CameraDave.co.uk

I have added another new camera to my collection today after well over 100,000 photos and several years good service I have finally replaced my hard working and now slightly broken Fuji Finepix S5000. The replacement is also a Fuji Finepix and is an S2000HD.

I had it delivered to me at work and was taking photos with it almost as soon as I got out of the doors and this was the first of the photos I took on my way home and I have to admit it felt good to be wielding a proper camera once more. Annoyingly although there are a lot of similarities between my new and old camera (they are from the same series after all) there are enough buttons moved around for me to have to learn how to use the new camera - Even more annoyingly they’ve put the button that pops the flash up exactly where I put my thumb, so every time I take a photo I accidentally activate the flash.

Still one thing I like about the new camera is the memory card, even at the excessive rate I have been known to take photos at in the past I won’t have to worry about space as even at the highest quality settings I can take 5,000 photos before I will run out of space - My old limit used to be 327 before I had to download off the card and that never used to lastme more than a couple of hours.

When I woke up this morning, my body may have been functioning, but my mind was not. It took me twenty minutes to work out what was wrong as I was working to work this morning. The world looked blurry and even after that personal epiphany it still took me a few second longer to work out why - I didn’t have my glasses on.

There is a very simple reason why I wear glasses, my eyesight is crap. I may only have two eyes, but I manage to be both long and short-sighted, as well as astigmatic. That is not the reason however, I can cope with a blurry looking world for the most part and it does have some advantages, such as making some people appear more attractive than they actually are.

The reason I wear them is without them I suffer headaches, like the one I have had all day at work. Where to see the computer screen clearly I have almost had to have my nose touching the screen*. Even worse it has meant that I have not been able to spend my day at work as I normally do, reading books and browsing at articles online. It’s surprising how long 8 hours is when you try and spend most of it sat with your eyes closed, you may not be clock watching but it certainly seems to have the same effect.

*And that isn’t too much of an exaggeration unfortunately.

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As a wise person once said, “Everyone looks the same in the dark”. It’s true though, darkness - or rather judicious lighting - hides a multitude of sins. Another thing that helps make things look more attractive to the viewer is alcohol and that’s how this photo came about. Yes I know it is a car and thus a blight on a landscape visually and environmentally, but I was I was drunk and not thinking of this. I was just thinking how pretty the lights looked.

I was at a houseparty last night and having imbibed a respectable amount of alcohol. I decided at 4am that I would walk home and go to bed.  A sensible thought you might think, except for one small thing. Sober for me the walk takes 90 minutes or so taking the straightest line home, as you might have already guessed I wasn’t exactly in the mood to be walking in straight lines and so it took a bit longer. The length of time it took me to walk home however is incidental, although for the record I got into bed 2 hrs later.

I haven’t walked through Bristol city centre at 5am for a long time, not  that I ever made a habit of it to be fair and whilst drunk I couldn’t help but enjoy how peaceful it was without anyone else around. It reminded me of when I used to do a paper round when I was at school. Once a week I would deliver about 80 copies of the local gazette across the town and when I say across the town I mean exactly that. To get around in time I used to start at about 2am, so that by 7am I had finished and had time to get ready for school.

The stillness about 4am or so is amazing, too early for postmen and other newspaper boys and too late for anyone else to be about. Of course the catch to this was if you did see someone else about at 4am walking about, they were obviously a nutter and it was probably best to cross over the street to avoid them.

Now I may not deliver newspapers at ungodly hours any more, nor am I yet a fully paid up member of the nutter club, but I have to admit that 4am is still a good time to walk around a place - At least it is as long as the only shopping you want to do is window shopping.

Earlier today I was talking to a friend more senior than myself, whose partner is trying to convince him that living out in the countryside is a good idea. From the sounds of it she is fighting a losing battle.

City born and bred as he was, the idea of space was attractive to him, but that was about the only reason he could come up with to want to live in the sticks. Whereas reasons to not live in the sticks were according to him far more numerous - Chief amongst them was the fact that you’re miles from anywhere.

He also didn’t like the smell of the countryside, but as I pointed out to him if he could smell the city instead  masking it with the cigarettes he smokes, he might appreciate the honest odour of manure a little more.

I was saying just a couple of days ago about how I cancelled my trip to Dartmoor because of the poor quality weather recently. In accordance with Murphy’s Law this has guaranteed an improvement in the weather, just to rub it in - If there is a God,* at least he has a sense of humour.

As to the picture itself, I found this view whilst taking advantage of the sun and walking through the centre of Bristol. With all the development work that has been going on in Bristol of late it was a surprise to find such a peaceful view, especially as unseen behind the ruins lies the building site that is Bristol city centre.

The ruins themselves are of the Church of St Peter, which was damaged during air raids upon Bristol during WW2 and has a history stemming back to just after the Norman conquest of Britain. Now however instead of being a place of worship it is closed off to the public as despite having over 60 years to do so the “repair the roof” fund is still in severe need of money.

*Not that there is.