bikes and things

I always try and go riding over the Christmas break. When I used to spend every Christmas in Bath I would normally try and get a Boxing Day ride in with Gav as well as a few more trips to Wales in over the Christmas break. As we alternate between mine and Emma’s Mum’s place now that doesn’t really happen as much.

This year I’ve also been full of cold and a hacking cough which has killed most ideas of riding. To be honest though the end of 2012 has seen a slow decline in riding which I’m keen to rectify. We had our annual trip in October (which I still haven’t written up) and I haven’t really ridden much off road since then.

So I managed to find some people willing or able to make a trip out in the pouring rain with me on New Years Eve – Finn and Joe from Brighton. We agreed that Swinley was probably the best option as the Surrey Hills would be a complete wash out.

I’ve been trying to not buy so much crap when riding. One of those is crap service station coffees on the way. So I grabbed a small cafetiere and some coffee and decided to make everyone a brew from the back of the van before we set off. Far nicer coffee and a nice way to have a chat before getting going.

Swinley is one of those areas that has miles and miles of trails that you know are there but you don’t know how they all link up to make a good ride. So we were keen to just ride around and try and make some of those connections as the conditions weren’t so good. Swinley is also having some work done by trail builder Rowan Sorell so it made sense to try and find new bits that weren’t affected by trail closures. We found lots of new bits and linked up some really nice little trails. Most of it was sloppy as hell and we spent plenty of the ride with water up to our bottom brackets but it was still fun. The forest looked strangely beautiful in the flat grey light.

I shot a few images on my LC-A with some HP5 400 in but I’ll have to wait a bit before processing those.

So even though it was wet, slimy and horrible and I had little lung capacity it was still great to get out for some fresh air. I rode mainly trails I had never seen before thanks to Joe’s incredible photographic memory for finding and linking them up. The favourite comment each time we stopped for a chat was…

This trail would ride really well in the dry!

Hopefully I can get another ride in next weekend and start getting back into the habit. Would be great if the weather started improving too.

And yes it’s probably time to trim the beard. Image by Finn.

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.

Whilst catching up with family over Christmas the usual duties of helping out with the odd IT query were carried out. I was pleasantly surprised to see my Dad with a Nook e-reader but then we opened up his laptop so he could tell me all about his Army friends from the 60’s and 70’s he was re-connecting with on Facebook. Internet Explorer had so many crap toolbars installed that half of the screen was in use.

Then at Mum’s house I used her laptop to check something online. 15 mins later it started up. Each individual action required waiting 10 seconds for the UI to update. Shocking how bad all this stuff is. Think an iPad might be the best option for Mum in the future.

Shocking to see how bad general computing is for the Mum’s and Dad’s of the world.

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.

The subject matter is old (in web terms) but well worth posting as the photos and subject are so fantastic. I’ve already posted about one of the iconic images by Iwaan Baan from when Hurricane Sandy struck New York, but he had access to a helicopter which is a little unfair on the rest of the photographers trying to capture the event. These images are based on slightly more accessible level of the city but still show the impact of the storm and the unusual black out which hit the city. Shot by a photo editor at MTV and part time photographer Colin Gray and found via this Wired article.

At the time, Gray had no idea that in addition to knocking out power to more than eight million homes in New York and 16 other states, Hurricane Sandy would kill more than 100 people, cause billions of dollars of damage and bring transportation to a standstill, with some of New York City’s subway stations filled with water from the tracks to the ceiling. All he knew was that he had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and needed to act fast.

I’d love to have the opportunity to shoot something like this. Must keep the camera and tripod in the van at all times I think, just in case.

Emma really does say some funny stuff. I wish I had time to write it all down but there’s just too much of it. This kept me chuckling for a few hours recently.

I like social media but I don’t want to be too social because you end up with all these dicks in your timeline.

Wise words indeed.

Storage at Chad’s garage is free!

Via @kristian

…from his Australian cousin.

More genius work from Adam Buxton.

Number ten in the series so far and this time it’s Brighton Jim or Jim Stephenson as he’s more often known. All round nice fella and talented photographer shown working on his latest shots in his flat in Brighton. It was great to collaborate on this one and come up with a few more ideas before shooting it. Although it seems like a simple image quite a bit of OCD went into it to get it just right.

Looking forward to shooting more for the project in 2013.

The whole Detroit ruin photography has been done to death really, with the best images coming from Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre in their wonderful book “The Ruins of Detroit”. It’s fairly hard to beat those images in my opinion, however these images offer a fresher take on the genre (if you can call it that) by contrasting the dereliction with a much happier point in the life of the building.

I still find it incredible that this situation exists at all but that’s for another post perhaps.