It is said that for every hundred feet you ascend in altitude, you travel one degree of latitude further north meteorolgically. Thus, someone living on the uplands of southern England ...Dartmoor say... has the same climate as someone living at sea level in Inverness. I have a similar theory. Fray's Law states that for every 100 miles you travel away from London, you go back five years in time. It's obvious really; fashionable ideas take a while to reach out into the provinces. It's not an infallible law and large provincial cities are often not far behind the capital. Motorways and fast transport links tend to spread metropolitan notions to places in their hinterland. But by and large it is true, and sun dried tomatoes reach Braintree while Llanelli is still coming to terms with processed peas. For any person of fastidious tastes the 1970s were a time of hardship and bereavement. Let us take one tiny example: bus liveries. Well into the 1960s buses were painted in dignified and noble colours ...rich dark reds (a colour always associated with public services in England) predominated in the towns, whilst in the country the handsome green of the Tilling group was king. Cream bands, lined with black, were used as a foil. The "fleetname" of the operator was applied in seemly gilt letters, and heraldic emblazonry brought distinction to the streets of those places where bus services were provided by the municipality. Everyone knew that the secret of good taste is understatement. Then the 1970s arrived. Out went seemliness and restraint. In came "brighter" ...i.e. garish... colours in hideous mis-matches. Cardiff went orange, Newcastle yellow and Sheffield an unprepossessing brown, like tea. The Tilling and BET groups were merged as the National Bus Company (not even "Omnibus"!) and a particularly uninspired livery was imposed, in either its red or green variants, everywhere from Berwick-on-Tweed to Penzance. In the world of the independent coach operator there was a most unwelcome innovation which became known as "Starsky and Hutch livery". This consisted of multi-coloured stripes originating at the lower front of the vehicle and becoming wider towards the back, where they turned and were swept up towards the roof. But remember Fray's Law. The new fashion in liveries took ten years to reach Scotland where, especially in the paint shops of the Scottish Bus Group, a palette of sombre hues continued in use. In a further proof of Fray's Law, Scottish bus operators tended to order well-proven models right up to the end of their production life, so that they had more old-fashioned fleets than modernity-crazed operators in the south. Glasgow, when I first went there in 1976, had an almost post-war bleakness and decrepitude which I found absolutely delightful ...just like going back to English cities of the 1950s. Fray's Law again! In the photograph we see a Bristol FSF Lodekka in the colours of the Central SMT company emerging from Glasgow's wonderfully seedy Dundas Street Bus Station on a gloomy autumn afternoon, with its tungsten-bulb interior lights glimmering dimly. The colour scheme was at least ten years out of date by English standards. Monday 18th October 1976.

PCA 180 – Conceptual Photography Sunday October 23 - Sunday, November 6, 2011 Image tag: pca180 Conceptual photography is a genre in art where the artist (you!) makes a photograph of a concept or idea. With conceptual photography there is a preexisting idea that the photographer has established and the construct of the image (whether found or set up) is the core of the photo. These concepts are often messages that the photographer is trying to convey and could be a political angle or social commentary. Common to these types of photographs are a level of abstraction that allows for the viewer to develop an individual interpretation. The photo should not be an explicit example of the concept, but a general expression of the idea. I am guessing that this won’t necessarily be and easy assignment, but I think it will be fun and allow for wide latitude of approaches. Many of the examples on the web have a strong degree of processing, but there are certainly plenty of examples of situations (created or found) that have a lighter touch of Photoshop manipulation. WIT I took a trip to San Jose a couple of weeks ago and contrived to leave work early to make my way up to Old Sacramento to meet ryanbot (Stephanie) where we had an impromptu photo walk and some really cool Mexican food at what turned out to be an authentic slice of the old west. This photgraph was taken inside a building on that walk. The interior has this amazing mobile of mirrors with light playing on it and I took both the straight shot and this one - a reflection from the inside of the windows of the mobile. For me it seems like something floating up in this steel structure - like a fish or some creature trying to escape. I converted it to b&w because the reflection washed out the colors of the object and I liked how much more contrasty this was.... What does it seem to be to you?