Cardiff - 26th September 2009

I like travelling by rail and while cars and even buses have their own appeal there is still something to be said for a good train journey.

I guess I can understand why people want to read on trains, I have done so on many an occasion when I am on a route I frequently travel. But today when I am travelling into new and unknown pastures it seems needless to bring anything more for the journey than my Ipod. I wanted to use the opportunity to soak up where I was going and even now as I draft parts of this entry on the train, I am glancing up more at the passing scenery than I am writing. Soon enough I will put paper down and watch the landscape roll by.

All around me adults are sleeping (it is 8:30am on a Saturday morning and I have been up since 6!) or are reading newspapers. Most are also hidden in plain sight by a pair of headphones much like I am. Only the small child sitting in front of me is taking in the joy of a journey and a landscape never seen before and not seen for long. I find this kind of sad yet endemic of life today. People are so intent to get to where they are going that they forget to just enjoy the journey. I'm not saying I am not also prone to this but I guess this journey today brought that little snippet of thought to the surface.

The only thing that would make it better would be for the train to have a steam engine.


As to Cardiff itself, well the weather took a while to improve. After starting out beautiful and sunny the clouds rolled in while in the Swindon area and stayed until midday in Cardiff. I was somewhat upset to see the bright morning skies disappear under cloud and the wide flat fields and gently rolling hills of western England become that little bit murky. It was defiantly autumnal weather. I had been 'promised' excellent sunshine and I was keen to steal a last bright and sunny day before winter set in. While the morning was less than perfect It did improve markedly. In fact as soon as the sun came out it became very hot, almost unseasonable.


Cardiff struck me as very quiet for a Saturday, I soon found out that that was due to two things. The cheese festival in the Castle and the newly opened 'largest John Lewis store in Wales' absorbing the majority of the population. Now while I had first hand experience of the packed John Lewis store (I went in there to look for a loose leaf tea strainer device and yes it really really was a mistake) seeing the quantity of people in the cheese festival was coincidental.


After walking around Cardiff and the bay all day I had got most of the photographs that I wanted including images of the Castle, Millennium Stadium and an unrelated to my practice yet amusing shot of the closed up entrance to 'Torchwood's Hub' by about 4pm. While wandering through the city centre in the last of the decent light I came across a church that I had tried to get a photograph of earlier. While trying again (with much better light this time) I spotted people on the tower top. I decide to investigate further and found for the small donation of a pound I could also go up for as long as I liked. It was a long climb on very steep winding stairs and included an angry buzzing insect of some kind (I assumed it was a wasp but was paying more attention to my steps that whatever it was I had just disturbed) but I got some excellent views of Cardiff, including into the grounds of the Castle and of the sheer numbers of people milling around for cheese.


These days out are all about the exploration, the journey. Granted there are rules and ways in which the day can be made preferential but most of these you cannot control nor should you worry about trying to do so. The final product, the goal, is the collection of postcards and photographs from the day, but to get there you must enjoy the journey, let your day unfurl as it wants to, embrace the oddities, unusual occurrences and strange urgings you get to investigate places that may or may not end up being interesting and give you that one photo you want to make into a work of art.

Relish the meandering path.

Brill - 21st September 2009

Never Trust the weather forecast.

I mean it, never never trust the weather forecast!

Late last summer, while returning from Sheffield my father mentioned the existence of a windmill at Brill. I had no idea where Brill was, except that it must have been near the M40 and Chilterns as that was where we were passing. At the time I didn't really react but inwardly I was intrigued. I've not seen many windmills and certainly one so near to me would be worth the visit. I think the last time I'd come across a windmill was on a 10 year plus old family holiday in the Norfolk Broads. Personally I wasn't aware of any windmills near to me by a long stretch but then again I live in a valley which is generally not conducive to a frequent and decent breeze.

I was aware that for the distance I would be going and the things I would be photographing that I needed the day to be glorious sunshine. So I decided to keep an eye on the Met office forecast and only go when it was meant to be sunny, not sunny intervals mind you, full sunshine. From previous experience I knew that sunny intervals might not be often or even definite sunshine and I knew that I couldn't in this case tell the difference by just looking out of my window. Unfortunately the days passed and all the forecast sunny days turned to overcast as they approached or I was unavoidably busy.

Suddenly a few days before I ended up going I saw that the mid range forecast was saying that Thursday was going to be amazing glorious sunshine. This seemed to be good news but it was too many days away to know for sure. I had been cheated by the positive weather forecast before. But only a day or so later the forecast changed to have that very day good sunshine (for at least the morning) and that was enough for me. I wasn't busy and although I could have waited till Thursday I decided that I might as well go that day than wait for a day that may or may not just be as good.


Photographing the windmill was not exactly as I imagined. The landscape was amazing, high up on a hill in Buckinghamshire, but in the immediate vicinity was the most hummocky undulated ground I've ever seen. I understood why some think Brill was apparently Tolkien's inspiration for the village of Bree in Lord of the Rings. It looks like Hobbits would have a wonderful time there. Unfortunately the weather forecast that I so pinned my hopes on was not entirely accurate. It was sunny but it had that autumnal haze that obscures the sun and loses the intense shadows and highlights that are so desired. The fact of the matter is that the forecast just cannot be that specific.

Usually I wouldn't care, Summer is usually easy to predict, bright sunshine will be bright strong sunshine and you can deal with the occasional fleeting cloud. But the autumn and spring months are more changeable. The sun is weaker and less likely to burn off high cloud, you have to know each season intimately and even then I am not sure you can really tell. So while the little sunshine I got from up there was a little on the weak and watery side the nature of the colours I use will undoubtedly make the whole image more intense. The view was still amazing, it is very nice to get to high places once and a while and I can always go back when Summer is in full bloom.

Sheffield 19th August 2009 – The importance of sunlight

While the trip to Sheffield was for a purpose other than sightseeing. I did manage to make a little time for my favourite activity. Since this trip was date specific rather than weather I have the opportunity to talk about difficulties related to poor weather and poor lighting.

First of all Sheffield is a very pretty city with an excellent travel system. Trams, Trains and more buses than you could shake a stick at. A few of those buses were free and the trams were in my opinion well priced, £3 for an adult day ticket anywhere on the tram network. Plus for an industrial city it has obviously had a lot of money spent on it to make an attractive and unified city centre and a green city. The council obviously had an obsession with fountains, there are at least half a dozen in the Peace Gardens alone plus goodness knows how many more dotted around the city.

This proves to be useful when finding good postcard sights, fountains are an excellent draw to people especially in the summer. In fact after locating the Tourist Information Centre (a criminally small and poorly marked shop for the size of the city and the tourism potential in both the city and surrounding areas) and purchasing a selection of postcards I found that I had already taken one of the depicted shots of the Peace Garden fountain.

Unfortunately the sun refused to come out until I was just about to leave. I did get a few nice shots when the sun made an appearance but they obviously looked rushed and left no time for the random and unexpectedly brilliant shots that always come. While the shots I got while it was dull helped prepare me to get the same shots in the sunlight it was never the same and lost a lot of its spontaneity. As a result I have a few images that would make excellent postcards if not for the fact that the light quality is flat and dull. The sunlight is vital to the image, bright light and shadow and the intensity of colour are needed for interesting and vibrant location shots. Images that would encourage others to visit.


While I can fake the light quality with paint it is extremely hard and I would prefer not to do that. Especially as it makes matching the right new sky to the work very hard. Light makes an enormous difference and a sky that suited the dull colours may not at all suit bright ones. In addition some colours, especially buildings, change in unexpected ways and the way the shadows are cast can be almost impossible to add to an image. All you have is a 2 dimensional representation of a complex 3 dimensional scene, you can guarantee at least some of the shadows will look out of place. While I like out of place I do need a certain amount of reality to be retained in my images.