Movie Club
This originally appeared as part of my Prime Lenses Newsletter. You can sign up for a weekly update here.
Last Stop Coney Island
Couple of weeks back Ali O’Keefe alerted me to a fantastic documentary about Harold Feinstein, a photographer I knew nothing about, but when Ali likes something, I listen.
The documentary is wonderful and was a gateway to a photographer whose work has shot to the top of my favourites list. On the strength of the trailer I decided to reach out to the filmmaker and am excited to say that I’ll be speaking to Andy Dunn about the film in a future episode. If you have the means please do go and give the film a watch and come back to me on socials with your thoughts and any questions you might have for Andy.
Last Stop Coney Island: The Life and Photography of Harold Feinstein
Show Your Work
I’m travelling again for work and have been dipping into this book. It’s great for lots of reasons and you should pick it up if you haven’t, but one of the things Austin Kleon encourages is the reading of the obituaries in the newspaper.
“Obituaries are like near-death experiences for cowards. Reading them is a way for me to think about death while also keeping it at arm’s length. Obituaries aren’t really about death; they’re about life. . . . Reading about people who are dead now and did things with their lives makes me want to get up and do something decent with mine. Thinking about death every morning makes me want to live.”
I liked this idea and adopting this practice led to a photographic discovery in the obituary of Ian Shipsey, a physicist whose work on silicon devices helped to create a camera that could monitor tiny amounts of light from distant stars.
“Ian was always seeking applications of the instrumentation he developed beyond particle physics and led the application of silicon detectors to record light from the most distant visible objects in the universe. He was a pioneer both in the US and subsequently in the UK of the Vera C Rubin Observatory LSST camera, the largest astronomical camera ever constructed, which is about to become operational in Chile after a 20-year construction period. It will search for clues to the nature of the dark energy that constitutes most of the universe.”
How cool is that?!
“Are you a gamer yourself?”
That was the question Barry asked me on the 19:34 to Inverness on my way home last week, prompted by the PlayStation water bottle I had with me. I love chatting to folks I meet out and about and talking about working in games with someone was just what I needed at that point in the journey.
It turned out that he plays games with his son, loved Minecraft Dungeons and the wallpapers on his various phone home and lock screens were all screenshots from Red Dead Redemption 2. His son wasn’t mad about Minecraft Legendsbut Barry had thought it was OK. He was working that night with his colleague Linda and we chatted while she checked tickets. He even came back later to tell me he’d texted his son about meeting me and his son had replied “cool!” which was praise indeed from a 15 year old.
We discussed whether he should buy an RoG Ally or Legion Go and whether Linda should get a PS3 or 4. I said 4 as the 3 is pretty old at this point and might not be very reliable.
Barry said he’d listen to the podcast and he liked my Ray Bans. If I had to guess I’d say there’s a chance that he’s reading this newsletter right now :) if he is, hi Barry. You made my night. A night that had begun with me leaving my bag on a previous train. I’ll let you know if I manage to get it back.