The Limbo Connection's photos with the keyword: youth

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.

A chance observation of a charitable endeavour. I don't yet know why the scene reminds me of the work of Sir Stanley Spencer. He once said' "Love is the essential power in the creation of art and love is not a talent. Love reveals and more accurately describes the nature and meaning of things than any mere lecture on technique can do. And it establishes once and for all time the final and perfect identity of every created thing." Another word for "charity" is "love". QED.

The art of Stanley Spencer exhibited in Sandham Memorial Chapel at Burghclere, near Newbury, came to mind when I cropped a significantly larger picture of a charity car wash and revealed this detail.

It was a Tuesday afternoon during August. The sun shone. August is a time for Philosophy and Growing Up, Far more than any other month.

I posted this picture ten years ago. It didn't look right then, and it doesn't look right now, but at least it looks better than it did. The best thing about the original post was the comment it generated concerning the word 'bokeh', or maybe 'boke', and its origins. From memory, the five-strong group of Wiltshire Youth Drummers marched nicely in single file, and made a satisfying clattery noise, but as entertainment they were a bit limited unless your idea of a good time was listening to drumming. Still, at least they didn't get heckled, which was the fate of some other acts in the event. This is a tough town. One further, if pedantic, point: Not all the drummers met the description 'youth'. There was a stout fellow who was definitely not 'youth', and another chap wearing some sort of animal skin was borderline. When does youth end? Perhaps it is a philosophical question, in which case disregard my uncharitable remarks. You can't see them in this photograph anyway, because of bokeh, or boke, or whatever. Only the audience is really visible, and I am making no remarks concerning the audience.

Just another Saturday morning. At least it's not raining.

Shot with a Nikon D2Xs and a Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 lens on a TC-16A teleconverter (field of view like 120mm on a full-frame camera). ISO 640; aperture priority set at f/11. The small aperture resulted in a shutter speed of 1/30th; this has given a blur caused by the movement of the girls as they passed. Although a tight composition in the first place, I have cropped it further for effect and presented it in black-and-white because the colours were fighting with one another. The whole picture is entirely accidental. I should have used a lens with a wider angle. the shutter speed ought to have been at least 1/125th, possibly 1/250th. But then it wouldn't have resulted in this picture. Life is full of chance.