©2010 Simon Crinks

I am a visual creature.

Despite my professed loathing for ‘too much Photoshop’, I think I would like to refine that statement to ‘too much bad Photoshop’.

Of course, one man’s meat is another man’s poison, so it’s all about taste in the end.

Which I have, and the other man clearly doesn’t.

A horse, Cornwall, 2010

I went up to the moors yesterday and checked in with the horses that roam about up there.

They told me to say ‘hi’.

Cornish beach, 2004

Nothing new, but something old.

Taken on my 30th birthday.

Chopper Jolly Green Giant buzzing beach

Found amongst a collection of slides.

Author unknown.

I adore this image.

Me and Sharon, Brighton Beach, 2004

I love these accidental double exposures of myself and Sharon, a friend from my art college days. We were attending a mutual friend’s wedding in Brighton and went down to the beach during one of the boring bits.

Starfish, 2004

More old stuffs.

Shot with natural light.

What I’m finding interesting as I go through this older stuff is that I had less technical know-how back then, but my vision was, if anything, clearer.

Starfish, 2004

Starfish, Wembury Beach, 2004

Still no new stuff worth mentioning, so here’s another old film shot from my archives.

I really deserve to own a Hasselblad you know. You should buy me one. haha..

Hurlers, Cornwall, 2004

As I haven’t taken pictures of anybody for what seems like an age, I’ve been mooching through some of my really old stuff.

I really like some of this. It’s made me realise that I really wasn’t that bad a photographer back then. I think I may have been ‘rehearsing’ at the time and really wanted to include people in these shots, but they’re pretty strong as they are.

They make me miss film, and in particular infrared film.

They make me miss the slow process that was involved, and that shows in the results, particularly the compositions.

Bodmin Moor, Cornwall, 2004

They REALLY make me miss square images.

Ho-hum.. perhaps I’ll get some nice prints of these made up.

Bodmin Moor, Cornwall, 2004

MY image of Ereka, near Newquay, 2009

The far-too-talented (and beautiful) Lara Jade posted information on her Twitter feed about something extremely useful for photographers. TinEye is a clever little site that uses advanced electrical machines and long sums to find other instances of your images on the interweb.

Why is this useful? Well, because as I found when I tried it with my image of Ereka, some folk like to take an image that is not theirs, clumsily remove the watermark and proceed to pass off the image as their own (and also try to sell prints of it).

I’ve known folk post other’s work on their sites before, but with an appropriate credit and usually some sort of permission is sought first. But when their posted with someone else’s copyright notice and the original one removed… well, that’s clearly an intent to rip-off the original artist (in this case, me).

People can, it seems, suck.

Tell me...

Three days in and I think the winter blues are just about kicking in.

I loathe the first couple of months of the year; I wish that I’d worked out a way to avoid them, or keep myself occupied until they pass.

And if I don’t shoot something new and interesting soon I think my brain might just implode.

Happy New Year!