The Limbo Connection's photos with the keyword: design

Daring. Defiant. Courageous. Majestic. She looks slightly tense. The hand in the pocket gives it away a bit. Her ensemble is avant-garde; you might as well look cool if you're going to put yourself in the limelight. I wonder what she's doing now. This is a new edit. There's always more you can do. It might have helped if I had made a better job of this at the time. I was not expecting such a wonderful opportunity to arise in a little Wiltshire village. Nikon D2Xs + Nikkor-H Auto 300mm f/4.5 lens.

And now for some photographs revealing what goes on in Limbo Hall. Nikon D700 and Nikkor-S.C 50mm f/1.4 lens (with a factory AI conversion).

The contrasting patterns took my eye. Nikkor-S 35mm f/2.8 lens on a Nikon D2Xs.

This and other sculptures by Ruth Moilliet are currently on show in The Courts Garden at Holt, Wiltshire. I used an AF Zoom-Nikkor 35-70mm f/2.8 lens made in the late 1980s on a Nikon D700 camera. The old 35-70mm has a macro feature which is handy for this kind of shot.

Photographed using an AF Zoom-Nikkor 24-120mm f/3.5-5.6D IF lens. Very good for this kind of shot; less useful for anything architectural.

In 1913 Edward Johnstone designed the iconic typeface used on the London Underground. Eric Gill was involved in that project and later created Gill Sans - the typeface used for the Pug Ditch F.C. letterhead - and claimed it to be the perfect legible typeface. It is a sans serif face based on classic roman proportions, and quite distinct from other sans faces. It became the standard typeface for the LNER railway; it was chosen for Penguin book covers; the BBC used it as their corporate face, along with British Rail and the Monotype Corporation. Jobbing printers used Gill Sans extensively during the years either side of World War II. It became ubiquitous and appeared stale despite its obvious beauty and excellence. During the 1950s and 1960s the herd stampeded towards Univers and Helvetica, neither of which have the 'readability' possessed by Gill Sans and which is so essential for extended text.

On view here is the top half of 'You See Poetry', the cover of a collection of poems published in 1970 by University College London Union Poetry Seminar/Workshop. The bottom half has the word 'poetry' divided in half to make a symmetric rectangle of twelve rectangles each being a linocut-style letter. 27 College members from many different departments contributed, including Alex Comfort and Cynthia Harrod-Eagles. Nikon D700 + AF Nikkor 35-70mm f/2.8 lens.

This is a photograph from the back cover of the paperback edition published in 1977 by Magnum Books. The photographer was Robert Golden. He originally pursued photo-journalism and documentary work before moving on to still life photography, eventually specialising in photographing food. Somewhere in between the change of direction he was producing book covers, of which this is an example of his strong style and ability to interpret a brief. The book cover does not reveal the name of the model who posed for this assignment. I photographed the book using a Canon EOS 40D with a Chinon 55mm f/1.7 lens on an extension tube. I wonder what equipment Robert Golden used in 1977?

Publicity flyer for Mathias Hair Design. Photographed with a Nikon D2Xs and a Vivitar 28mm close-focus f/2.8 lens.

Some further nips and tucks to do yet. Nikon D50 and Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 lens.

For the photographer there are specific-purpose bags: rainy day bags; anti-pickpocket bags; bags which do not look like camera bags for use in tough neighbourhoods; slim-profile bags for carrying in crowded areas; bags to inspire confidence at an important event you've been hired to shoot; bags so impossibly large you use them as a supply depot where your other bags call to make changes to their contents; bags which are devoted to specialist items like flashguns or filters; medium-format bags; 35mm film camera bags; digital camera-with-lens-fixed-always bags; soiled bags that you don't mind using in dirty conditions ... the list is endless. The more camera bags I try - all sourced from eBay, the world's greatest lending library, where sometimes it's even possible to turn a modest profit on short-term acquisitions - the more I realise that what we're talking about is a sack. A sack with compartments, a sack with different dimensions to the previous sack, a sack made from different materials, but nevertheless a sack. This particular bag is the Tenba P-750 Pro Pak™ from the early 1980s, with its super-cool logo which reads the same upside down (but best not to verify this when the bag is full of kit). You often see them referred to as the ‘Tenba Equa’ because the logo suggests that is the name. It was available in rust, black, and grey, as well as the more traditional tan colour you see here. It is constructed of ‘Cordura’, a waterproof and rugged nylon. ‘Cordura’ will always win in a friction squabble with your coat or trousers. Tenba put a less aggressive pad of material on later Pro Pak™ bags where the ‘Cordura’ met the owner’s clothing. Of 'Cordura', the Tenba catalogue of the early 1980s said, "Dupont Cordura nylon ... is 3 times stronger than canvas, yet 1/2 the weight. Will not rot or mildew like canvas. We use . . . a complete waterproof coating of 2.3 ozs of nitrile WATER-LOK, an elastomeric coating." The P-750 is an unusual design with a fairly deep compartment within the lid to store 30 to 40 rolls of film, and a stout zip fastener to keep the contents secure. On the other side of the top ‘half’- i.e. on the inside of the bag’s main compartment - is a modest zipped compartment which might be for tickets and passport-type documents. There are four ‘D’ rings, for a back-harness or tripod straps, and unusual side straps which can be deployed to limit the travel of the lid or to transport a monopod. The main compartment lacks the extreme weather-proofing measures you find on a Billingham bag, like zips and secondary flaps. That is perhaps a weakness if near water or sand. It rather negates the value of ‘Cordura’ as a waterproof fabric. The coups de foudre are the two external pouches which, in combination with the hip logo, make this bag unusually distinctive in a market place stuffed with boring oblong boxes with straps. Nikon D2Xs and AF-S DX Nikkor 35mm f/1.8G lens.