...Said an alleged Sisters fan to BB once. Which, if you're not a Sisters fan, amounts to liking two early singles and not the three albums and numerous EPs that followed.

This NotBBC post nicely points up the problems in being a fan of one specific period of a band's history.

Home Photography by Andrew Sanderson: I have to stop going into bookshops for at least a few years if books like this keep coming out. And I swore I wasn't going to buy any more tutorial books. Good job the floor under our bookcases is solid concrete.

Actually, this is less a tutorial and more a philosophical tome. And the photographs are fantastic. You'll look at your home completely differently afterwards, and probably take a lot more pictures around it. Very inspiring.

Update, 2004-01-26: My full review is at Nikonians. Andrew Sanderson's web site is finally up (NB. not the URL in the book), and you can find some of his stock images at Trevillion or visit his gallery (Sanderson, George & Peach) in Holmfirth, Yorks. [Andrew: Many thanks for your kind email. I did reply, but I'm not sure if you got it.]

Some quotes from the book that seem particularly apposite to Internet photography forums and their rampant gear mania:

"We can easily find ourselves getting a little too wrapped up in concerns which have no real bearing on the outcome of the picture. ...The standard of your work will not necessarily depend on your equipment, nor will it depend on your choice of materials as such..." (p. 58)

"Many amateurs would see a big improvement in their work if they stopped reading and worrying so much, and simply went out and shot a mile of film." (p. 68)

"...Most users of 35mm do not achieve the maximum quality that these cameras are capable of, due to sloppy technique." (p. 122)

Update, 20090626

Nikonians has, rather rudely, become a pay-site so my review - the one that was contributed freely to their site - is no longer generally accessible. I managed to retrieve a draft copy, which is reproduced below.

Beginning photographers often hit two problems eventually (apart from the myriad technical challenges, that is):

• Experienced photographers often write about having a "vision" and "style"; how does one find these? What sort of photographs do I want to take?
• Lack of subject matter or, more precisely, inspiration; there no longer seems to be much worth photographing once the initial thrill of using the camera has worn off.

Andrew Sanderson's new book has been a big help to me with both of these issues. His thesis is that our own everyday surroundings provide an ample source of pictures once we learn to overcome our familiarity with them. He illustrates this with a collection of stunning, gorgeous images taken from his own home life, an approach initially forced on him by child-rearing duties. (Incidentally, production quality of the book is excellent, with glossy pages used.)

Most of Sanderson's work is in the form of toned B&W prints on a variety of formats (there is one colour image). Cynics might argue that anything looks beautiful in toned B&W - heck, I'd look beautiful represented that way - but his observational and compositional skills render these pictures truly exceptional. Moreover, they contain the same elements that surround most of us. Several are based on food; his close-up of Emmental cheese apparently prompts much frenzied speculation on the subject matter ("boiled eggs in milk?"), while a subtly lit still-life of "Eggs and pegs" in a bowl (taken while unoccupied during a visit to his mother-in-law) is attractive despite the prosaic subject matter. Even a "snapshot" of a black cat on the roof of a caravan, viewed through the kitchen window, forms an intriguing outline in the midst of an ordinary frame. Scale is playfully manipulated; shadows are used to direct the attention; the commonplace takes on new form or meaning.

Accompanying the pictures, the text gently prods us with questions designed to shake up the way we view our surroundings and consider what images around us are waiting to be discovered even as we sit reading. Sanderson throws in a generous treatise on his own motivations and approach (apologising in the introduction for such "airy-fairy" talk).

Chapter headings are loosely defined, more an excuse for free association around the words: the room space; in your kitchen; architecture; gardens, plants and flowers; people (even nude self-portraits!); pets; toys; a short walk; etc. The subheadings are common to many photographic books (being visual, composition, etc.) but the treatments are not. Throughout, the author carefully picks examples of his own work that will in turn inspire the reader to have a go - and they won't need to move far to do so. He even includes a selection of thumbnails at the rear to give a taste of some of the unused shots.

If you are a stickler for technical details on an image, be warned that Sanderson is not. Few of the pictures are accompanied by this information; in a postscript, Sanderson argues that the picture itself contains sufficient detail when examined to convey the necessary exposure data and that, as modern lenses generally meet an adequate standard of optical quality, equipment is irrelevant.

While the photography is uniformly excellent, sentence construction in the text becomes clumsy on occasion. There are a few too many sentences joined by commas like this one, one would have thought that a good editor might have fixed these.

However, these minor problems do not detract from what is a both an inspirational tract and a testament to Sanderson's own creative abilities. I suspect many would be proud to own this book, either to develop a new approach or simply as a work of art in its own right.

On a personal note, I realised that I have always liked images of the style displayed here but would have been hard-pushed to categorise them, let alone select this style as an avenue for my own impulses. In particular, the illustrated use of available light (or unusual light sources such as the anglepoise lamp) and selective focus to impart an artistic quality to the image was an eye-opener. As a consequence of reading this book (and some unrelated discussions here on Nikonians), I have modified my own approach and finally begun to take the kind of pictures I always wanted. As a humble amateur, I can't ask for more.

Here's an interesting thread on Nikonians about the merits of fast lenses against all-in-one zooms. The latter are usually targetted at the "consumer" market, because consumers want the convenience and will accept - or are unaware of - the limitations and compromises imposed by these designs. Chief among these are narrow (slow) maximum apertures (second is quality loss, although it's arguable whether this is a serious issue for typical print sizes). That means problems working in low light (i.e. the upper northern hemisphere :-) and difficulty obtaining shallow depth of field effects - which often produce the most "artistic" images.

I got dragged into this thread because, prior to it, the lens I most coveted was the Nikkor 28-105D zoom. Not much of a dream, but I need to replace the 28-100G bundled with my F80 (it was satisfactory right up until I saw the first picture taken with my 50/1.8D prime), and the 28-105D is generally reckoned to offer the best value/quality trade-off at the low end. It also has a limited macro capability, which interests me.

Now Nikkor have introduced the 24-120VR AF-S. For approx. another 25% of the cost of the 28-105D, you get vibration reduction, faster/quieter autofocus and more range. Great, I thought; all those 28-105D owners will upgrade and dump their old zooms on the secondhand market! But, as the thread above points out, either way you're stuck with the slow apertures of a consumer zoom and you get whatever distortions and quality loss are concomitant with a lens that covers such a wide range of focal lengths. Obviously, you can choose a zoom with a fixed f/2.8 maximum aperture instead but they're expensive, heavy and most of them have much narrower ranges than the two lenses above. I can't justify that kind of money on a hobby. A part-time hobby at that.

Time to rethink, based on my photography to date:

• I like primes. I like their contrast and sharpness and I even prefer the limitation of a fixed focal length, since it forces me to put more effort into the shot. Yes, you can tape down a zoom to one focal length but honestly, who would? It would be like taking two wheels off a Jag so you can learn how to ride a bicycle. Yes, you miss some shots when you can't get close enough or, less frequently, far enough back but so what? I miss loads of shots anyway by simply choosing not to bother, not to make a figure of myself, not to hold everyone up while I faff around. At least with a prime, the shots I do take are generally worth it. And if I'm going to put some time into a shot, shouldn't the result possess the highest quality I can manage?
• I have 24mm and 50mm covered by primes. (I've never found 28mm to be wide enough anyway.) For long distance work (e.g. the zoo), I have a 70-300G that works acceptably well. The only gaps I'd like to fill are the 80-100mm area with higher quality (too short to be useful for "telephoto" shots but handy when a barrier stops you taking another step forward with your 50mm, and good for isolation) and macro capability.
• Having just devoured Home Photography by Andrew Sanderson (more later), I really like the isolation and aesthetics provided by wide apertures. Reducing clutter in the frame is always a problem.
• I like to shoot 100ASA or slower film, because it scans better (less grain aliasing). Conversely, I hate dragging around and using a tripod; it doesn't make my picture-taking more considered, it just makes it more fiddly and rushed. With slow film in anything less than bright conditions, you soon find you need wider apertures than f/4.5 to keep shutter speeds above handholding limit. (On the other hand, I need to maintain at least 1/125th with a 100mm lens - is this always possible at f/2.8, bearing in mind that I'm frequently forced down to 1/45th at f/2 in the shade? Regardless of the available aperture, maybe it's time I got over my tripediphobia (lit. "fear of three legs"))
• I'd rather take one prime and live with it than a zoom that allegedly arms me "for anything".

So I'm now looking for either a secondhand Micro-Nikkor 105/2.8D or new Sigma 105/2.8EX. Both are supposed to be super-sharp and have macro down to 1:1. Although, of course, they are rather different lenses to the 28-105D.

As wee bairns across the land eagerly await the arrival of the fifth Hairy Plodder book, BB notes the following related news items:

• After 7,000 copies are stolen from a TNT delivery, Merseyside police warn that anyone caught reading them - we're talking about a book aimed at kids, remember - will be prosecuted. (Frankly, knowing what scousers are allegedly like, the only solution may be to kill all the first-born in Liverpool.)
• JK Rowling, via her US publisher, is suing an American newspaper for $100m after they printed brief extracts and a synopsis based on a copy bought from an unwitting health food shop. (Obviously the health food shop had $100m less in revenue and a tighter case, so they aren't being sued. It's a shame the paper didn't have it couriered from Liverpool, then Merseyside police could have arrested the editor.)
• Rowling's Canadian publisher reportedly offered a woman $5,000 to return a copy sold to her by mistake. She refused because she "hadn't finished reading it yet". (We really don't know who's crazier here. Lock them both up in a secure ward.)
• One web site already offers three ways to download the text from file-sharing networks. My ghod, we thought ripping off struggling record companies was bad enough but this is Grand Larceny - send in the marines!!
• Bloomsbury announce higher profits than expected due to advance demand for the new book.
• JK Rowling is now richer than the Queen, Onassis, Croesus and Russia. The marketing people said so.

We trust Merseyside police are doing their utmost to recover the stolen books, as obviously the whole HP phenomenon would collapse and Bloomsbury be left bankrupt if the plot were to leak out 24 hours before the official release. Presumably even now they've pulled all their detectives off the usual drug and murder inquiries to pump the Liverpool criminal underworld for leads:

"'Ere, Ron Weasly's my favourite."
"Don't you know? He dies at the end of the new book!"
"RIGHT, YOU'RE NICKED, MY SON!!"
"Aaaahhh!!! Hagrid, save me!!"
"Sarge, I've caught one of 'em! How long can we detain minors for?!"

Perhaps dealers are pushing badly photocopied fakes on to eight year olds at the school gates as I type this.

"Hey kid, try dis, it'll get you reely high, like!"
"Fook off la', where's me heroin?"

Despite the lucrative rewards from publishing Harry Potter, Bloomsbury must be gutted that millions of kids are now going to have unlicensed thoughts about the him; basing dreams and childish fantasies on him and his pals without purchasing the rights to use the characters! If only merchandising agreements extended to the mental realm...

Reports that the government is considering legislation forcing everyone to purchase a copy of the seventh book on release (following the Vatican's canonisation of Rowling) are assumed to be premature. But our capacity to be surprised is currently exhausted.

From a news item about the increasing incidence of job candidates losing offers after their prospective employers run background checks on the Internet:

"In a third case, a senior sales executive seeking a move also ended up getting the sack after boasting to the Friends Reunited site, set up to keep old school pals in touch, that he lied at interview and his CV was "a masterpiece of fiction."

Geez, you'd think he'd be a shoe-in for sales with those tactics. Maybe they considered him over-qualified.

In the new issue of Word magazine, Moby talks about how long it took him to realise that - far from a merry jape or publicity stunt - Eminem really did hate him. He doesn't understand why. "...There was a genuine hate and rage on his part towards me. And I'm like one of the most inoffensive people I know," he says, thus answering his own question.

BB is in the Guardian today, with a short paragraph of penetrating insight on Beckham and United; actually much greater than the sum total of our football knowledge.

I begged the journalist (who wandered up while I was enjoying a break in the sun) to make up a quote because "you're a journalist, you've done it before!" He didn't laugh at that (the photographer did) but swipe me, he did make part of it up. The "control his players" bit wasn't mine, and it renders an already vapid and incoherent viewpoint into utterly meaningless bollocks (but then, "that's football" as we say). Add to that a photo (print edition only) that made me look like an eager chipmunk and - well, never believe what you read in the papers, that's all I can say. My thought process in those five seconds of groping for something articulate to say was roughly along the lines of: "Lemme see, David Beckham seems like a nice lad and Ferguson is an angry twat... Err... Ferguson is to blame!"

Let's pretend I had time to come up with something better:

Ade Rixon, an astounding yet suave genius in the IT world: "Blame is never a helpful concept when a couple's relationship breaks down. Ferguson has got to realise that, even though he'll never be as attractive as Victoria, David still loves him. But equally, David needs to alleviate his insecurity by paying him some attention. In the end, we have to hope they'll stay together for the sake of Gary Neville."

Tomorrow: Why Blair Must Go and Those Rumours About Me And Posh. Plus, David Beckham starts his new column about Enterprise Unix.

Currently reading: Bully for Brontosaurus by Stephen Jay Gould, now my other favourite author of readable intellectual discourse alongside Alain de Botton. The late Gould covers an astonishing array of genuinely interesting facts and sniffs out the fascinating, often wryly amusing stories behind them. One of them, and not even the most intriguing, is that apparently 30% of Americans still believe man and dinosaurs co-existed at some point in history. Well, they've seen them fighting on TV and in movies. It must be true, raht Cleetus? (2% probably think Jeff Goldblum killed the last one a few years ago, just before he fought off an alien invasion with a Powerbook.)

My reactions to this were roughly in the order of:

• So few?
• I bet research would find a similar proportion in Britain. Civilisation is skin deep but ignorance goes to the bone(head).
• Small wonder a majority accept without question that al-Qaida, Iraq and 9/11 are linked, and Bush is doing a great job of defending their interests. (In truth, it's not that they have been linked by Bush; it's that they are linked by Bush. Hey, Bush is the missing link! What a shame Gould isn't here to witness this evolutionary discovery.)

School Run

Sensitive teacher arrives at tough L.A. inner city state school and quickly realises that she will have to adopt some unconventional techniques to reach out to troubled pupils. Unfortunately, she is shot dead during the first maths lesson, after asking one of the younger boys to be quiet.

Homie & Whitey

Wise-cracking black cop and straight-laced white detective team up to fight corruption in city hall, but instead become the focus of a federal investigation into racism within the police force after members of the public witness one of their regular disagreements. As both are suspended from duty, rioting and looting erupts downtown, giving the mayor an excuse to bulldoze the area for a lucrative property deal.

Night of the Vampire

Teens trapped in an old castle must fight for their lives when it turns out to be infested with vampire nuns. Unfortunately, their rank stupidity viz. backing away without looking, dropping crucifixes in a panic and tripping over while running away from packs of slavering nosferatu means that they are all sucked dry within the first ten minutes. Vampires spend remainder of film moaning about how easy it is to slaughter innocent people these days.

Sentimental journey

When a wayward grown-up daughter discovers that her estranged mother is dying of cancer, she immediately disappears on a six month sabbatical to Europe to avoid nursing her, flying back after hearing of her death but dying herself en-route of an undiagnosed brain tumour.

Return Of The King

In the final part of the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, Frodo and Sam enter Mordor intending to destroy the Ring in Mount Doom. However, they are caught and physically violated by a pack of marauding Orcs while their companions are peppered with arrows during the initial assault in the Battle of Gondor. Later, their mutilated heads are displayed along the city walls by the victorious Ringwraiths. Sauron reigns supreme and every living thing on Middle Earth is condemned to an eternity of darkness. Bummer.

Barry Manilow took a wrong turn when getting out of bed and broke his nose by hitting the wall. In other rock news, Mick Jagger has suffered a split lip and Pete Townsend sprained his wrist.