Desperate Dan

One thing I really know about photography is that it just doesn't simply happen. There has to be a serious subjective response to a situation, a willingness, and a coming together of all that onboard expertise. I began to identify with Henri Cartier Bresson's photography quite early on, and soon realised just how much hard work photography is, if you want real results. Of course anyone can point a digital camera at any subject matter and an image can be recorded, but is the created photograph worth anything at all.
We can easily be our own critic and I spend hours looking at the photographs I have taken before going into hard edit mode. Overall I am happy with what I am presenting, but not always.
I have had a run of problems lately which has kept me away from my first love - photography and of course blipfoto. This will continue, but then sometimes (as today) a potential  image will just surface, and if you can react soon enough then it can well be successful. I have spent years photographing over the August bank holiday, the scarecrow festival in Thornton le Dale, North Yorkshire. Today I decided to give it all a miss on the basis that I had seen it all before and the scarecrows were all beginning to look the same. In the closing hours of the afternoon, just before the light was lost, Desperate Dan presented himself on the street corner, outside the Buck Inn. What it was that made me rush indoors for my camera was not the comic character, nor the cow pie, but the sheer quality of the late afternoon August light. I am a slave to the light. I will always be there with my camera, not wanting to miss such moments.