Evening sky

The Taylor Wessing exhibition was very interesting to see last night. There were some amazing shots, and some that quite honestly, if I had taken them I would have deleted them as I thought they were utter rubbish. What was very interesting was the talk afterwards, by the associate curator, one of the judges and last year's winner. I think that the selection process is quite disappointing - they have about 4600 entries, all prints, and the judges sit in a room at Somerset House while the art handlers carry each print in before the judges who spend a few seconds glancing at each image saying yes or no. How brutal for the entrants to hear that the judges spend so little time narrowing down the selection to the 65 prints that make the shortlist and the exhibition. They get through viewing all the prints in just one day. Last year's winner said he thought there was definitely a type of image that the judges liked - something narrative, usually the subject has tattoos or were different from the norm....the judge denied that. There were many images of Syrian people, some Ugandan school children. Just because a poor child has had their arm blown off in the Syrian conflict does not necessarily make it a good photo - in my humble opinion.
 
Our little village has had so much going on this week. On Wednesday at 5.25pm four masked men went into Carphone Warehouse and ordered the two staff to open the safe before locking them in the toilet and making off with 160 iPhones - that is a haul of about £100 000. So the area around this store has been cordoned off by the police. Tonight is the switching on of the Christmas Lights, with Miss Surrey in attendance and the guest of honour being Theo Paphitis (from Dragon's Den) - so more sections have been closed off to facilitate this event. Just hope no emergency services need to get through out High Street tonight!

Today I met up with some mums from Adam's old class at prep school and we had a wonderful get together over lunch at a pub in Clandon. I took a photo of the sky before I went in to the restaurant, but when I came out the sky had these beautiful touches of pink being reflected off the setting sun - the sun sets early these days, it was not such a long lunch!

Tonight unfortunately we won't see the switching on of the Christmas lights as we are going to friends for supper, and when we get home Luke will be here. I am so excited about seeing him again. I texted him this morning at 9.30am and they had just arrived at Canary Wharf from Durham to start their day's work at Ernst & Young. I thought that was a surprisingly quick commute from such a distance away.