“The typescript of George Orwell’s latest novel reached London in mid December, as promised. Warburg recognised its qualities at once (“amongst the most terrifying books I have ever read”) and so did his colleagues. An in-house memo noted “if we can’t sell 15 to 20 thousand copies we ought to be shot”.

- From the Guardian’s look back at 1984, the “Masterpiece that killed George Orwell”.

1984 is no longer the book that’s most influential on me, or my favourite, but it is still a part of who I am – like a literary tattoo. I read it at just the right age and the right place – a wordy 17 year old at college in Luton, obsessed with books and how they describe the world – and I’ve got some beautiful copies of it at home (including a beautiful illustrated one) as mementos. Penguin recently posted up a competition on Twitter to win a signed print of the Shephard Fairey image adorning the the current 1984; you had to come up with an image Penguin’s publicist can use on his Twitter page that reflects the book. I pulled two contenders from my Flickr account:

It’s a shot of the Colossus computer at Bletchley Park. I liked the flatness of the colours, the lack of shadows, and the suggestion of words being monitored. And also, of course, the reference to “the commons”. In the end though, I went for this one:

A favourite of mine, snapped on the iPhone at Tate’s Rothko show. I think it’s funnier and stranger than a lot of 1984-derived images tend to be; of course, it doesn’t shy away from the central darkness of the novel, of how bleak life is when words cannot be trusted.

Update: I won!

This post from a while back on a flash hack for the Nikon D40 has been one of my most popular pieces here, but sadly the original images it linked to are long since gone. Today I found this article over at Instructables which is just as good – in fact, because it uses the foil of a cigarette packet to act as the flash difuser, instead of just cardboard, it’s probably even better. Read the full how to here.

A post on the Flickr blog got me thinking about my 12 ‘Flickr Superstars’. As I made my notes, several themes emerged:

i. The Far East, specifically Japan. Having visited the Far East specifically, and having a Japanese fiancee, it’s no surprise that I’m fascinated by Japan, and I think there’s also a sense of me trying to understand it – culture, people, places, feelings – through images.
ii. Fast lenses. Quite a few of my favourite Flickr images rely on fast lenses (f1.8 and below).
iii. Simple, strong, compositions. If you look in the group devoted to these lists of 12, a lot of the photographers suggested are ‘high concept’. Lots of PhotoShop, and self-consciously arty compositions. Not for me – as with film, music (where I’m a big fan of 80s and early 90s alternative US groups such as The Replacements, Pixies, Nirvana), I tend towards images which are more strongly rooted in reality.

My favourite 12 are after the jump.

1. The first of several photographers on this list based in Japan, I wouldn’t say I ‘like’ .:*ghost*:.’s photos – rather, I’m drawn to them. There’s a sense of darkness in many of his photos that goes beyond spooky or creepy, but the subject matter is never, ever explicit. If anything, it’s the slightness, even vagueness of the subjects – little chunks of light, cats, sunglasses, empty parks – that gives the images their unsettling feeling. It’s the sense you might have when you’re in a strange place, in a strange mood, and the day is changing to night, making shadows and shapes out of normal objects. .:*ghost*:.’s ‘burari’ set is well worth exploring.

2. dannybird is the main photographer at the publisher where I work, and when it comes to still life product photography, he is simply one of the best photographers I’ve ever seen. A genius when it comes to using flash lighting to make even the dullest objects appear interesting, as you can see from this shot.

3. davemason is based near me in South-East London, and his subtle compositions slice up mundane scenes and render them surreal and intriguing.

4. A journalist in real life, there’s a strong narrative to many of greenwood 100’s photos, linked to a great visual instinct. Well worth adding as a contact, as the updates vary between the topical and the personal, proof positive that far from coolly observing the world, the best photographers are in the thick of the action.

5. Yes, yes, I’m a sucker for the Far East and from the moment I saw this terrific shot I’ve been a fan of Gori-JP’s photos. His shots are frequently bright, colourful and best of all are shot from a vantage point that’s completely immersed in the scene.

6. Tim Rudder is another photographer based in Japan, Tim’s portraits are fantastic – there’s a directness to them which I often find lacking photos you see online. He has a way of shooting that renders the glass of the monitor between you and the subject invisible. He’s also never content with the obvious shots either, which in a world when it seems everything has already been photographed, is a real talent.

7. Not only a fantastic photographer, Alieh is also based in fascinating place that is often represented in the media in a very one-sided manner: Iran, specifically, the historic city of Isfahan.

(This is my fave shot of hers, but she’s disabled off-site images.)

8. Navid J. There’s a real sense of poetry to his shots, and his sense of composition is very strong – frequently managing a fine balance of simplicity, abstraction and intrigue.

(This is my fave shot of his, but he’s disabled off-site images.)

9. Horses and Tigers provides subtle travel photography from places such as China and Iran; it gives the viewer a sense that there’s another world out there, and that strange as it seems, it’s not as radically separate from your one as you might think.

10. I’m a big fan of fast lenses, and re.mo always inspires me with the way he uses his Nikkor f1.4 turning simple objects into scenes filled with wonderful blobs of bokeh.

(This is my fave shot of his, but he’s disabled off-site images.)

11. Jonas Peterson is a pro and you can see why. Unlike many photographers on Flickr he’s not drawn to maximum contrast and whacked up colours – instead, what you find are a sensitivity to muted tones and the power of soft light.

12. There’s nothing showy about Kimicon’s photos – if anything, at first glance, they’re homey snapshots, almost to the point of being dowdy, but spend some time really looking at them and they’re have an undeniable charm which really communicates a strong feeling and humanity. You’re never in any doubt of the warmth of the heart and hands that held the camera and framed each shot.

(This is my fave shot of hers, but he’s disabled off-site images.)

Another excellent set of photos on The Big Picture today, focussing this time on animals in the zoo. As always with The Big Picture, there’s a real (if subtle) sense of a narrative running through the post, thanks to the ordering of the shots. I couldn’t help but be grabbed by this one of a six-week-old North Chinese Leopard from Hagenbeck Zoo in Hamburg, Germany.

It makes a very strong impact thanks to the strength of the subject. At first it’s funny and cute, thanks to the disparity between the dinky little cub, doing his best to snarl, and the photographers. The wicker basket makes him appear all the sweeter, as if he’s a pet on a picnic or something.

Look at it longer though and there’s a toughness to it – there’s a predator’s cruelty in the leopard’s eyes. Cub or not, there’s no mistaking the fact he’s (supposed to be) a hunter and a killer, which makes the way he’s trapped quite poignant. Increasing this sense are the partially obscured faces of the photographers leering out of the blown, smudgy white highlight on the right. The super-saturated light gives a feeling, I think, of the outside forces shaping the cub’s life.

Other highlights from the post include shot 23, which features some very clever use of shadows and picture 26 which is a flat out super composition – the human hand makes it a much more interesting shot than 27, despite the fact that 27 is, on the surface, more action packed.

When is too much in Photoshop? This article (translated from Danish) tells the story of a photographer who entered a competition, and was then asked to send unedited samples of his images. The article reproduces the pictures – before and after – so you can judge for yourself if there’s too much editing going on.

Those images are mostly landscapes; Photoshopping on humans is much more widely discussed (both behind the scenes, and in front of camera, as in the Dove ‘real beauty’ adverts), but Shakesville’s series, ‘Impossibly Beautiful‘ does a good job of showcasing what, post-software, is considered beautiful.

Update: Co-incidentially, this month’s French Elle is not only Photoshop free, it’s also dispensed with make-up for its female cover stars, who include Eva Herzigova, Monica Bellucci, Sophie Marceau, and Charlotte Rampling.

I ended up on Peleliu more by accident than design; I have family living on Palau, so my partner and I went to visit, and Peleliu seemed like an interesting day trip. I took the photos, wrote up the guide’s stories and did some Googling when I got back. One of the nice things about a blog post getting wider circulation, as mine on the Battle of Peleliu did thanks to Boing Boing, is that you get input from a huge variety of people.

Firstly, from the (very kind) comments here and over at BB, one book recommendation comes through very clearly – With The Old Breed by Eugene Sledge, so I’ve added that to my Amazon wishlist. First published in 1981, Sledge fought on Peleliu and in numerous other battles in the Pacific war. It’s very highly thought of, and it doesn’t flinch from depicting the brutality of the war. Paul Fussell, who himself wrote a brilliant book called ‘The Great War and Modern Memory’, praised it as ‘one of the finest memoirs to emerge from any war,’ which is about as good a recommendation as you can get.

With The Old Breed is, together, with another WW2 memoir, Helmet For My Pillow, being used as the source material for an HBO series about the battles across the Pacific. Called ‘The Pacific,’ it’s being produced by the same team (Spielberg, Tom Hanks etc) as the brilliant Band of Brothers, and will be on TV at some point this year. This site has a few YouTube snippets.

Also recommended was Ken Burns’ The War – I suspect this is fairly famous in the US, but this is the first I’ve heard of it. It’s easy to get on DVD though, so I’ll hopefully get a chance to watch it.

One commenter on Boing Boing wanted to know about the Japanese tank I photographed; another identified it as a Type 95 Ha-Go, and Wikipedia does indeed claim 15 were deployed on Peleliu.

Another added a link to a Flickr user with some shots of cleaning up unexploded WW2 ordinance in the Marshall Islands – this set in particular is well annotated.

A search on Metafilter revealed a post about American photographer James Fee. His father fought on Peleliu, and in 1998 James went back to the island to take photos. The exhibition he created combined his own images with shots is father had taken. You can see 18 of the images here and the book is available on Amazon. The picture of the Zero at the top of the post is his. It’s always interesting to see the approach other photographers take to the same subject matter. I’m definitely jealous of his Zero shot; it’s terrifically moody. I’m surprised by how different his images seem to mine; they’re hazier, more lyrical – he seems more wary of the colours, of the brightness of the sunlight that I was.

Finally, someone asked what I used on Peleliu – it was a Nikon D40 with the 18-55 kit lens, and for some of the shots, an 85mm f1.8 prime. It doesn’t auto-focus on the D40, but it really isn’t a problem when you’ve got such bright sunlight, and such still scenes to shoot. I’ve written about my love for this camera quite a bit; honestly, some of the best money I ever spent. I’m glad people appreciated the pictures.

Peleliu is a small island that forms part of the nation of Palau in the Pacific. It’s about five hours flying time south of Japan and three hours east of the Philippines. It’s now, like the rest of Palau, beautiful, peaceful and home to more shades of blue in the sea and sky than you or your camera lens would ever have thought possible.

Blue wasn’t always the colour.

Between September and November 1944, it was the site of an incredibly fierce battle between US and Japanese armed forces. Peleliu island is about 14 square miles of terrain; during the three months of fighting, the casualty rate worked out at just under 1,000 men killed per square mile of island. Close to 1,800 American servicemen died; of the 11,000 Japanese soldiers defending the island, only 202 were captured alive.

The battle was fought over the fact Peleliu had an airfield, and was within range of the Philippines, from where the US planned to eventually launch strikes against the Japanese mainland. The plan to attack Peleliu was a contentious one – not all of the US high command thought Peleliu was strategically important, and after the battle, the US found the airfield was barely operational, and posed almost no threat to US forces elsewhere in the Pacific.

I’m from the UK, and visited Palau in October 2008. I took a day trip to Peleliu with a Japanese tour group. I took some photos, and made some notes. The photos are all hosted on Flickr. You can see the images as a slideshow on Flickr, check out the full set, or read the rest of this post to see what I saw.

This shallow stretch of idyllic Pacific ocean is where US forces first landed on Peleliu; called ‘Orange beach’, the US Marines arrived here at half eight in the morning on September 15th, 1944. This map of Peleliu shows the landing beaches quite clearly, all grouped together at the south of the island, near the Japanese airfield.

Unlike previous battles in the Pacific, the Japanese opted not to put all their effort into defending the perimeter of the island, so while the marines faced resistance when they landed, it was only going to get worse when they advanced into the island’s interior. Below is a picture from Google’s archive of images from Life magazine which shows what it was like for the US forces approaching Peleliu. Here’s how Time Magazine’s Robert Martin described it:

‘Peleliu is a horrible place. The heat is stifling and rain falls intermittently — the muggy rain that brings no relief, only greater misery. The coral rocks soak up the heat during the day and it is only slightly cooler at night… Peleliu is incomparably worse than Guam in its bloodiness, terror, climate and the incomprehensible tenacity of the Japs. For sheer brutality and fatigue, I think it surpasses anything yet seen in the Pacific, certainly from the standpoint of numbers of troops involved and the time taken to make the island secure.’

***

When you arrive on Peleliu, it doesn’t take long to start spotting the remains of the war. This is partly because while the US helped rebuild Peleliu (and Palau as a whole – the country only become fully independent in 1994), they just moved the civilian population from the south of the island to the north and started afresh. The south of the island and its thick jungle still contain plenty of WW2 relics.

While the Japanese tactics were different to the ones they had used previously, the US relied on a similar approach to previous Pacific island battles, pounding Peleliu with tonnes of heavy shells fired from battleships before landing troops. They were confident they had destroyed most of the Japanese garrison and that when the Marines landed there would be little resistance.

Despite the damage done to the island (seen above, in another image from Life), the Japanese troops survived by sheltering in their caves. When the marines landed, they found Peleliu extremely tough going – no surprises when they were being shot at from well concealed sniper positions such as this one.

Like the rest of the Palau islands, Peleliu is made mostly from extremely tough volcanic limestone. Its toughness made it ideal for turning into defensive fortifications, and once stripped of its vegetation, it was razor sharp on the feet and extremely hostile to navigate.

Unlike previous battles in the Pacific, the Japanese didn’t place the entire emphasis of their strategy on defending the beaches – they fortified the island, in particular a mountain called Umurbrogol. The Japanese riddled Umurbrogol with a huge network of caves and tunnels from which to operate (this image shows a plan of one complex). Once they had completed their work, they evacuated the civilians, and waited for the Americans.

Below you scan see the entrance to one of the Japanese caves, and beneath that, a shot from inside, looking back to the entrance. The entrance itself probably isn’t more than 3 or 4 foot high; inside the cave ceilings are slightly higher, although very uneven – but it’s not a great place to be when, like me, you’re 6 foot 2. It was a horrible place to spend 15 minutes, but caves like these were where the Japanese forces lived for the duration of the battle. Inside, you can still see discarded boots, bottles and bullets.

Peleliu has several Japanese graveyards/memorials, of which this is one. If I remember rightly, this shrine was built by a Japanese soldier who survived the battle (one of only 200 of the original garrison of 11,000 who did), who then went on to become a successful businessman running book shops in Shibuya. The man in the blue shirt on the right was our guide, Kikuchi-san.

***

Peleliu takes an hour or so to get to via boat from Koror, Palau’s capital, so while we’d set off early in the day, after seeing the landing beaches and the first set of caves, it getting towards lunch time, and really warming up. In the sun, the temperature was comfortably over 30 degrees Celsius, and once you got away from the sea, the humidity really started to rise. Everyone on the tour group clutched their bottle of chilled water and regularly took new ones from the chiller box in the back of the tour’s Toyota minivan.

Once we’d finished at the graveyard, our small group piled back into the Toyota and hit the road, throwing the windows open and glad of the breeze. Next stop: what was once the HQ of the Imperial Japanese Navy on Peleliu. A two level concrete structure built in the 1920s, it’s now a beautiful, quiet run that is gradually becoming part of the jungle. We were free to explore – even up the crumbling staircase. Spookily, it was, when we visited, decorated with brightly coloured chains of paper cranes, hanging still in both sunlight and shadow. It’s a common custom in Japan for children to make these for ceremonial occasions – and I think Kikuchi-san told us they were brought by school children on a history trip.

***

Peleliu’s climate is exhausting; hot and humid, it pulls the energy out of you. The suffering of the soldiers – both Japanese and US – from combat was compounded by the climate. It also exacts a real toll on buildings and equipment, as you can see from this shot of a concrete bunker. I’ve never seen concrete rot before:

***

Once we left the naval HQ, we drove towards Umurbrogol mountain, the site of the fiercest fighting on Peleliu. Initial aerial photos made it look to US planners like a relatively simple mountain that the Marines would have little trouble capturing. They were wrong:

“Instead of a gently rounded hill, the Umurbrogol area was in fact a complex system of sharply uplifted coral ridges, knobs, valleys, and sinkholes. It rose above the level remainder of the island from 50 to 300 feet, and provided excellent emplacements for cave and tunnel defenses.” Brigadier General Gordon D. Gayle, USMC, 1

Even now, backed up by bottles of chilled water and carrying only a few pieces of camera equipment, it’s not easy to climb. The path leads on a very circuitous route, framed on each side by steep drops, cliffs of sheer stone and thick foliage. The heat hangs in clusters, the sunlight waiting for you to pass through, baking on your skin when you do.

This huge Japanese gun remains in a hollow, looking out over the island:

While these ferns proved nature’s tenacity…

By growing in this US landing craft’s engine bay.

This Japanese tank was much smaller than the American one. Though it has been abandoned, it makes a nice memorial; nature is reclaiming it.

***

There are many memorial plaques on the mountain, some in English, some in Japanese, some in both. This one was placed outside a cave where several Japanese officers committed ritual suicide. As the Americans advanced slowly up the mountain² – taking horrendous casualties as they did, and causing the troops to name it, with typical Marine corps black humour, ‘Bloody Nose ridge’ – they resorted to using flamethrowers to clear the caves. Today, you can still see the scorch marks on the wall.

The group paused here while our guide, Kikuchi-san spoke about the battles.

As with most of the tour, it was in Japanese (which I don’t speak well), but he kindly translated for me. After Kikuchi-san had finished his talk, the Japanese on the group were silent and offered prayers to the soldiers. It was a very sad moment, and difficult to know what to think. Part of me was flattened by how useless the whole fight was – how strange that something people were willing to fight to the death for has faded in sixty years to the point that I can visit the battlefield as a tourist, on a tour with the ‘other side’ – yet you can’t help but be moved by the bravery and tenacity displayed by both sides. Perhaps what you feel most keenly on Peleliu is the passage of time; how powerful the process of the minutes moving onwards is.

This is the view from the top of Umurbrogol.

***

We also stopped briefly at the airfield that was the stated aim of the US assault on the island. Rusting nearby in the jungle was a Mitsubishi Zero fighter.

***

The battle on Peleliu became the inspiration for the phrase ‘thousand yard stare’, after the title of a painting by a war correspondent there, Tom Lea. Previously known for jingoistic, ‘Go America’ images, Peleliu altered Lea’s approach.

According to Wikipedia, Lea said about the marine who was the subject of the painting:

“He left the States 31 months ago. He was wounded in his first campaign. He has had tropical diseases. He half-sleeps at night and gouges Japs out of holes all day. Two-thirds of his company has been killed or wounded. He will return to attack this morning. How much can a human being endure?”

***

This image shows our guide, Kikuchi-san, at one of the memorials to Japanese and American soldiers. It looks out over the beautiful Pacific and blue is the colour.

¹ Taken from BLOODY BEACHES: The Marines at Peleliu, by Brigadier General Gordon D. Gayle, USMC (Ret)
² Gayle’s write up is is very detailed when it comes to the action on the mountain.

Amazon is selling the Nikon D40, with its 18-55mm kit lens, for the low low price of £246 (41% less than what I paid for it). The D40 is the dSLR I talked myself into buying in January 2007; although it’s since been replaced by the D40X (a ten megapixel version), and then the D60 (a ten megapixel version with a few tweaks and a kit lens with vibration reduction), the D40 remains a superb camera, especially for under £250. This is how I convinced myself to buy it, this is what I thought of it after a couple of weeks, this is what I thought about the kit lens, and below is a pic I took with it reasonably recently (kit lens at 18mm, f 3.5). The D40 may not be brand new tech, but sometimes that doesn’t matter.

This year, as well as recording the books I’ve read, I’m also going to take pictures of them. The idea is that the photo will in some way reflect the contents, style and/or writing, or perhaps what I learned from reading it. The covers will be added to this post, and will also be in this Flickr set.

Here they are:

It's very black

Took the shot above yesterday at Tate Modern, and it’s the first one I’ve got from the iPhone’s camera that I’ve been really happy with. It’s from Tate’s excellent Mark Rothko exhibition…

Part 1: Overheard at Mark Rothko
Well, I say it’s excellent, but that’s if you like Rothko. If you don’t, it’s fair to say it’s not going to change your mind about him. It’s not like there’s a secret room of photo-realistic portraits or delicate watercolours in the middle of it. Despite the fact Rothko is one of the few 20th century artists to be widely known, plenty of people there seemed annoyed, offended and upset by what they found. Best exchange I overheard was a father leading his 10 year old son through the rooms, at pace, saying:

“Right, so the last room was the purple and black series. This one is the grey and black series. You see the difference?”

In close second:

(Man, looking at a massive canvas that’s absolutely covered in paint) “Well, it’s not really painting, is it?”

Part 2: The Camerabag iPhone app
You do get some interesting people at exhibitions. Families with babies that literally look like they’ve just come out of the hospital, perplexed French tourists and people who appear to have dressed solely to look like cliched art fans. It all makes for great photos, but unfortunately you have to contend with the gallery guards and the no photography rule. This meant the SLR was out, and the iPhone was in. I’ve written about the iPhone’s camera before, and as it’s not brilliant, I’ve tried out a few apps to see if they could improve it. By far the best has been one called Camerabag; it’s cheap, regularly updated (most of the bugs have now gone) and allows you to apply a series of filters to pictures you take with the camera. The idea is that the filters mimic certain camera styles – Lomo, Polaroid, monochrome etc – and it’s easy to use, and as you can see from the picture I took at Tate, allows you to get a bit more out of your phone pics. Well worth the £1.79 cost. For more, check out the Camerabag Flickr group.

Previously on the Wired Jester:
Art: Visiting Tate Britain’s Holbein exhibition.