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
