showing something someone saw

I was sure there had been an extra weekend between thinking that the forthcoming weekend was the weekend the photography exhibition held in the Edinburgh Photographic Society's premises closed and today, though it was still open and will be until 8pm tomorrow. Last week was quite a long one, work-wise; perhaps that's it. As was the case last year I'd be very interested to see the workings of the thinkings of the minds of the judges. At least they didn't give any of the seriously misbegotten HDR-abuser exhibits much prize, though most of the most photographish/clean/pleasant pictures were ignored beyond being selected for exhibition. Pleasingly, a lot of the better-to-me images were by people without letters after their names (or at least by those who choose not to display such letters at every opportunity). As was the case last year there were several examples of ooh-what-does-this-effect-do on the first wall and more Printed on Art Paper with Poncy Title than there should really ever be collected in one place at any one time. The organisers perhaps need a few different categories so that all the I Really Wish I Could Paint people could be judged alongside each other and the HDRers and excessive-dodgers-and-burners similarly sectioned-off so that it when all their pictures are displayed together it becomes obvious even to them that large haloes around everything does not enhance a picture's emotional content.

The distinct other exhibition downstairs is all mostly just photographic photographs and thus requires much less scowling to view, though I was distinctly unimpressed that one which was Highly Commended was just a big cheat's cheating-photograph of Ron Mueck's big head, cheatingly not even credited as so being. Shirley Hollis LRPS. If you're reading. Big cheating cheat. Today's newspaper had an article about the default-photoshoppering-smoothing of faces and bodies in magazines but there were a lot of pictures in both of today's exhibitions which were over-smoothed of landscape and other texture as well as the more prevalent forcibly-homogenised skin exhibits (as opposed to those with over-contrast-enhanced faces when the face was too old and wrinkly to smoothify). The slope which starts at removing a skin-blemish, a stray piece of litter or errant cloud and ends at something which looks more like a painting than something based on the photographic capture of actual photons bouncing of actual things is evident steep and slippery. Still, for £3 it's worth a couple of hours.

Mesrine part 2: Public Enemy Number 1 this evening; as watchable as the first if not quite as gripping, though it ends very well with a different POV of the first scene in the first film. Good score, good lighting and a very convincing prosthetic lard-belly on Vincent Cassel; it looked quite fake-of-shape when clothed but the reveal in the final act suggests that he may have pied it up for the role. Possibly District 9 tomorrow, possibly during the fireworks as my tripod is still eighty miles away.