& J: Joshua Bradley: Blog

I saw this lady’s work on I love Typography dot com, and I think it’s great. Go and see.

OK. So I have two favourite types of lens. I like a lens to either distance me or force me into the proximity of my subject. I don’t think there’s anything strange in finding the latter the more taxing occupation. London teaches us it’s often easier to not interact at all than interact and risk a stabbing, a gay-up, or, worst: the unutterably, impossibly, shit-on-the-flawingly banal. And so there’s a lot of enjoyment in spying down from the concrete walkways above, and capturing (literally stealing!) a moment from unknowing, unaware models. And what a set! I couldn’t do this in my studio. Though the lighting would be better.

It might not be better than this, however: the kebab shop on the corner of Primrose Street and Bishopsgate, and its owner. When I asked them if I could take their photo, the guy in the background said: ‘Oh no… I did this before… And the next thing I knew, I was in a sex magazine. It’s disgusting. I’m not doing that again…’ But the manager was happier with the prospect, and approved of this shot, which is reassuring. The burger I had was delicious, if a little over-spiced.

This reminds me of a dream. Do you like Christopher Doyle? I like Christopher Doyle. I saw a film last night, Dumplings, which was quite fun. Certainly sumptuous. It had that disappointing quality where a director/writer seems to pick up a vivid image or allegory, does it, and then still has an hour and a half of movie to fill. C’est la.

It’s been a while since I posted and now everything is new and different, because that’s what happens- that’s how we roll. I have new plans.

I bought a new prime lens for my camera last week, and I’ve been using it pretty much exclusively since. ‘Prime’ means it is fixed at one zoom position. This makes it less flexible for general purposes, but it means that it can be built with a very large aperture (for the price).

This means two things to me:

1: Narrow depth of field! Get everything really blurry (yeah!) except a tiny bit chosen apparently at random by the autofocus machine in the camera! I actually like this.
2: Great in low light! Which my other lenses aren’t.

It also looks really squat and chunky on the camera body, and I find this appealing for some reason.