That’s right, another saint’s day about which I know almost nothing, how shameful is that? Whilst working in the churchyard yesterday I was lucky enough to be able to accompany Rob up the church tower for the ritual St George’s cross hoisting. Rob and I decided to do a homage to English radicals — I made a little video which is just below.
The spring flora has been quite magnificent this year, or maybe I am just noticing it a little more as so many previous seasons have been marred by the dehumanising and soul-dulling situation of urban office confinement. Never a good situation if you really need to experience the seasons in all their glory!
This is a shot of the white blossom on a tree, which I planted myself about ten years ago, it is now a fine specimen and compliments its pink neighbour quite well. I decided to process this image in black and white as I thought it looked so much more ‘photogenic’, I like the almost zen-like tissue print quality of the tonality in this image which has been processed for infra red. I must admit to a general gravitation toward black and white treatments on everything now. After all BW is a traditional photographic quality, sometimes I find the colour in digital images to be a little too intense and unnatural regardless of camera colour space settings though the images from my D80 yield exceptional quality in black and white.
It’s another very short entry today, very little to discuss just now the weather has turned bleak and wet again so that is limiting various outdoor operations at the mo.
Again the highlight of the week has been another recording session with Rob, sorry “Gerald Westmoreland” Jazz Critic :) This time we did a few bits and pieces about the village and other things but the main purpose of Wednesday evenings session was for Mr Westmoreland to have a final ‘practice’ before his appearance on the ‘Roundabout’ show on Bollington’s Canalside Radio at 10pm.
Rob, AKA Gerald Westmoreland Jazz Critic. by Oliver Wood
Here you can hear him discussing Miles Davis “Kind of Blue” in my ‘studio’ with a short clip of the Roundabout show at the end, all very good stuff.
I’m in something of a local interest mode at the moment and planning quite a big revamp of the Prestbury pages on my site. The idea is to incorporate much more photography along with my videos and sound recordings.
The highlight of the week has been a few recording sessions in my own ‘studio’ with my friend Rob. He is about to present a Jazz show on Bollington’s local community radio station Canalside FM. The show will be dedicated to one of his favourite albums namely Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue”. In fact, we both share a love of this classic and it was probably the first real Jazz LP that I owned. I have an idea to see if we could record other shows here, maybe one dedicated to Joe Henderson’s 70s mile-post LP “Power to The People” as a follow on and then package the whole thing as an MP3 for Canalside FM, just an idea.
We had a lot of fun experimenting with various voices but decided in the end that Rob’s own natural voice was the best option. Back in 1999 I made a recording of Rob in the churchyard tool shed or Coach house where he is discussing various thoughts on life, memories of travelling adventures and a youthful life in the merchant navy etc. Rob wanted to do a follow on from the 1999 session where he was discussing an erstwhile ambition to emigrate to New Zealand. Having since revisited the country with some German friends Rob recounted the experience in typically charismatic style.
It’s another beautiful day and I should be out with my camera or at least getting on with a number of well overdue household repairs!
