B&W gallery: Volterra lamp

What can you say about a streetlight, except that they are the most awkward things to

photograph when they're lampposts. Up on a wall they're fine, but I once had to film a

cramped exhibition of antique Italian lampposts in a house in Kensington for some news

report or other, with just a camera and a tripod. No crane, which would have made it

pictorially interesting, no track for moving shots, no lights - pardon the pun - and no idea

what the script was going to be about either. Not my favourite job.

This lamp is in Volterra, on the outside wall of the excellent Etruscan Museum. I've treated it

in digital post-production as an old Victorian 'Calotype', which William Henry Fox-Talbot

invented in the early 1840's. Incidentally I was taught 'art' (not very well, I might add) at

Salisbury during my first year of applied photography by one Major Fox-Talbot, the old boy's

great-great-(great?) grandson who was himself about 90 at the time. I don't know what he

would've made of my skills as a photographic 'artist', but we probably would've argued over

what constituted 'art' in a technical - ie.photographic' - sense. I still do.

What can you say about a streetlight, except that they are the most awkward things to

photograph when they're lampposts. Up on a wall they're fine, but I once had to film a cramped

exhibition of antique Italian lampposts in a house in Kensington for some news report or other,

with just a camera and a tripod. No crane, which would have made it pictorially interesting, no

track for moving shots, no lights - pardon the pun - and no idea what the script was going to be

about either. Not my favourite job.

This lamp is in Volterra, on the outside wall of the excellent Etruscan Museum. I've treated it in

digital post-production as an old Victorian 'Calotype', which William Henry Fox-Talbot invented in

the early 1840's. Incidentally I was taught 'art' (not very well, I might add) at Salisbury during

my first year of applied photography by one Major Fox-Talbot, the old boy's great-great-(great?)

grandson who was himself about 90 at the time. I don't know what he would've made of my

skills as a photographic 'artist', but we probably would've argued over what constituted 'art' in a

technical - ie.photographic' - sense. I still do.

Street light, Volterra