The Light Side Of Life

The pull to be in the garden is so strong now that spring is really here that it's hard to find time to write my book blog. However,the rain of the last few days gave me time to hunt out the next lot of books. Although sitting down to read them was not in the plan, I had forgotten how readable and inspiring was “My Rock Garden”, a book which a friend found at a sale years ago and dropped in to me on her way home, one of those kindnesses that are never forgotten for their spontaneous generosity. Reginald Farrer wrote this book, and my copy is from The Garden Book Club, London 1942, when a lot of gardeners had other things on their mind. No doubt it cheered many a person who was wondering if he would ever enjoy growing flowers again.

I had a little Brownie 127 camera when I was very young, and when the children were growing up we had a little Halina. But I was never really a photographer, for lack of both time and money. Things changed in the years since 2000. Digital cameras arrived, and at the same time, people began throwing out their old film cameras as well as film, often out-of-date; many found their way to charity shops and I brought them home. When we got our first computer, the bundle that came with it included a Kodak digital camera. It had a viewfinder but no lcd screen and I hadn't a clue how to use it. Around the same time I found a Halina 3000 in the Oxfam charity shop attached to the recycling centre, and at a library sale the next day I found 'The Amateur Photographer Handbook', published by Hamlyn in 1987. It's a very thick, smallish-sized hardback, with lots of text and drawn illustrations, as well as, naturally enough, photographs, although they are not many for the size of the book. Since then I have never looked back. I found that the way to learn how to take pictures is a combination of reading and doing, and for the active part of the adventure, the Halina 3000 is a wonderful camera. It has an uncoupled light meter on top with a little pointer to a number, and you set the speed and aperture so that the same number appears in a little box on the camera, then you take your photo. If you change the shutter speed, for instance to take a faster-moving object, you will have to change the aperture setting in order to get the same number again in the box, and this is how you suddenly realise what it's all about. Of course, you may have known all that already, but I didn't. Then, once I started to read about light meters, shutter speeds and apertures, everything became clear. If you start your picture-taking life with a modern digital point-and-shoot it is a different learning experience, but ultimately, both film and digital cameras work on the same principles. More sophisticated cameras, both digital and film, have coupled light meters, and the camera chooses the shutter speed and aperture, but with one of those I wouldn't have learnt the function of the camera settings.

I bought the next photography book, 'The Instant Picture Camera Handbook' by Michael Langford, published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1980, to go with an instant camera I found in the same Oxfam shop. Although one might think that digital photography is 'instant photography', this is just not true. When I take pictures with a digital camera they lie a long time on the computer, and I hardly ever feel moved enough to print them. My Fujifilm Instax camera gives me the print immediately, without the need for printer or ink. Granted there is the cost of the film but you can get good deals online. Polaroid film disappeared around 2008 except in hugely expensive buy-it-nows on E-Bay, but there is a new company called the Impossible Project making it now for the old Polaroid cameras, and Fujifilm for many years have been making peel-apart type film FP100C and the like for the old Polaroid Land cameras. I however find Fujifilm Instax is all I need. The Impossible Project film is very expensive, also it is not all that stable yet, so results are often unpredictable. If you are interested in just taking out a camera for fun, I recommend the Instax range of cameras. Also remember that Instax film won't fit Polaroid cameras nor will the new Polaroid type film fit the Instax cameras. Go to www.flickr.com and put Instax in the search box and you will get an idea of how good these photos can be.

There are many many books on photography of all types, film, instant film and digital. I have found that the fancier the book and the more packed with photos it is, the less you can learn from it, at least at the very beginning. Just learn what shutter speeds are about, why you might need to change the aperture, how to take pictures in different lighting conditions, things like that, and you will soon have it all. On photography forums you will find all kinds of lofty conversations about lenses and refraction and parallax and so forth and it may mean nothing to you; believe me, you don't need it, just a simple camera even with very few manual controls, and with practice the ability to compose a shot will become second nature, and you're away.

Two companionable books that are worth keeping on your shelf are both Oxford publications, one from Oxford University Press, 'The Oxford Book of Humorous Prose', edited by Frank Muir, my copy published in 2002, the other from the Clarendon Press, Oxford, 'The Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes', edited by James Sutherland, and dated 1975. The former is a very thick paperback, in lovely condition, and I honestly cannot remember where I got it, while the latter is a hardcover book about half the size of the other, and I see it came from a library sale and is besmirched with the dregs of torn-off labels, 'withdrawn from stock' stamps and lumps of now redundant brown paste.

The first book I have wandered through, picking here and there, but I always finish my session with it by reading one of my favourite pieces of writing of all time, James Thurber's 'The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty'. It is amazing that this short story was made into a long film, but to me one of its major virtues is its compactness; another is that it actually makes me laugh, something that few things in life do, and in particular those which are manifestly intended to do so. Frank O'Connor's 'My First Confession' also figures in this book, another gem which if for some reason you have not encountered before, I bid you to seek out as soon as possible, You will be reading this book forever, and will probably find it a little amusing at least, even if, like me, you do not seem to share the commoner type sense of humour.

The Oxford Book Of Literary Anecdotes' is a collection of writings too, and is satisfying in a different way. It is full of the doings of famous writers, as commented on by their contemporaries. They are the sort of stories that can freely be written now that their subjects are dead, which they most certainly are, since the book starts with the Venerable Bede (673 - 735) and ends with Dylan Thomas (1914 - 1953). Well, in truth it starts with someone called Caedmon (670), of whom I have never heard, and in the end I have to be honest about it.

Now I hope you will excuse me if I go back to Reginald Farrer, and all those little plants which he considered to be personalities in their own right, at the same time recalling my old friend who so generously gave the book to me. But first, I think, a cup of tea is in order. Goodnight all.