• Please use real names.

    Greetings to all who have registered to OPF and those guests taking a look around. Please use real names. Registrations with fictitious names will not be processed. REAL NAMES ONLY will be processed

    Firstname Lastname

    Register

    We are a courteous and supportive community. No need to hide behind an alia. If you have a genuine need for privacy/secrecy then let me know!
  • Welcome to the new site. Here's a thread about the update where you can post your feedback, ask questions or spot those nasty bugs!

A Rotten English Photographer in France

D

Denbigh Gabbitas

Member
I have been doing photography for most of my adult life (73) and have never really got the hang of it. Each time I think I have done something nice I take a second look and generally think it doesn't look so good any more. Yeah, there are some sparks from time to time, buit mostly they are luck, so I will keep on trying.

If you think I am going to expose myself to ridicule here, you have another think coming. I am here to watch mostly - and offer more or less useless advice on things I know everything useless about.

I have always liked the technicallity of photography, I used to make up the potions in the Ilford, Agfa, Kodak books and produce strange 'wrong' pictures. I know the joys of developing a film in the tropics and having all the emulsion slide off the backing as I ran my fingers down to squegee off the excess. I started tinkering with colour on film and then digital arrived and made it all look so wasteful of time and energy trying to remove colour casts etc. So, once I get stuck into the new stuff, I find the minefield of colour management... ohhh. Yeah, I have always been dead unlucky, I could have done something useful with my life instead of photography for which I have no flair at all.

I expect you can tell, from the funny way I write colour, that I am that sinister bad-guy from all the US films - an Englishman! I like tea and straight malt whiskey, but not together.

And, to quote Forrest Gump: "that's all I have to say about that".
 
Asher Kelman

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Denbigh Gabbitas said:
I expect you can tell, from the funny way I write colour, that I am that sinister bad-guy from all the US films - an Englishman! I like tea and straight malt whiskey, but not together.
Click to expand...

Liking tea, Denbigh, is a great social characteristic in itself. It can even add order to one's life. That's one thing I'm religious about! :)

Denbigh Gabbitas said:
And, to quote Forrest Gump: "that's all I have to say about that".
Click to expand...

Denbigh, Because he didn't think, ever!!

(It's interesting to me that he was a "Gump". Andy Gump is a far older American Icon of the first half of the 20th Century. "The Gumps were utterly ordinary: chinless, bombastic blowhard Andy Gump, who is intimidated by his wife"). Source. Forrest brings us into the second part of that Century with gusto, running ahead of the wind.

This particular "Gump", namely Forrest, had a chin, but talked as if he was indeed chinless, even robotic. The very name "Forrest" implies, not an individual, (like Wolf, David or John), rather a substance like the masses of common people He represents the people to whom orders are given. So he just followed orders and army training and ran with history. The Forrest Gump film was almost a Republican party manifesto of blindly "following what the leaders ask of us and not looking back". The film does not question sufficiently the morality of the wars as deserved. Rather, it demonstrates for its protagonist, the great success in the end by flowing through American history with no personal protests. He ends up owning a shrimping business!

Still it's a great film. Forrest's sympathetic and wonderful character was a seduction mechanism for reviewing the late 20th Century escapades of the USA. His heroic rescue of fellow marines was so spectacular, he earned a place in the American psyche.

Back to photographs! I'm looking forward to your insights and views!

Asher
 
B

Bob Latham

New member
Welcome Denbigh and very good of you to join us.
A word of advice though...If you've arrived here to assume the mantle of the most inept English photographer in France then you'll be sadly disappointed....step aside Sir, I'm coming through.

Bob
 
D

Denbigh Gabbitas

Member
Hélène Anderson said:
Hello. Where abouts in France?
Click to expand...

Hi Hélène,

j'habite à PONTRIEUX, 22260 en Bretagne avec ma femme. Nous sommes ici depuis 5 ans et, comme nous sommes, nous deux, un peu agés, le Français est une barrière formidable. Notre region est trés agricole mais nous avons beaucoup d'églises des champs et des beaux paysages (mais tout plat). Je ne peux pas trouver quelque chose à cliquer !!

Et vous? (est-ce-qu'ici on peut tutoyer?)

denbigh
 
H

Helene Anderson

New member
Denbigh Gabbitas said:
Et vous? (est-ce-qu'ici on peut tutoyer?)denbigh
Click to expand...

Pas loin de Poitiers dans le huit six. Et oui, pourquoi pas.

Though probably here not all speak French, I'll explain a bit; Tutoiement , in French (as in many langauges) there are two ways to address someone, formal and informal. To tutoyer means to use the informal version. So, in French there is Vous and Tu, in German, Sie and du and lots of rules of grammer around the lot.
 
Doug Kerr

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
Hi, Asher,

Asher Kelman said:
So one can use tutoyer here as an adjective; "Is it like here, a bit informal?"
Click to expand...

Well it is a verb (the infinitive form). I'm not sure how one would use it as an adjective, or if not, what the corresponding adjective would be. Perhaps tutoyé?

Hélène, can you help us out here?

Thanks.

Best regards,

Doug
 
Doug Kerr

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
Hi, Jerome,

Jerome Marot said:
This is not an adjective but an infinitive proposition (if that is the correct English name for that). As in "we can say", say is not an adjective.
Click to expand...
Well said.

In English it is sometimes called the "bare infinitive" (as distinguished from the "full infinitive" which would be, for your example, "to say").

Best regards,

Doug
 
D

Denbigh Gabbitas

Member
Doug Kerr said:
Hi, Jerome,


Well said.

In English it is sometimes called the "bare infinitive" (as distinguished from the "full infinitive" which would be, for your example, "to say").

Best regards,

Doug
Click to expand...

Well, I am a student of French, but words like preposition (and other horrors like subjunctive) belong to the general great unknown called 'grammar'. I rarely know what part of speech or grammatical form I am learning or using. It does interest me that sometimes French and more so English people have no idea that they are using this or that grammatical form. For example, why do we say "We are having a meeting on Friday and it is vital that you be there" - 'tis the subjunctive and we only know it sortof sounds right.

Actually, I came here to follow a passion for Photography and inadvertently started this - please excuse and I promise not to do it again. No more French from moi.
 
H

Helene Anderson

New member
Denbigh Gabbitas said:
(and other horrors like subjunctive)
Click to expand...


Ah, le subjonctif , je kife grave (LOL) ! !

Speak and if you're understood, fine. I knew a guy once that was really up on German grammer. Once in Germany he was so scared of making a mistake he didn't say anything. Me, well, more rabbit than Sainsburys as a certain singing duo once said. Once started I never stopped. Don't know if that's a good thing or bad, hey ho . . . . . .
 
D

Denbigh Gabbitas

Member
Kippers and cigar-leaf...

Ahhhh, that heady blend of kippers and cigar-leaf, and a snip at only £650 ?

Actually, on the whiskey topic. I never take water in whiskey - I know a lot do, but it is not for me. If the whiskey is really good it is smooth. If not, it can be harsh and water might help, but I just don't drink enough whiskey to need to drink un-good. The ad for the Lagavulin is mouth-watering not because of the price, but because I only drink the Islay malts, my favourite, for a combination of price and quality, is Bowmore's 'Darkest', priced about the same as a decent claret. But, where I gladly fork out for claret and burgundy wines, I am a bit tight on whiskey - a contradiction, I suppose, since we get through far more wine than our livers should be exposed to. That is what living in France does for Englishmen. I put it like that since our French friends are far more restrained !
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top