At Full Stretch

Evidence, if it were needed, of Peter's endeavour as he leads Chris to the summit of the long, slightly uphill, against-the-wind, climb from Toddington to Shetcombe cross-roads.

It's not all tea-and-cakes on a BDOOB (or, for that matter, fun-and-frolics).

Boys' Day Out on Bikes

Yesterday’s BDOOB had been planned for some time. Guest day-tripper Chris joined us. He’s a man with a very demanding work schedule, so we booked him in with all the necessary advance warning.

Our cycle route was planned by master orienteer Dave, with a virtually infallible eye for wind resistance, rainfall, minimum gradients and road safety. They don’t call him “four eyes” for nothing.

My lowly ambitions were twofold: to complete a twenty mile round trip (that’s long distance for me), without being late for my guitar lesson, or dismounting for any inclines. I achieved them both, with a little help from my friends. Big Dave made an excellent windbreak at times, while Chris spotted that my saddle was too low, then adjusted it for me.

Naturally, the outing included the BDO staples: nerdy conversations about pedal bikes and their accessories, playing with digital cameras, and reminiscences of steam engines. At one point along the way, we suddenly all felt the need to sample some real ale, so a slight detour up and down a hill was considered a worthwhile exchange for a rest, one which involved quality control procedures on some very fine amber liquids in the beer garden of a village pub in Alderton.

Here you see us at the climax of the journey: three middle-aged blokes, happily inhaling the steamy trackside atmosphere at Toddington station, one end of the line of the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway, a preservation society run by volunteers in the Cotswolds. Can you identify the really serious cyclist? Clue: look for the hi-tech footwear. Yes, those bare-naked calves of Chris’ have pumped up and down for many thousands of miles. So have Dave’s, but in a more modestly attired manner. Me? I just cycle in my old jeans and shoes. I’m most often seen operating in my spontaneous nip-to-the-local-shops-and-back mode.

Group of Three (Ignored)

Peter is not one to miss a group of three except, it would appear, when he's stood right next to one. It's not surprising, though. I'm amazed my camera found anything in the murky audience at the gig we attended on Friday.

The wonders of twenty-first-century technology.

And all jolly good fun.

A room full of photographers

I wrote, elsewhere, about preferring to record the tension back-stage at a recent gig in Stroud, one which Dave and I photographed, together with some others we'd never before met.

It could be argued that a room full of photographers simply added to the collective angst, since it’s long been an established theory that the mere presence of a purely passive observer, however objective, always has the potential to influence the dynamics of any situation.

So there we were, an illumination of photographers (to mint a collective noun), each bringing his or her own unique set of styles, skills and experience to the party, all of us consuming even more free space, adding bodies to the crowd, working around each other, all making our own individual images, never two the same, even of identical subjects.

It’s not the camera that makes the photograph, it’s the person behind it, as evidenced the portfolios.

Ash No More

I've never smoked but I've nothing against smokers, weak-willed, self-harming folk that they are. We are all entitled to live our lives as we wish, as long as that wish does not impinge on the lives of others. Of course, there's the rub, because one man's smoke is another man's poison.

The desire to banish smoker's from any publicly accessible, indoor space has had an undesirable knock-on as far as I'm concerned, particularly in pubs. Where once they were spread throughout the premises, producing an overall but manageable fug, now they're all concentrated outside. It's often impossible to see one's companions in a beer garden thanks to the desperate, lung-shattering exhalations of the addicted surrounding you.

Anyway this lovely clean, sparkling ashtray beckoned. So I photographed it, as you must.

Big Dave, big camera

While I was busy poking my lens into a set of garden chairs, Dave was studying the light in an ashtray. What more pleasing way for two grown men to pass the time over a drink in a shady corner of a pub than playing with their boys' toys?

Hemisphere of Light

Dave really thinks about his lighting for television, constantly battling with the tension between what is technically possible and what his creative eye really wants to produce, in spite of the limitations of the medium and the budget. He still does, improving, to his credit, even specialist programmes such as poker, or indoor bowls.

Years ago, whenever possible, I used to book him as a resident guest lecturer on the lighting courses I ran. He brought his unique style to the learners, imparting hard-won secrets freely and generously to those learners whose knowledge, skill and experience fell far short of his, challenging, then empowering them, to produce a quality of pictures they never thought possible.

One of Dave’s original lighting theories was developed after countless critical observations of how light behaves in real life, as well as studying the craft by which those old Dutch Masters of painterly illumination constructed their interior scenes. He'd experimented with what could be done, in the genre called "Drama", to make sets, scenery and faces look natural in the artificial space of a TV studio. Dave introduced me to the term “Hemisphere of light”. It referred to the mushrooming, ballooning, and scattering in all directions of light through a window. Light shines up, as well as left, right and down. Look for yourself next time.

I was instantly reminded of Dave’s thesis when I saw this nicotine stained ceiling in a Malvern pub, uplit by said hemisphere of window-smashing photons. Dave and I sat supping and story-telling, satisfied with good ale, still interested in the fine details of our surroundings.

Q.E.D.

More Tea, Vicar?

Swapping dainty teacups for mugs, the fearless duo swept through the wilds of Warwickshire hunting down the perfect cuppa. After breakfast at Rhubarb in Blackminster - sausage, bacon, egg, tomato, baked beans, black pudding, mushrooms and fried bread (with tea and, for a change, coffee, and also some food-swapping - I don't eat eggs or tomato and Peter passes on bread and sausages), we meandered to a spot of tea at this railway carriage in Little Milcote.

Having assuaged the bacon-induced thirst to some extent, we ventured to Preston-on-Stour (diet coke and a Fentiman's lemonade), then more tea at the airfield at Wellesbourne and a well-deserved cup of tea at Hatton lock on the Grand Union.

All this was mixed with two bouts of ecclesiastical image-making, a stroll by the canal, rice pudding and a toasted teacake - just a typical boys-day-out.

Tea for two

A typical Boys’ Day Out (BDO) almost invariably involves a tea shop. The Old Stable is little more than a stone’s throw from my home. Dave and I found ourselves in need of a visit, late one recent Saturday afternoon. Well, our morning’s cooked breakfast had worn off by then, and we’d only had a light snack for lunch.

Happily tired from playing lighting games in a nearby church with our big cams, I simply stuck my little point-and-shoot on a self timer setting, plopped it atop a convenient table, then let it focus where it would, and expose for what it could. We assumed the position: cups and saucers at the ready. Dave waited for the flash. I didn’t, because I knew there wouldn’t be one.

A Bit of Old Wood

As I've mentioned before, there are times when I grow concerned that Peter and I spend too much time surrounded by the arcane and subtle lures of religion. We had no sooner gained entry to the graceful little church of St Mary's, Hill Croome, than Peter was eyeing up the centuries-old Jacobean pulpit. I could sense his eagerness to get up there and pontificate. And why not; he's a fine speaker.

We needed an excuse and one was at hand. Earlier in the day I'd acquired, second-hand, another Nikon flashgun. I needed to try it out with the original and the ideal combo would be in a set-up sometimes called key and counter-key. On Peter's right was a small window emitting a feeble northern light. I helped it, not with a nourishing mug of chicken soup, but by bouncing one of my flashes off of the cream coloured surround. Over his left shoulder I fired off the second flash, direct and unmediated by any flaking paint finish. The result; a classic combination of a warm main light (the key, soft and bounced) and a hard, cold kick from behind, diagonally opposite (the counter-key or kicker). The candles were lit for effect; in reality the face is over lit for candle light. What surprised us both was how much light came back off the old wood, avoiding the need to treat it separately - normally dark wood soaks up illumination as eagerly as a cat licks up cream (or is it Guinness?).

Anyway, sorry about the technical rabbiting - just fancied doing it for a change rather than talking about the weather, or the state of British roads, or whether we will ever find out where it is in the universe that ball-point pens disappear to (along with small screwdrivers, lens caps and, in my case, shutter releases).

Little & large

I believe there's plenty of room in a friendship to accommodate differences, as well as celebrate similarities.

Fleet of foot

For a big man, Dave is remarkably quick and nimble: one minute he's standing right in front of you, the next, he's disappeared down the road, out of sight. Mind you, he's usually only gone as far as the nearest tea shop.

Ahoy, Me Hearties!

Peter's always waiting for me to post something so that he can reply with one of his images showing me in some incongruous or debilitating position. So as not to disappoint, here are a couple of snaps from our recent outing to Gloucester Docks.

Still Waiting

While Peter was fossicking amongst the daffs and crocuses (or is that croci?) I was in a common image-gathering pose - lying flat out on the ground.

I'd made an assault on these snowdrops earlier in the week and not been happy with the results, partly because I hadn't noticed that I'd left my camera bag visible in some of the shots. Passing through Cirencester again a few days later gave me a second chance. While still not over-the-moon (I'm very difficult to please), at least there's no longer a big black blob sitting unattractively on top of the tomb.


The interior of Tetbury parish church, built 1780, comes as something of a surprise to devotees, like myself, of the Cotswold wool churches; the columns are minuscule in diameter compared to the robustness of the Norman, Early English and Perpendicular versions I'm used to. As Peter discovered, the outer surface is of wood. This covers an iron core and gives the whole space a very light feel, albeit with a strong sense that the proportions are not of this world. (I think that's my first use of the word 'albeit' in these pages, notwithstanding past efforts - ah, first use of 'notwithstanding' as well).

Nurse! More pills, I'm starting to write in Victorian.

Cirencester churchyard

By the way, Dave isn't always supine in the shrubbery. Can you spot him here?

Waiting for God

The pair of feet you see here belong to an elderly gentleman who is a regular visitor to the churchyard in Cirencester. It’s an oasis of quiet, situated mere strides from the bustling main streets.

Dave and I were creeping carefully among the spring flowers yesterday, photographing snowdrops, daffodils and crocuses, among bronze-lit dried leaves under a clear blue sky.

We observed the old man from a respectful distance as he read his book. I had a moment’s uneasy glimpse into my own future.

Individuality

Give two photographers exactly the same subject and you're sure to get two different pictures.

Improvisation

You don’t always have to look through the viewfinder (or at the screen) of your digital camera to take a good picture.

Dave's fine study of a pint of ale, which you see posted herebelow (Glass Half Full), was made using a pub table to support his heavy camera, with added value from a few beer mats pushed underneath the lens, to get the low-angle framing just right.

A trial and error approach soon yielded exactly the shot he wanted.

Glass Half Full

While Pixie and Sparkly were out and about in Worcester doing something doubtless involving handbags or lady's clothing, Peter and I took ourselves off to the 'Farrier's' in Fish Street.

There we drank, or is it quaffed, a superb real ale named Hobgoblin. My, was it a cracking pint! Rich, nutty with a mouth warming sweetness and a sizzling slice of hoppiness. Served at a perfect, just below, room temperture. Coolers? Frosted glasses? On your bikes! This was the drink for men, not your namby-pamby, ice-cold, foreign muck.

Gnomonic gnees

The expression of intense concentration about me in Dave's profile shot of me has less to do with photography (a point-and-shoot camera is a relatively simple device) and rather more with the brain-hurting thinking I was engaged in. Why, I was asking myself, would anyone put a sundial on the North-facing side of this cube, on a pedestal, in Malvern Abbey grounds?

The answer came later, in a discussion with Dave, when we talked, not only about his knees, but also about how far round “behind” the sun would actually "travel" at certain times of the year. The old adage “The sun rises in the East and sets in the West” isn’t strictly true at all points on our beautiful blue planet.

Later that day, and keeping with the shooting into the sun and flagging it off the camera theme, my young friend does something arty with the rather unusual sundial in the churchyard at Malvern Priory.

The difference between my attempts at this sort of shot and Peter's is that his knees still work whereas mine feel decidedly flaky rising from this sort of position. That's the reason I've taken to attaching my camera to a monopod and using it upside down, triggering the shutter with a cable release. It's a bit like using a metal detector.

Flagging off the lens

Shooting straight into the intensity of the sun while including that brightly burning sphere in the frame isn’t usually recommended. It’s best to employ a device to block out the sun. A tree or a signpost will usually do. In this case I rather wanted to use Dave’s unmistakeable silhouette to, as we in the lighting business say, “flag the sun off my lens”.

Splish, Splash

Peter has been waiting for me to upload this image but I'm inhabiting a negativity node with regards to blogging at the moment - I get them from time to time; they blow over.

Anyway, here it is. Let play commence!

2007 Dinner, 2008 Breakfast

The Fab Four had decided to celebrate the change of year together. On New Year’s Eve, Pixie’s renowned attention to detail and her fondness for colour co-ordination was directed to laying this inviting dinner table.

On seeing it, I realised I should have brought golden Christmas crackers, but, bathed in the warm glow from a lit corner of the room, these silver ones obligingly assumed an auric air.

The next morning dexterous Dave rustled up our call-orders, deliciously fresh from his man-sized stove, adding a surprise splash of Madeira to the pan-fried mushrooms, thereby instantly redefining the term “Full English Breakfast”.