I want to explore "simple" in photographic terms.

I spend so long thinking of interesting, intricate ideas - how to light this, where to stage that, what outfit the subject needs to wear - and I'm starting to forget the basic reason why I love doing what I do; capturing moments, feelings, glimpses of the strangers that live inside each and every one of the people I know.

Simple portraits. A conversation, window light, simple background. An exercise in talking and listening and trying to capture a moment in the subject's life. Lose the falsehood of smile-for-the-camera; just wait for the right moment.

And I'm not pretending that this hasn't been done, that Avedon didn't do this with every one of his subjects (and do it magnificently, too). But it's a challenge to me.

The Great Alone

Slideshow of photos from the Terra Nova and Imperial Transantarctic expeditions of the early 20th century.

Beautiful and haunting and achingly desolate.

No, you are not the centre of the universe

Flickriver:

I’m loving this site. It’s a great way to browse Flickr images without having to deal with the Flickr interface, which for pure, good old-fashioned browsing is a bit on the pants side and too full of distractions.

If you've half an hour to spare, check it out. You might find something you like.

I've started playing around with Tumblr (you can find my Tumblelog at tumblr.grahambinns.com for the record).

I've no idea what I'm going to use it for; probably one step above twitter but one step below the blog - so, little snippets of stuff - and also as a sort of quasi-del.icio.us in technicolour with movement, etc.

There, that cleared that up for you, didn't it?

Subscribe to it, don't subscribe to it, whatever you will. I'm playing with it not because I've only just come across it, but because I have an inkling that I can make use of it, if only as a sort of digital notebook. The important stuff will get reblogged here anyway; I've written a dirty great hack to get that working (I should have written something cleaner and made it part of Frabjous, but I couldn't be bothered for the sake of something this small and beta).