Chris Bassett's photostream

I've been taking photos for four years now, and I think I've developed an eye for structure and shape. Now I need to find drama and humanity and I hope I will become a more rounded, complete photographer.

If you want to license my photos. they should all have the Getty images button enabled, just ask.

I love this photo. Go and see Blue Lotus.

23 May 2010
So, that was a long time away. Still took photos, but I've been hibernating for a while, I guess. Lots of change, maybe too much. Anyway, Went on a flickr London Meet-up walk-about this weekend and had a great time, met some great people and took lots of photos.

I've started to wonder if there's a way to take my photos more seriously, if they are worth taking more seriously, if I can exhibit them somewhere/how, if someone would pay for them. I really am not talking about becoming a photographic professional - the idea of shooting a wedding or taking portrait photos holds no interest to me. What else are people willing to look at / pay for?

Not sure why I'm thinking about this, is it just some kind of vanity or am I starting to feel a need to express myself? My usual English taciturnity means I feel odd about putting myself out there, maybe it's also a fear of failure. Hmmmmm.

24th August 2008
Only a few new images recently..I've taken loads, but I'm going throught he usual summer trauma of not having my Macbook Pro to play with, so relying on the c1999 iMac - nine years on and it's still surfing the web, uploading photos, but the 6Gb hard drive is straining to cope with all these modern fandangled RAW images crowding it out. The Macbook gets back on the 7th Sept, so I expect to be more prolific soon after : )

4th June 2008
Apologies to anyone trying to view my photos "large" as I have recommended occasionally, the "download" setting needs to be set correctly before you are allowed to, and it was set to only contacts. I've changed it to anyone now.

12th April 2008
Spring has Springed, the weather is unpredictable and people are posting very ugly pictures of their very ugly little doggies...It must stop!

Pugs are ugly. Hence the phrase "Pug ugly". Pugs are not cute. They do not have any redeeming quality that would make a sane human go "Ahwwww" at them. I'd be more at ease in the company of a tapeworm than a Pug...Animals should not need to put that much effort into breathing to stay alive. It's just wrong. I don't put any blame on the poor innocent little animals, it's those who breed these monstrosities, and the owners who encourage this sick and inhuman practice. I'm sure they are all very nice people otherwise, but this makes them one sick set of selfish bastards in my book.
/rant.

10 January 2008
Happy New Year to the world.
Two nice numbers reached recently, 10,000 views of my photo stream was passed earlier this month, and I've also just passed 40,000 views of my photos (thanks Flickr Stats for this extra little tidbit of information. That little "stats" link could become addictive). These are quite nice numbers for someone like me, just playing around trying to learn. I've not been putting as much effort into this photography thing as I should have been. I'm finding winter in London less than inspiring. It's not easy to drag myself outside into cold wet weather just to take some photos of a grey day with the washed out light that goes with it. I've resorted to manipulation in photoshop to bring some new life to old images. I need a shot of inspiration, I guess. Hmmm. What to do?

Ah well. Everything else is going well. Yay!

15 September 2007
I got my mac back after it deserted me for a couple of months, so I'm back with Aperture and have started uploading photos again after a break. It's good to see some Goode around again - I guess there's been a lot going on in everyones lives for summer. Many photos backed up here - probably a few thousand for me to sift through...

7 May 2007
I'm in a bit of a quiet patch, and haven't got to do my "week in manual" yet, but I do have my camera set to a default of Aperture priority, and have taken more and more photos in full manual mode. I really need to get my camera sensor cleaned as well. Damn you, D70s for being such a dust magnet. I have lots of new contacts on flickr, and it's nice to see people from all round the globe finding something to like about the images I like, this truely is an amazing place. A special thanks to everyone who leaves comments, it is the best inspiration I have had for a long time.

31 March 2007
I'm thinking of doing "A Week in Manual". Switching everything off on my camera and forcing myself to set every part of every shot up. It'll slow things down a lot, and I'll make a lot of mistakes, so I'll probably have to even do manual bracketing to try to learn what works, but I think it'll be worth it as a learning experience. This week is going to have some variety as I'll be in London for the weekend, Bournemouth on Wednesday, on a ferry Wednesday night, in St Malo Thursady morning, driving through the French country side and on to my house near Nantes, so hopefully plenty of opportunities to point, adjust, shoot, adjust again, shoot again, adjust again and finally get the shot right..!

22 March 2007

I liked this enough to ignore my own rule about not taking photos of circles on the outside of cars...I also don't use clock faces unless there's something unusual about them. Not sure why I have this rule, but I think it's so I don't end up with photos of every car wheel I come across...nothing wrong with them, but I originally started taking circle photos as a way to push myself to look at things differently, and hopefully improve my eye for a picture. I guess I'd never make it through a car park or past a watch shop if I didn't have this rule...
;-)

19th March 2007
The mac's back, and I've got photos from the past month to trawl through, tag, label, classify, tweak and post. It'll take a while. I've put some stuff up that I took in Frankfurt during a business trip there a while ago.

Oh, and for the first time I commented on a photo that was subsequently made private. It was something I saw in the "everyone's photos" page, a couple of kids running round a garden covered in paint and having a great time. I think I freaked the poster of the photos a bit by making a comment about the photo, and the series had gone private by the time I looked at the `'comments I made``' link to see some other comment on another photo altogether. I guess I can't blame them, but it's a bit sad that a) they didn't make them private to start with (doh!) and b) they feel the need to make them private, what with the fact that I could have been some undesirable looking at the photos for nefarious reasons.

I must admit, I did the same kind of thing for a couple of days too. A photo of my niece taken at christmas got something like 50 views in as many minutes with no comments, so I marked it private until I was sure any interest had calmed down. I had only put it up there for family to see, but most of the people I wanted to show the photos to aren't members, so I hadn't marked them as family only. Anyhoo, it's all back to "normal".

25th Feb 2007
I'm a bit stuck at the moment, 'cos my mac's at the menders getting a new bit to make it work, so no real updates for a while. I usually use iPhoto (though I'm testing out aperture) to tag and name and comment my photos, so I have the metadata in both flickr and on my laptop. As I don't have the laptop, I'm waiting 'til I do before I post stuff. Oh, and I like how I got 500 "views" in 20 days. Again, not sure what it means, but it's nice to see people interested. Thanks.

5th Feb 2007
Just opened my photos page and noticed the "views" count was exactly 3,000. Yay. Not sure what it means, or if it should have any effect on me. I wonder who the 3000th person was, I'd like to give them a lollipop to say thank you. Now, that would be a nice feature for flickr.

1st Feb 2007
Things I have learned.
Light is everything, apart from composition. Without either of these, you have nothing.

In london, light is sparse, if there at all.

(until summer arrives,) I must compose.

That is all.
C.

20th Jan 2007 - I discovered contacts just a few weeks ago, so I guess it's time to join the community. Hello to everyone I'm pestering by making you new contacts (some thoughts on this here). C.

14th Jan 2007
It looks like I have a new calling in life. I'm taking photos of circles. It's not all that novel a thing to do maybe, but it's getting me1 out with my camera and some of these are quite technical to capture, so I'm getting all manual about it finally. It's not good for composition, which is something I need to learn about, but I'm learning my camera controls and something about my limits.

Good thing about circles, they're everywhere. Bad thing about circles, they're everywhere. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them all once I have them, or even what I mean by "have them", but a flick book might be in order...we'll see.

12th Jan 2007
So it looks more and more like I'm using this as some kind of backup service, I'm sticking all and sundry up here with no thought for quality. Apologies if you're looking for wheat, but getting mostly chaff. Try looking at the sets I've created, they don't contain everything that I like, but there's a higher wheat content...

26th Dec 2006
Well, I was right about it getting busier, I upgraded to a pro account, but not sure if I've used it all. I am learning, though most of my shots are still just snaps, rather than thought out photographs, but the number of the latter is increasing...slowly.

18th August 2006.
OK, so up until now, I've been uploading a few photos here and there, but I just found something that exports from iPhoto including the comments and tags added there. It's going to get busier around here. Let's start with some tourist photos of a trip to Jersey.

13th July 2006, I bought a Nikon D70s camera for my first foray into photography beyond just taking snapshots.

There's a lot to learn from scratch. Hopefully, you can track my progress here.

Places I've Been...

create your own visited countries map

create your own visited states map
Photos taken by me are copyright Chris Bassett, but if you want to use them, just ask... : )