 6pm?) But today I didn’t even start editing them until after 6pm thanks to various factors, including but not limited to:

• Not getting up until after 11am, despite the alarm waking me up at 8am - The floor I was on was warm and comfortable.
• Getting trains back to Bristol and making the journey 30 minutes longer than it has to be by not picking connecting trains.
• Going to the agents to pick up a key to get copied, only to find when I got hom that although the key was cut fine it won’t open the lock as the key is too fat to fit in the lock.
• Going shopping and seeing Dark Crystal amidst the DVD section. I would say I’ve never seen it but after today that would be a lie!
• Pretending I was a student by putting off work and playing around on Facebook and MSN instead.

But I did eventually stop procrastinating and get around to editing the photos and putting them up.

*Well student politics anyway.

Yes I know it’s just a picture of a front door, but it’s a perfect illustration to go alongside the haiku* I wrote at work today.

banging at the door-
an unexpected guest or
man with joke pehaps

And before you ask, yes I was very bored at work today. Whilst I enjoy writing poems (and for some reason haven’t done so for a while) I wouldn’t usually use knock knock jokes as my inspiration

*And for any purists reading this I know it’s not a haiku and for anyone that didn’t know and is interested it’s a senryu. A haiku is not just any poem of 3 lines in a 5-7-5 syllable pattern, a haiku is defined by it’s subject matter and should concern nature and doesn’t have to be 5-7-5 (at least not in English anyways).  Anything which follows the form, but isn’t about nature is at best a senryu.