Travel
I'm lucky enough to travel a lot but I also aim to understand a place in some depth. So I like to find out about the local history, sociology, wildlife and local arts. I prepare for a trip by looking up photos of the famous sights, they're usually a good guide both about the local visual interest and also a warning of what has already been done or over-done.
I try to use the tools of modern photojournalism and photography to communicate how I feel about a place. You’ll see that I have used Portrait, Street, Interior, Historical, Abstract, Landscape, Historical, Wildlife, Phone-camera and Selfie genres at different times for specific effects.
Photos from a working visit to Caversham, the Berkshire “former village” where the Chilterns meet the valley of the River Thames at Reading.
Colourful but chilly near Caversham Bridge over the Thames with swans massing around one of the boathouses. There's been a bridge here since about 1168 AD. Higher up, vestiges of snowmen still on the ground at a part of the Ridgeway where drovers herded sheep above Hem Dean; these days Hemdean is full of red-brick houses and Cavesham is a commuter suburb, no longer a village.
Winter morning sunshine at Evesham, the country town on the banks of the river Avon (the same Avon that runs through Stratford). Evesham Abbey bell tower gleaming in the light, it's still hung with bells: we heard the peals when the campanologists were rehearsing the previous evening. Evesham abbey once housed some of the remains of Simon de Montford. His forces were routed in 1254 A.D. following the Battle of Lewes, both major battles of the Second Barons War.
Evesham abbey was ruined in the dissolution of the monasteries of the 16th century. A similar fate maybe awaits Wood Norton Hall, now vacated by the BBC (the technical faciliies remain on another part of the site).
More treasured is The Walker Hall, a classic timber-framed and jettied medieval building on one side of Evesham Market Square.
Here's my last postcard of photos from 2011: New Year’s Eve in Margate on the North Foreland in Kent. We travelled out from London on the 140mph rail service from London St Pancras.
Margate is home to the “Turner Contemporary - a dynamic visual arts organisation”; this power house of the arts is housed in a new building by David Chipperfield Architects; it is reminiscent of a trio of reactor halls at a nuclear power station.
As well as one of “The Kiss” from Auguste Rodin’s workshop (the sublime moment surrounded by what Kenny Everett might have called the Naffs of 2011), we saw the current exhibition “Nothing in the World But Youth”. Lots of interesting pieces, but the selection seemed more to reflect the life of youths destined for an art college lifestyle rather than youth in general. There were a number of significant gaps: music, mobile phone culture and sport, though stabbing and bullying/hazing were represented as well as teenage angst.
Margate beach faces northwest so the possibilities of dramatic sunsets and evening skyscapes remain much as they were in the days when J.M.W. Turner was in residence in Margate. The cafe in the gallery has a huge picture window which faces the sunsets, the cakes and coffee were fine but New Year's Eve 2011 sunset was not particularly special.
The thought I took away was that the green shoots of regeneration are still fragile: Margate is probably still an excellent place for a skinhead and scootering rally and rave at a seaside “party house”. Margate remains at the end of the line despite the injection of contemporary art, and the high-speed trains are most useful to get back to “The Smoke”, meaning London.
As it happens, we returned to Canterbury for a quiet and enjoyable New Year’s Eve party with friends.
A postcard of my photos from a trip north to south through Cumbria: Cumberland and Westmorland.
Pretty autumn mist over Ullswater as "The Lady of the Lake" cruises past Norfolk Island in to the sunshine - she is believed to be the oldest working passenger vessel in the world.
I found the mist on the south side of the Kirkstone Pass: maybe Kirkstone Pass a new definition of where "The South" begins, along with "The North" begins on the north side of Euston Road, London (or Aix-en-Provence if you live in Marseille).
I found a bit of colour in Kendal, the town of grey stone houses on the river Kent. And sea mist obscured the sands and mud flats of Morecombe Bay viewed through the windows of a platform at Grange-over-Sands railway station.
Cambridge by day and Cambridge by night - two postcards from a visit to Cambridge to return my late Father's academic gowns to his college. The familiar buildings of Magdalene and Kings College are now joined by impressive recent architecture of the Centre for Mathematical Sciences (CMS) and Robinson College.
As a respect to my late Father, I was honoured to be invited to Formal Dinner by candle-light at High Table in the early 16th century hall at Magdalene College; I stayed overnight as a guest of the college, thoughtfully accommodated in a set of rooms which my Father had had the use of as a Fellow. These precious experiences have helped me understand more fully my Father's academic life and work; the warm personal memories of the Fellows whom I was honoured to meet, confirmed the glowing tribute published in the college magazine.
Outside the college walls, celebrations were under way for the weekend of Hallowe'en and the changing of the clocks back to GMT. Undergraduates scurrying in ghostly costumes around the shadows of the city streets on their way to parties: “Play hard - study hard”, one hopes.
Tourists were on the streets again next morning but concentrating on the well-known buildings near the city centre. I was guided further afield, where there is much interesting new architecture to be discovered and appreciated.
On Parker's Piece I happened upon the ancient (sic) collegiate game of Frisbee Soccer: rather appropriately as it was Parker's Piece where the rules of Association Football were first defined.
