The bad news is that the sun was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I knew instantly that the uncoated heliar wouldn’t be able to cope with the angle of the light and everything I wanted to photograph had low sun behind it. Double rats.

However…

I loathe photographing stuff like this but I had loaded the film in the camera and for all I know it will rain non-stop for the next two weeks. This one didn’t turn out too badly considering it is a 10.5cm lens handheld at about 1/60 sec.

I also quite liked the spinyness. It’s a Mahonia I think. If I remember, they have yellow flowers with a heavy drop dead gorgeous lily-of-the-valley scent, particularly in the evenings. We’ll have to return soon because I think they flower early in the year.

The light was incredibly harsh and contrasty here and the hanging things looked 3D in the light.

And now for some serious flare

Dark and moody/murky. I’ll have to rig up some sort of homebrew lens hood like James Ravillious did with his Leica. He shot into the sun too and had a large cardboard contraption on his Summicron.

Likewise this one

We met a woman visiting the fields who said she was as old as the camera. She had gone to school round the corner but had moved away. We were looking out over the remains of the dog track above and she hadn’t known about its demise, so long had it been since she left the area.

I’ve always been wary of skip guys and scaffolders since I was attacked by a wrench-wielding scaffolder on Effra Road in Brixton about 20 years ago. The lorry had nearly run me down driving the wrong way up a one way street and I was stupid enough to point this out. Exit pursued by lorry, but I didn’t make it to Brockwell Park and they caught me outside the betting shop.

The gates were open and these skips piled high caught my attention though, so I went in and snapped.

Laban is in the middle background and the new apartments ”inspired by dance” (ffs!) far off. Boxes, containers and skips stacked from foreground to background.

And sure enough, behind me I heard a van pull up and a voice said ”Why are you taking photographs of my yard?” It sounded a bit like the three bears in Goldilocks, ‘Who’s been eating my porridge’?’

”Because I’m a photographer” I replied. I didn’t particularly care since I’d got the photos but I was slightly concerned about the camera. It was also private property so I was very likely in the wrong. Maybe having a non-threatening folding camera (the Super Ikonta) and a gangsta dog beside me helped. I got the health & safety spiel and it got left at that. Ho hum.

Otherwise I may have ended up in here. It was that kind of yard.

Today I was travelling light with the 55 year old Zeiss Ikon Super Ikonta 532/16 (6×6) with the Opton Tessar f/2.8 80mm lens.

Saturday was a glorious break between the incessant rain and generally crap weather. From a photographic point-of-view the light was somewhat challenging, intensely bright sunlight suddenly disappearing behind thick cloud leaving relative darkness, usually just after I had metered.

The cemetery is full of broken things and statuary in various states of decay and dilapidation and decomposition. Angels at angles.

I find it hard not to be drawn into imaginary life stories of the people in these graves.

Alice Maud Embleton who ”fell asleep” aged 28. Who was she and what did she look like? The shaft of light on her urn influences my imaginary backstory.

Another angel, only about 30cms high, overshadowed by an ugly memorial.

”Peace, perfect peace” is inscribed on the stone. I wish.

There are so many striking memorials and statues that it is easy to forget the more simple graves. The strong sunlight makes some of them stand out through the undergrowth.

The highlights are blown in the photo below but I like the randomness of the trees and the pillar:

I’m not sure why the area to these graves is restricted but I like the contrast between the fence and the chaotic background:

I’ve said this before, but the photographs of corroded stone monuments, graves and statues sometimes give the impression of softness but I don’t always think it is the lens or my lack of technique (sometimes). Even to the naked eye they look soft and crumbly but that is the surface texture. The photograph below of the coy foot illustrates this. The plinth is super sharp and is in the same plane of focus as the statue. The surface texture appears soft however, and I think it is because it really is soft. Lichen covered and corroded, possibly sandstone or limestone, it lacks sharp edges and definition.

I’d have preferred to use f/11 or f/16 but I had no tripod so (from memory) this was f/5.6 to enable handheld (no tripod today).

Because of the lighting and contrast I decided to stand develop the Fuji Neopan 400 (shot at EI200) in Rodinal 1+100 for an hour. I’m quite pleased with the results and like this ‘lazy’ way of developing.

However, it wasn’t a shoot-out spanning half a century of equipment. I’d be the first to concede that Leake Street is probably better photographed (in colour) with the D700. The main reason for taking these photos was just so I could play around with Rodinal stand development – 1+100 for an hour, 1 minute slow agitation to start with, then nothing for 59 minutes. Since there were reflections and edges from the lights I thought the results might be interesting.

The picture above has an unusual 3-D aspect to it. Is that the dev?

I missed an opportunity when two police people walked slowly past the lamp post assessing the Ikonta for possible threats to our national security. It would have made a good image, the camera was on the ground on a table-top tripod (I can’t shoot 1/2 second handheld, not now, not ever) and they walked past staring directly at the lens.I was lying on the ground trying to frame the shot so it probably looked kind of weird.

Oh well, Toby got the shot, but not from below.

This was 20 seconds at f/16 – bulb setting, counting 20 elephants. I even forgot the cable release. So I’m astounded by the sharpness. Once again, from below (ground level). The Leake Street tunnel isn’t really aircraft-hanger size. Some ‘ghosts’ of people moving would have been perfect, dragging across the 20 second exposure.

Now I know what I want from the tunnel, I’ll probably go back there and spend a bit more time waiting for the moments. One thing is for sure, the lighting doesn’t change. When I do go back, I’ll take the Rollei, I’m too old to be grovelling on the floor trying to second guess the Super Ikonta’s viewfinder.

Finally, a door. Shot wide open (the lens…) at f/2.8. This Tessar aint bad.

Mission accomplished. I hope to more stand development and try and get a handle on the results. I’m sure it suits some things more than others. I just need to find out which ones.

Fuck capatalism (sic)

What exactly is the mindset of the person who half erased the word ‘Fuck’ but left ‘CAPATALISM’ spelt like that? Huh? I’m not sure what I find most offensive *. However, what is left is in capitals, with a view of the capital of capitalism in the background (The City and Canary Wharf). Neat. And writing it on a plaque pointing out the sights is genius.

Capatalism has also been erased now (we wish). Glad I caught it in time.

* I of course am the worlds greatest speller and grammarian… though the spell checker hasn’t picked up on ‘capatalism’, ho hum

I’m amazed at the results!

I have to get my head round the long exposures though! As usual, the cemetery is bright sun (huh?) and deep shade. The first place I metered needed a 27 minute exposure. With those sort of times you need to be alone with a book, tis a bit much to ask the partner and/or dog to hang around that long. Now I know why people build pinhole cameras out of coke cans, you can leave them and come back after lunch.

With these conditions I was averaging 3 minutes per exposure and that was doing my head in. Even 3 minutes seems an insanely long time to be exposing film to light, and it seems even longer looking at the stopwatch on my phone!

I should trust it though. This was the first time using the Zero 2000 ‘in anger’ so I will get used to it in future.

A cemetery is a natural place for pinhole photography, if perhaps a little cliched. Most of these images need to be clicked on (to enlarge) to do them justice.

This double exposures (above and in the top photo) were intentional I’m happy to say.

Something that is probably obvious is the angle of view, ie low. This is because I can’t be arsed to carry a tripod so I only had a Manfrotto 210B/ME10 table-top tripod. It is a sturdy little beast with a ball head but it is only about 10cms high. Which is not high at all. Fine if there is a gravestone handy to rest it on, but otherwise it is on the ground. I hadn’t realised how wide the pinhole is, so I captured a lot of foreground in some of the shots. I’ll know better next time.

A couple of rolls of FP4 took over an hour to expose. I also had the Super Ikonta with me, so from the super-soft and dreamy we are jolted into the relatively sharp.

I took a shot of these NZ gravestones before with a reflected light meter and they were all blown out. This is a whole lot better. And very sad too.

The cemetery is full of angels, natch:

One of the big draws for me is the ramshackle nature of parts of the cemetery. Some corners look like my children’s bedrooms used to when they were younger, only on a monumental scale:

All souped in Rodinal for 16 minutes, FP4+ exposed at 100

How scary is that? I remember when I was 15 I lay in a coffin with the lid on for a dare. This feels the same way, ie not very good.

If I ‘fall asleep’ aged 58 we’ll know what happened. Wish I could have found a grave with a pre 28/08/2009 date, I’d be less superstitious about it.When we were kids we believed that if you trod on a grave you would die at the same age as the person buried there. I’m supposed to be a techie FFS, not somebody who crosses the road to avoid nuns (I don’t, but I do not like to see shoes on a table, that is really bad luck).

Nice pic of the Super Ikonta though.

And there’s the rub as they say. I was out in mufti testing my new pinhole camera and what better place to test out this environmentally friendly little box made from managed/reclaimed teak wood? I also had the Zeiss Ikon Super Ikonta with only three shots left on the roll so I wasn’t exactly prepared for photojournalism. Three shots, I wasn’t counting those left on the pinhole. So I had to make the best of them.

Climate Camper from Brighton

I think I did make the best of them, or at least one. I will go out on a limb and say that I think this is one of the best people photos I’ve ever taken (yeah, maybe the bar is low…). I like ambiguity and this has it in buckets. The expression on the woman’s face – the framed half-smile, her eyes slightly obscured by the fence, the fence itself, the tents, the walkie-talkie radio, they all make me want to ask questions. As I took the photo she said ‘…like those concentration camp photos?‘. Since I’ve been thinking a lot about Lee Miller’s 1944-45 war photos recently it must been subliminal because as soon as she said it, it was obvious.

This and the rest of the photos below come from the pinhole, all with 40-50 seconds exposure! You so don’t need a Nikon/Canon for photojournalism.

Now here is something tangential, the relevence of which will hopefully become clear. On Tuesday night West Ham and Millwall football supporters were fighting pitched-battles around Upton Park. For those unaware of English football tribalism there has never been very much love lost between these two clubs, it goes well beyond animosity (and the dumb-ass assertions by ill-informed journos that it is ‘South vs East London rivalry’. Millwall Football Club is in South-East London you fuckwits, South London is a different place. Just to confuse them more, Millwall the place is on the Isle of Dogs, East London).

The fixture had been scheduled for months so the Met police have had just a bit of notice to prepare for the inevitable.

Can we assume (a) they were not prepared for the obvious or (b) that they are quite happy for the two sets of supporters to beat the shit out of each other (thus saving them the trouble of wading in themselves to do the job) and subsequently pick them all off at leisure later from the CCTV (plus the covert filming and photography that they were up to as usual)? Or (c), The Tactical Support Group are a bunch of cowards and thugs who, when faced with a group of people that would and could fight back, hid away in their vans. If (a) they must be incompetent. If (b) it casts an interesting light on recent police actions at events such as the G20 where public safety was held up as one of the reasons for the para-military attacks on, among others, the climate campaigners. What about the public safety of the residents of Upton Park on Tuesday night? I think we can work that one out without spelling it out. Upton Park is not the City innit… Finally (c). Seems the most likely. There is of course an additional option (d) that suggests the ranks of the TSG are drawn from those two sets of football ‘supporters’, that they were there in civvies, keeping their hand in, and indulging in some vicious racism at the same time.

However, this is Blackheath where a lot of the people who work in The City live (they are among the few who can afford to live there), so in some perverse way somewhere it follows that the residents need to be protected, but in a new post G20 softly-softly cuddly way. However, it is still hard to avoid seeing the surveillance cameras on the 50 metre high gantry overlooking the camp which can presumably look up your arse as you are having a crap, or miss the ‘command centre’ around the corner. But most bizarre of all, the campers appear to have kettled themselves by bringing their own fences. I don’t think Wat Tyler did that…

But the bleeding obvious question is what exactly are they/we being protected against? Having been caught-up myself in a few ‘situations’ in the 1970s & 80s (including being kettled by police horses at a Man U/Liverpool match outside Old Trafford, before we had ever heard of the topical kettling, or wondering why the 159 bus failed to stop and pick me up during the 1981 Brixton riots which had gone off behind me) I know how frightening and intimidating large groups of fighting football supporters, rioters etc are. These are not the feelings I get at the climate camp which largely seems full of happy people. WTF is there to be frightened of?

The answer lies in the banner perhaps?

I will bet there are busloads of Tactical Support Group coppers waiting round the corner in case it ‘goes off’. Just waiting…

Bardsley Street, Deptford. Love the way the wall is reflected in the car. OMG the sun was shining!

Just a bit further down is a car wash and something something topical!

Perhaps this should be seen in the context of Microsoft’s latest racist fuck-up in Poland. And it isn’t the first time Microshaft have been mired in racism either… Quelle surprise. An ambiguous image, it even has a couple of mis-matched chairs.

To round off the day, a pukka 100% abandoned chair on Deptford Green:

I can’t get enough of them lol.

If you half close your eyes and imagine the block of flats is the letter ‘I’ it spells ‘DIE’.

Urban code-breakers R us… How freaky is that?

Just by the bridge on Creek Road to the left (facing towards Deptford) is derelict land that is usually secured and hard to access legally (we’ve been there before about three years ago to take photos). Once through the fence though it becomes really interesting.

RIP continues the theme

These ‘gravestones’ are enormous and I can’t for the life of me work out what they are there for. Possibly to stop something driving into Deptford Creek. This time they had been sprayed pink and looked pretty cool.

Some caution is needed. The whole area is littered with dirty syringes  and needles so it is very important not to get spiked accidentally. Likewise, there are plenty of lonely hidden spaces with no prying eyes overlooking them so it is best to keep alert. I didn’t want to meet the local users, though I probably know some of them. Having a pit-bull with you is an advantage hehe.

The walls are covered with outstanding grafitti that for once black and white film can’t do justice to. So I haven’t tried.

Roller

This one looks OK though:

Aroesolic Assasiin (sic)

Yet more crappy rabbit-hutch flats going up behind. These ones are ‘Inspired by Dance’ according to the developer’s boards surrounding the site. Yeah, right. It happens to being built next to Laban. Clutching at straws methinks. But it sounds better than ‘I’m a greedy rapacious land developer inspired by making as much money as possible for as little outlay as I can get away with in a recession and will dress it up anyway I can to make it sound good’.

Enuf already… back to reality.

Best of all are the broken chairs!

Elegant!

A bit closer

Legless

Stuffed

Extraordinary! The quest continues apace…

It was late(ish) afternoon and hot hot hot like an August day should be. The overhead sun really complemented this landscape, making it even more stark and clear. England were on their way to winning the Ashes, joy! And it was my birthday, which for once wasn’t spent wasted in Barney (our late relatively unlamented VW bus, RIP) in a remote £5.00 a night campsite <irony>all mod cons</irony> in the rain… Things are looking up!