We went to an exhibition at the British Museum on the theme how Rodin was influenced by the Ancient Greek sculptures he saw in the British Museum. His ‘The Thinker’ and ‘The Kiss’ were there. In my mind’s eye I already had an image of how the couple in The Kiss were entwined and melted into one another, and here in the photo above is the couple, seen from the front. The Front and The Side I know there isn’t a ‘front’ and a ‘side’, exactly, on a sculpture that is by its nature something that can be seen all the way around. But I think that is more or less the ‘front’ – the position from which the two are seen most entwined, having a good old smooch. But come around the side and surprise! The man is sitting upright, straight backed. Rodin

Dorothea Lange At The Barbican Art Gallery This summer, Barbican Art Gallery stages the first UK survey of the American documentary photographer Dorothea Lange (1895–1965), one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century. If you are in London and want to see Lange’s work, there are 250 of her photos along with books, letters, and notes in an exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery. The exhibition describes how Lange started her working life as a society portrait photographer in San Francisco and was doing very well for herself. Then the Depression came and the Government Farm Securities Administration hired her and other photographers and writers to document the exodus of Oklahoma tenant farmers to California following a drought that had turned the mid-Western states into a giant dustbowl. The experience opened Lange’s eyes, and from then on her mission was to document social issues to bring about change to make a more equitable society. The exhibition is well worth seeing if you have the opportunity. What Is Sharp Lange’s photos are held in …

I went on a candid street photography photowalk with some people when I was living in Edinburgh. It was just the one walk because other things got in the way of finding time to go on others. I’m mentioning it because yesterday I was looking through old photos from my D7000 and I came across this one from that photowalk. Let’s call it candid street photography on the streets of Edinburgh – woman tired, sitting and resting on a bollard. The first shot is ‘straight out of the box’ as it were, with blown highlights and just generally overexposed. Photographers talk about how digital cameras behave somewhat like shooting slide film was in film cameras. Don’t blow out the highlights because you will never get them back again, was the mantra. With digital, it means that once a certain amount of light hits the sensor or parts of the sensor, it overpowers it and turns everything to blinding white. Except that the Nikon D7000 manages to recover highlights very well, as you can see here.