A scandal is rocking the music industry:

Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke has admitted he was among the thousands of people who paid nothing to download the band’s latest album.

Despicable. Just because he wrote and recorded the thing doesn’t mean he shouldn’t pay for it like everyone else. Who does he think he is? I predict there’ll be a wave of revelations. I bet J.K. Rowling didn’t pay for her own copy of Harry Potter 7.

There are a lot of naysayers, and they’re all full of it. I guess part of being a critic is enjoying being critical, but online Doctor Who ‘fans’ seem incapable of liking anything, any more. Time Crash is just lovely.

My good friends Lil and Tom married at the end of September, and my chum Ben and I were lucky enough to be official photographers at their wedding. It was a great day. Six weeks later and I’ve finally finished processing ~1300 photos down to ~400 on Flickr.

I was honoured when they first asked if I’d take on the photographic duties, but I declined - wedding photography is a particular skill and too important for an amateur to try without experience. Things changed, though, and I agreed as long as they were aware I might mess it up. They were entirely happy with this, so I brought Ben on board as co-photographer and we set about researching wedding photography techniques. Obviously we wanted to produce the best results possible, so we read as widely as possible, trying to absorb second-hand information. The big day came around very quickly, and it was a hell of a thing. I did mess it up at one point, but the experience was amazing.

Ben and I met up for breakfast first thing that morning, and went over the plan of action. Everything seemed to be in place, and we quickly headed off in different directions: him to the groom, me to the bride. Each was half an hour’s drive away. Our strategy when researching was to steal ideas, and we both had a rough idea of the kind of image we wanted to capture. I’d been planning to scout out the destination the previous night, but two enormous traffic jams on the motorway meant I hadn’t arrived until 3 that morning, so I was entirely reliant on the satnav. Thankfully she did a stellar job, and I made it to the house in good time.

Lil was in the dress and looking lovely, and I took a lot of images of the final adjustments to hair and makeup, then some family group shots. At one point Lil took time out from her incredibly busy morning to hand me some books from a series I’d been reading. I was having enough trouble keeping everything in my head and I wasn’t getting married that day - I am in awe of her presence of mind Time quickly ran out, and I headed out the door a minute or so before they were due to leave.

I ran back to the car, set the photos copying from the memory card to a laptop on the passenger seat and headed for the ceremony venue. I don’t ever speed and didn’t at the time, but I was one of those irritating people who swing from the slip lane straight into the outside lane - I was determined to make it to the venue in time to photograph the bride’s arrival. Unfortunately it wasn’t to be; I hit traffic in Exeter and was actually the last person to arrive. Lesson 1: scout out routes beforehand. If I ever do something like this again this will be a major priority. Ben handled the job with aplomb, however, and I got there just as people were starting to head inside.

I knew cameras were banned during the ceremony and only one official photographer was allowed, but wasn’t sure where I would be allowed to stand etc.. A quick word with the very friendly lady performing the ceremony and I was told I could stand at the front, step forward when the rings were exchanged and move around as long as I wasn’t too distracting. Ok.

I took a few pictures of the room, then realised I hadn’t deleted the images from that morning, and I was going to need the space. I’d taken a few since arriving, so set them as ‘protected’ on the memory card and formatted it. Turns out, this doesn’t work: formatting trumps everything, and I lost maybe ten pictures of people entering the venue. One of them still niggles. In hindsight I should have realised the problem, but I was still somewhat flustered from the drive - at least, I like to think I’d have thought twice under other circumstances. Nevertheless: Lesson 2: know your camera inside out. Ben was doing a good job of covering the guests, so I retook shots of the room, figured out the ISO I was going to need based on the lighting (1600), then had a couple of minutes to say hi to all my friends, who I hadn’t actually managed to meet yet.

The ceremony began and I took my place at the front. Ben and I had been hoping he’d be able to stand at the back and take wider-angle images, but that wasn’t allowed. Lil entered and was walked down the aisle. I quickly became aware of the focus beep, and waited for a calm moment to try and surreptitiously navigate the menus to disable it. I hung back as the vows were read, kneeling and moving from side to side as necessary, hoping the shutter wasn’t too noisy. At one point I was kneeling for a good angle and felt myself physically shaking - whether from adrenalin or strain I don’t know - and hoped this wasn’t really obvious to the whole room.

To speak technically for a minute, I was getting roughly 1/50 at f5.6 at ISO 1600, which, while fine, was close enough that anything much darker would have caused problems. Flash wasn’t allowed, and would have ruined the pleasing window-light anyway. I had my f1.8 in my pocket in case of emergencies, but didn’t fancy risking the tiny depth of field that would produce - I could easily focus on Lil but not Tom with that thing.

I moved forward during the exchange of rings, hoping I wasn’t being too annoying, then stepped back. At this point I made my massive mistake.

The lady said ‘I now pronounce you husband and wife’ and, as you’d imagine, there were big smiles from the bride and groom. I rattled off a few quick images, not wanting to catch anybody blinking at that particular moment, while she said ‘you may now kiss’. And the buffer was full: I pressed the button and nothing happened and I missed it. Lesson 3 is pretty much covered by lesson 2, but is worth reiterating: know your technical limitations.

Lil and Tom signed the register, at which point I relaxed a little as everybody else’s cameras came out: anything I missed should be covered by someone. Ben had an excellent image-stabilised zoom lens and got some great, blurred-background shots from the back. He did this throughout the day, actually, and his shots of guests are far superior to mine. Lesson 4: to isolate guests, get back and zoom rather than try and compose around it with a shorter lens. I should have known this from Damian’s shots, but somehow forgot on the day¹.

The happy couple headed into the gardens and I had a quick opportunity for a few shots sans guests. Ben and I then took a few formal portrait shots in the gardens, but a light drizzle meant we decided to put off the rest until the reception. We took casual shots instead while formulating a plan of action, then it was into the cars to head for the Pride of Exmouth. I again set photos copying from the memory card to the laptop, and we drove half an hour to the coast. I was feeling bad about the missed kiss, but the ceremony was done without any other mishaps, and I was looking forward to the afternoon. Having to continually copy photos from my one 2gb memory card wasn’t ideal, however - Lesson 5: take ridiculous amounts of media, it’s cheap enough that it easily overrides the hassle and worry of transferring ‘in the field’!

The boat set off at the last possible minute before the tide rendered our route impassable, and the sun came out. The weather was beautiful for the rest of the day, which made for a lovely afternoon on as we moved south along the Devon coastline - including, incidentally, a view of the Napoli.

Ben and I took the opportunity to chat and socialise, while taking casual shots of happy people. Most of the advice in this regard had said ‘quality not quantity, unless you want to spend weeks editing photos’. Given our amateur status we ignored this completely, and took as many as possible of any given situation to make sure we had something usable. We did end up with 1333 pictures, but I still think this was the right approach.

Being nearby meant I got to chat to Tom and Lil a fair bit, which was great. There was food and music and sunshine: a fantastic afternoon.

After the meal had settled came speeches - I gave one - and formal family photos. I’d been nervous about these, but thankfully they went ok. The bright sunlight meant we put everybody in the shade of the front of the boat to avoid ridiculous contrasts. I tried to balance flash with the ambient light and was only partially successful² but while concentrating on the technical aspects found I was struggling to remember the best ways of arranging people. Thankfully Ben had no such difficulty, and did a sterling job of balancing heights etc..

Soon afterwards we docked back at the harbour, and the happy couple disembarked. I asked Tom and Lil to recreate the kiss, which they were very willing to do, and we took the photo Lil had requested months beforehand:

What a cool couple they are Probably the only chance I’ll have to take a wedding jumping photo! We also took the opportunity for a group shot of all the Arden schoolfriends, together for the first time in years, and of course there was the throwing of the bouquet:

Looking forward to the big day, Helen.

All too soon Lil and Tom headed off on honeymoon. I immediately wanted to re-do the entire day - Ben and I had learnt so much that we knew we could do better the second time. But, other than the kiss, we’d got everything we wanted. There were a few technical problems later - the laptop refused to power up, for one thing - but Ben’s 4gb usb2.0 stick saved the day. We ended up with photos in four different places, and it was a relief to get home and consolidate everything. Having used the demo for months I finally bought Adobe Lightroom to edit the RAW photos and can say without doubt that the program is a godsend. It’s just remarkable, and deserves its own write-up at some point.

In hindsight I didn’t give Ben enough credit on the day - he worked very hard, and I didn’t always correct people when they called me ‘the photographer’. Much kudos to Ben for his great shots.

This has been a technical write-up, but obviously it was a lovely experience personally. I’ve known Lil since secondary school, and it was wonderful to see her so obviously in love and happy. The whole day was a joy, in many respects, and I’m very grateful to Tom and Lil for giving us such a wonderful opportunity. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

1. I think I did this because of an old piece of advice saying portraits look most natural at 50mm from a couple of metres away. While this may be true in a studio, I’m going to say its redundant in uncontrolled situations [↩]
2. should have bumped up the ISO [↩]

We’ve just started a module on Studio Photography, and yesterday I spent the whole afternoon taking portraits with professional lighting equipment. It’s a hard life, sometimes. It was an introductory session so we were learning how everything works rather than trying to produce anything specific, but the whole group came out with some classy results. We now have to use the same equipment to work on a fairly tricky project.

Over the next four weeks we have to find an interesting photograph taken in controlled conditions, then a) recreate it 1:1 b) shoot a further picture that interprets and extends the original in some way. We’re using film, which is a slight pain. I’ve nothing against film, but when recreating a particular scene it makes far more sense to use digital, imho - having to wait until the film is developed to know whether you’ve got the shot is tedious, especially when studio resources are tight. Still, that’s fairly minor compared to the difficulty of finding an interesting photo in the first place.

The niggle is that we have to create a ten-minute presentation on the photographer, which immediately limits the options to people with some public history. So we can’t use something cool from a magazine/flickr. It’s also difficult for us part-time students to find models, especially as the studios are only open 9-6 weekdays, so still-lifes are a better bet. Admittedly I haven’t properly researched yet, but two hours of browsing the library this afternoon suggested that still-lifes by well-known photographers are scarce, and usually boring as hell. There’s not all that much contemporary stuff, though - I’ll try online.

Hmm, that’s all a bit whiny, isn’t it. Wasn’t meant to be, and isn’t actually as bad in my head. I’m actually looking forward to the challenge, I just think it’s a bit weirdly structured. Get to play with large and expensive toys complex pieces of equipment, though, which is always a good thing

I’ve had a request - a request - to review the video for “Headlines (Friendship Never Ends)” - the new Spice Girls single. I don’t know why either, but I’m always happy to oblige friends…I should mention that Anna Pickard has done a good job of this already.

I should also confess that I don’t mind the Spice Girls at all. They had some catchy songs: I still think ‘two become one’ is pretty good. Please don’t stop talking to me. I should probably move on. Here is why I think the Spice Girls video is like Hamlet.

Video begins with the Girls walking into Enormous Room of Abandoned Stuff. Dark, musty and littered with photogenic bric-a-brac, it’s a place that only exists in music videos. The entrance is, in my view, important. In Hamlet he gets banished for a) killing old men a) being a brat, but when he secretly returns to Denmark he has the advantage of surprise. He can spy on his enemies, track their movements, plan his revenge. And then he blows it by throwing a hissy fit and jumping into a grave in front of everyone. It is the very definition of anti-climactic¹. ‘Headlines’ is the same.

So the Girls enter Ikea Batman’s warehouse. In slow-motion, natch. They’re in beautiful dresses. They look elegant, mature. They used to be a massive pop force, and are now together again. Ok so the song isn’t all that hot, but the video can redeem it. Some class is needed. What’s the story?

This is the entire story of the video: the Girls stand in a room; some of them undress.

Well, Ginger does. Takes her about fifteen seconds. There she is looking good in sparkly red dress, and moments later she’s in a bra and up against a wall.

Lesser bloggers would need to take a moment out after that sentence. I shall push on.

They soon split off into little areas. Ginger has clearly been banished to a corner, so is all look: I has breasts and occasionally look: I has thighs. Posh stands around looking sultry for a while, then, suddenly, we cut to mid-lap-dance: she’s on a chair in her underwear, feeling herself up while gazing sidelong into the camera. Scary appears to have been replaced with Animatronic Girl devoid of personality. Sporty and Baby are clearly embarrassed by all this so wander off and, by virtue of actually being able to sing, retain their dignity.

And that’s it, really. Well-lit attractive women hovering about chez-lounges. Measuring it on the Take That Scale of Comebacks, it gets a Winehouse with Merit, slightly below an All Saints First Single. I hope they get their act together - I still think they’ve a certain kitsch charm.

1. people have tried to tell me it’s very clever and moving. Having none of it. I like the play, but this bit is Just Rubbish [↩]

The Point of Inquiry podcast interviewed Michael Behe this week. Prof. Behe is a leading advocate of the ‘intelligent design’ movement, and Point of Inquiry really really isn’t. It’s great fun, and perfect for playing Spot the Logical Fallacy. Behe comes out with straw men, ad hominem attacks and false premises, as well as poisoning the well, saying things I believe to be demonstrably untrue and continually crying conspiracy. Interviewer D.J. Grothe doesn’t pull any punches, although is of course polite throughout, and calls Behe on his evasions when necessary.

A particularly interesting moment comes when D.J. Grothe asks how ID-ers can criticise evolution for not providing a full and complete explanation, yet offer no mechanisms of their own. Behe’s response is that everybody is trying to explain the appearance of design, so saying ‘it looks designed’ isn’t something that needs to be backed up. This is slippery.

As I see it, the point of evolutionary theory isn’t to explain why things look designed, it’s to explain how they arose. That they appear designed is a side-effect, as it were, and related to the way our brains look at things (also interesting from an evolutionary standpoint). Books like ‘The Blind Watchmaker’ explain evolution from a basis of ‘how come things look designed’ as a) a response to creationists, who use this argument all the time, and b) it’s a useful way of structuring an explanation. But evolution isn’t there to explain the appearance of design any more than round-earth ‘theory’ is there to explain the appearance of a flat planet - that’s just something that arises from the theory.

D.J. Grothe also asks him the obvious: isn’t intelligent design just ‘god of the gaps’? Behe denies this, saying ID uses what we know rather than what we don’t know. But this misses the point: ‘what we know’ in this case is entirely based upon what they claim evolution can’t explain - in other words, gaps. He doesn’t address the question.

The final question is also particularly telling. Behe’s latest book apparently claims malaria cannot have evolved and must have been designed. Why, he is asked, would a designer create something that kills so many innocent people? Unlike his scientific evasions, which sometimes took me a few minutes to unravel, the answer is obvious: god has a secret plan.

It’s worth a listen, although it probably helps if you have a passing familiarity with intelligent design and its recent history - particularly the recent US court case in which ID had its ass handed to it by a conservative judge. Understanding the position of people you’re arguing against is always a good idea, and it’s cool that both sides agreed to the interview.

Here’s a headline you don’t see every day:

A man caught trying to have sex with his bicycle has been sentenced to three years on probation.

He was staying at a hostel in Ayr and got caught in the act when cleaners unlocked his door and walked in. I admit to finding this particularly entertaining:

Stewart had denied the offence, claiming it was caused by a misunderstanding after he had too much to drink.

“I’m sorry, your honour, in the dark the BMX looked just like Kelly Brook”. Said a spokesman.

But, seriously, how is this a crime? He was charged with:

a sexually aggravated breach of the peace by conducting himself in a disorderly manner and simulating sex

WTF. Was this person not in a room on his own? And could they sound any more Victorian?

Weird as it may be, what’s the actual problem here? It’s not even a slap on the wrist, the guy is on probation for three years and is now on the sex offenders register. That’s going to completely mess up the guy’s life, which seems vastly disproportionate. Maybe there are more details that make this less pleasant; from the information given it seems arcane and ridiculous.

Pop Art Portraits is an exhibition currently at the National Portrait Gallery:

Apparently [the artists] cut up magazines, copied comic books, drew trademarked cartoon characters like Minnie Mouse, reproduced covers from Time magazine, made ironic use of a cartoon Charles Atlas, painted over iconic photos of James Dean and Elvis Presley - and that’s just in the first of seven rooms.

Be careful, though:

There is, however, another message about copyright in the National Portrait Gallery: it is implicit in the “No Photography” signs prominently displayed throughout its rooms, including one by the entrance to the Pop Art Portraits exhibition.

Cory Doctorow, writer of the above, thinks Andy Warhol would be turning in his grave. Hard to disagree.

The Guardian has an article defending homeopathy, which includes a moment of genius. Most of it is the usual:

I am sure that there is a placebo effect in homeopathy, but it is a fact that many of the people who end up visiting a homeopath do so as a last resort, when nothing else is working. That such people often see an improvement suggests that the remedies themselves are contributing to the wellness of the individual.

Bit of a non sequitur, there. Then there’s:

Homeopathy seeks to understand everything we are, everything we do, as a web of relatedness. The reason why I have a recurring sore throat will not be the reason why you have one, and what helps me may not help you.

This seems to be partly why tests used for conventional medicines fail when used to test homeopathy.

If only there were some kind of testing system based on, oh, I don’t know, efficacy? Ah, right - the reason your homeopathic remedy doesn’t work for me is that it’s designed for someone else! Now I get it.

I take New Scientist every week [I am not sure this is wise - Andrew] and I am continually amazed at how the seemingly well-known physical world of ours is beginning to show itself as stranger than anyone imagined.

You see? New things are being discovered, therefore my made-up-crap is true. This is the logical fallacy of Completely Missing The Point.

And finally, if you’re particularly masochistic:

Objections to homeopathy begin with what are viewed as the impossible dilutions of the remedies, so that only nano amounts of the original active substance remain, and in some cases are only an imprint, or memory. Yet our recent discoveries in the world of the very small point to a whole new set of rules for the behaviour of nano-quantities. Thundering around in our Gulliver world, we were first shocked to find that splitting the atom allowed inconceivable amounts of energy to be released. Now, we are discovering that the properties of materials change as their size reaches the nano-scale. Bulk material should have constant physical properties, regardless of its size, but at the nano-scale this is not the case. In a solvent, such as water, nano particles can remain suspended, neither floating nor sinking, but permeating the solution. Such particles are also able to pass through cell walls, and they can cause biochemical change.

We do not know whether this has a bearing on homeopathic dilutions, but it may well be that nanoparticles offer a clue.

I don’t know where to start. I expect it was a bit of a shock when somebody first accidentally split an atom, though. Thus far, the article is nothing particularly interesting, but then I saw this:

This homeophobia is[...]

Homeophobia. Genius. Google turns up a few previous references, but I’d never seen it before. I can see that term spreading. Article via Bad Science.

I just discovered that ctrl-delete removes entire words in one go. No idea how I’ve missed this.

Scribbles was watching BBC coverage of the recent fire in London, and admired the eyewitness who saw smoke. In the sky. I also liked the breathless announcement of its being ‘within the 2012 olympic site’, like that’s a Green Zone or something.

I ordered a replacement laptop hard drive last week, but accidentally clicked an SATA version rather than IDE. I only discovered this after opening the packaging, and as I needed the drive that day I was forced to visit the local computer shop. They had an IDE drive in stock:

Ebuyer price: £39.02
Local shop: £116.33

I appreciate they have more overheads, but that’s just stupid. Didn’t have any choice at the time, unfortunately, and it’s obviously unfair to pass my muppetry on to the client. Won’t make that mistake again.

Scrabulous is still the king of addictive facebook apps, but Herd A Word is pretty compulsive. It’s simple stuff: you have three minutes to link letters together to create words, the longer the better. I’m not sure of the best strategy yet. Anything above six-letters gets hundreds of points, so it’s possibly worth searching for these at the expense of everything else. On the other hand, rattling through 3 and 4 letter words might work just as well, although likely doesn’t scale. Found via Ryan, who claims to have a score of 1700. I’m at 580…

I temporarily plugged a monitor into a Vista machine, and ever since the monitor has refused to display anything but 640 x 480, reporting ‘unsupported mode’ for all other resolutions. Irritating.

My desktop speakers are rubbish, and one will regularly cut out, requiring picometre adjustments of the phono connector. Except for this week, when setting off a Windows-error ‘bing’ will fix the problem. I am aware this sounds stupid, but that’s three times now I’ve been playing something in iTunes and had the dead speaker splutter into life in time with a beep.

I’ve just seen that Amazon have launched their Prime service in the UK. With this system you pay £49 for a year’s (first-class) postage, so every subsequent order is just the item cost. Clever.

Minimum delivery on books, for example, is £2.75, so in twelve months you’d have to be making eighteen orders for it to be economical, assuming you didn’t use the free ’super saver’ delivery. It does save the hassle of grouping orders for cheapest postage, though, and when combined with the one-click system it’d be great for busy people. Is it worth it for me personally? Probably not - Gmail reckons I’ve only ordered seven times from them since last November. But it wouldn’t take much more, and I can see the average family hitting eighteen without too much difficulty.

It must be great for Amazon, though: who’s going to use any other store if you’ve paid nearly fifty quid for a year’s deliveries? Amazon’s usually the cheapest anyway, excluding delivery, and given the speed and simplicity of their website it’d be incredibly easy to end up using them for everything.

Can’t think independent bookshops are too impressed, mind.