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.