Polemie.com

I have no idea about photography or great photographers but here’s what I think and I think I’m not very wrong.

Anyone can take a picture of a street sign, but it takes talent to make this regular, every day thing worth a photo.
Anyone can take a black and white picture of their grandpa, but without a lot of practise you’ll never be able to capture that magic instant, that has allowed so many great photographers to create the most magnificent portrait shots.
At the centre is the content and the 99% around it are the how, the art of the photo. Angle, lighting, perspective, colours and so on.

The content, though, is not simply what lays behind the lens but what the artists sees. These 99% are how he expresses his ideas. He makes the picture happen. Some objects aren’t as photogenic as others and require more patience and concentration in order to get a good shot. It’s not just about clicking a shutter button but seeing the potential of a unique scene, sometimes only lasting the split of a second.
The artist doesn’t take a photo, he makes it.

It’s the photographer who makes the great photograph, not his camera. Sometimes, a state of the art DSRL can be beaten by a smartphone. It’s not by applying a vintage filter that you’ll create an eternal piece of art. Even the ability to remove wrinkles in Photoshop doesn’t matter. Artsy over-edited Instagram snapshots of fruit are getting annoying. The essential bit is to create. This can be as little as a cup of coffee sitting on a beautiful table cloth. Such a simple mise-en-scène can produce finer photos than a sunset.

Photography isn’t really about anything else than yourself and your ability to see through a lens. The rest is inspiration and transpiration.

I knew it from the moment Eva consented to my request. Letting me have her room in Camden for a week would make me realise what I’m missing in Uxbridge.

Thorben was visiting, from Germany. I thought it would be immeasurably more enjoyable to reside in central London rather than next to the furthest station on the Tube network. Uxbridge is not an area to show your friends, especially not if you plan on showing off a little bit.

So I got the keys to my friend’s place, she’s on holiday, I’m grateful and am now seriously considering moving here. All it needed to terminally steer me away from accepting Uxbridge as a home was five days in the cultural centre.

Being in Camden is what I had imagined living in London would be like before I moved to England last September. Being woken up by sunshine and traffic noise, getting a fancy breakfast for £16, visiting expositions on sliced animals, walking around hipster restaurants and pubs and meeting people from all over the world. In only one week in central London I’ve felt more enjoyment than after months and months of monotone Uxbridge.

Camden town is only two tube stops away from my temporary residence. If you’ve never been, you’re missing out. As you step out of the station, setting foot in the swarming streets, you’re immediately indulged by the mess. An endless array of shops and indians advertising their restaurants takes over your perception. It takes about half a minute until you realise there’s more than noise. Oh, there is a bridge and there is a river and there is the sky and there are cars and tourists, so many tourists. After you’ve got yourself together again you can start walking around but need vigilance and focus as you’re heading forward. Shopkeepers are buzzing around you like bees, convincing you that their rubber GameBoy imitation iPhone case is worth £10 and after a minute of paltering you get it for £4.

If there’s one thing you learn after an afternoon at the market it’s to say no. It’s impossible to stop at a shop for more than three seconds without getting the retailer’s attention, but then again I doubt it’s within human capacity to ignore Justin Bieber Beats headphones, LED fake Zippo lighters, glow in the dark shirts, Hello Kitty sex toys or vintage Coca Cola ads.

The best thing about Camden are the stables. The concentration of chinese restaurants is incredible and can be found nowhere else in the world. I’ve counted 50 and only stopped because I was distracted by this guy trying to convince me of buying a Rolex imitation. Somewhere hidden between band shirts and noodle stands are stairs leading to more shops underground. Following a long corridor of boutiques instead of walls leads you to the english student’s dream place. At the end of the hallway is a tiny café with half a dozen tables, an italian piano player singing ballads and young couples holding hands. The corner is enclosed by innumerable bookshelves holding old classics, comics and titles visibly having being passed on for generations and generations. The place smells like history and coffee.

Leaving the markets is like returning to the normal, dull world. The rest of London seems boring compared to the brouhaha at the stables and returning to a life in Uxbridge is unthinkable now, but sadly inevitable.

On friday I took the bus to Wycombe. It’s closer to Uxbridge than central London, and also cheaper to travel to.

I was about a quarter through The Hunger Games when I arrived. My friend decided we should watch the movie. She had finished the book and kept comparing both and flattered herself by spotting inconsistencies. After she had pointed out all the omissions from the book I decided to throw popcorn at her.

We then walked around a little and I bought a pair of shoes.

At the end of the afternoon, I went to see my friend Chris from uni. He was still on his way back from Mill Hall so his mom opened the door. This led to some awkward but amusing smalltalk. We talked about their fish, called Fish, because there was only one fish, why bother naming it? Fish a very old, fat and lazy goldfish, but the colour has worn off, so now it’s silver. Fish is older than my brother. My friend’s mom also pointed out that the holes in the carpet came from their bulimic rabbit, which is now dead. It probably ate too much carpet. I learnt that the rabbit used to happily crawl behind the TV set and eat the cables. I forgot to ask for the rabbit’s name. Then I made a .gif of the fish.

After what seemed like an eternity, Chris arrived and we went out. I had to introduce myself to new people. This is always a bit complicated since I can’t answer “Where are you from?” that easily. I wore a Vespa jacket that night and was able to disguise myself as italian and also passed as swedish. I speak neither. This guy asked me to listen him talk about his tunisian cousin in broken french. He probably woke up with a headache.

Cool. You’re reading my blog. I love you.

I have decided to post more personal stuff. There’s no point in publishing essays when there is clearly no audience. I have just checked my RSS subscription counter, there are 19 of you. Please don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for your interest and will not abuse of this privilege. Yes, it’s an honour to entertain you.

However, I have to confess that I feel like a pastor who missed the memo that today’s mass was cancelled but gives his speech anyway. Just as Twitter is more fun when there’s feedback from followers, blogging can become monotone without responses. I don’t expect comments, but a click on “like” will do the job. And even if it’s just knowing that there’s a level of curiosity out there for a bloke with a mishmash of nationalities, studying a topic he doesn’t enjoy and is constantly complaining, I’m happy. Dear reader, thank you.

On that note, I’m writing to inform you that I will blog a little more personal content.

Things have changed since the last time I wrote about my halls.

Arriving at uni last september introduced my flatmates and me to a pest. A person with no respect whatsoever for other people’s lives and belongings. We have had a wave of food thefts just before Christmas and are now witnessing similar childish shenanigans. Two weeks ago, my frying pan went missing, a friend’s pan has turned up in the glass trash bin, I found my cheese drowned in a sticky and liquid substance, the level of ketchup bottles mysteriously sinks and frozen pizzas disappear. Of course, none of this has been recorded on camera, a shame for a nation under CCTV.

We have filed formal complaints and feel like the victims of a humorless David Thorne. There have been thoughts about acts of revenge, but these ideas were quickly crumpled. Sometimes it is best to just stand above the problem, not to level with it. Unfortunately ignoring the troll didn’t help much, we still get blocked up sinks, a flooded floor and caramelised coke on the cookers. Fighting “le mal par le mal” only works for depressed french poets and the fire brigade. We won’t strike back, but luckily the holidays are approaching and the bollocks will soon stop.

I have now applied for Industrial Design, a 4-year course, and will be staying at Brunel. I’ve found a house to live in with a couple of friends, at about five minutes away from the campus. I will be leaving the student accommodation. Good bye, Mill Hall.

I cannot comprehend how people can put up with streaming TV shows. It’s life’s worst experience.

There are hundreds of sites to watch TV shows online, one worse than the other. The user is made miserable, the quality is depressing, the need to close pop-up ads becomes painstakingly distressing after the 100th time and the only perk is that after 72 minutes comes relief.

I know enough people whose understanding of watching TV shows online is defined by scam like megaupload, videobb, and so on. To play the newest episode of their favourite show they will first open a site collecting episode links from various sources, then look for a source with a high enough rating, after that they will probably have to go back and forth a couple of times to find a reliable and functioning stream to play the video. The horror isn’t over now though, the user still has to click away at least two ads, maybe enter a captcha, mute a video ad half way through the show, ignore the pop-ups. In addition to all these drawbacks, the video quality is crap, the sound awful, the playback rough. But at least it’s free, right?

I am past the age of feeling a need to be rebellious against the media industry, of avoiding to pay for their products at any cost and later complaining about the show. After about 20 episodes of HIMYM, House and The Simpsons on various online video sites I’ve had enough. I needed an alternative. I couldn’t stand the lack of attention put into these sites. Yes, these sites are in a legal grey area, but then again you can get HD TV shows from Piratebay.

Lucky for me Netflix now works in the United Kingdom and I’ve been subscribed since day 1, about two months ago. For the price of a student lunch I get unlimited access to all their movies and TV shows and there’s an iPhone app too! The video starts playing immediately and automatically switches from HD to SD depending on the network to guarantee a fluid playback. Me gusta!

The problem is, though, that Netflix currently only works in the US, Canada and the UK. It’s not that we, the “download generation”, aren’t willing to pay for content, it’s more that there isn’t any option. Sure, we could buy everything on iTunes and pay three times the DVD retail price, but that isn’t really a solution either. Blame the studios. The main issue lays with the TV executives who still fear the internet, who will wait a year between airing and DVD release. The broadcasting industry is killing itself with conformity.

Netflix isn’t a new service, it won’t convert the megaupload evangelists and it won’t affect anyone outside its three countries. But with its extension to the UK a first step is made, just as Spotify recently became available in Germany, gaining a huge amount of praise and new users. Services like Netflix and Spotify both facilitate user experience and present the content in a lovely package. They reduce illegal download and crappy streaming and bring some money to the studios. Not much, but it’s far better than nothing.

There have always been pirates and there will always be outlaws but easy beats free and with age comes maturity. The downloading youngsters will chasten themselves from their shitty video sites and soon appreciate decent, immediate playback for the price of two Frappuccinos a month.