Push chair

Coke

Only just got round to developing them. Took a risk with the Tri-X and threw it in with the FP4+ and stand developed it for 3 hrs at 1+200 in Rodinal. It shouldn’t have worked, but I like it.

Roads to nowhere…

Signs of the times…

Olympic village

Triumphal arch

These were all taken on a sunny NOT St Georges Day, the one The Mayor of London got so badly wrong (this year it falls on Easter weekend so it gets shunted to May 2nd). Boris is a fuckwit.

Shortly afterwards, the sun was followed by an apocalyptic electrical storm. Kind of appropriate really.

Olympic trickledown anyone?

Give them a bone

I didn’t know whether to photograph this skipper. It was in the back of an abandoned lorry trailer. But obviously I did… intrusive or not.

Trailer skipper

However, karma came back round. I bolloxed up spooling this roll of film and had to do some significant ‘recovery’ to get this image.

Just round the corner is (I assume) the source of all the broken bottles and rubbish that litters this area.

Audio Rehab (Serenity Saturday?)

Needless to say, I’m not on the guest list.

Lets leave it with this

Grim…

My feelings too

I haven’t walked The Dog along the Thames Path around the peninsular for a while. Mainly because it hasn’t been possible because of the barriers. I hesitate to say it is ‘open’, but it is walkable. Just fenced.

Fenced

Lots of what made this area of Greenwich so unique is disappearing fast. Currently there are vast empty rubble-filled spaces left after the recent destruction/deconstruction, presumably to be filled with the banal dormitories that are covering Greenwich and Lewisham like some malignant growth. Much of the peninsular remains inaccessible.

Security

Or behind a gate

Space (empty) is not at a premium though

I even found an abandoned chair or two behind bars.

But enough of this negativity. There are still lots of good things to photograph along the path. Even if I have photographed them before… But there was a reason dear reader, just bear with me on the ramble

Boats, yay

The beach obviously changes all the time

WTF?

Westminster life saver

I was itching to use some film again and the day was gloriously sunny, just asking for FP4+ at EI100. Should have made it EI80 thinking about it. I also wanted to try a super lazy stand development with Rodinal, 1+200 for 3hrs with 1 minute initial agitation and a mere 5s gentle inversion at 90 mins. How cool is that? I also mixed in a roll of Tri-X. I’m pleased with the results so thanks for the suggestion in the comments.

Less pleased I screwed up one roll of film spooling cack-handedly, out of practice.

We’ll end where we began because, well… what he said

Coming up against the Thames path barrier the other day really pissed me off. I can’t take photos of this view again because this part of the path is still blocked off.

This photo was from an early part of my year of film & film developing, much of it spent walking along the path. I love the recursion of the verticals; the lamp posts, the chimneys and the fence posts. Even (well, especially, after all, this is what it is all about) the grain which enhances the mistiness of the late afternoon…

…but I want to do it again, with medium format film since I now have a much clearer visualisation of what I want, and enough knowledge of film dev to know how I want to process it to get what I want. This photo was part of a sketchbook of ideas and projects. I can’t re-take it though, because like much of Greenwich, it is inaccessible. I’m not even sure this particular view will ever be available again.

Fuck it. I hated being a neophyte but even more I hate being thwarted when I’m no longer a neophyte.

For some reason I find this image of a discarded pair of gloves lying on the concrete slipway slightly disturbing.

They are more uneasy in a larger photo, but here we are stuck with a web image.

And on the danger meme

Perversely, the notice on this box makes just makes me want to open it… Lucky it is padlocked.

I found a plastic fedora down by the river. Malcolm Allison’s ghost? I like the ‘painted’ background effect of the Summicron. Bit buggered with the jpg compression but looks great on the original.



It was quite windy and got blown about because it was so light. So I thought I’d just photograph it where it landed

One problem was that it didn’t stay still, resulting in motion blur

Location, location, location. Canary Wharf on one side and on the other, The O2 (Dome).

RIP, hat…

I can feel a theme developing (hats passim). I need one, been feeling a bit uninspired lately.

This doesn’t help

Six weeks was the original estimate for the closure of the Thames path – about six months ago. I’m glad to see that people appear to have been venting their anger on the barrier.

I’m in Brighton. With Kate. I had a little Ricoh GR1v, not expecting much from the film (fairly sure it was FP4+).

Since then the negs have been destroyed or lost. All I have left is some crappy jpegs from a scanner.

Summer 2003 was hot. We slept outside in a yard in Kennington.

38 degrees C. Music from house parties all around us.

Possibly the last of the hot summers in the UK lol

None of these photos are *correct* (like so many of mine are not) but they mean more to me than almost all of the other photos on this site. It is my emotional response that is important.

Perhaps that is why I like William Eggleston so much

It has a reputation for producing excellent bokeh. Certainly some of these backgrounds are interesting. I’ve done very little post-processing

Canary Wharf

Some views of the bankers across the river

Thames Path

Mainly down by the breakers

These were taken at shutter speeds of 1/60 and below, most at 1/30. I don’t think I could handhold an SLR with a fast 90 lens successfully/consistently at 1/30

Slightly disturbing, if a little over-dramatised. Loving the little guy to the right