To Flash or not to Flash

I've nothing to say tonight. I thought I'd start like that but then that would be the end. I'm exhausted having done almost nothing. I picked up my daughter Clara from the nanny, we cycled along the seine for a few kilometers until we found the ducks I'd promised her. We fed them and ourselves and then got fed up and came home. I'm faced with a week of domesticity, I know it's nothing. Well it's nothing to women and some men, but I'm not some of the men. Clara is sleeping now and I'm tiptoeing around and cursing myself when I drop something like the lid of a saucepan. I hold my breath and wait for the dreaded word papa. Phew I can breath again, she didn't wake up. I turned my camera onto the orchid today, armed with a macro lens and a reflector I played around none too seriously, but enjoyed the flower and it's challenges. I took out the flash and Elinchrom skyports to play around with the flash from different directions, up close and diffused. I hate them. The flash just doesn't do it for me. I say I hate flash, but that's only because I've never really got to know it. To appreciate flash and to make your pictures look as though they were taken using natural light is an art in itself, and I confess right now I can't get it! I am working on it but as is often the case I want to give up before I've begun. Do you do that?

Natural Light WINS!!!

I will persevere this time as I'm getting more and more corporate work where I have to go into offices where the light can be less than ideal. I'm in a bankers office tomorrow to do a portrait of the CEO so my flash is ready to go. Though I will use natural light if there is any.

Paris Photography what?

It's a Wednesday I think? I'm in Paris I know for sure, and it's March 14th because someone called to wish me a happy St Patrick's day, I had to think fast (that's painful) It's not the 17th Ida is it? I know my body is going but I didn't think my mind was so far gone that I'd forgotten my beloved St Patrick's day. The only day in the year when every one wants to be Irish. Many years ago I was in LA for March 17th and I'd never seen so many black  and Hispanic Irish people in my life!
The day outside of my prison looks glorious, the sun has put smiles on the faces of the Parisians passing by (ok I exaggerate), they are almost smiling, that's miracle enough. Well done my sun!
http://www.kevinhayden.book.fr/
I sat down here to write about being once more lost in my photographic world. I lack so much confidence when it comes to being asked to do something photographic, I've only been doing this for thirty two years so what do you expect! Yes I'm a slow learner. I've been asked by someone I respect and consider as a friend and agent, friend first agent second. He has asked me to put together the details of a two day tour/workshop around my usual haunts like the Latin Quarter, Montmartre and the Marais, well he may as well have asked me to extract my kidneys sans anesthetic and fry them in red wine. I don't know where to start? What do I know?
http://www.kevinhayden.book.fr/
I've only been reading, drinking, eating, and sleeping photography for donkeys years how the f... can I do this?
Now the sun is starting to reflect off this lovely picture of mine, a sunrise. I used to despise photos of sunrises.
This one is special. I took it! Now I feel I should be at my cafe reading about Hemingway, imagining I'm Hemingway

 These girls were happy to pose

and writing like Hemingway. Now I can smell the coffee, f... this for a game of soldiers I'm out of here! Now better save this for later. Wait a second the sun has stopped reflecting off my f.....g photo. Panic over the sun is still there! So now I'm off to my terrace au soleil, and to say "bonjour mes amis, ca va"! That's about my vocabulary before they start laughing at my pronunciation. Which reminds me, I was in Moret famous for being once home to Alfred Sisley and for making Poppy ice cream. Can you say coclico? Coclico is french for poppy. I don't know how they screwed it up to this? Well I can't, not for all the tea in China can I say coclico. I say clo cli clo. So I had chocolate f.....g ice cream instead. Yes I was and am pissed off I still can't say it after 8 years.
I'm supposed to be gone for coffee, see I forget even the nice things in my life. And I'm supposed to be blogging about photography. I've a great memory but it doesn't last long!  I presume if I click on save that this diatribe will be here when I get back? Why the f... did I start this? Jaysus I need a fag! He was bewildered!

 Bewildered

Back again! Now where was I? Oh yes photography work shop for two days. I'm thinking... macro, portraits, architecture, maybe not architecture cos then we'll have to go into photoshop unless we use tilt and shift lenses, street photography is great, but nobody like doing it because it's outside their comfort zone. And it is tough in France because they are so aware of their rights and "le droit d'image" is more than ever present thanks to all these social networking sites like Facebook, Flickr and Twitter. When I approach someone on the street I tell them how handsome or beautiful I think they are and keep talking while they make up their minds, my french being what it is they generally give me a look of bewilderment and by that time I've got the picture, and say merci au revoir, bon journée bon everything and leg it!
After sacrificing hours of bullshite on my cafe terrace I expect my business to flourish now...the phone hasn't rung?

Paris Forest

Sunday in the forest of Vincennes...

I plan to blog every day and every day something else pops up, or my mind wanders (yes it's age related), even at 50 I sometimes forget my own name. Deliberately! Please don't remind me either. I'm doing my damnedest to forget. So it's Sunday evening, I've just come back from discovering another part of the Parc de Vincennes. I ventured further than normal. This old boy gets around you know! I managed to find the jardin Tropicale with the help of my girlfriend Hélène I must admit I'd never have found it otherwise. Even she had a job to find it, and we did take some wrong turns. But that reminds me of something else. You see my mind wanders, and wonders. Are there any wrong turns? Looking back as far as I can without wanting to kill myself again, or at least to the age of five what has passed thru my life has always been "right", and I've never really been lost, I'd say just suspended in a learning bubble of nothingness sometimes, and that can be a dark and worrisome endroit, but now I know it was all meant to be. Like the mouse holding up the bar of the mouse trap, if it doesn't kill you it will make you stronger. Now when you're in the midst of a black period and someone says something like that to you you suddenly go from suicidal to homicidal. I didn't.

Anyway back to my cycle around the bois de Vincennes. It took two hours, the hours of 7 and 8pm to be exact to set out, get lost and found and find the tropical garden. We passed the hippodrome of Vincennes which is huge and impressive by it's enormity. I do love racehorse tracks. If you want to make a small fortune on the racetrack, start out with a huge fortune.

Again I'll try and get back to what I set out to write about. What was it? Now I can't friggin remember?

It was photography as always on my narrow mind. It was the light that struck me.  The cyclists spokes were glistening in the golden light. Kids and parents with buggies and push chairs were annoyingly there too! In my way.  This is my path now piss off!  The sun was sloping behind the trees, and caressing them with a gorgeous light as it slid down behind the lake between the trees.

So I attempted to stay in the moment and zen. It didn't last, I just can't stand the unpredictable nature of kids on forest paths, and I hate using my brakes when I've used up all my energy to work up to this speed and then to have it wasted to avoid cutting a child in half. 

I'd better stop before you get the wrong impression. I love kids but I wouldn't eat a whole one.

Where was I? 

Oh yes ff..ing photography.

I love it really!

I saw many photographs to take, but again couldn't bring myself to touch the brakes, I'm flying now!

I was with my girlfriend but so alone it was bliss! The smell of Spring fresh air(well as fresh as you'll get in Paris), birds singing gleefully, and strangely a flock of swans that were flying around very agitated as if they had wasps up their arses or something. They are loud bastards swans. I was struck by gratitude that they didn't crap as they passed over me for the umpteenth time, swan crap is huge in case you didn't know. There is no luck attached to it I can assure you. I pissed my trousers having seen it happen to another unfortunate in Buckinghamshire years ago. He's probably still cleaning himself poor man.

That reminds me of a point and shoot camera for some reason. An old Canon G9. That's what I had in my pocket on my bike as I breathed in the less polluted air of a wooded Paris suburb. Nogent is lovely quand meme!

We then passed the French olympic athletes training centre. Forgettable.

The lakes, streams and waterfalls make the forest of Vincennes a must visit.

In all earnestness my/our cycle was inspiring. I will go back with my medium format camera and tripod and hope for light half as good as I saw today. It won't ever happen, it never does. But that's what makes photography such great therapy, a little like fishing you have to wait for everything to be right before you strike. And it's an inside job. It's known to some as the zen of creativity. To be still, centred and quiet and to wait for the photo to come to you. To wait until you are touched or until you can no longer feel your arse, and then take that Tate gallery worthy picture.

Don't give up!

I may, so take my advice I'm not using it anymore.

Don't let the sunset stop you.