I’m wallowing in an ‘expansive’ intrigued and optimistic mood tonight and this fortunately tends to be something of a default state. The general effects of ageing and its supposed creeping cynicism has no chance of a foothold here tha’ knows. Same goes for any form of pessimism or fatalism. It’s just that I wish I could ‘regroup’ some of the old acquaintances or ‘creative partners’. Or rather, I wish they were still up for world domination, or at least, a mode of thinking that transcended the minutiae of an increasingly ‘internalised’ worldview. That rather claustrophobic way of thought that now seems to be intrinsic to our relativistic society where the aspiration to knowledge for its own sake is becoming more and more exclusive and virtually redundant.
Recently Mr P sent a burn of a new offering from the band of young Turks collectively known as Bloc Party and I should point out from the outset that I am now finding it nigh on impossible to get into anything outside of the innovative jazz category. The BP album entitled ‘A Weekend in The City” has its moments, but for the most part I thought it was all hanging a little loose. There is a curious sense of the band losing interest in what they are doing whilst actually performing (recording). The result is a feeling of disengagement, an occasional promising opening dissolves into an over long non-descript meandering that seems unstructured and banal — well that’s how it struck me.
Tonight’s Music
The Cinematic Orchestra “Man With a Movie Camera”
This is something of a recent classic of the so-called Nu Jazz genre and gorgeously sumptuous it is too. Although TCO are a London based outfit their music (which blends large-scale acoustic arrangements with ‘electronics’ and state of the art production) has that certain moody internationalist flavour. It is a style that is more typical of the continental European and specifically Scandinavian outfits that have largely pioneered the most recent innovations in the Nu Jazz genre. Cinematic is a very apt term here as Man With a Movie Camera was supposedly inspired by Dziga Vertov’s classic and ground breaking avant-garde film of the same name. TCO make the kind of music that I most admire, it is intelligent, exceptionally well crafted, mature, sophisticated, innovative and visually inspiring too! — get me a roll of Super 8 immediately!!
As we have just broached the subject of “visuals” I thought it appropriate to drop in a foot note on the great Nikon debate which is spinning around in my head. I really need to get back to the joys of SLR-ing it, but as I am no longer so keen on the fuss of film; digital SLRs are taking precedence. It all boils down to a contest between the D50 and D80, and it would seem that both are excellent cameras. I was recently advised on the merits of the 50 and the possibility of saving the extra few hundred quid required for the 80 to go toward a half decent lens. Neither the 50 or 80 will correctly support the use of my ageing collection of manual Nikkors and Tamrons, or rather the metering features will not function with manual lenses. This opens up the intriguing prospect of using an external exposure meter or just resorting to educated guess work which I suppose would introduce an element of ‘old school’ craft to the business of digital photography.
Not such a huge amount to write tonight, though I suppose the new hosting of this website on a ‘proper domain’ does warrant a small mention. Ten years on free hosting with LineOne and then Tiscali. An unreasonably long, unmemorable and SEO unfriendly address has finally given way to the new trip and the. co.uk ification of Oliver Wood Photos.
I thought I would include the rather old (and subsequently processed) photo of the telegraph pole because at the time it seemed strangely apt, it is also in pride of place on my redirect pages with the old host. More importantly, this image recalls a previous photographic obsession with such things intending to convey a sense of inate technological intrigue, the tendril electronic nervous system of the information age — or something along those lines but I think I may be about to return to this one.
Welcome www.oliver-wood.co.uk
It’s a while since I last saw this chap guarding the gate at the Macclesfield end of the Riverside Way, a rather nice project managed ‘track’ that runs all the way from Macclesfield to Prestbury. The path runs parallel to the river Bolin ostensibly running through the flood plane, though there are divergent pathways that surmount higher ground and run parallel to the Manchester to Stoke railway. This two and-a-half mile track through woodland and fields was always my favourite cycle commuting route to and from work in Macclesfield—oh for the joys of simple pleasures.
Last nights ride home was a rare adjunct to the Manchester to Macc train commute, usually I go up the London Road but decided to take the Riverside for a change. The trip was not without incident, and of course I found myself almost completely bogged in mud (up to the chain at one point) about half way home. There were curious echoes of a daring ride back from Manchester to Heaton Chapel a few days earlier. When “for a change” I decided to take the Ashton Canal and Nelstrop route (after dark) arriving at Gill’s about an hour later than usual due to extreme flooding in part of the so called Highfield Park (or something). One of last year’s trips along this route resulted in my impromptu disruption of location filming for ‘Life on Mars’. The great beauty of the Macc run (in comparison) is that one is hardly likely to bump in to any one and if you do, they are nearly always quite benign, or at least appear to be sane—or should that be saner than me?
Any way I digress, the photography work here is hotting up and some decent digital kit is definitely within sight. I’m now becoming a little disappointed with the Sony W50 although neat and compact the image quality is quite crap in comparison to anything in the Nikon D80 league. I am noticing the flatness of my images more and more and in some circumstances the W50 can produce moiré distortions almost as bad as the toy-like Fuji Finpix. The images don’t seem to tolerate a great deal of post tweaking either. I really want to capture subjects in all their luminous subtly and to be able to convey the mood of lighting at least as well as a good 35mm Film camera with a decent lens. I like shape, form, and patterns but it would be nice to fire off a few images with some depth and warmth too, and images that are closer to human visual perception in chromatic and luminous qualities.
I’m continuing to ‘sell out’ to the ethos of work and the antithesis of ‘idling’ in that Hodgekinson-esque sense vis-à-vis his treatis on the antidote to modern living entitled ‘How To Be Idle’ and other such offerings. All of which became something of a practical philosophy of life for other local ‘rusticated’ friends and myself. However, in some ways I seem to be reaping the benefits of more routine chronological rhythms, not to mention a stable income. Well, there you go, not much in the way of ‘thoughts’ at the moment.
Total cycling mileage 7,357.7