bikes and things

Another set of images from our visit to Dungeness last weekend, this time of the weird and wonderful structures that exist there. Hopefully these are slightly less cliche than the others.

I deliberately avoided the two modern houses that have recently arrived designed by Simon Condor and NORD – I think they’re pretty well covered already and the originals are far more interesting to me.

I shot these all handheld with a 50mm ƒ1.8 and I might do a few prints of these soon if anyone is interested. A select few below but the full set can be seen on Flickr.

Not a big fan of the Met or their egos but they do capture the odd good image flying around in their helicopter over London. This one caught my eye in particular.

A rare thing indeed but perfect for grabbing a shot of our green a pleasant land from a satellite belonging to the European Space Agency.

Last weekend we managed to get down to Dungeness to have a wander around and take a few photos. It’s one of those places we’ve been meaning to get to for a while now so added it to the New Years list of things to do and get on with it. We drove down from Peckham in the van and ended up at The Pilot for a decent fish and chips lunch.

I’ve seen so many photos of the place that it almost seemed like a cliche to take any photos at all. Boats, bleak horizons, houses, derelict sheds etc and shot countless times and over processed or HDR added. It was still nice to wander around in such a strange and unique context. The perfectly formed architectural shots of the recent Simon Condor and NORD houses leave little idea of the wider surroundings and often ramshackle nature of the structures that exist – or maybe survive is a better word.

There also seemed to be a local vernacular of single storey timber buildings furnished with a metal roof and with external shed added. A ladder is often present which gains access to the roof void over. This typology clearly inspired the NORD house.

I have a collection of photos of the houses which I’ll save for another post. Here’s my cliche shots for now.

Just look at the light in this video. Shafts of light over the Brighton seascape rolling by. So beautiful.

Back in December I dragged myself out of bed early on a Sunday morning to head down to Brighton to meet Jim and Finn for a bit of a photo walk along the coast. I was hoping to repeat the success of the one I did cycling East from the Design Museum (but without the swing on the lens engaged this time) as well as get out of London for the day.

I like the idea of picking a place and then doing a mini photo project in a day. Just taking the tripod, camera and 24mm shift lens and then observing the interesting spaces I see.

Instead of the main stretch of Brighton seafront we headed West past Hove and into the more industrial areas of Shoreham. We were blessed with a perfect winters day. Hardly any cloud, warm sun, clear blue skies and a real sense of clarity to the light.

It took a while to find things I wanted to shoot but once I found them progress was slow on our walk. Seemingly everywhere you turned there was another form, fence, yard or industrial machinery to shoot.

Finn had to get back so he left after a coffee at a small but decent cafe we found. Jim and I pushed on as far as you could walk which ended up at the mouth of the port.

We then looped back on ourselves and crossed over a bridge back to the main part of Shoreham to wander back along at higher ground.

By this time the light was starting to fade so I grabbed this one and headed up to Jim’s place to sort out his shot for my Creative Spaces project.

Looking forward to my next photo walk. Maybe something in London, the Thamesmead Estate or something on the coast again.

Pretty impressive footage.

Via @Futurefabric

Earlier last year I bought the superb John Pawson – A visual inventory book, which I really enjoyed and have recommended many times since to others. I wrote a few words on why I liked it too, which I still stand by.

I was also fortunate to see him at the Design Museum in conversation with Deyan Sudjic. The format worked really well and there were some interesting questions after. I tried to speak to him briefly but he was mobbed with people so left it. Jim managed to set up an interview with him for a magazine and that interview is now online which reveals a little more about his process and his obsession with photography and imagery. In particular I liked this quote.

But I think what’s interesting to me is that photography forces you to look at things more closely, both before you take the picture and afterward. You start seeing things framed, like vapour trails in the sky crossing telegraph wires for example. You start seeing photographs everywhere. I like being able to capture that with the camera in my pocket.

I found a similar thing after finishing a 365 project in 2009. The process of recording images on a regular basis makes you far more visually aware and I’d recommend it to anyone even vaguely interested in photography. Well worth reading the article in full.

So good having a bike shop a few doors down, and a decent one at that. One day I’d love to have a garage with a workshop like this and full of bikes.

Last time I was up this way (Pampisford/Cambridge) a photographer on Twitter photographer Brian Stevens suggested I pop over and see the radio telescopes to the West of Cambridge. It turns out he grew up around here and recognised photos of the area I was posting at the time. I remembered this on Christmas eve and had a poke around on Google and Bing Maps to see what was worth seeing and what the access was like. Unfortunately Christmas eve was a wash out so I couldn’t get out for pictures, I also wasn’t keen on going in the dark to be honest without having scouted it first in the daylight.

The site is called the MRAO or the The Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory and is made up of a number of radio telescopes. The one that seemed to be most interesting and also easiest to access is the Ryle Telescope which is made up of eight dishes. The text on the page describing the purpose of them is a little beyond my scientific understanding really. However I knew there’d be a few decent shots to be had. The structures of the dishes is pretty spectacular up close and so incongruous to the surrounding flat lands of the Cambridgeshire countryside.

Unfortunately the light was fairly flat today and it also involved a bit of a schlep across a field of claggy mud to get to the right spot.

Whilst I was probably trespassing in the field as there was no right of way it was out of season for crops so I wasn’t doing any damage. I also tried to not get too close to the actual dishes or trespass on their property as I’m sure a bunch of grumpy security guards wouldn’t have been too far away.