After a couple of nights with the most violent, dry-retching cough along with the gooiest snot my nose has ever known I went back to the pharmacist again. Is this a problem yet? Nope, apparently, not. Gimme some of that Night Nurse then. Anything for a decent night's sleep.
And yes, the lovely chemicals in Night Nurse do indeed keep you asleep. But while they do their best to deal with the mucus they ain't so successful at that and I found my self waking up with a distinct inability to breath and a need to cough like none other. So while I may have gotten 6-8 hours I then spent the rest of the day paying for it.
The sweating is the weirdest. Not a fever so much and it comes and goes. Why?
Anyway, in-amongst all these thrills I managed to take the above self portrait. Don't fully remember doing so but there it is.
Feel a bit more lucid tonight, but then I felt a bit more lucid over the weekend so I'm not reading anything into it.
Reference photos taken in Specsavers.
As you may have noticed but been too polite to say anything, my glasses were getting to be a bit fucked. Getting on for nine years old the lenses were scratched, the arms were padded with duct tape and they had a tendency to sit wonky. But then four years of farming, decorating, refuse collection, gardening and misc manual labouring will do that. So it was time to bite the bullet and go get some new ones. Andy and Alex were on hand to help with the trauma of deciding, helped by the realisation that there aren't a lot of hidden costs in your modern optician these days (unlike dentists) and I now have two new pairs.
Interesting to note that the style I would previously have jokingly called "new media wanker glasses" (thick black rectangular) is now the norm. In fact I now have a pair (not pictured), which is fair as I'm pretty much a new media wanker these days. The other is a rather distinguished pair of wire-frames (bottom row, 2nd) that compliment my balding head in an Uncle Pete kind of way. Both are thin rectangles which is messing with my head as I adjust to the different field of vision The top bit has vanished while the sides are all wide-angle. Also of note is that my prescription had barely changed in the last decade.
Getting new glasses has a strange psychological aspect. I've now changed my face is a subtle but definite way. And thanks to the 2 for 1 offer I can switch faces at whim. I'm not sure I welcome this new daily choice in my life, but I'm sure I'll deal with it.
New glasses!
Bournville, March 6th
** ** **
I might be putting 2 + 2 together and coming up with 20 but has anyone else noticed the torrents for certain American TV programs that are usually broadcast on Sky in the UK are massively oversubscribed at the moment, and when you do find one that'll let you join it fair zooms down the pipe?
Could it be that customers of Virgin Media, who let's not forget used to be NTL / Telewest, a company known for their broadband as much as their TV, are getting their Lost / 24 / Battlestar / etc fixes through other means? And could it be that when this squabble between Branson and Murdoch is over they'll be quite happy sticking with a system that doesn't have adverts and is a significant number of weeks ahead?
Sky's figures for 24 are down 175,000 while Lost is down 96,000 (via). I wonder if they'll come back?
** ** **
Went to see Hot Fuzz last night - first time I'd been to the cinema in ages come to think of it. Very entertaining though didn't quite have the impact of Shaun of the Dead. Recommended, though director Edgar Wright really needs to calm down on his multi-fast-jump-cuts. There's barely a shot in there that's over half a second long.
The Sky, March 3rd
There's something zen about watching an eclipse for an hour and 15 minutes. It was definitely worth it though. Magical stuff.
This photo is better bigger and much better much bigger.
NEC, 25th Feb
Went to Focus on Imaging today at the NEC, my first visit to a trade show where I wasn't putting it up or taking it down. I was there for a little under four hours.
By the gods these things are mental! I didn't really do much other that wander around but I'm utterly exhausted from the experience. But I do have a few inches of glossy catalogues for cameras I can never afford.
Best stand was probably Ilford where they had photographers who used their film and paper on hand to talk about their work. Biggest disappointment was probably Apple who were just pushing Aperture, though I guess that's understandable. Weirdest omission was no sign of Lightroom at Adobe. Hardly any freebees or schwag. I got three sheets of Ilford inkjet paper, a copy of the British Journal of Photography (which is pretty good) and a Nikon carrier bag. Got to play with a Gorilla Pod after hearing about them ages ago which was cool and I think they might actually be worth the money.
Walsall, Feb 18th. Bigger.
Sunday was the first Black Country Flickrmeet being a tour around Walsall, only the second time I'd ever been there. My knowledge of the area west of Brum is embarrassingly lacking. Or maybe not so embarrassing. After all, Birmingham is a pretty large place. When I lived in Southampton I felt no obligation to get to know Portsmouth though it was only a short train journey away. And, it has to be said, my knowledge of Coventry is equally poor.
But still, there's this whole urban sprawl out there waiting to be explored which is handy as I'm starting to run out of places in Birmingham. On the last meet in Digbeth I felt like a tour guide, though of course revisiting places is never a bad thing, especially as Birmingham is changing so much these days.
But still, the Black Country has opened up a whole new area of interest and coupled with some developments in my blogging work (more on them later) I'm starting think outside the city boundaries and consider myself more of a West Midlander. Which is quite a development for a Birmingham resident.
The best thing about these Black Country meets is I've got nothing to do with them. I just turn up and let others lead the way. Very refreshing!
Of course now we have two monthly meets in the area along with everything else the photographic calendar is getting a little crowded leading to some musings on how we're going to deal with it all this year. I think it'll be fine but right now there seems to be a Flickr-related meetup every week, and that's on top of all the other things going on. S'gonna be a busy year!
Aston Cantlow, Feb 17th
World TTV Day was on Saturday, marking roughly the first anniversary of a Through the Viewfinder photo being posted on Flickr. Naturally I was going to partake in this occasion (and even wrote about it for CiB). However, Saturday was rather overcast in the Midlands and I found myself, not unwillingly, accompanying Matt and Anna and Matt's brother on a very very muddy walk in the countryside. Not perfect photography conditions. But I prevailed. Tried out some new processing techniques too. (Cross process is so last year...)
Haven't had a chance to look through the World TTV Day Pool yet but have already spotted some West Mids action in there, which is good to see, if not surprising. Today was the first ever Black Country Flickrmeet and of 11 attendees four had contraptions with them, and that's not including Harri B who'd gone straight for the day. Photos from that will follow soon.
Digbeth, Feb 11th
Digbeth, Feb 11th
My photos from Sunday's Flickrmeet are up. Here's the set. Not a huge turnout but I'm not worried. Winter will do that, even though we had lovely weather again. There are now 95 members of Birmingham Flickrmeets which is quite incredible so the summer should be good.
The big find of the day was an open abandoned warehouse in Digbeth full of dead pigeons, broken glass, water and shit. It was great. My personal high, however, was finding the above yellow chair. There's something about a plastic chair in the wild that really gets my juices flowing. I've got three now (one white and another yellow) and while that's not many it's the quality that counts.
-- -- --
Blogging on my two other blogs is going well. It's interesting how I approach each one. Created in Birmingham is a lot more formal as befits a paying gig and while I'm trying to inject in more personality it does take a while to get things right before posting, like they mean something. There's no shortage of material for it though. If anything I need to cut down on posting news and get back to profiling people. On the whole I look at the archives for the last couple of months and I'm happy. Proud even. There's still a hell of a lot to do though. My feeling that it's going to take a good 6 months to a year to properly bed in seem realistic.
Brum Blog is proving a lot of fun, especially since I decided to abandon doing proper posts with titles and everything and just whack whatever crosses my path on it. It's something of a return to old school blogging and I think my decision to use Blogger was a wise one from a psychological standpoint if nothing else.
Reaction to the blogs has also been good. The most interesting thing has been people asking me for advice on blogging, which kinda blew my mind at first. It makes sense though. You can do anything with the blog format, anything at all. So where do you start? What tone should you strike? What subjects should you cover? These things don't really matter if you're gradually evolving your blog but if your site exists to sell you and your services then it's important to get it at least partly right from the outset. Is there a market for a Blogging Consultant? Did I actually type that last sentence?
Another nice side effect which I may or may not be able to take credit for is a small but noticeable increase in activity in the Birmingham-centric blog world. This is my secret agenda with these blogs - to provide a bit of substance on which an ecosystem or conversation can build. Early days still but I'm hopeful.
-- -- --
I'm sure people are curious about the quilt. It's coming together slowly. Very slowly. I've got four pieces now of a projected 49. More news as and when it becomes interesting.
Bournville / Selly Oak, November 06
I got my first film taken with the Vivtar Ultra Wide & Slim back last week. These shitty little cameras are quite popular at the moment, especially in the West Midlands thanks to lo-fi king Harri B scoring a box load and distributing them for a quid each. I understand they're quite hard to get hold of generally, especially in the States, so cheers Harri!
The camera itself is nothing special to look at - a standard plastic compact that takes 35mm film. What's cool about it is the very wide lens (22mm) and the appalling quality of said lens. Not only do you get a great warp but the lens flare can be quite fantastic. It also requires a hell of a lot of light. The above photo was take on a fairly sunny day, albeit in the shadows. You need bright direct sunlight for this baby.
I haven't quite got it to work yet, probably because I put slightly expired Ilford PAN 400 film in which is a bit too grainy and contrasty to really get the benefits (though I really like the feel of the PAN and will certainly try it again in the Nikon). A roll of 10 year expired colour is at the labs so we'll see how that worked out next week.
Naturally there's a Viv group on Flickr which is one of my favourites. Actually, as Flickr gets busier and more prone to the madness of crowds these lo-fi / mod groups are quite the oasis.
Worcestershire, January 28th
Kinda pooped today thanks to spending Sunday in the fresh outdoors of the countryside taking photos at Witley Court for three hours. Some nice results (sideshow) though it did take a while to adjust. Funny how one gets used to the urban environment.
The trip was something the Birmingham Flickrmeets collective are doing this year - planned excursions out of the city every month or so. Nothing to do with me, I'm happy to say. The group has really taking off on its own and I'm pretty much in the back seat now, which is how I like it.
Most impressively we got 12 members along , two of whom bringing their families, with the usual diversity of people and equipment. It was a good thing.
But it did kinda write off today. Still, that's probably no bad thing.
Here's the post-meet thread and pool which has been a little slower than usual taking off. I guess the others were hit by all that oxygen too.
Home, January 21st
Yesterday, seeking some much needed time away from the screen, I joined Dr Zoop in the garden where he was clearing the remains of autumn away and took a peek in the compost heap. We've been added kitchen stuff to it for about a year now and I wasn't overly convinced much was happening. However, on digging down worms were revealed. Hundreds of them! And then under them the loveliest loamy compost you ever did see! There's not a massive amount of it and I suspect it could just be all the tea bags we get through (at a rough guess about 100 a week) but even so. Progress!
In other news I haven't been doing much other than hack away at the Created in Birmingham blog which is picking up steam nicely. I didn't really think how much spinning my Birmingham stuff off to that and Brum Blog would leave this blog so empty. Maybe it's time to re-integrate the linklog? What do you think?
Cotteridge, January 18th
Jewellery Quarter, January 14th
Sunday saw the January Flickrmeet in Birmingham take place. It was a lovely day - blue skies and bright sunshine. Given how shit the weather has been this month this was something of a miracle. Not a huge turnout but that's the winter for you. I would say something about Fair Weather Photographers but this was the first time I'd been out with a camera for a while.
We made the most of it and headed out into the Jewellery Quarter stopping off for a bit of graveyard cliche stuff and the legendary Yellow Wall before stumbling across the shell of a nightclub that burnt down last summer. Hog heaven for the likes of us.
My photos are here, group photos are here, discussion thread here.
The next Birmingham Flickrmeet is on February 11th and all are welcome.
Kings Heath, January 13th
Saturday saw The Destroyers playing The Station in Kings Heath. I wrote a bit about them on Created in Birmingham but suffice to say they're currently one of my favourite musical acts in the city. A must see.
The Station is an interesting venue. A very traditional looking pub with wood beams all over which continues into the back room, usually a sparse affair at venues. Really nice atmosphere. Apparently they have live music there regularly on Saturday nights, usually in the folk vein.
Bournville, December 17th
Cotteridge, 16th December
Digbeth, December 9th
Bournville, November 30th
Barfly, Birmingham, October 6th
Got a bunch of negs back from Lord Gareth of the Dev yesterday including my shots from the Psychic TV gig in October which came out fairly well. (Set, slideshow.) For some reason I didn't write about it at the time but the gig was tremendous - one of those landmark iconic occasions with the added bonus of having some really fucking great music. Excellent stuff.
[Update: Here's an excellent review of the gig. I love it that I just don't need to write gig reviews these days - others will do it so much better.]
Bournville, November 28th
Gas Street Basin, Birmingham, November 20th
Monday night the photographers were out en masse taking photos at the Frankfurt Market and wound up on the canals, tripods at the ready, for some long exposure action. Here are the photos.
While shooting the canals we noticed that occasionally the reflections were bending. In reality there was a slight bend but it was mostly an optical illusion. On a 20-30 second exposure the bend was really pronounced. There are numerous explanations for this but none of them quite add up. Anyone with a decent knowledge of light care to shed any?
Jug of Ale, Moseley, November 12th
Full set of 24 photos
Went to see Dufus on Sunday. They were very good indeed as were the support Mr Bones & The Dreamers who I intend to check out again on the 30th. I'd seen Dufus supporting Jeffrey Lewis last May and wrote about them here but that review can pretty much be discounted as representative of this gig as the lineup was completely different. Except the drummer. I think he was the same. Looking at their recent CD I realised that Dufus is basically lead bloke Seth with about 24 other musicians who come and go so every tour is probably different. Last time they were a bouncy bloke-heavy party rock band. This time they were more of an intense, performance art-ish folk-rock band. Maybe. Definitely on the odd side of the spectrum and in a really good way. The monstrous beard that Seth has grown in the last 18 months only added to this dissonance and it was only when they played songs I recognised from the Ball of Design CD that I was 100% they were the same band. It was a terrific set lasting for what seemed like a good hour or so and I'd highly recommend seeing them again, whatever their construction.
This was also a slightly different gig for me as I'd been asked by Mark of Iron Man Records to take some photos of the band in return for some quality schwag, the closest I've gotten to a paid shoot in this regard. I've done gig shoots on a pro-bono basis before but this felt different somehow. Kinda professional and very enjoyable. It helped that Dufus were a very photographable band but I'm really pleased with the results (slideshow). Of course I can't take all the credit. The new 50mm lens did most of the work and I took 580 shots so the chances of them all being shit was slim, but even so I think some kind of corner has been turned and it's got me pondering. This, of course, is assuming Mark is happy with them.
Bournville, November 6th
T'was the Flaming Lips gig tonight so you'll have to make do with a photo for now as my head is wobbly.
Boy, it was terrific!
Bournville, November 6th
King Heath, November 3rd. Full set.
Friday was the much anticipated Enablers gig at the Hare and Hounds. It was terrific. They are if not one of my favourite bands then definitely one of my favourite live bands ever. Here's RussL's GDFAF report and I should also note I finally met Russ and he's a good man, if a little tired. But I understand that, having been there before. The middle of Going Deaf For A Fortnight is always the hardest. You're knackered from the first week, the second week looks horrifying daunting but you've still got sufficient mental faculties to feel the fear. I was amused to hear he's ending with a Motorhead gig. Now that's brave!
Was also good to meet Lisa who had put the gig on for no other reason that she felt it a necessary thing to do. Folk like her, operating outside the usual circles of promoters, are an inspiration, especially when it results in gigs like this. Support from Last of the Real Hardmen was great and while they only played one song it was a long one that built from simple guitars and tricksy drums into a pounding roar of feedback and loops. More from them next time please.
The Enablers were stunning. Nuff said really. I took a shitload of photos, going with the "whack open the lens, point the camera a click 300 times" technique which seemed to work fairly well with 32 making the grade. I'm still torn as to whether there's an art to gig photography or whether it's just luck, but I have to say watching Simonelli through what is essentially a telescope is quite thrilling.
Three free mp3's are for the taking here. Go get them now.
Banbury, October 24th
Back.
Tired.
Later.
Really couldn't make a decision on where to go tonight based on the bands so I went for the "who else is going" system which pointed me towards Misty's and Kate Goes at the Barfly. I'm sure Schwervon et al at the Jug were superb but one can only be in one place at one time. Anyway, met up with Matt M and posse and naturally Andy Pryke was there.
Top gig. KateGoes are really tight now, streets ahead of the last two times I saw them yet still completely out there (for want of a suitable term). Hard to believe they've only been going for less than a year.
Misty's Big Adventure, as ever, were tremendous. Every time I see them they seem to improve and they've been at the top of their game for a while now. New songs were great and some of the old ones have had a rocket shoved up their arses, especially A Dog Like You which fucking rocks now.
Photos were taken TTV style.
-- -- --
One of the advantages of living in a shared house is you can announce on your blog that you're going away safe in the knowledge that you're not leaving an empty honey pot for web surfing burglars. My sister and her brood are moving to New Zealand next month (yes, my family is slowly transferring itself to the other side of the planet) so I'm going down to Banbury to help them sort shit out. Not sure if I'll have much net access or time to do anything so things might be quiet for a week. I also expect another wave of spam returns to clog up my peteashton.com email when I'm gone making webmail impossible so use the gmail.com with peteashton in front of it if you need to contact me.
Birmingham, October 20th
Selly Oak, October 18th, Dawn
Walsall, October 14th
On Saturday members of the Birmingham Flickrmeets group ventured to Walsall to take photos of their world famous (possibly) Illuminations. I'd heard of this spectacle, what with it being world famous and all, but had never been before. As described it doesn't sound like much - a park filled with somewhat tacky displays all lit up - but actually being there is something else, possibly magical, definitely out there. The tackiness is of such a degree that it transcends badness and is, quite simply, bloody great. I should also add that beyond the displays the park itself was quite tastefully lit. Or at least relatively tastefully. See for yourself.
Many photos were taken and a lot of them came out nicely. Here's my set which has a lot of TTV but not exclusively (I took the tripod along too) and here's the special group pool which, as usual, is already very full. If you don't want to plough through the whole thing you can apply Flickr's "interestingness" filter for those photos that have gathered the most attention already. All these things are probably best viewed as slideshows. Put on the cheeziest music you can find and you're halfway there.
The Walsall Illuminations continue until October 29th and are, in my view, well worth attending at least once before you die. But be warned, they get very busy of a weekend.
(Interesting to note that Wikipedia briefly defines Illuminations as "secular Autumn festivals of electric light held in several English cities". The secular part didn't occur to me at the time, but they're right. There was nothing religious about them at all. And that, in retrospect, is quite refreshing.)
Flapper and Firkin, Birmingham, October 13th
Took the TTV machine to a gig last night for the first time (as opposed to a more relaxed festival). Fairly successful, I think. I also brought along a flash gun, which made the contraption look even more absurd, but the results from that, while occasionally inspired, we're quite so hot. Long exposures and luck seem to be the way forward, especially in the terminal gloom of the Flapper. Here are the photos.
Bands seen were Untitled Musical Project who were a little shambolic thanks to two guitars breaking down and then their amp dying. It was Friday the 13th after all. Nice to see them again though. In the middle was The Gravity Crisis who were good but suffered, in my jaded mind, from sounding like a lot of other bands and didn't quite grab me. They were tight though. Headliners were The Big Bang who I'd heard good things about in the last year and they didn't disappoint. Comparisons to Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster are there with a splattering of glam and it was nice to see a rock-type band playing stuff you could really dance to.
The venue was packed - a rare sight for a £4 local band night - and again Zoot put on a solid trio of bands. Top value.
Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter, October 8th
Birmingham, October 8th
I have a new contraption. It's a bit like the TTV contraption only completely different. It took the above photo and it looks like this:
It's quite simple. The light comes in through the old camera on the left which has it's shutter fixed open. This is then projected onto a piece of plastic cut from a CD case which has been sandpapered with a circular motion to approximate the opaque qualities of ground glass. The plastic has been fixed to where the film would normally go so the projection itself is in focus. The cardboard tube is light proofed and has a hole at the other end into which the lens of the digital camera neatly slots. Photographs are then taken of the projected image on the plastic.
Y'see? Simple!
It was tested in the wild on Sunday at the Flickrmeet (my photos, discussion thread, group photos) and I must say I'm very pleased with the results.
Update: I've decided it's called The Scratchbox.
Bournville, October 6th
Bournville, September 25th
Using Lightroom rather than Photoshop to process the above has gotten me all enthused about 'normal' digital photography again, which is handy given I have a rather expensive digital camera sitting there. Now I just need to go take more photos...
Illness update: Popped into the doctor's surgery to see how the blood test went. For some reason this is dealt with by the receptionist, which was a little alarming. You'd think someone with medical training or at least some semblance of a bedside manner would give out this sort of news. After a worrying minute or two where she couldn't figure out what the results meant and had to call over someone else, it was announced that they'd "never seen such a clear blood test" before. So my blood is a pure as a newborn goat's. Which is good to know. Except it means there's something else the matter. So I'm going to see the doctor proper on Monday.
In the last week I haven't really been doing much and it got to the stage where I was wondering if my lethargy was coming from not actually doing much rather than being non-specifically 'ill'. Thankfully Nat, who employs me to do stuff, phoned to see how I was doing and mentioned a small job, clearing the crap off their scaffolding before it comes down and wiping clean the window frames. Not a hard job, only a couple of hours. At the very least I could see if I was capable of doing this. At first it was okay but by the end I was losing it again. It's a strange feeling, not so much tired or exhausted but more dizzy (which is fun on scaffolding!) like I hadn't eaten for a couple of days. Still, I'm not going to worry about it until I've seen the doctor. Too many variables are still out there for me to figure anything out usefully.
In other news I had a trouser-related trauma on Wednesday. First my belt, which I think I've had since school, broke meaning I could only wear my combats. Then the zipper on my combats broke, leaving me with no trousers whatsoever. Alex kindly lent me a belt (which I'm rather taken with as it has a rather substantial Obey buckle) meaning I can go outside in something other than my tiger camo pyjamas. Which is a relief.
Now I just need to go shopping, Where does one buy a belt from anyway?
Birmingham, October 1st
Sister and brood had been bugging me to go visit them in Banbury and must have gotten fed up with my prevaricating as they arrived in Bournville this morning. Actually they weren't just coming to see me - Banbury is only a 50 minute drive away and a day out in Birmingham makes a nice change it being a city and having city sized things.
Since the weather has done that dramatic change thing with the thunder and rain and cold we figured indoors was the best idea and went for the Sea Life Centre which I could vouch for having worked there for a week as an otter a couple of years ago.
It was great though keeping track of two toddlers in the dark did mean dwelling over the tanks wasn't a big option. I still highly recommend it. Not too busy on a Sunday either. Took the TTV contraption which wasn't entirely successful given the low lighting (should have packed a flash really) but did get some gems before the batteries ran out.
Afterwards we went to the newish Handmade Burger Co restaurant by the canal in Brindley Place (no website I can find but here's a photo). I can't recommend this place enough. The ambiance is perfect, the music very pleasing (Pixies track! Woo!) and the food utterly fantastic at very reasonable prices. Possible the best burger I've ever had outside of Texas. I will be going there again.
Home, September 30th
Home, September 23rd
Home, August 2006
As this was recently picked up by Lake Oz Fic Chick to illustrate a blog post I figured I'd drag it out of the archives since it's kinda nice.
He lives on a bookshelf in our living room. He is our god. Well, one of them anyway.
Centenary Square, Birmingham, September 10th
Wolverhampton, September 24th
Sunday morning at eight am we all trundled off to the Wolverhampton Camera Fair for a Flickrmeet Fieldtrip. It's held in the entrance lobby / bar of a racetrack near Wolverhampton. It's full of dealers selling a mind boggling array of vintage and second hand cameras. If you're a camera nerd then this is your temporary church with services held every other month.
I'm not a full-on camera nerd, at least not yet, but the environment was very familiar bringing back memories of the marts and dealers halls I used to rummage around in my comics collecting days. Not so much the small press era but before that when I used to collect the things and store them in plastic bags. When you go to these events, and they exist for every niche hobby if you look hard enough, you travel to another place outside of normal time and space. The sheer depth and saturation of stuff overwhelms all other concerns. Things you never really conceived of are available, tempting you into new avenues of obsession, and when you snap out of the absurdity of paying silly money for a thing you'll never really use there are the bargain bins full of nonsense without the investment risk. Naturally I found myself digging through them and came out with this bounty for £13.50...
It's like eBay without the postage charges!
Naturally I had TTV in mind, although only one of them is any use for that pursuit. The rest, needless to say, can be used for other things. Maybe. I've already adapted one to take 35mm film (similar to what Gareth did here) and am quite tempted to actually get some 120 film and use it properly. Next time I'm hoping to get the guts up to buy something useful.
The Fair was something of a rite of passage. While kit nerditude is only one facet of photography, and in many ways an unfortunate one, it's probably something you have to go through if only to cherry pick the important lessons. And needless to say it was nice going as a group, especially as many of us are novices. Or at least are suddenly aware of what novices we are.
In other news, feeling much better today (handy because I wasn't sure I could deal with the Fair all morning) and, after a bit of an Abba fest during the above mentioned camera conversion, watched Priscilla, Queen of the Desert for the first time in over a decade. With some minor qualms over the dialogue put to one side it stands up well. I'd forgotten Hugo Weaving was in it. LotR and The Matrix will never be the same again.
Birmingham Artsfest, September 10th
All my Artsfest photos are, finally, online. 156 of the buggers in this set. In the actual Artsfest group pool we've got 780. Which is quite a lot. And I know there's still some more to come from the film shooters.
Kitchen, September 19th
Kitchen, September 16th
So I'm dragging my heels processing the Sunday photos from Artsfest. While Saturday was mostly TTV with a bit of "normal" DSLR, Sunday was all DSLR and while there are a few gems in there it's all a bit yawn. To me anyway. Nice enough images, a smattering of decent composition but, at the end of the day, nothing special. Too perfect, perhaps. Which opens that whole "perfect digital" conflab in my brain and it starts hurting. And it was notable, to me, how little feedback I was getting on them. The occasional comment, usually about the subject matter rather than the photos, but not much really.
So to clear the cobwebs I went through the TTV folder, worked through the bits and bobs I've been taking over the last fortnight that weren't Artsfest specific and threw a bunch up on Flickr. All in all about an hour's work for 11 photos. A little later and there's a whole slew of comments and faves, all for the TTV.
This pleases me because I like the Through the Viewfinder technique. I think it has enormous potential and produces beautiful images. But, and this is the big thing, it's actually really easy. You just point your contraption at something and click. Even if it's not framed properly it still looks cool. The imperfections of the glass and the warped colours mean you can take good TTV shots pretty much with your eyes closed. (In fact, those long exposure shots taken at Artsfest, like one of my most popular photos ever, pretty much were taken with my eyes shut it was so dark.)
Of course that's not to say it's easy to take amazing TTV shots. Pushing the contraption to that next level is actually quite difficult, not to mention the challenge of building and modifying your kit (see various threads in the TTV group like this one). It's just...
Look at it this way. If I point my expensive Nikon D70 at a tree a snap a photo then I've got a photo of a tree like any other photo of a tree. If I point my TTV contraption at the same tree from the same angle I've got a mini masterpiece.
This doesn't worry me. I just find it interesting. If anything I'm coming full circle having started my photography with the shittiest of shitty digital cameras back in 2002. And like I said, basic TTV is easy but advanced TTV is another matter altogether. This also doesn't mean I'm giving up on the D70. I just need to develop some way of fucking up the images it produces, either in Photoshop or when taking the photos themselves. Hmm. Filters...
I'd be interested in what you lot, particularly those who aren't on Flickr, think of the TTV stuff. Do you think it's a one-trick novelty that I'll soon move on from? Or do you think it's something more than that?
Birmingham Artsfest, September 10th
Birmingham Artsfest, September 10th
Birmingham Artsfest, September 10th
Birmingham Artsfest, September 9th
I've been tired now for over a month. I've cut my work down to four hours a day (and took Monday off after Artsfest), I'm taking vitamin supplements, I'm eating properly (fruit, fresh veg including broccoli, less bread / pasta) and I'm getting a reasonable amount of sleep.
But I'm still tired, and that makes me irritable which, worst of all, makes me tedious. I don't like being tedious. I want to stop being tired.
Any tips?
Birmingham, September 9th
Insect report: Thankfully no repeat of the wasp nightmare of last year but tonight we've been invaded by hoards of Daddy Long Legs, which is a name I always feel slightly embarrassed to say, like announcing you need to go poo poo or something, but seemingly everyone else uses it so it's not that bad. They're actually called Crane Flies which makes sense and they are the most fucking stupid of all insects, even moreso than the moth. Like the moth they come for the light but proceed to bounce around the room in a most annoyingly random fashion until I'm forced, forced I tell you, to get up and squish them. Andy came out with a fact which I have my doubts about but will pollute the internet with anyway. Apparently they have the most potent poison load of any and all insects but have no way to deliver it. Which is just typical of the dumb fuckers. I'm so buying a handheld mini-vac.
Coming soon - my war with snails.
Family report: My mother passed the age of sixty yesterday. Last November my father also passed the age of sixty. Both my parents are now over sixty. My sister has two children. I have white patches on my (occasional) beard. This is all cool.
Movie report: Election, starring Matthew Broderick and Reese Witherspoon, is a very good movie indeed.
Mac user report: Forgot to mention that I upgraded to Tiger the other week. Since Leopard has been announced I figured it best to try and keep up. It runs fine on my old G4 tower. Andy installed it on his G3 iMac and it also runs fine. Which, when you think about it, is rather impressive.
Other reports are pending.
Curzon Street Station, Birmingham, September 9th
This is pretty much how I felt on Sunday night, only happier. The cat, since you're no doubt curious, was found during building works and put in a glass case, pride of place, in the foyer of Curzon Street Station. It was nothing to do with Artsfest and the mind boggles when considering this was considered a sensible and reasonable thing to do back in the day. You'd never see this in a modern building and more's the pity.
So, Artsfest is over. We, being the Birmingham Flickr Artsfest Posse (for want of a better name) had a brilliant time and are well pleased with the results, even with a small fraction uploaded already. It's going to take a good couple of weeks to get everything up there (film needs to be developed and everything needs to be tagged properly) but when it's all ready there'll be an annoucement. For now you can keep an eye on the pool as it fills and browse the tags (still in progress).
My Artsfest photos are going into this set though I may have to split it as it's already pretty huge and I haven't finished Saturday yet...
Artsfest itself was mad. It was huge. There was an absurd amount of stuff going on. I'm still processing my thoughts about it. I'll definitely be there again next year!
Victoria Square, Birmingham, September 9th
My feet hurt...
Eastside Green, Birmingham, September 8th
Artsfest begins. Bhangrafest on Friday night was great. But I'm already knackered and there's another two full days to go. Eek!
Photos are already going up and there'll be many more to follow.
Gotta run!
Moseley, September 6th
The House of Higgins currently has scaffolding all the way up to the top, and it's quite a tall house. The view is stunning but my zoom lens doesn't really do it justice. I'm going to try and go back at night with the tripod...
Moseley Folk Festival, September 3rd
If you saw a bloke in a cap wandering around holding a cardboard tube with a camera stuck in it, that was me, taking these.
Moseley Folk Festival, September 3rd
All 44 photos from the Moseley Folk Festival are now online. At least the ones from the D70 are. Through The Viewfinder shots will follow tomorrow evening. Don't want to flood you or anything.
Moseley Folk Festival, September 3rd
...were fucking amazing!
Moseley Folk Festival, September 2nd
First day of the Moseley Folk Festival happened and it was good, surpassing my gently optimistic expectations. Yes it rained. yes we had to retire to a pub for an hour to warm up, but the music and atmosphere was spot on. I will write more later (maybe - you know what I'm like about promising to write more later these days...) but naturally the day was also spent taking photographs.
I've become somewhat bored with gig photos of late. Probably because I've taken so bloody many of them in the last year and there's only so much you can do with a folk standing on stage singing into microphones. So while I'm still drawn to the pit like a moth to the flame I've been trying some other stuff, and what's interesting is how I've found myself applying things I've learned from playing with film and messing around at Flickrmeets watching how others do their art. It might not be apparent in the photos yet but I can feel it in my mind and it's a nice feeling, being able to stretch without falling.
But it's late and there's another 10 hours of the festival tomorrow. I've started a set here which will be added to over the week.
In other news Andy and Alex went charity shop scouring today and came back with a load of old videos. You know, on tape. Tonight we watched Total Recall and somewhat shockingly it stood up. I saw Starship Troopers recently and that also impressed way beyond expectations. I suspect a reassessment of the works of Paul Verhoeven might be in order, not to mention the genius of Michael Ironside. (Unlike that James Cameron who really is a pedestrian hack.)
Moor Street Station, Birmingham, August 30th
London Science Museum, August 30th
The London Science Museum, like most museums, doesn't have an anti-camera policy. Art galleries on the other hand, even ones holding our "national treasures", have men in balconies armed with rifles ready to blow the heads off anyone who points a light-sensitive recording device anywhere near their copyrighted works of art. This is one of the many quite refreshing things about the Science Museum. For example, you're welcome to bring your own lunch and eat it in the many areas between galleries. Most edutainment centres would have a deal with their catering contractors banning such things but not here. But back to the photographs. I'd seen a couple of people taking photos with film SLR cameras along with the usual mass of digital compacts. I guess I notice these things more these days. Struck me it'd be neat to do that with some grainy black and white film to try and capture the exhibits as they would have been seen back in the day so I may do that at our own museums in Birmingham. And it turns out there's a Science Museum Flickr group which looks fairly popular and active, not just with photo of the exhibits but of people interacting with them. That's nice to see. I bet there isn't one for the National Portrait Gallery where I was once stopped from photographing their escalator.
London, August 30th
Sister needed to go to the Austrian Embassy in London's West End for a reason I'm actually unsure if I can reveal come to think of it so I won't and since Bro-in-law was out of the country she asked me to come along to help with Niece and Nephew being, as they are, 2.93 and 1.66666... years old respectively. And I agreed. And it was painless and fun, especially as the embassy bit only took 10 minutes leaving us the rest of the day to do a bit of London.
Initial plan was to do the Natural History Museum for Dinosaur Action but the Bank Holiday factor (which I always forget about not being someone who notices Bank Holidays) meant every other bloody family in the South East had the same notion so we gave up on that. However there was no queue whatsoever for the Science Museum next door, which must piss off the Science Museum people no end. How can we get in on this Dino Action, they must be asking themselves, regretting they day back in time when they let Natural History go off on it's own. Plant and animals - pah! Who'll be interested in that? They'll be back in no time. We've got steam engines and airplanes and space stuff! They've just got stuffed rodents, a bunch of bones and some rocks! Never underestimate the power of the dinosaur...
The great thing about children at the ages of 2.93 and 1.666666... respectively is they can be entertained by pretty much anything, especially if it's an airplane hanging from the ceiling. And the great thing about the Science Museum is it's perfect for letting small children run around pointing at things. As usual I was depressed by the stagnant Space Exploration exhibit, especially the tatty Apollo Moon Landings mock-up which really should be taken away as it's kinda embarrassing, but at least the Apollo 10 command module is still standing proud. That's something.
And then it was a walk back across Hyde Park (no Tubes were involved in this outing - do you think we're mad?) stopping off at a play area (that rubbery concrete stuff is weird!) before four tired persons aged 2.93, 1.666666..., 30.86 and 33.95 got the train home.
The Jeffrey Lewis gig on Thursday was superb. New York Howl were the touring support and were hugely enjoyable. The singer was very tall and they had a bass saxaphone, which is always a pleasure. Faceometer, the local(ish) singer-songwriter, was also tremendous and certainly someone to watch in the future. I bought all their CDs, which is not something I do very often.
And if that's the level of gig review writing I'm capable of these days maybe I'd better not bother repeating Going Deaf For A Fortnight this November as I'd been pondering doing. Thankfully the mighty Russ L emailed out of the blue asking if he might take the baton and in my usual convoluted way I said why the hell not.
So I'll be looking for a new challenge this winter. I expect one will just pop out of the blue at me as they tend to do that. I wonder what it'll be?
Regarding the above photo, this was the first time I took the D70 to a gig and while shooting at 1600 iso was useful it was very clear that the kit lens (18-70mm 1:3.5-4.5) isn't very useful for gigs. Thankfully, with the money from the sale of the S7000, I've got a 50mm prime lens on order that goes down to f1.8 which, if you've no idea what I'm blathering on about, is a good thing. Though after the success of the Supersonic photos I'm thinking I might just go with b/w film at gigs from now on. We'll see.
Five photos made the cut. Here's the other four:
Central Birmingham, 26th August
Saturday night was a Flickrmeet, one of the new impromptu ones we're starting to do. Organised by Matt it was tripod-centric consisting of a walk from the Mailbox to Brindley Place at night with long exposures and high speed films. While personally my results weren't radically original it was nice to have a couple of hours to practice this stuff with the protection of being in a group, especially as we approached Broad Street which, as anyone who's been there against their will can attest, is the circle of Hell that Dante was too scared to include.
Birmingham Noir: my set, group thread, tagged photos.
Home, August 2006
Got a roll of Ilford HP5+ 400 back from Gareth today. Pretty pleased with the outcome considering the actual shooting was a bit aimless. Much more grain and contrast than I was expecting for a 400 speed film. I suspect Ilford is going to open up a whole new can of worms to investigate...
Birmingham, August 13th
Bournville, August 15th
Birmingham, August 13th
This is an old trick but definitely due for a revival. Set your camera to a long-ish exposure (say 1/2 sec), fix the subject in the middle of the frame, start to manually zoom in and release the shutter, finishing the zoom just before the shutter clicks back. For the above effect, hold the lens steady and rotate the camera itself. I call this Zoom Twist.
Birmingham, August 13th
Birmingham, 13th August
Flickrmeet occurred (My set). It was good and judging by the tone of the pub afterwards I think we're ready for the next stage...
It also resulted in this:
which I'm rather chuffed with. If I was a total narcissist I'd get a print, but I'm not, which is a shame.
Cotteridge, August 8th
The lens than came with the D70 goes from 18-70mm. While this isn't as much zoom as I'm used to (more on this later) it is much wider. I've been loving the fixed 28mm lens with the manual FM2 so being able to pull back even further is great. There's a little bit of fisheye, understandably, but that's the nature of these things. While the width is good for getting whole buildings in it's actually the foreground that's gotten me most excited.
Severn St, Birmingham, August 6th
Took the D70 out for a walk on Sunday. Unlike the previous new camera day which I compared to "moving from an 100cc moped to a Ducatti" this one was a little more subtle. My now old digital camera, a Fuji S7000, mimicked the functions of a real SLR even it was just a glorified compact so the D70 doesn't really seem that different. A couple of extra dials and buttons in different places but at the end of the day it's the same sort of operation. Not to mention that it's obviously similar to the manual SLRs I've been playing with of late. Of course it's excellent in many ways and I'm liking the feel of it a lot, but the results haven't been radically different. If anything they're somewhat subdued as I'm really in test-drive mode while I get used to my new limb.
Anyway, Sunday's photos are here, though the light was rather poor. Once I'm bedded in I expect great things.
Custard Factory, Birmingham, July 22nd
All the Supersonic photos are now on Flickr.
The D70 arrived early. It will be broken in tomorrow.
I'm very tired. Smashing plaster off brick walls is hard work. Fun. But hard. And very dusty.
Custard Factory, Birmingham, July 22nd
Picked up the Supersonic negs from Gareth today. Scanned and posted 28 shots from the first roll. Set is here. I'm very pleased.
Second roll to follow tomorrow later (the D70 arrived...).
Also picked up my share of the motherlode of film we jointly scored offa ebay. I now have ten rolls of Kodak Tmax p3200 b/w film that expired in 1997 and another 36 rolls of misc, none of which is supposed to be used after 1999. Should be... interesting!
Lickey Hills, July 15th
Selly Oak, July 11th
Home, July sometime
Too hot...
South of Birmingham, July 15th
This is from my first deliberate go with expired film, a roll casually thrown at me by Gareth a few weeks back that I'd been putting off using. After all, what if I took a wonderful photo and it came out all shite cos of the film? How tedious would that be?
The end result is quite a relief, especially when you compare it to my digital shots from the same day. Yes, they both have their merits but I'm bored with the cleanliness of digital at the moment. Too crisp, too perfect. These shots on film that should have been binned in 2004 have a bit more character, even if it's that they look like they're from the 70s.
They way I see it photography is like a big field with different disciplines and techniques scattered all over it. I'm moving around that field, dipping into this and that to see what I can learn from it. Right now expired film has me mildly excited. Next week I'll see how I feel about high speed Ilford black and white. In a month or so I'll be onto something else (I recently scored something interesting on eBay but you'll have to wait and see what it is) and there's still plenty more to explore.
That I'm happy with the art of expired is a good thing. Gareth, Alex, Andy and I clubbed together on a motherlode of the stuff on eBay last week. 164 rolls of it, some dating back to 2000. Eek.
Expired set on Flickr where I'll be dumping more of this sort of thing.
Moseley, July 19th
Off to Supersonic in a bit (I bailed out of the Friday - too tired) and it's raining, which has thrown me. Do I wear a coat? It might be wet but it's still warm. Do I cycle? If I don't cycle I can walk back (unless there's a taxi-share going on) as it's only 4 miles. I've got about an hour to deal with these traumas...
Selly Oak, Birmingham
Some more slides came through from Guernsey today and I'm pretty pleased with them. After the last couple of films came back somewhat underexposed I decided to trick the light metre and set it to 75 ISO for a 125 speed film and then erred on the side of overexposure when fiddling with the knobs. The result is a set of much brighter, breezier photos that hardly need any work in Photoshop. Of course this could just be the scanner but Alex and Andy don't seem to have the same issues with their negs. It's also noticeable that I seem to be playing around with composition a bit more, having gotten more comfortable with the controls of the manual SLRs, which was to be expected but is still nice to see.
I should write a decent length update about my adventures in photography, as a record if nothing else, but it'll have to wait (along with the posting of the rest of the slides on Flickr). I'm back doing gardening this week and, as you might be aware, it's very hot again. Forecast is 35 degrees tomorrow. Eek. To deal with this I started work at 7am today and those few hours while the sun was low were very productive. And then Nat had the bright idea of using a, wadayacallit, big table umbrella thing to keep me in the shade and that worked wonders too. So tomorrow I'm aiming (note I said "aiming") start at 5am and finish around 1pm in time for a siesta. Mediterranean time, since that's where we're at weatherwise. In order to do this I need to go to bed. Now.
Random flatmate said I was mad but I've done 6am shifts in factories before and it's actually quite pleasant (as long as you get some sleep beforehand). For a start there's fuckall traffic - a good thing since motorists seem to go more psycho than usual in this weather - and it's so quiet you could be in the countryside. Perfect for the digging.
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Note to self - keep a diary of when you go shooting film. I have no idea when the above photo was taken...
Lickey Hills, Birmingham, July 15th
Went to the Lickey Hills today, just south of Northfield. Shockingly it was the first time I'd gone as it's not that far. Lots of people flying kites. Some photos.
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Yesterday I tidied my room, which might not seem a big deal but it's a very small room with a lot of stuff in it. When I moved in I put the stuff I figured I'd need within easy access. A year later I'm not needing the small press comics or back issues of The Comics Journal so they've all gone up to the ceiling. I've also put some stuff on eBay for the first time in a while. Now I know I'm tediously old school but I remember when all eBay required was title, description, price, duration and image. By the gods they've got options overload! It's a miracle anyone bothers with the low-price items, but obviously they do, and obviously I did, ploughing through the screens of display choices and listing variants, screwing up numerous times.
Related to this, does anyone know where I can get jade valued? Don't ask. It's a long story.
Was shocked, shocked I say, to discover that the post office now limit 2nd class post to 750 grammes. Time was you could send anything up to 2kg by second class post - now you have to use something called Standard Parcels which only goes up in 1kg increments. Still, it's cheaper than Parcelforce, but that's not saying much. That said, it's all going to change again in August with pricing by size as well as weight. Speculation is that this is to cash in on eBay, or at least to normalise the service to the new reality where no-one sends letters anymore. Funny thing is, having spent my pre-internet zine life relying on the mail I find this stuff interesting even though I will very rarely have to use it.
Update: I realise I was talking out of my smelly old arse there and got my facts completely tits wongways. Second class always had a 750g limit which is why I used to have to send out BugPowder orders in multiple packages to keep the costs down. So nothing has changed. Yet. My apologies for gross memory-based ineptitude.
Selly Oak, Birmingham, July 14th
Spent an hour or so walking around at dawn and the money shot didn't come until the walk home. Typical.
Birmingham, July 9th
Birmingham, July 9th
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Ooh, got the writers block again. Keep writing long paragraphs of nonsense, realising they're nonsense and deleting them.
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Actually, I could do with some advice on what to do on Saturday. Una Corda are (probably) recording a track in our living room and while that'll be entertaining for an hour or so it'll probably get tired rather quickly. Unfortunately there ain't nothing going on on my events horizon. Any tips for 2pm onwards?
(Given that we have no neighbours this is surprisingly viable, as long as there isn't a Carillon recital.)
Holloway Circus, Birmingham, July 9th
Flickrmeet occurred on Sunday and, again, it was good. I'm so proud. Sixteen people turned up. Sixteen! Thread - Photos - Slideshow.
My photos are here. I'll admit to not taking the photography quite so seriously this time and just having a bit of fun, and that's probably not a bad thing.
More later as, by golly, it's 2am! You know what that means? I'm working from home this week on a website job. Nocturnal times are back again and I think I missed them.
Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham, June 25th
Given the somewhat emotional response to my set of photos of the former Birmingham Museum of Science and Industry I figured people might appreciate seeing more so I went back to the original shots and pulled out another 23 which didn't make the initial cut. (This also might give an insight into the stuff I usually discard, who knows...)
If you've already seen the set these are the new ones.
Kings Heath, Birmingham, June 17th
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Alex has started scanning in her photos (including some very old family ones) and Andy's first set of negs came back from Uncle Gareth's Dev Shack (motto: "Photography is half art and half chemistry, and I was always a shit chemist"). Early days - Andy's will be going up once they're scanned and processed - but quality is high. I feel an odd sense competition in my gut for I am no longer The Photographer in the house. This is a good thing.
In other news I am tired and hot. I may have a very mild case of heatstroke judging by the radiation coming off my balding scalp but on the plus side I have a bitching tan, even if it is just on my forearms.
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Thank you all for the considered and at times lengthy answers to the What are we like? question. I just threw it out there because I was lazy but you've done me proud.
Selly Oak, June 16th
Selly Oak, June 16th
Sometimes you need someone to tell you to just stop, and sometimes the weather will do that job. The other year I coined the term "dog crushingly hot" and, since it doesn't appear to have been taken up by the masses, I feel justified in using it again.
It was dog crushingly hot this weekend.
I did potter along to the Cotteridge Festival but by the time I got there I was dripping and having spent the week outdoors in the sun the novelty had worn off somewhat. So I returned to watch that football match with Zoop which I enjoyed tremendously, and not just for the schadenfreude. The drama stayed with me, rather like that of a good movie, and the tears moved me ever so slightly towards mild compassion. Still, at least it's all over for a couple more years.
Sunday, being today, I did fuckall but sit in my pants and sweat. And it was good. Apart from the sweating. I could have done without that.
Deadwood, by the way, is very good. Ian McShane impresses no end, a sentence I never thought I'd utter.
Oh, and I finally got around to sorting out next Sunday's Flickrmeet and built a map of the routes taken so far which was oddly satisfying, as making maps often is.
Kings Heath, Birmingham, June 17th
Slide film came back. They're a little dark. Hmm. Selections will be drip-fed to Flickr over the next few days.
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That what are we like? post is going great guns. Do join in if you haven't already.
Newhall St, Birmingham, June 25th
Full set of 25 photos
Sunday my photographic subject couldn't have been more different with a trip to the former Museum of Science and Industry in Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter. The museum was closed in 1997 to make way for the spangly new Thinktank at Millennium Point (which I still haven't been to yet for some reason) and the listed redbrick parts are about to be converted into some mixed-use business/apartment thing like so much of the city. Before this gutting an outfit known as the Museum of Lost Heritage had the inspired notion of opening the shell up for the public to walk around with a number of walks and exhibits created from the remnants by artists Alistair Grant and Stuart Mugridge.
I must confess to not bothering with the Art side of things, preferring to make my own interpretations with my camera than view through someone else's eyes so I can't judge whether their efforts were a success, but if such artistic trappings are needed to open such buildings up then so be it.
As you know I have an interest in decaying buildings. I think this was first triggered by seeing a recently emptied shop on a high street with the fittings removed and the shadow of commerce revealed. I then went on to close down a couple of branches of Waterstone's in London, again stripping away the spectacle and revealing the scars of history on the building. (Some photos, specifically of the Charing Cross Road branch closure, can be found amongst my L'Espion set from 2002 if you fancy a dig.) The facade we place on our environment is so temporary and fleeting and often the buildings are too, quickly torn down and turned to rubble. Where they are kept and augmented to new uses the ghosts remain, hidden behind the new facade. There is no permanence but still there is permanence.
Or some shit.
Anyway, the Museum had all this in spades. A visible history of 100-odd years and the decay of nine years neglect. It was beautiful and awe inspiring. I just wish I'd had a foresight to tell others about it before I went.
25 photos made the cut, which was pleasing since I was shooting in dark rooms without a flash. I also shot some film and they'll be online in a week or so.
Bournville, June 24th
Full set of 44 photos
Oh wow. The Bournville Maypole. What can I say?
As you know by now Bournville is a slightly odd place. Originally a model village set up by the Cadbury family in the late 19th Century it's now part of the urban sprawl of greater Birmingham and yet manages to maintain a unique personality that other consumed areas struggle to hold on to. Part of this is due to the Village Trust who enforce strict rules within the ward (no pubs, no supermarkets, no unauthorised modifications to buildings) and part of it is because the residents, who cross all classes, like it that way.
One way of looking at Bournville is as a suburb with pretensions of viliage-ness and this striving for some idealised vision of rural country life has some very odd, if well intentioned and ultimately beneficial, results.
Nowhere is this better illustrated that at the Bournville Village Festival. Last week I was at the Kings Heath festival which was a very different beast made up of a ramshackle collection of local activities that really represented the community as a whole. From the cheezy compare singing karaoke to fill the gaps to the hoards of kids from the many dance schools doing their routines it was, in spirit, just like the chaotic village fetes I remember from my youth. Bournville, on the other hand, seemed to be taken from the "How to put on a traditional English village festival just like in the olden days" book, which isn't to say it was false or contrived or misguided. It was as vibrant and inclusive and representative as the Kings Heath one, just very very different. Remember, 100+ years ago there was nothing here but fields and a few farms. Bournville itself is a construct so it follows that everything else will be made up, including tradition.
The Maypole dance, now over 100 years old, is the lynch-pin in understanding the wonder of Bournville. Lasting an hour and featuring over 130 local children in costume it runs through an elaborate sequence crowning the Festival Queen, a local beauty chosen by a select group of three to, well, I'm not sure what she does exactly but there she is. Our queen. (Actually, if I remember rightly, she assists in turning on the Christmas lights. Which is something.) While other areas may crown a May Queen of some sort nowhere takes the ceremony quite as seriously as Bournville.
Thinking about it, this sort of thing is usually done as some kind of Heritage Tourism, putting on a show for the public to illustrate "what things were like back then" with a reenactment of some ritual long forgotten. This was not heritage, for Bournville has no real history past 1879. This is current. This is now. Those watching were not being educated or entertained in a dispassionate sense - they were intrinsically part of it.
To fully comprehend the glory of this spectacle I'd encourage you to work through my photos. Due to some high level connections on the committee (my landlord) I was able to gain access to the balcony of the pavilion overlooking the arena - a rare privilege not granted to many. Look at the photos and remember at all times this is taking place in a suburb of Birmingham, the second largest urban sprawl in the country. Look at them and marvel at the fact that this actually happens.
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Next week, in my summer tour of the local festivals and related events, sees the Cotteridge Festival on Saturday (with Misty's Big Adventure playing) and the Moseley Music in the Park festival on Sat and Sunday (I'll only be doing Sunday, obviously). Mayhap I'll see you there?
Bournville, June 24th
I must have taken around 500 photos over the weekend which is great but even with my streamlined Photoshop workflow systematics it's taking a while to process them all. Here's the easy batch to begin with - eighty photos of the Bournville Village Festival fireworks display. Usually I'd pick the best 10 or so but they're all much of a muchness, a very nice and good muchness, but a muchness all the same.
I took my tripod along, set the camera to the longest exposure and went trigger-happy with a cable release. Some were very long exposures, most were just a second or two. Best viewed as a slideshow.
Many many more to follow...
Bournville, June 24th
I won £1.50. First prize was a fiver. Next year that fiver is mine.
Kings Heath, Birmingham, June 17th
Saturday was the Kings Heath Carnival and I found it a little odd as it was full of normal people, which is a potentially wanky thing to say but there it is. That said, I also turned up on my own and my state of mind improved once I met up with Jez, and then Matt and Marv. I'm still not sure what to say about it but it was fun and lively (and very very hot). It just felt like I'd be transported back in time to some strange other England, one that never really went away. Later flatmates Andy and Alex arrived and we met up with Gareth, Julie and baby Max and an impromptu camera club emerged resulting, in part, in the above photo, taken with my digital through the focussing screen of Gareth's dismantled SLR. Alex has also gotten the camera bug of late with a salvaged Pentax MX and it's good to have a photo-positive environment outside of Flickr, though I suspect the two will merge in time.
Speaking of which I recently became an Admin of the main Birmingham Flickr group along with Stef which should be interesting as we've both got lots of very different ideas as to how it should develop and I think the flexibility of the setup should accommodate our visions and enable them to feed each other well. We're currently throwing long emails at each other to bash out some kind of general approach but hopefully interesting times are in the pipeline, and not in the Chinese sense.
Next Saturday is the Bournville Festival which I'm looking forward to a lot as it's on home turf so we'll be able to pop back home for tea, and I've recently discovered that Misty's Big Adventure are playing the Cotteridge Festival (aka CoCoMad) on July 1st so that's a no-brainer. Will probably pop along to the Moselely Festival afterwards (and definitely on the Sunday) as the lineup looks pretty keen. Unfortunately this knocks Northfield out of the running but a sheepdog rounding up geese only has so much appeal.
Digbeth, June 11th
I can picture Skizz holding this...
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Last day as caretaker today. In retrospect it was good to work out the week after hearing I hadn't got the job, allowing me to put it all to bed and move on, although I was aware that I'd just reached that point in a job where I'd comfortably settled in. Quite an odd feeling, being attached to a job after all this time. Still, it's on one of my cycle routes so I can always pop in for a cuppa (and maybe revisit that tunnel...)
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I realised that this week I'd been avoiding going out for extended photography trips despite planning them, which was strange. Then I realised why. I'd loaded a film into the Nikon F5 and really wasn't looking forward to dragging about the place, beast that it is. So today I bit the bullet and headed for the Selly Oak graffiti gardens where I knew I could rattle off 36 shots with no problem. Allowing for the fact that I've fitted it with an old manual lens, and therefore not using a fraction of the automatic functions, I'm resolutely unimpressed. Mostly this is down to the weight. It's like carrying a couple of house bricks around your neck and I was sweating like a pig by the time I got home. I can't believe pro-photographers used to carry these sorts of things around, not to mention all the extras that go with it.
Of course in the pre-digital days if you wanted auto-focus and auto-exposure you needed this kind of kit but these days it's a serious case of overkill. (That said, I did like the extra shutter button on the side for portrait shots.)
This post may vanish for a while when the F5 goes on eBay!
-- -- --
Tomorrow (Saturday) I'm off to the Kings Heath Carnival, partly for the photo opportunities and partly because it just seems really mad. Dogs jumping through fire, a junior school heavy metal band, donkey rides and "Mad Dominic". If it goes well I'll be endeavoring to go to all the local carnivals and festivals over the next month: Bournville (24 June), Northfield (1 July), Moseley (a whole week but mainly 1-2 July) and any others that cross my path. It's all rather fête-tastic!
Digbeth, June 11th
A Tunnel, June 14th
The place where I work has a long tunnel running the length of the building to which, as caretaker, I have full access. Since I won't be working there as of Monday I figured I'd best make the most of this opportunity. After all, how many of you have access to a Victorian-era redbrick tunnel? Didn't think so.
There are nine of these shots in the set (slideshow) taken by setting the camera to the longest exposure, switching off the lights and setting of a hand-held flash gun as many times as possible.
I've got some more photos of the tunnel itself and they will follow in due course.
Digbeth, June 11th
A string of overly hot sleepless nights have caught up with me and I'm somewhat knackered so no RvD tonight, which was a shame. I have, however, got a teeny bit hooked on the football. Not a surprise as it happens every four years - I just try to stay in denial as long as possible. I fancy Croatia's chances myself, but what do I know? Fuck all, really.
Digbeth, Birmingham, June 11th
I've dribbled a few more of my photos from the Flickrmeet into this set with a fair few more to come. There are currently 216 in the group pool (slideshow) and the quality level remains fucking high.
Today I'd like to draw your attention to Harri B's Through the Viewfinder shots, taken by shooting a normal camera through a Kodak Duaflex (one of those box cameras you look down into). He's got loads more here and, naturally, there's a Flickr group for this inspired nonsense. Lovely stuff that I never knew was being done and it adds yet another valuable angle on the walk.
As I said before the nice thing about these meets is the mix of cameras being used, from professional-level DSLRs with fancy lenses to cheapo pocket cameras, not to mention the old-school film cameras which we'll have to wait a while to see the results of. It's a keen thing that we've got an environment where those at the top of their game can stretch themselves while newcomers just figuring things out can feel comfortable. As you can tell I'm pretty chuffed at how it's all turning out.
In other photo news, because photo news is all you're getting from me these days and you'll learn to accept it, I've currently got a frightening number of pre-digital cameras scattered around the place which I'll be selling on ebay for me dad (I have better feedback than him). The Nikon FM2 is a perfectly normal beast that I enjoyed shooting with at the weekend but the Nikon F5 is a monster, weighing a ton, requiring eight batteries and so complex it took me 10 minutes to figure out how to turn it on. I spent a while reading the manual this evening and tentatively popped a film into it. Tomorrow I'll be taking it out around Brum (before Robot vs Dinosaur). Given that the lens I'm using is not compatible with all the F5's fancy-pants auto-bobbins (except Aperture Priority mode) I'm not expecting anything radical, but at least I can say I've used one before flogging it.
Digbeth, Birmingham, June 11th
The Birmingham Flickrmeet Tour of Digbeth occurred today and I'm pretty sure it was a success, which is nice. Despite the laughable BBC 5-day weather forecast suggesting thunderstorms it was a bakingly hot and sunny day as eleven of us spent 2 hours walking from Moor Street to the Custard Factory taking photos and chatting.
While I had a good time I didn't feel overly inspired, presumably because I've been shooting areas like this for over a year now and it's getting a little old, but it was worth it given the results from the group so far which are very good indeed.
Here's the pool for todays shots, best viewed as a slideshow as there will be hundreds. You can also check the post-meet thread where folk will be posting their best. So far I've been utterly blown away by Matt aka Brilliant Mistake's set which took all my suspicions about how far I've got to go with my photos and confirmed them with a vengeance. Some serious studying of his compositions will now follow.
My photos will be dumped in this set over the week. Nothing's jumped out as amazing yet but there's still 100 or so to process. I also slapped a film in my dad's Nikon FM2 which should be developed in a couple of weeks. I'm quite intrigued as to how I may have improved with a manual camera since last time.
Now, about those thunderstorms. When you're ready, weather gods. In your own time.
Longbridge, Birmingham, June 7th
See how the walking bloke adds so much more to the image?
-- -- --
And so it came to pass that, two months after the application deadline and a month after the actual interview, I was informed that I didn't get the permanent caretaker job. It was close though, shortlisted down to two and, as I understand it, the preferred candidate of my immediate boss, but the other guy has decades of caretaking experience and, once his references checked out, the powers that be decided he was the better choice.
I was surprisingly down about this, given that the job in itself is really nothing special and I've only been there for 9 weeks, not to mention the random nature of my employed life these last few years. I kinda realised I actually liked working there. The job was random enough to be interesting but, critically, not too interesting and the people were nice. I liked the fact that I could do anything they threw at me immediately and without complaint and I especially liked the fact that they were grateful for this. I think I'll genuinely be missed, which is an odd thing for an agency worker to say. I, and everyone else, knew I was just covering the vacancy while the process crawled torturously to it's conclusion, but had I got the job the transfer from temp to perm would have been seamless so it feels a little like I've been fired.
Of course in my role as temp I'll still be covering the position for a week, maybe two, until new guy can start, which will be slightly strange but I'd be a fool not to make the most of the 9am-1pm shift while I can. The only ray of light is the last person they gave the position to only lasted a week before leaving. If this new chap also doesn't work out then I'll be back.
On the other hand this does open up a couple of potentials I'd had to dismiss due to my maybe-perm status (including, yes, a very theoretical extended trip to New Zealand) along with putting me back on the cash-in-hand odd-job market. You got a garden needs clearing? A load of heavy things need shifting? Something needs painting? Get in touch.
-- -- --
In other news, Birmingham-based photographers should note the impending Flickr meet this Sunday where we'll be touring Digbeth with our cameras before ending up in the pub. The last one was excellent and with any luck those red bricks should glow in the sunshine. (Yes, I've seen the forecast but it's never accurate...)
-- -- --
I'm sure I'm supposed be to doing something tomorrow (Saturday) but I've got no idea what it is. Any ideas?
(No, it's not the football. I'll be using those 90 minutes to get some shopping done in town.)
Coombes Lane, Northfield, June 7th
-- -- --
My chum Celeste was on Radio 4 today as one of the experts on In Our Time discussing Uncle Tom's Cabin. As usual Melvin Bragg is an arse masquerading as the listener's advocate but it's still worth a listen. I've picked up bits of Abolitionist history by osmosis over the last year or so and it's fascinating stuff. MP3 here for the next week.
-- -- --
My bike has developed another puncture in the rear wheel and I'm getting mightily sick of it, especially as the front wheel has never gone flat in the two years I've had it. I'm thinking it might be time to get a new tyre as it's either got something sharp but miniscule embedded in it or it's getting worn out and allowing stuff in. I'm especially annoyed because each time I take the wheel off the ball-bearings slip out of place and the breaks never quite sit right.
While standing at the bus stop I saw a crow appeared a few yards away from me and hopped onto the Bristol Road, a dual carriage-way of some intensity. It was scraggy and old and incapable of flight but determined to get to the other side, making it over the first lane but stopping in the second. A car approached at speed and I turned away, at the last minute looking back to see it miss by a whisker. Another car approached but this time I couldn't look. The driver honked his horn followed immediately by a sickening thunk. There was a bright red patch where the crow had been with the crumpled corpse a few metres up the road.
I was mildly distressed at this experience and started to wonder why. Part of it was my innate cyclists negative attitude towards car drivers bombing about the place with no awareness of exactly what they're capable of doing with their metal death machines but he reality of roadkill isn't a radically new idea to me. And, as a meat eater who's just this evening chopped up a substantial chunk of cow and made a curry with it, I'm not morally outraged at the notion of killing animals. But this crow, to coin a phrase, touched me.
In the end I rationalised it as a piece of anthropomorphism. When I saw the crow I didn't see an animal reaching the end of it's natural life. I projected ideas of humanity onto it, gave it consciousness and felt sorry for this feathered reptile descendent. Then, as the inevitability of it all rapidly became apparent I had time to build a drama in my mind building to a terrible climax. If I'd arrived at the bus stop a few minutes later or had cycled past I wouldn't have given the carnage a second thought. It's all about the story.
Later a greenfly landed on my arm and I squashed it with no qualms whatsoever.
Longbridge, Birmingham, June 7th
Working in Longbridge, as I currently do, you can't help but be acutely aware of Rover. The factory, which dominated the area for decades, finally closed last year leaving 5000 people without jobs. Presumably having learned lessons from the Thatcher era the government set up a £150 million package for the Rover workers to get them retrained and back into work as quickly as possible. This has, by some accounts, led to accusations of preferential treatment, whereby someone from Longbridge who finds themselves unemployed but is not "ex-Rover" is put to the back of the queue, but from a community point of view the alternative is much worse.
These 5000 people, often in middle age, have mostly worked for one company all their lives, are specialists at whatever section of the track they worked on and were comparatively well paid for doing so. So you've got a large number of institutionalized people with a very narrow skill set who make up the main breadwinners for the local area trying to navigate an employment marketplace which has radically changed since they left school. For Longbridge (and Northfield) to survive economically these people need to get back into work as quickly as possible.
A year on many of them have, though rarely at the same level of pay as before. Many of the temp jobs I did had ex-Rover guys there, traveling across town and working for a little over minimum wage. A recent Radio 4 documentary I caught had some some success stories where people had, as they say, made lemonade, but there are still a significant number still out of work. I overheard a conversation between three of them today and it was as if the factory had only just closed down. There were, essentially, still in shock, trying to come to terms with their situation. They spoke quite candidly about the inertia of not having anything to get out of bed for, the need to avoid the pub like the plague and went over and over their final cash settlement and how it affected their benefits. Their mood was not desperate but had the sense of a support group, sharing woes but also advice and information. But overall I got the impression the reality still hadn't sunk in.
Today I turned right on the Bristol Road and went to the factory. Unlike the other closed and abandoned buildings I like to photograph this one was really odd. It's a huge complex, at least a mile square, and completely silent. Some sections have been demolished but the bulk remains complete with signage. Having cycled right around the perimeter I was struck by the lack of vandalism and graffiti, as if it were a sacred tomb.
A few photos are here. More may follow.
Banbury, June 3rd
This weekend was spent in Banbury with sister, bro-in-law, niece and nephew helping with some house-rearranging stuff and getting some quality family time as summer kicked in. It was all good if somewhat exhausting and as usual it took me a couple of hours on returning home to switch down the gears to the normal Bournville pace. All is well there. Izzy is turning into a real person and I'm finally seeing why people say Spike looks like me - I hope his huge grin doesn't morph into quite the frown mine did.
As seems to happen every time I visit the various strands of my family I came back with a boot-load of stuff, specifically electrical equipment they're no longer using which wouldn't be worth taking to Cashconverters, though it's still way better than the ramshackle stereo system I'd cobbled together. I've also got semi-perm loan of Jeff's old mixing desk, a Mackie 1402-VLZ, which should be fun to play with as I have some half-arsed notions in that direction.
Also of note was the arrival, via post, of a large cardboard tube from Photobox containing two giant 30" x 20" prints of these two photos. These would normally cost £18.99 but they're doing a special offer this month at £5.99. And by fuck are they fantastic. Not only that but you've got to love a company that warns you of a (quite reasonable) 5 day processing time for posters and then has them on your doorstep within 36 hours.
In work news, still no news about the perm position but I did figure out how to adjust the door armatures today. If you work in an environment with doors than slam loudly all the time get a couple of screwdrivers and remove the metal box attached to the arm. There should be a few control screws in there, one adjusting the general speed of closure and another for the final few inches into the frame. Playing with these will make things better. In theory.
Digbeth, May 28th
The latest development in the War On Torrents is the raiding of The Pirate Bay, a Bit Torrent tracker site of great notoriety and such, by Swedish police. While interesting as news it's probably not a big deal as new torrent sites pop up all over the place, especially after a legal clampdown.
What's really interesting, I think, is the timing. I could be wrong but I seem to remember the last time the torrenting community was temporarily thrown into disarray came just as the major US TV shows ended their seasons, allowing a few months of restructuring to take place before they started again in September. Now here we are with nothing much worth torrenting TV-wise and this happens. And you know, by the time Lost and Battlestar and the rest start up again in the "Fall" (when in Rome...) it'll all be okay again. Am I reading too much into this? If I'm not it begs some interesting questions...
Related to this is news that Warners are to sell video via Bit Torrent, which is an intelligent move, except it'll be all DRM'ed up as per usual. At first I dismissed this as not of use to me but then I thought about it. I've always said that I'd be happy to pay for downloadable TV but only as a high quality DRM-free file I can do what I want with, not in some crappy iPod format or whatnot, but I'm not able to hand my money over. But actually I can, by buying the show from iTunes (or whatever service is offering it) but not downloading it from them, instead getting a proper copy via Bit-Torrent. They get their royalties, I get my shows.
So once these download shops kick into gear I'll be getting Lost and Battlestar this way, and any other shows I sample and decide are worth paying for (paying for the previous seasons since they probably won't allow me to pay for the current ones before they're broadcast in the UK). I'll also start doing this for music I torrent, paying for, but not actually downloading, any albums worth buying on iTunes. If enough people do this maybe they'll notice a discrepancy in their income vs downloads and realise what's going on. I won't hold my breath but at least my conscience will be clearer.
[Update: Martin Currybet has a nice Pirate Bay analysis and a neat idea.]
Home, May 29th
Today, other than the four hours of wage-earning, was spent sawing and drilling and screwing and generally building things out of stuff from the skip-diving session. Actually I went back a few times, tape measure in hand, for more. The red board has been cut down to 36" x 24" and mounted on a frame, originally intended to house photos but I quite like it as it is in a Rothko kinda way. After that I did a proof-of-concept for a book idea I'd had based around two piece of wood bolted together with the top one hinged. The wood is slightly larger than A3 and the bolts hold the paper in place. The idea is to have a scrap book where pages can be added over time, except the bolts I've got are too short and I'm using the rule of not buying anything for these projects. Working with limitations and all that.
I should post photos really, but it's late.
Selly Oak, May 29th
Today I bought a nice spiral-bound book of black paper and one of those spray-mount cans and set about putting together a work-in-progress album of my prints. Which was hard as I'm at the stage where all my photos over a week old, let along those from the winter, are shit. Clichéd, novelty bollocks. Clever-clever entertaining wank. Ooh look, there's an amusing composition, see how I juxtapose this and that. Fuck off, it's worthless.
This, of course, is a good thing, but still rather frustrating when I also want to present my work and record my progress in some physical archival form. But I managed to find 20 or so from the 300-odd and they do look nice all mounted up on black. I'll keep adding to it as the prints come in and then, when I eventually reach a point where I'm mildly happy with what I'm doing, I'll have a good record of how I got there.
A word to the wise though. Spray-mount gets everywhere, even when done facing the window with a fan behind you. Good job I'm an experienced cleaner...
In other news, Zoop and I went skip-diving this evening. You might have seen us outside the UCE campus in Bournville trying to drag interesting pieces of wood out from beneath an inconsiderately placed filing cabinet. I got a wonderful piece of chip-board painted bright red. Not sure what I'll be using it for but it sure is red!
Home, May 29th
Rear of Custard Factory, Digbeth, 28th May
Popped into Digbeth today to figure out a vague route for the next Flickrmeet on June 11th and couldn't resist taking some shots of the graffiti garden behind the Custard Factory. It appears to be a condoned space but given that it's in a run down car park presumably in the shell of a demolished building it has all the elements necessary for that sort of environment. What I find interesting about graffiti is how it can work with the physical structure of the surfaces creating new shapes and perspectives on it, much as how a photographer changes a view by framing it from a certain angle. Or some shit.
Here's a selection of my graffiti photos.
On the way back I found myself in the middle of Gay Pride, which was not hard given that Hurst Street, the heart of Birmingham's gay quarter, doubles up as National Cycle Network Route Five. Last year Pride was kinda quiet on the Sunday but this year it was rammed to the gills. By accident I cycled into the tail end of the parade and found myself stuck on the wrong side of the barriers, which would have been great since I had my camera, except I also had my bike and nowhere to park it. Ah well. Then, since it was a wristband event, I had to blag my way into the rest of Hurst Street using the "I'm just a lost cyclist try to get home" excuse, which was true but a handy tip should you want to get in free next year.
Actually there's a shitload of stuff going on in Brum this weekend. A music festival in Digbeth, the "fun" fair in Canon Hill Park, some 10 mile sponsored walk, and that was just on my route. Must be summer.
Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham, May 14th
Northfield, Birmingham, May 26th
I think I'm entering a Black and White Period.
-- -- --
In music news, the new Mogwai album Mr Beast is a lot of fun. I'm particularly enjoying the pounding second track "Glasgow Mega-Snake". It comes (or at least Zoop's copy came) with a DVD showing them recording it in their house, a lo-fi approach I approve of. It's also quite short at 43 minutes, which was a mild disappointment at first but actually works rather well. Recommended.
Live-wise, I've been taking a break from the local scene of late but Capsule have some interesting forthcomings. Big news is Psychic TV on October 6th. I never thought I'd get to see Genesis P Orridge and now I may well do so. Also the lineup has been confirmed (for a while now) for Supersonic Festival - must pick up my ticket this weekend - and the Capsule girls are running a new night at the Bulls Head in Moseley: Larry's Lonely Knights Club is on Thursday 1st June and promises to be "more a get together" than a club night. Entry is £2 or "free with cake." Una Corda are guest-DJing the first one, which should be... interesting!
Northfield, Birmingham, May 5th
Just got a batch of prints through from Photobox (who still come recommended) comprising the last month or so of shots uploaded to Flickr. As before there's a significant difference between the ones I think look great on the screen and the ones that look good on paper. Not a big surprise, maybe, but certainly noteworthy. This one in particular, taken from the top deck of a very clean bus, jumped out as a classic example - it's nothing special in pixels but comes alive as a print.
As I continue my struggle to improve my photos I've had some very useful discussions with Housemate Zoop as he's on a similar kind of path with his art, trying to move from pieces which are adequate to that ever elusive... something. This evening I found him sifting through the prints and I mentioned how I felt I'd hit some kind of wall, albeit one that's surmountable if I could just find the right metaphorical angle with which to progress.
With some gentle nudging we came to the conclusion it's people that are missing. I'm representing a sense of place but it's unpopulated. So I need to take photos of people.
This, of course, is easier said than done. A building doesn't mind you staring at it for five minutes looking for the right angle. A person is going to want to know what the hell you think you're playing at, unless you ask permission before hand which kinda ruins the naturalism. Plus I'm a fucking coward.
But it's probably something I'm going to have to do. Any tips?
(ATP report to follow sometime over the weekend. Along with the photo delivery the last episode of Lost season 2 kinda ate up the afternoon...)
Camber, Sussex, May 20th
It's all caught up with me, as well it should, a man of my age. I'm completely wiped out, but unlike other comedowns I've had from crazy weekends this one still feels good and very much worth it.
Please excuse the pun.
Camber, Sussex, May 21st
If I hadn't been wankered I might have gotten the exposure right, though I'd probably have missed the moment.
All my ATP photos are up now and a full report will follow soon, maybe, probably, I think, don't hold me to it, oh okay then.
Camber, Sussex, May 21st
Just got back from All Tomorrows Parties at Camber Sands for three nights of live music and assorted shenanigans. It was terrific in so many ways. I may list the ways later but for now I present the above photo, taken at five am after 10 hours of gigs and 4 of DJs when crazy fools decided it would be a good idea to go to the beach and carry on.
(I should take photos when very drunk more often...)
Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham, May 14th
All my Flickrmeet photos are finally online, 36 in total.
Spitz, London, Feb 18th
Pitsford St, Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham, May 14th
Frederick Street, Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham, May 14th
A quick look at the thumbnails for my Flickrmeet photos indicated there was a lot of good stuff in there so I've been opening them up one at a time. When this one went full screen I nearly fell off my chair.
I realise my idea of good is different from others but, by golly, I'm dead chuffed with this!
Best viewed large, as they say.
Another 10 went into the set tonight and I'm still only about half way through.
-- -- --
In other news, the interview went well, I think, but I'm not thinking about it too much. I did look fucking sharp though. Quite the surprise.
Mint Cemetery, Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham, May 14th
Flickrmeet occurred today. Twelve people turned up. I'd consider that a success, especially since this was the first one (last year was just a dry-run) and nobody really knew anyone else. We took this route through Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter over a couple of hours, then spent another couple of hours in the pub. Many photos were taken. Those tagged properly are here - 216 so far. The most interesting thing about these walks is seeing all the different perspectives on the same area. Here's a few different sets all of the same route. Mine are here, though I've only processed 10 out of 28 with another 76 to work through. One of my best hit ratios for a while.
The Jewellery Quarter itself is bloody fascinating, which I knew from being told but for some reason I'd never been there before. Actually, I figured out why on the way - it's a bitch to get into, being surrounded by a moat of dual carriage-ways and one way streets that keep spitting you in the wrong direction. It also has that Digbeth effect of making perfect sense on a map but being a maze when you're in it. But once you make it in it's wonderful, chock full of nooks and crannies that ooze history and the sort of decay that has a majesty to it. And on a Sunday really quiet. Today, while producing some good shots, was really just a scouting trip. I shall return, repeatedly.
The next Birmingham Flickrmeet is on Sunday June 11th, probably in Digbeth. Watch the group for details.
Bournville boating lake, May 5th
So I asked my boss for advice. What should I wear to the interview for the caretaker job? She said as smart as possible, the logic being they're going to assume I won't be dressing as smart for the job itself so if I go casual I'll probably be a scruff-ball in reality. Which, of course, I am.
I have a pair of smart trousers, though I can't remember why I bought them and I have a tie which I think came from Debenhams in Winchester around 1990. I also have a blazer bought for my by my mum for my first ever job interview though I probably won't wear that. I don't, however, have a shirt. Or at least I have shirts, but they're not the sort of shirts you wear with a tie.
So I had to go clothes shopping.
This scares the shit out of me.
Primark was recommended as somewhere cheap and functional so I went there. As I'm sure you all know it's shockingly cheap, a temple to slave-labour global capitalism and bugger the consequences. I found the shirts but they had these numbers all over them which were supposed to relate to the dimensions of my torso, except I don't know the dimensions of my torso. I'm a medium, usually. I asked for a tape measure but they didn't have one. I guess when you're selling stuff that cheaply people just throw it away if it doesn't fit. So I went to see Andy at work, who buys shirts more than once a decade, and he told me I was probably a 15-16" neck and a 36-40" chest, which I diligently wrote down.
The shirt, in a delicate pale cream, cost £4. I then noticed socks at £2 for 5, so I got some of them. And then I queued for ages, despite it being 9.30am, as people piled huge mountains of stitched material on the counters.
I left in a bit of a quandry. I don't buy a lot of clothes (save a minor t-shirt habit) mainly due to the cost (plus the horror of actually purchasing them), but here are clothes at prices I deem reasonable, except morally it's all so very wrong. But then pretty much anything I buy that's manufactured abroad is going to have moral implications, from a cake of CD-Rs to cheapo bin liners (not to mention my tobacco) but clothes have a higher profile in the ethical wars, so I'm being somewhat hypocritical to get all high-horse about my £4 shirt while saving up (still) for an iPod.
Probably just best to be aware but not get all tied up in knots about it, for that way leads to madness and a tendency to be an annoyingly sanctimonious wanker.
Kings Norton Canal Junction, May 12th
I've been getting very very self-critical of my photos of late. This is a good thing, I feel, though it does mean I can come back from a jaunt with very little, if anything, deemed worthy of public consumption. Today eight photos had the mustard. Either it was a good day or I'm slacking.
In other news I spent most of the morning crawling under a stage sweeping up dust. My snot was black.
Job interview on Monday. First one since about 2002, I think. I need to buy a shirt.
Link of the day: Horizon documentary from 1981 on Richard Feynman. Not only wonderful stuff (key quote: "the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something") but the style of the piece seems revolutionary. Fifty minutes of talking head with no narration, no music and no fancy editing. This is what factual TV should be, and it turns out used to be, like.
Bournville Boat Pond, 11th May
Can it be too bright? I've been using Aperture Priority mode recently and it keeps topping out at 1/1000sec at wider apertures, and I'm not even pointing at the sky. This is not a problem, more a measure, but it really makes you appreciate "soft" light. If only there was a way to keep the clarity of the brightness with slightly less of the contrast.
Still, at least it's bright. This Sunday is the Birmingham Flickrmeet, an afternoon's stroll around the Jewellery Quarter followed by pub. If the weather is like it has been the last couple of days this should be perfect, especially as the red bricks of Birmingham simply glow in the sunshine. But the forecast is for dark clouds and rain. We're in that late-Spring period where the weather don't know what it's doing, which all very interesting but shite for the planning. At least there's the pub.
-- -- --
Couple of music tips for ya.
Yes Virginia by The Dresden Dolls is quite, quite wonderful. I've had the CD on my old-skool walkman-thing for a week or so and feel like I've known it forever. It leaps ahead of their previous album both musically and emotionally and I can't recommend it enough.
Show Your Bones by Yeah Yeah Yeahs is growing on me slowly. Less yelping, more tunes and while nothing is leaping out at me I'm going to stick with it for a while. Ben has more thoughts.
For those of a more Rock bent, the Wolfmother CD has been getting a lot of praise in this house for its audacious but forgivable "homages" to all things Sabbath and more besides. Personally I find it amusing and then somewhat tiresome after about 20 minutes. Just like Sabbath really.
I thought the new Morrissey album was turgid shite, but I was never a Smiths fan. What it is with the adoration of this guy? No, don't answer that. Please.
-- -- --
Birmingham Invaded by Greenfly Hoards, although it seems to have passed now.
I got caught in it cycling home. Greenfly in my ears, greenfly up my nose, greenfly crawling around my t-shirt. There were clouds of them. It's was mildly disturbing.
Stratford--upon-Avon canal, Kings Norton, May 10th
I'm going to try something new. For the foreseeable future posts to this blog will consist of a photograph followed by text, sometimes related to the photo, sometimes not, and sometimes not there at all. But the photo will be the main thing.
I may explain the motives for this change or I may not.
