These people are at the City Hall every Saturday when I pass. They’re worried about a lot of aspects of modern life and most people walk by with barely a glance.
Are they wrong about everything?
Covid and Conspiracies
Vaccine Passports 2
No march this week but a rally at City Hall.
Attracting a crowd of a few hundred and becoming a weekly event this, obviously, is important to a lot of people.
I waited until I got different placards framed by the two guys standing in front of me.
The end in sight
The vaccinations are rolling out as quickly as we could have hoped and in April it’s expected that up to 40000 people a week will be vaccinated. The infection rate is dropping with less people catching the virus and hospital admissions falling.
Our government has published a plan for exiting lockdown and getting back to normal. Anyone familiar with Northern Irish politics will know this should be taken as a positive sign for the future – they have all managed to agree on something. We are critical of our leaders, often with good reason, but looking at the way some European politicians have acted during the pandemic we should probably try to complain yes in future. That’s as close as I come to commenting on politics.
I’m looking forward to being able to travel again, Not necessarily abroad but just around the country. I was in Carrickfergus recently and it’s the farthest from home I have been for two months or more. Sometimes I still have difficulty believing that this lockdown is actually happening. I know it has all been necessary but governments having power to tell us who we can spend time with and where we can go should always be a concern.
On the photography front my experiments with images from my iPhone continue. I’m not sure if I mentioned it previously but I’ve bought a Gopro so I’m experimenting with that as well. I said previously that I’ve been mostly using Hipstamatic and wouldn’t be distracted with the many other apps available. I should’ve known better. I’ve rediscovered Snapseed. I had installed it on my phone some time ago and forgotten it was there. I continue to send images off but no sales so far. I’m enjoying creating images on my phone so no pressure.
When things get back to normal I’ll probably start shooting some images for stock again but on a more casual basis than in the past.
Hair Dye and DIY
The lockdown continues and with hair salons being closed and no one having any idea when they might open Rosemarie took things into her own hands and got some hair dye.
Surprisingly, as I assisted, things went well and when I wasn’t assisting I took some photographs. Stock sites need more pictures of people dying their hair.
With hair rinsed and dried she did her own makeup.
On a more glamorous note. In an article about the supermodel Naomi Campbell in DP Review yesterday we are told she did her own hair and makeup and took her own photograph with an iPhone for the cover of Essence magazine. The Coronavirus lock down prevented the magazine from dispatching the team that had been booked. You could say it was Supermodel DIY.
Naomi Campbell was one of the super, supermodels of the nineties along with Linda Evangelista and Christie Turlington. They were as famous as film stars and pop singers. Evangelista is remembered for the quote “We don’t wake up for less than $10,000 a day.”
Naomi Campbell is not alone. Actor Robert Patinson is on the cover of GQ Magazine having also photographed himself although he used a DSLR rather than a phone. I’ve no idea how much he gets paid for waking up but he looked like he just got out of bed. Somebody said that’s the look many aspire to nowadays.
Some photographers expressed concern about celebrities taking their own pictures. If supermodels can still demand $10,000 for getting out of bed they shouldn’t worry.