Inflatable Ingrid

Simon's Special Friend

My new neighbour introduced himself today. Scottish, seems like a nice bloke. Certainly too polite to comment on the tripod, wig and inflatable doll I was carrying.

And certainly way more polite than my friends. I mentioned Ingrid’s impending arrival to precisely three people - Georgina, Chris and Nadia, all of whom jumped to the worst possible conclusion despite knowing me well.

Honestly, you buy one little blow-up doll and people assume the worst.

Over the last couple of months I’ve been building an in-person interviewing capability for my podcast during the evenings. The set-up consists of studio lighting and three cameras. The challenge is to arrange the lighting and align the camera settings so that the footage looks the same when all three are combined.

This isn’t easy at the best of times and it’s been particularly difficult to do by myself. What I have been doing is turning on all the cameras then sitting in front of them, then stopping the recordings and reviewing them. Simon as subject, and as camera operator.

Not only is this time consuming it hasn’t worked. Using the histogram to adjust settings such as white balance, shutter speed and focal length is a lot easier to do when you can actually see the histogram.

Ingrid solves this problem by kindly agreeing to be the subject for me to point a camera at. Also, we’re dating now.