ash

I'm not around here much anymore. If you want to see what I've been up to, swing by my webpage www.ashtonmason.net

Hi to everyone I know here

Ok so I seem to have dropped out of DA. Sorry to anyone who misses me.

I like DA and I had a great time here. I'm still taking shots, but lately I can't be bothered to submit them. I really enjoyed having an audience for my stuff, plus I learned a huge amount and met lots of great people (who I have now lost touch with a bit, which is sad), but after a while, chasing favourites and one line comments starts to seem a bit old.

My best wishes to everyone I know here. If you want to contact me you can get me at ashton_mason [at] yahoo [dot] co [dot] uk. Hopefully I will be back from time to say hello. I also have a website, www.nerve.org.za, and plans (albe they slacker plans) to revamp it into a regularly updated sort of online photographic magazine. Who knows, it could happen.

love
Ash

Hi to everyone who I know around here. Sorry I've been missing for a while.

In case you're wondering where I've been, I have been taking the odd photo -- although not with the insane intensity that I was shooting last year -- but haven't really been hanging around on DA much or submitting any of the shots (two mortal sins, no doubt). At the moment I still don't have a net connection at home (or even a landline). And to be honest it hasn't been bothering me much -- it's summer and I've recently moved to a new flat, so there are lots of distractions.

The shots that I've been shooting have all been on Fuji Neopan 1600, which I've been rediscovering lately. It has the dual benefits of giving these really grainy high contrast results while also, happily, allowing me to shoot in less light than I'm used to (which is useful in London).

The catch is that it doesn't have much exposure latitude, so if your exposures (or the camera's) aren't good then the important detail can easily be lost. A plus side of that is that it's a lot closer to the metal than a more forgiving film like Neopan 400 or 100 ACROS. And the grain is pretty sexy, let's face it

I've also been getting to grips with the gain setting on my scanner, which can be useful for extracting useful detail out of a technically under- or overexposed neg.

Anyway, enough technical drivel

[people]

Apologies for the lack of activity around here. Life has been a bit full lately, and, for worse or better, not full of photography. I've moved house, which killed a weekend or two, I've been working like a dog at work (10-12 hour days and some weekends), and inbetween I've even found some time for some real life pursuits like cycling and and reading and socialising. So there hasn't been much actual photography going on, and what there is I haven't had much time or inclination to scan.

Anyway I hope you're all well, all the people I know here. Thanks for dropping by. Often it seems like you have to submit another picture, to get another fix of attention. I guess I'm a bit tired of that as well. But god knows it's a big site and there's no time to see it all, I for one have long since deleted my watchlist and just randomly browse people I like, and even that has petered out to nothing lately due to having no net connection at home yet and no time to surf at work. Busy times.




[people]

[warning this story is long and relatively pointless]

actually it was so long and pointless that I decided only the super-keen would read it, and deleted it

so instead, a question. do you think our eyes have more depth of field in bright sunlight than on cloudy days? is a narrower band of stuff in focus when it's dark?



[people]