The 100,000 barrier

It surely can't happen very often - in amateur circumstances - taking more than 100,000 shots with a camera. The average amateur photographer has to own (and use) a camera for a very long time indeed to reach such a total. In practice, many amateurs (if they can afford it) are chasing the latest and best, and never do much with old equipment except put it away, or sell it on, or junk it. 

But I've now got to that magic 100,000 shot total with my little Leica D-Lux 4 of June 2009 vintage. 

Well - to be strictly precise - the camera's internal shot counter has registered over 100,000 shots - 100,002 to be precise. But the actual number of pictures taken is still only 96,572 (I have always kept a spreadsheet to account for the difference). Ninety-six thousand is still a considerable figure itself, of course; but it will be a long time yet before there truly are 100,000 shutter-actuations, as nearly all my photography is currently done with LXV, my newer and more capable Leica X Vario. (And occasionally with my phone) 

The little Leica is - at long last - semi-retired, with only standby duties. It will come with me to Scotland shortly, as a necessary backup camera, but I doubt whether it will be called upon. LXV has eclipsed it almost entirely, except for macro work. But there won't be much of that. I shall be much more interested in capturing scenery - the sort that makes you go wow - possibly scooping the final falling of the Old Man of Hoy, plunging into the sea just as the ferry boat passes (what a shot that will make!). If I'm lucky, the Northern Lights. Certainly some amazing sunsets. And all the day-to-day sights - including people - that I'll encounter as I drive or walk about.  

The real point of this post is not so much to celebrate a big milestone passed, but to relate what happened when the little Leica's shot counter reached this extraordinary total of 100,000 shots. The manual was silent on what to expect. Perhaps they (the nibelungs who beaver away at Leica HQ at Wetzlar) never imagined that anyone would use a D-Lux 4 so much, and consequently thought it superfluous to give advice - or a warning - in the manual. 

So the little Leica's fate remained unclear. I wondered whether it would simply stop functioning when 100,000 shots had been taken - the primitive electronics would register the total, go automatically into Termination Mode, and then switch off beyond any revival. Or perhaps the camera would warm up with a bleeping noise and explode, in some kind of heat death. Alternatively, since some cameras have a soul, there would be a long, soft sigh, and a camera-shaped wraith would emerge from the front of the lens, shimmer briefly in farewell, then fade into nothingness, on its way to a place that you and I can know nothing of. Or maybe the little Leica would physically transform into a butterfly, and flutter out into the garden, then on to far horizons. Who could say. Any of these endings could happen.

There was also, of course, the bare possibility that the camera would carry on quite normally. Having already created 99 internal photo folders, one after another over the years, it would now create its 100th folder and continue indefinitely.

This is the little Leica D-Lux 4 in person. 

It's quite small. Here it is next to my phone, and the lens cap of the Leica X-U I owned for a few months.

Although obviously durable, it isn't built to traditional Leica standards. The little Leica has always been vulnerable to accidental damage. It certainly hasn't got the bulletproof build that my considerably-larger Leica X-U - named Lili - had. This was the two of them next to each other a year ago.

Even so, its very smallness has made the little Leica easy to protect from harm. I have long developed a warm affection for this most faithful device, my companion on so many adventures. I'd be sad if it died simply because (like some cheap washing machine) it had an in-built operational life that couldn't be extended.  

Well, the 99,999th shot finally arrived. I used LXV to photo the playback screen.

The screen graphics look Stone-Age! The shot counter shows the total in two parts, separated by a hyphen. '199' means 'folder 99'. The very first folder automatically created by the camera was numbered '100', then there was '101', '102' and so on. Each folder could contain 999 pictures, starting with picture '0001' and on to '0999', as here. Thus, folder 99 with 999 pictures in it. So what would happen if I took one more shot?

I set up a selfie. Make or break.

Aha! No electronic termination, no heat death, no departing soul, nor any miraculous transformation into a butterfly. The little Leica had simply created a new folder - '200', meaning really '100', and had numbered my selfie as file '0001' within it. 

I linked camera and laptop and examined folders '199' and '200'.

Well, I was relieved that the little Leica was still alive and kicking! But faintly disappointed that the 100,000-shot point had passed with no drama whatever. How perverse of me!

These folders have now been emptied by copying the pictures to the laptop, and deleting all pictures left on the camera. Which automatically gets rid of folder '199' and leaves only '200'. As I said, the total of pictures actually taken is really only 96,572. Another 3,428 to take before I can truly say that 100,000 shots have been taken with this camera. Unless something awful befalls LXV, it could take five more years to accomplish that.  

Bruised

The day after I went to Chichester (see my last post) I had an appointment for a shingles jab. 

I qualify for most of these 'pensioner specials' nowadays, and I'm more than happy to take what's offered. I can't see the sense in spurning something that might ward off a serious illness. 

Some people do, of course. They think of possible side-effects; they may not like needles; they may have lapped up some daft 'advice' or 'warning' on social media; or they may have been dissuaded by the weasel words of a trusted friend or relative, or their spouse. Me, I'm free to form my own view, and I do. And that boils down to looking hard at the risks of having a bad reaction, compared to the benefits of being vaccinated. Generally, it's no contest. I want to live long and prosper, and not be hit by a debilitating condition that harms my ongoing quality of life.

So I turned up at the local surgery at the appointed time. It was very pleasant to see Tracy again, one of my favourite nurses, although they are all nice. She seemed pleased to see me, and remarked that there was no way I looked so old as seventy. I think she meant it. I denied any such thing, of course. All right, I might get away with looking only sixty-nine!

The sealed kit for administering the shingles jab was quite elaborate. Besides the little vaccine bottle and a special syringe, there were other bits and pieces. Clearly it had to be done just so. 'This is going straight into the arm muscle,' Tracy said, 'and you'll get a temporary rash afterwards.' Well, I could cope with a temporary rash. And I snapped my fingers at a needle into my upper arm muscle. As expected it hurt a bit going in, but I did not flinch. And it hurt a bit more after the vaccine was injected, but I was brave. We chatted a little further, then I was off. 

By the time I got home, the muscle pain had subsided, and really there was now nothing to feel. No tenderness, no twinges. And for the first three days no sign whatever of that rash.

On the forth day, however - which was yesterday - I woke up with a peculiar mark on the inside of my arm, resembling for the most part a large red bruise, but sharply delineated near the elbow crease., where it was darkly purple. 

The mottled red speckles made it look like a rash, but the topmost layer of the skin felt completely normal: all these colours were below the skin. When the arm was hanging downward, it looked for all the world as if I'd been hemorraging, and the blood had collected at the lowest level it could get to. But really, there was no sensation whatever, nothing to alarm me. As the afternoon went on, the darker part got more defined and more purple. The bruise looked lurid. But I still felt fine. It only looked awful. 

I decided to take the cool of the evening down at Littlehampton, and scare people with this bruise fully on view while I nonchalantly strolled along the quayside to the beach. And quite a lot of them did stare at me. But that could have been for several reasons, including the fact that I had LXV in my hands and was clearly looking for shots. For some reason, once people notice my latest camera, they scrutinise me very carefully. Let 'em; I don't mind. 

I also had my chestnut walking stick in my hand, which I was carrying in case needed. Perhaps it looked like a weapon, rather than a walking aid, the way I was holding it. Who knows. 

It was a very nice evening, and as anticipated a reasonable sunset developed. So a few pictures to give you a flavour of the people about and the sunset on the river Arun.

This morning the bruise has already started to fade. I hope the people who jumped aside and ran away in terror yesterday have now recovered some composure, and can face the new day.

Touching

Five days ago, before the real heat began, I drove to Chichester with a veggie lunch at Café Paradiso in mind. I always look forward to lunching there. It's at the top end of North Street and it's such a nice place. I've been an occasional customer since 2002. They have a back garden, if you like to eat al fresco, but I always stay inside in the shade. Most often I have their impeccable vegetable lasagne with four salad items, plus an Americano. This time I chose rocket, mixed beans, wheat berry and tomatoes.

This consumed, what next? I had bought three hours' parking time. It wasn't too hot to wander through the Priory Park and on to a section of the old Town Wall, then along East Street to the Market Cross, then south a bit and into the Cathedral Precinct via an arched side entrance. The grass in Priory Park looked very parched:

Odd how the trees continued to look green. But then I suppose their roots went down further, into soil still cool and moist. It was tedious mounting the steps to the Wall one by one - this was before my recent leg improvement - but I got up there eventually and walked along easily enough. This was the north-east section of the Town Wall. The best sections are the north-west and south-west. But this part was nevertheless pleasant - and quite shady - with plenty to peer down at on either side.

I was deliberately looking for things to shoot with LXV. People - buildings - and things seen in shop windows that might make a picture, such as this:

A camera shop - that rarest of beasts nowadays - had a good display of classic second-hand film SLRs, complete with standard lenses: 

I'd owned Olympus OM-1N and OM-10 cameras. I still had my favourite OM-1N, with a 50mm f/1.4 lens attached. In the window was an OM-1 with the slower 50mm f/1.8 lens. The asking price was £199.99. Wow - only £200 for a top-notch film camera! That was so affordable. They'd probably be asking £250 for the OM-1 plus the f/1.4 lens - still very reasonable. That didn't mean of course that my OM-1N was worth £250 to sell. I'd be lucky to get £50 for it. 

In the past, Chichester has surprised me with the sudden appearance of a man in Edwardian costume, pedalling a penny-farthing. Not today. But there was this display of panama hats outside one shop in South Street:

Perfect for gents wishing to look the part, when sipping their planter's punch. 

I cut through to the Cathedral Precinct. The masonry of the Cathedral needs constant attention, and in recent years it has been swathed in scaffolding. But now a lot of that had gone, leaving the cleaned-up and repaired stonework in full view against the blue sky. 

The coolness of the cloisters beckoned. And it seemed that a ceramic exhibition was on. Artistically-formed pots and bowls are always worth a look. Meanwhile I switched LXV into black-and-white mode, just for some stark shots of the cloister windows. 

There were people in the quadrangle, studying various pieces of sculpture there. Moving along, I saw that there were some pieces under cover too.

I rather hoped the letters written on the interior surface of the globe would offer a clue as to meaning; but if they did, it was beyond rapid comprehension. I suspected a tongue-in-cheek code or cipher. Next, the pieces in the quadrangle. I especially liked this sinuous form, reminiscent of a woman's torso twisting around:

And these podded forms on stalks, presumably male and female:

Although not a work of sculpture, this sequence of images, showing a man grappling with despair and eventually mastering himself, must have struck a chord with many visitors. Who hasn't had to overcome bad news, grief and distress in recent years?

He had his painting trousers on - might this be then the anguish of an artist who couldn't get what he felt down on canvas? Painter's block, in other words?

Ah, at last. A general clue to the common thrust of these works.

On I went, and then saw around a corner I saw two elongated sculptures. Each seemed to be a straightforward collection of dismembered body parts, artistically arranged. But a closer look revealed something different. I think the artist had made plaster casts of two different naked middle-aged couples caressing each other sexually. Then she had carefully split the casts up into significant pieces, joining them together again to create a composition that drew attention not only to the pleasure of sensual enjoyment, but to the most tender aspects of lovemaking, enhanced all the more by the participants' obvious seniority. At the same time, these works were celebrating the fact that age alone does not preclude, nor deny, the full expression of physical love.  

I'll let the pictures I took make my interpretation clear.

These hand-claspings were an important feature.

Not to everyone's taste of course. For me it was an uneasy challenge. Never in my entire life had I become used to extensive body-touching and caressing. I could give it to other people, but not accept it for myself. It was too intimate, too much an overload of whatever made me shy away from it. And I hadn't changed as I grew older. I remained averse to such physical closeness, and the surrender necessary for it. This was why I felt vexed and impatient with any suggestion that I must be hungry for sex. If only the people who thought that knew how it really was with me! 

But I made myself take those pictures, perhaps to face up to something I was fearful of. I can readily appreciate the artistic merit of the pieces. But I can't imagine myself entwined with someone else in such a way. Nor do I want the capacity to experience this kind of desire. I know what the emotional consequences might be. I want to remain serene and in control. 

Many will say that I'm missing out, that I'm wrong to be frightened of further emotional damage. And that in an uncertain world, the best thing is to take love and affection and physical experiences whenever they are offered. I see the point they make. But I haven't built up my defences for nothing. I have achieved some security, and feel safe behind my high walls, and intend to stay that way.  

But I do also understand the price I am paying for peace, stability and immunity from upsets. It might eventually prove too high. 

I looked in on the ceramic exhibition, and got into conversation with the physiotherapist who advised me on my walking stick (see the last post). Then I walked back to Fiona, passing this statue of St Richard, to whom the Cathedral is especially dedicated. 

I am not religious, as readers will know well; but I thought he gave me a blessing as I passed. I promised him I would look at my life and make changes if I could.