Kodak seems to have mislaid one of my rolls of Kodachrome which I shot walking the North Downs Way in June. Ahhh good times, sun, the open track, hard graft, great views and a sense of achievement. Wonderful, much more meaningful than a lot of the crap in day to day life I guess.

Anyway, if anything it’s a blessing in disguise because I’ve been feeling a bit sad that my adventure for this year is over. I had a tremendous amount of fun as ever, I guess I just love being out there and free.

So, in lieu of me feeling a bit melancholy and missing that adventure, having lost a roll of film and indeed the weather on the day concerned being what we call in the trade, “thoroughly pap” (i.e. crap) I thought I’d walk it again one weekend in August.

That’s basically Ranmore Common to Westerham via Box Hill, Reigate Hill and Tandridge Hill. I have 5 rolls of Kodachrome still in the fridge so I can take two rolls, shoot it, do a good job on some good weather and hopefully not have Kodak mislay these rolls (in fairness, this is the first of however many rolls of KR64 I sent them that got lost, I’ve probably shot around 80-100 rolls of Kodachrome in my time…)

It’s a bit crazy as I know the day I walked from Ranmore Common to Godstone was a long old day but damn was it good fun. Hard going fun.

The kind of thing that makes life thoroughly amazing and worth living. The best things in life have to be worked at, and are often hard going. But there was never any sense of accomplishment of watching Jeremy Kyle. Though, on second thoughts, anyone who can make it through a whole episode of that without wanting to throw the telly out the window has my admiration.

So, back off to the North Downs then

All in between me enjoying the South Downs and finishing my B&W Photography Magazine, B&W Photographer of the Year entry… Eeeep!

I haven’t written much here lately. Not for bad reasons, just been busy making the most of summer and that is in some respects why I am updating my blog on Saturday afternoon – I have been out and about so much that my flat has turned into a dump! So I’m having a day of cleaning up, mopping, hoovering – everything. Later on today I’ll be off out to take a photo of a subject I need for my entry to Black and White Photography Magazine’s B&W Photographer Of The Year competition (something I don’t anticipate getting anywhere with but I’m giving it a go, and the end result is 4 prints I will like and hang on the wall even if the critics think they suck!

This time last year

Today a year ago I started walking the South Downs Way, and since then in June I walked the North Downs Way. A combined distance with all the to-ing and fro-ing of probably 380 miles. I’m quite a nostalgic person and I own a pair of rose tinted specs for every day of the year but it did get me thinking a little, of how awesome it is to be able to just get out there and walk, enjoy the countryside and take photos. I’m actually going to do a print tonight of Gander Down which is where I walked through a year ago today, pure coincidence but a happy one all the same. (My subject is the South Downs.)

About three-four years ago I had got myself into a rut, one that I progressively made deeper and deeper, it taught me a lot in hindsight but I got in with the wrong people (again) and it almost destroyed me. It’s only now I’m looking back thinking, “What the… why!” I got myself into something I didn’t need to, probably only because I felt lonely and was having a hard time adjusting to the difference of being in University and then going into work, hardly trauma central but enough to unseat you, especially when you get made redundant  and then progressively all your friends move away back to their parents and you’re holding the fort out of stubbornness, blind stupidity and mostly a love of where you now live. This was in 2005/6 (before this recession) so I do feel for people out of work who have strong work ethic, signing on at the DSS is the most humiliating thing I’ve ever done.

And then there’s the stupid things I did in that time too, at the time I felt I should be doing them, and I learnt a lot, saw a lot (and I already had beforehand, life really ain’t all roses and sweet-peas I’m afraid, not for everybody anyway, but you can make your own life pretty OK if you try hard) but even though at the time I felt I should be doing these things, I look back and think what I damn idiot I was. But c’est la vie; it got me to a good situation now of where I know exactly what I’m doing and most of all, I don’t really have much but I’m now happy and even feel that I’ve got to really cram as much in as possible because life is so short!

Next year I have plans to probably do some more chalk-hill walking, Cotswolds Way is likely. I did think of Offa’s Dyke but I also want to go to France for a week and 2 weeks of holiday one for walking, one for France eats half of my annual leave, let alone taking 2 weeks for Offa’s Dyke and 1 week for France, I’ll be left with nothing for the rest of the year virtually.

Nostalgia

Last night I sat down and went through 4 boxes of Kodachrome slides I got back from walking on the North Downs Way. (It equates to the first 4 1/2 days of walking) I swear that looking at projected slides is one of the biggest things people miss out on with digital photography. I don’t like engaging in any trivial spats like digital or film, Mac or PC etc. but the cost of a 1080p projector (which doesn’t have the resolution of projected slides) vs. a half decent slide projector and some well exposed chromes is an experience so many are now not enjoying. The richness of the colour, the detail almost dripping off the slides. Gorgeous stuff.

Anyway, it was lovely just to sit there and “re-walk” that part of the North Downs, really casts the mind back and it was most enjoyable. It’s much more enjoyable to look at a print or a slide projected than looking at something on a computer screen I think, much more detail and saturation (whatever you use, including digital) and this year alone I have had 4 or 5 people loose their PCs due to hard disk failure and you guessed it either no backups or very little, losing all of their photos!

They’re now backing them up thank goodness but it worries me people aren’t looking after their slides, negatives, JPEGs or RAW files as well as they should. Get prints, get photo books done (one of the amazing things we can now do easily due to digital), store those slides properly, just get hard copies and back up any scan files or pictures from your camera. It’s so so important, otherwise we all risk losing a great deal of photographic history of our time on this planet.

I haven’t written anything since I got back about my sojourn across the North Downs, a 132 mile hike from Farnham in Surrey to Dover in Kent via Rochester and Canterbury. The biggest reason as it stands has been my:

• Very busy couple of weeks since I got back
• The depressing fact that a year on I have still to pull my finger out and finish writing about the South Downs Way which I did almost a year ago now.

But there have been other reasons. When I started the South Downs Way I knew and still will produce a photo book on the South Downs Way but the flaw was trying to shoot it all in ‘one-sitting’ and whilst this is true to the journey, it has produced some of my favourite photos but also some that I am less than enamoured with. The upshot is that I’m going to need to re-visit the trail and photograph it again. Not exactly a bad thing in my book! So this project whilst very much swept aside for me to get on with impression:mk is alive and I am sticking with it. I just have to get these things right and there is no need to rush (unless of course I die tomorrow in which case i need to get a shift on!)

The other reason is a biggie, but that hasn’t stopped me getting on with it in the same way that say my birthday, barbeques, the pub (a few times admittedly!) and doing some extra work outside of the day job has done. But it has made me stop writing about it in yet another diary like fashion. Why?

I have long shrugged off or indeed acknowledged/struggled to find that any work of mine (photographically or written) has a philosophy, there is one but it’s not exactly obvious and probably still isn’t to me. But I do know what I am interested in and I’m now old enough to not give a damn about whether people think it’s odd, weird, deranged or obsessive. Which is a good start because there is nothing wrong than wanting to say photograph in black and white maybe the underside and underbelly of industrial Birmingham with its urban motorways and canals and decayed industry and social housing but not being able to do so because you’re worried a friend or all your friends are going to look dimly on it. Now, the latter is also something I will do (when I get time) but I’ve completely got over the whole keeping up appearances for friends, I am what I am and if you don’t like it do yourself and me a favour and kindly show yourself the door darling.

But behind this in the things I have attempted to write, and the things I do photograph of my own volition have been informed by something, or a series of somethings that are never entirely in isolation but do quite often float in the ether encapsulated all by themselves. Quite often these things are entirely subjective, subvocal, hidden and emotional and its hard to explain them except through a photo, or a sentence/paragraph that forms part of that overall patchwork of experience which describes where I am at this time, and what has gone before to bring me here in this frame of mind.

Without drifting needlessly into the obtuse, walking has always given me the freedom to think clearly. Whether that’s drifting around London or Brighton, or out in the wilds of the Downs or indeed the North Downs it hasn’t really mattered. The car, and to a lesser extent the train give you a sense of movement and an interesting perspective on how the landscape and your viewpoint shifts with that movement, but it’s nothing like the view you get when walking, which awakens and feeds that curious appetite. The bus for me does none of these, there’s no romance or emotion in that transport. It’s as utilitarian as a girdle (unless you have a girdle fetish, not that I am suggesting bus buffs are… Someone help me out of this hole!)

Walking this time seemed to sew up some kind of philosophy, it’s very quirky but it makes some sense. And so rather than write just a series of daily diaries of each day on the North Downs Way I’ve decided to work it into a wider remit on photography, subjectivity and philosophy of an art form and indeed maybe even a little of life. It’s hard to explain succinctly otherwise there would be no point in writing a book but it’s non-fiction and most definitely not a Kerouac-inspired journey dialogue. It is really a photography book, it might not be “Mastering Photoshop CS4’ or ‘The Dummies guide to Digital SLRs’ (I have no idea if those books exist but I bet they do, and I bet they are really really boring, bit like what I write then *chuckles*) but it’ll be interesting none the less.

The photo that summed this up for me is one I am still waiting back for, but maybe that’s it, a photo can make sense even with it not present if the thought behind it is sound. I was sat at Gatwick Airport station, on the final leg back home to Worthing, Day 14 of walking and I had done it, I had walked every inch from Farnham to Dover. And I was sat on the floor of the platform in the sun, it was nice to stretch out the legs but you get interesting perspectives on different levels. Ahead a lady, perhaps a flight attendant still dressed up glamorous strolled down the platform towards the incoming train and ahead a train was moving north to the far-side platform, the sun was bright. And it was hot (never start a sentence with a conjunction – except when it works for effect.) Long shadows carrying the cerebral and emotional baggage we all hide following in tow and the sky was pitch perfect blue. The departure board scrolling across for the Brighton 1842 or something like that fringed by its bright yellow metal armature which burst out uncontrollably against the navy skirt-suit of the what I have now decided is most certain an air-hostess. And in that pitch perfect blue sky a plane is coming into land taking people back from their escape, and the train is here to carry some away too on a hot Sunday noon. Why and what is all this for, each little step and snatched glance, with every uttered word what are we doing it for. Are we always In Search of Sunrise?

And photo sums it up for me what this book is about and that’s the book concept/title too, In Search of Sunrise. It’s a quirky idea but it makes sense. It’ll be a good antidote to ‘1001 Digital Photography and Adobe Lightroom Skills: The Ultimate Guide to everything.’

First things first: My Canon EOS 5 and then 3 never fell apart on any hike. But then I hadn’t walked 160 miles with either in one go, but they proved to be tough cameras. So the Leica’s first outing on a hike through Surrey and Kent in South East England for 2 weeks around my neck covering at least 130 miles up and down on the trail and 30 miles to and from pubs, accommodation and around towns would give it a gruelling challenge.

The result was the M2 holding up perfectly apart from one screw going walkabout somewhere in Rochester probably.

It had always been loose, the one on the right on the top plate, it was loose probably due to the camera shop not tightening it properly – I should get it sorted, and will, but not having my M2 for even so much as an hour is a daunting thought! Otherwise the camera kept soldiering on, come wind, rain and an awful lot of shine. The beauty of a manual camera is there is no electronics for water to foul although you wouldn’t necessarily want to drench the M2 in a downpour as I’m sure it wouldn’t do much good in the long run.

The lenses were a slightly different ball game. First the Voigtlander Ultron, held up magnificently until day 11 of 14 when I noticed the back screw thread plate was working itself free. I can forgive it as it had a lot of stress and that would work screws free to an extent, this had the effect of getting the focussing helical (?) off kilter so that at infinity it was focussing beyond infinity if that makes sense. Also the focussing was slipping with the rangefinder coupling becoming uncoupled as the lens shifted a few tenths of an inch from its usual position. I assumed this meant adjustment under warranty but was advised by Robert White it would be a 4 week turnaround time, so I have tried adjusting it myself and will run a test roll and see whether it is indeed now OK.

My ‘new’ 50mm Canon Serenar (a gem of 1950s optical design, 50mm f/1.8 and pretty flare resistant and excellent colour rendition) managed to end up in two bits The front part which contains all the optics unscrewed from the rear part which is the barrel and rear screw mount. Screwing it back together tightly solved the problem. (It hadn’t been done when I received it and I had no idea how to adjust it as it has no externally visible screws, so it took it to fall apart for me to realise how its held together!)

Overall, I shot 13 rolls of Kodachrome, 1 roll of EBX and the camera did a grand job. Leica sent a replacement screw to me for free (which was unexpected!) so the M2 is visually all 100% again. That said, I found the elastoplast I had taped over the hole made a comfortable thumb rest, might keep it on!

That said, the Leica just kept on going. Just what I expect from a camera. They have tough lives with me, but they’re like working dogs – they appreciate it that way.

As I have said before, there are few things in the world that get people’s backs up: religion, politics, the EU and Ken Rockwell

His website is an enjoyable read, it isn’t some statement of fact in all cases and apparently using Windows is like living in a Communist country. Well I better go get myself a Trabant and start talking about how good the ballet is in Prague this spring That aside, he’s just published his top ten peeves about amateur photographers.

Now I am an amateur in the sense I am not professional i.e. I don’t take photos for a living (or my main income) but I’m not an amateur with regard to knowing what I am doing, though…

Not quite sure why he gets a bee in his bonnet over it but that’s his own perrogative! A few points though did make me think, eh?!

• Backpacks:

  Number on his list is the backpack. That makes some sense to a degree but it’s a bit naive to assume that most people with cameras lumber around for a couple of miles and then pack it in. I’ve been known to walk 25+ miles in a day and there is no way you can shoot all day without a backpack carrying some supplies not just for the camera but also you. Backpacks may not be a fashion statement but photography isn’t about some fashion statement or looking the part, it’s about the journey and the photography. And if I can do more of the latter because I have water and food, and a stack of film in my backpack then I’m all for that. It’s also a good place to keep a purse and mobile phone as I don’t know of many women who carry their purse in their pockets all day long like a man does with his wallet.

• Camera worn directly over the neck:

  Again I’m not at all sorry if I look a nerd because my M2 is around my neck but for me it works, also walking long distances with a large backpack and the camera slung over one shoulder does not work, the backpack (which if you’re walking over a number of days like I’ll be doing in a week’s time, 135 miles worth) restricts access to the camera. Frankly if you’re worried too much by how you look to others carrying a camera over your neck, seriously take a step back and figure what you’re more bothered about: feeling comfortable taking pictures that work for you, or looking cool. It just so happens that being really ugly I don’t have to concern myself with looking cool

• Lens caps:

  Largely I don’t bother either, I have an 81B on most lenses and that’s the cap. However on my Summar, with its large unprotected easy to scratch front element that’s just been repolished, I’m not going to have my lens ruined by not protecting it with a simple lens cap. As I’m not a sports photographer I have no desire to throw lenses in my bag. Largely because I don’t have a large income, have items sent to me for review or get things sent to me for nothing, but because I have a day job like most and lenses take a large chunk of my salary — I work them hard, but I respect them. Press photographers don’t have this, it’s provided by their employer and if it breaks, they don’t usually pay. If I broke my CV Ultron, it’s me who pays.

That said he also talks some sense. Just like I do on the odd occassion.

The ones I do nod in agreement with though is the assessment that some people freak if they haven’t got every mm of range covered and the old logo on the strap thing is real sucky. In fact the logos on most cameras suck full stop which is why I love my M2 in that the front of it has no daubings at all to identify who made it and what model. All those names and model numbers do is serve as a free advert, it’s not like you wake up some days and think “Ooh now which did I buy again, a Nikon D300 or D700?”

Either way, Ken’s doing Ken’s thing, expressing his opinions — even though some of them are curious. The most amusing thing lately is how his glowing review of a “$15 Olympus 35RC” ended up pushing at least one such 35RC OVER £340 on eBay. In perspective, that’s £40 more than my M2! I’m sure Steve Jobs would be impressed at how Rockwell appears to have managed to get someone to pay way over the odds for something you could do with another camera for about £330 less.

Anyway, keep up the good work Ken, we love you really, although its back to my communist country seeing as my iBook has been stolen.

There’s a chance if you read closely (which is presumably not many) that I have some peculiar or rather different interests. I’m also intrigued by the less salubrious underbelly or overlooked aspects of people’s lives. There was a great quote in Sugar Rush in series one, which aptly described some people living life as though it was a Disney movie, but the reality was closer to a gangster porn flick.

And in some aspects life really is mired in the less than good or aesthetically pleasing.

This is a nagging thought with the Milton Keynes project impression:mk — MK is not necessarily anywhere worse than anywhere else but its new-ness does a good job at hiding the underlying problems of where social deprivation is taking hold, where drug usage is rife (I sadly know about this one first hand) and the built environment doesn’t fit the anticipated of a beautiful impression. These are far from unique issues to MK but they exist like they do anywhere and to ignore them would be doing a greater injustice than showing things as they are, how they appear.

Since I started the project I knew about these issues but had been fighting with myself to exclude them from the project — however I just cannot. To not include them would be defeat the honesty of what I am doing. I’m not trying to sell postcards to Japanese tourists, I’m not producing 1 in a million Bearskin Hat and Double Decker bus souvenirs to send people off with picture postcard memories of Britain or indeed Milton Keynes.

I am attempting to assuage that prevalent myth of the concrete jungle and actually I can do that very easily as its just that, a second-third-hand myth. But to present MK as some kind of complete utopia without problems would be wrong. I can do this without losing the promise of a definite structure to the project which is to be followed in the picture series as a journey in itself.

This final relent over this touchy area was brought about two things: Monday morning and Monday afternoon this week. Monday morning started as normal, go and get breakfast in CMK, take a few photos and generally wander and then plan over coffee what I would do that late-morning/early afternoon. On the way back I took a walk through Downs Barn, Conniburrow and Bradwell Common and I was quite shocked at the state of disrepair on some of the infrastructure. So much so that the things commonly (and rightly) complained about in Worthing and West Sussex look a bit trifling. Whole sections of the polished granite coverings that adorn pretty much every concrete balustrade and parapet were missing in large chunks, masses of dumped trolleys, steps missing 2ft wide sections of the steps themselves… This is pretty abysmal and whilst largely cosmetic it was something I was painfully aware of but had sadly fought actively to avoid, at least on the impression:mk project. That was wrong.

Some could cite these observations as middle England walking with her Leica and looking down at the nose of this. Frankly, it’s not like that at all and you can sod off if you think that, I was born to a working class family and haven’t lost my roots. I drive an old 22 year old banger (more on that in a moment) and I actively engage with people of all walks of life and sad as it is to say it, but the attention people pay to their houses or where they live DOES say something about their life even if its not politically correct to say so. That said, I have known cocaine addicts who have had beautifully kept gardens but they are the exception.

Seeing this and just talking to people seemed to reinforce particularly in Conniburrow that they felt the neighbourhood had changed in the past ten years or more, and not for the best. Does Milton Keynes Partnership (MKP) or Milton Keynes Council conduct the surveys that Milton Keynes Development Corporation (MKDC) did when they were in existence? The results compared could be interesting.

One thing for sure is I can’t fix the Milton Keynes with a few photos but it may draw attention to some of the issues and I feel that a more honest approach will do much in the long run to show MK as a model of largely success but one that has flaws that can be corrected, if they are recognised and stood up to. I hope if not for impression:MK, but for subsequent work to try and engage people in all districts of MK to just talk.

And Monday afternoon confirmed this. Long and short of it my car was broken into and my holdall stolen from the boot with all my overnight bits and peaces. Now in paradise, crime doesn’t happen, and in no way is MK a paradise but it’s a pretty good place overall.

The trip was cut short because of this but I did consider for a while whether the loss of all the rest of it was worth bothering with this project and eventually after the shock, it didn’t take much to realise that it really is.

This might all read a bit of a jumble but it’s hard to write this amount of thoughts in an explicitly organised fashion!