Oliver Wood Photography

Feeling a bit glum this evening as my situation is now becoming something of a worry. Still, everything passes and all things improve as a matter of the natural course of life, or so I have found! It’s just that this period of immobility is tending to linger rather too long and I am concerned about ‘issues’ of age and other things!

On a lighter note, I have been helping Mr N to cut the grass in the churchyard today which is always an enjoyable get away. We also went up into the tower to re-set the church clock just as a team of ringers started up! The sound in the bell room was defining but standing just a few feet below the very large bells as they swung through 270 degrees at very high velocity was quite a scary experience. I’m sure I could feel the whole tower shaking with all of that mass in motion!

The weather has turned a bit dull but it is a pleasant spring-like dullness, fresh and scented air at a very comfortable temperature, ideal cycling conditions. Last weekend I rode up to Timperley to see Brother and SIL, always a most enjoyable adventure and my first proper long ride of the year. Toby and I ended up riding all over Hale and then mooching around the fields at the bottom of Shay Lane / Ash Lane were we used to play as kids and I just wish I had a camera with me then.

Photographic activities are slowly moving along and I have an idea to do some more B&W of the locality, just waiting for the right sky at the right time of day with the sun in the right position for desired effects on some of my planned shots! I feel a strange dual pull to both comply with more traditional forms of photographic reportage but also to bend the rules and try to find or develop my own unique style and then stick with that. Many have defined my approach as ‘multi genre’ that means that I don’t have any readily definable style but instead just happen to evoke other styles by accident when the mood, subject and camera settings take me! Still I tend to cite Brandt, White and occasionally Ansel Adams and Imogen Cunningham as inspirational sources. I think these old school art photographers really did set out the fundamental agenda for the creative photographer and there are few I can think of since that have really added to the kind of approach that most interests me. One, which puts a great deal of emphasis on subject matter transcended by technique. I only wish I had gear that was capable of f64 Group levels of finesse!

Total Mileage: 10,098

St Peters Churchyard 16th March 09

Again we write with an almost empty head but it is necessary to make the obligatory seasonal entry. Things are still pretty much the same for yours truly and as previously mentioned there is a sense of a state of becalmed relaxation, which is very pleasant. Of course it will not, cannot last, as is always the case.

Spring has arrived in Prestbury and there is much joyful colour all around. Monday was exceptionally pleasant sunny, warm and still, just as springtime should be. Now of course this pleasant stillness and clearness of sky is just a seasonal lull, a glimps of a mini proto-summer before the depressing slide into sick climate syndrome and the grey, wet, flooded out reality of real summer months.

I spent much of the afternoon helping Rob to clear up around Ford House in preparation for a sale. Working out doors in the sunshine with Mr N talking cinema, jazz and philosophy is the closest I can get to a sense spiritual fulfilment in Prestbury. It is such a pity that the village has lost the opportunity for a proper community centre in Ford House, a proper ‘drop in’ facility with IT and all sorts of other free ‘community’ share-ins would have been quite nice really. Prestbury needs at least one institution based on socialist principals! I suspect that it is destined to become yet another highly expensive private property though.

Music of The Moment.

It’s music of the moment time, but this time it is a desire for something exceptionally rare that is unavailable as any kind of download.

Joyce & Nava Vasconselos Visions of Dawn

Again Mr Giles Peterson has introduced me to another rare gem of an album. Visions of Dawn was a collaborative effort between Joyce and Nava Vasconselos two significant artists in the 70s Latin ‘Western’ cross over mix-up – apparently. And of course it has attracted a lot of attention as part of my ongoing discovery of progressive 70s Latin Jazz, Latin Soul and Folk Jazz. So far I have only heard the song Chegada (last track on the album) but it was impressively atmospheric in that narcotic inspired way that is essential in all such matters. Lots of reverberating vocals, spatial guitar and distinctive and refreshingly unusual harmonies. I just love these chronologically retrogressive discovery adventures.

Really very little to say tonight, I have re-grown a beard — yet again — and may be clean shaven by the time this goes to press, I reckon people must be starting to think I have some sort of schizophrenic personality disorder with all of these constant appearance changes.

I’m really stuck in a black and white mode at the moment and doing almost nothing in colour. There are a lot more of my self portraits on flickr of course.

Right now I feel strangely detached from everything, nothing is having any effect on me at the moment and life feels strangely, unreasonably, comfortable and easy, Well at least on that more mundane material level of simply existing if you know what I mean.

As usual I’m listing to Giles Peterson’s recent show and it is a good’un tonight. Eclectic as ever, but we have a rather satisfying cross section of Latin and Euro jazz. I mean we have just gone from Michel Legrand to Stereolab and then some wonderfully obscure 1976 collaboration between Joyce & Nava Vasconselos on the always interesting ‘far Out’ label. I’m getting quite fixated with the contemporary Latin Jazz and soul thing at the moment.

The weather has been slightly more unsettled today with a little intermittent drizzle. Lighting conditions will still not permit me to undertake a few local photo experiments, which I have in mind; but things are bound to change soon.

Heading out of Bollington and deep into the night.

Last night I managed to do a full circuit of the Bollipot Loop without mishap — (mental note to self) must return Jane’s light! This time I had the good sense to take one of my cameras, actually a bit of a cop-out as I decided to take the little Sony w50 — which is still rather surprisingly good and allows a lot of creative latitude — no pun intended mind! Generally, it is not quite up to ultra low light exposures as the slowest shutter speed is about 2 seconds but it did allow me to capture some interesting deliberately shaky shots of lit objects and also carry out a little “light painting” with my bike lights. A kind of luminous abstract homage to the Bollipot Loop I think.

I seem to become ever more taken with Bollington every time I visit the place, the cosy sense of community, a certain down to earthiness and the general aesthetic of the architecture, which is both typically rugged and at the same time quirky and whimsical. Bollington is full of intriguing little details. The shear variety of cottage door designs and also the way that people decorate the stone lintels and a door surround is a very charming feature. Bollington does have some semblance of an active cultural life, which is contemporary and genuinely artistic.

Night Ride

light painting with LED bike lights on drystone wall Bollington.

Next I need to do the much more challenging trip up to Bakerstonedale and Charles Head where wind formed Scots pines and gorse bushes line the hilly high altitude roadsides. A landscape which can at times appear very surreal and cries out for my black and white treatment.

Since Farrow & Ball set up shop in Wilmslow I have noticed a steady return to more traditional paint colours and finishes on a lot of the local buildings. Prestbury is starting to look a little more colourful again with personalised but tastefully traditional paint applications on New Road instead of the universally applied and rather drab black and white timber work. I have noticed quite a lot of transformative activity in and around the village since I have been enjoying the luxury of extended free time, job in-betweening or whatever euphemism is currently in vogue for the inevitable down side of capitalist labour exploitation. The large swath of land behind Ford House (the village allotments during the war apparently) is currently being landscaped, no doubt for private use. This patch would make an excellent communal village green but I have an awful feeling that it is either going to get built on or turned into a car park — eventually. The old vicarage is all being done up and the charming features of Spencer Brook close to the start of the Vicarage drive way have all been enhanced and cleared of vegetation — or something? I can’t ever remember the stream feature down there but this may be because it was so overgrown.

Friday was another moderately eventful day for yours truly. This was my first active visit to the new dentist in Macclesfield, a state of the art practice if ever there was one that seems to be manned by a team of Asian dentists and all with doctorates so I assume I am in good hands. Unfortunately, I did have to have another tooth extracted. This time it was one quite near the front (adjacent to my right canine or eye-tooth) but fortunately, it has not had an adverse effect on my speech and I was more worried about that than anything else at the time. Now of course I have a rather fetchingly roguish gap to the far right (your left) of my smile, the tooth deficiency equivalent of a facial scar no less — how cool! I seem to remember that Tony Wilson had all of the teeth on his left upper jaw missing and it didn’t effect him adversely. I’m glad that it has gone though, my mouth now feels at lot more healthy and I am looking forward to some cosmetic treatment on my remaining good teeth — of which there are still quite a few I hasten to add.

The wait in the dentist’s surgery was probably the most painful thing of all in truth, as they had GMTV on the large LCD TV that was difficult to avoid. A pre-valentines day schmaltz fest for simpletons is probably the only way to describe GMTVs theme for the 13th. God, to think if the Daily Mail lobby got their way all of British media would resemble GMTV! I’m not so sure about Valentines Day this year, it has temporally joined the ranks of those pointless and annoying commercial festivals that I despise such as Halloween.

If Halloween is the commercial celebration of the kind of unscientific naffnes that only makes sense to histrionics with learning difficulties and gives ill mannered kids an excuse to throw eggs at their neighbours front doors. Then Valentines Day is an aid memoir for disingenuous lovers, a green light for creeps and another Christmas for insecure self-centred adoration seekers. Valentines Day actually causes more strife in relationships than it solves apparently and this day sees the largest number of break ups and bust ups than any other day in the year. Some people take this crap far too seriously — bar humbug!

Sometimes I feel that capitalism would not balk at the idea of mapping every event, feeling, and motive in our lives in terms of some stupid ‘day’ for the purchase of thematic trash. Is this all part of the consumer moron conspiracy to turn us into unthinking homogenised fashion victims that need to ‘purchase’ every aspect of our being and can only express self identity and the finer feelings through consumption of product and the giving of ‘gifts’?

On a lighter note, I went for a little local explore and decided to take myself off across a field that leads from London Rd over toward the railway. I have never been down there before, I always thought it was private land but there is indeed a foot path which leads up to a rather large over-bridge crossing the railway. It’s is quite an interesting vantage point and I intend to try a few photos around there soon. Both of the very old ‘pebble concrete’ crossing styles are still in place. These enabled walkers to surmount the old railway fence but freely walking across the main line to London (on a 100MPH stretch) is not advised so they had to build this very elaborate over bridge in the middle of empty fields to satisfy the foot path bylaws. Nobody ever uses it of course.

prestbury fields
Heading Up Top © Oliver Wood 2008

Its been very cold and sharp of late, quite pleasant in some ways as the air is clear and the quality of light is very conducive to landscape photography, more on that in a moment. I do like the winter months to be more or less ‘seasonally correct’. Of course, our skewed climate now means that we tend to expect the winter months to be a persistently gray damp and humid mess much like the sadly altered northern summers, with only an occasional and highly disruptive storm to break the monotony!

The current economic climate appears to be going from bad to worse with a frightening number of job losses in Macclesfield. I am currently ‘between jobs’ but as always being equipped with an anti bourgeois situationist out-look on life enables me to adapt to the circumstances very well. A disconnection from mindless ‘affluensa’ gives one a positive psychological advantage in times such as these. There is never the less, a curious sense of doom and foreboding, a feeling that somehow the world as a whole is about to become very much more unstable. I wish there were leaders that had the foresight to invent and establish an alternative mode for the capitalist world. Some form of econometrics that will be more appropriate to our future world of recycled product, environmental constraint and limited (or non-existent) natural material resources, some form of mutual cooperativisation is required I think?

On a lighter note, all this new found free time has enabled me to spend more time out and about with my camera and to take advantage of fleeting moments of sublimity which would otherwise have been missed. I am exploring the possibilities of black and white landscape once again with a particular interest in the effects of infra red photography and thus far without the use of any filtering. Next I want to try a 25A red filter on my Sig 10-20mm lens and then see if this has any marked effect on the tone mapping in IR. Apparently the IR effect is much more realistic in digital processing if one uses a red or IR filter on the camera.

I’m trying to create images that are fresh and not cliched or derivative in some way, though I have explored classic angles and tonal qualities too. The idea is to produce a collection of images, which have my signature compositional and subject style but which also allude to classic renderings. It is quite a while now since I last engaged with my local rural landscape in a photographic sense. This kind of setting can yield just as many opportunities for original creative imagery as any urban environment. It is just a case of re sensitizing oneself to the qualities of light and finding abstraction in the contours of the landscape and compositional angles and always being alert to those rare interactions of light and shape. I’m always open to this kind of setting by virtue of the fact that I do just find it to be more inspiring than any other, I think it is a particular connection with nature and the firmament that gives a natural space that extra edge. As with any form of creative expression the best work is always produced when the artist has a certain emotional connection with the subject. It is all about capturing those feelings and that special fleeting (and probably highly personal) sense of time and place.

One of the hardest concepts to embrace in landscape photography is minimalism. Yet there is a very inspiring group on flickr called (surprisingly enough) ‘Rural Minimalism’. I’m still trying to engage with this very concept in my own rural photography and it is not by any means easy!

Giles Peterson in the background as usual, it’s a good jazzy show this week (last week) with a ‘super rare jazz mix’ coming up, more Brownswood goodness. Right now we have Mama! Milk from Japan and a very curious slant on cinematic Euro jazz – wonderful stuff.

Total mileage 9,666.6 oh err!

The great Nikon debate here at Oliver Wood photos has at last found a resolution in the form of the fabulous D80. I’m very impressed with this camera and although not quite as robust as some of the more top line digital SLRs it is never the less a very nice piece of kit.

I got a Nikon DX 18 – 70mm lens with this camera, another fine piece of gear, all of the hand rings have that unmistakable Nikon feel, as if they are gliding on oiled silk and the auto focus servo is virtually silent. I was quite impressed by just how fast the servo focus system works – it is almost instantaneous. The camera has many very useful features as well as some that I will probably never use such as multiple exposure. As with all pro digital SLRs it can accurately replicate a wide range of ‘film effects’ including colour filter enhanced contrast in black and white. Now I’m looking for opportunities to test out the ‘red filter’ mode and go a bit Bill Brant – ish with my B&W— again! The D80 has a very ingenious feature that lets you select focus areas within the frame, literally steering the focal point around the frame with the positioning control. With this feature you can bias focus to subjects that may be outside of the central area leaving the rest of the frame in soft focus. Another handy feature is a proper ‘scientific’ approach to white balancing that lets you specify the reference colour temp in Kelvin. I really do like this as most cameras offering preset WB still appear to produce incorrect chromasticty in incandescent lighting but I suppose this is just one of my strange ‘obsessive concerns’. Although the D80 is promoted as an ‘intuitive’ camera there is a heck of a lot to learn and operation requires a fair amount of learning. Many of the controls have ‘soft features’ according to program settings though I found that operation of the camera does become almost automatic after a day or two of experimentation. All important parameters are clearly displayed on an illuminated OLED sub screen within the eyepiece viewfinder. It seems to be expected that most users will prefer this mode of viewing as I have not yet found a way to make the very large rear TFT monitor display a through the lens view.

The menus are really nice and clear, though there are a lot of them! The rear screen resolution is superb and it is also very bright with good contrast. Another handy feature is a setting which lets you trim down these menus so the camera will only display the features you need in the ‘my settings’ mode. It is worth getting to know the whole range of menus though as much of the really interesting and innovative stuff is quite deeply buried in sub menus.

The only gripe I have thus far is a very minor concern with the stiffness of the front and rear command wheels, they are rather difficult to turn and after a short session you can end up with a very tired hand. Though they do move in a solidly incremented way rather than continuous rotation. Generally it is quite a fab camera. All I need now is some time and inspiration to go out and use it as intensively as possible.