Runswick Bay

I usually shoot photographs with a digital single lens reflex (DSLR) camera with interchangeable lenses. I have at least three different camera bags with which to transport my ever growing collection of bits of glass and camera-person essentials. In theory I should never be in the position of 'having the wrong lens'. So why does that happen so often?

The main reason is that I don't like to be encumbered by a bag. Nor do I like to look like a photographer. So my preferred lens storage place is a coat pocket where it can mingle with the fluff, toffee papers and other detritus. It is not really a suitable environment for a £700 piece of equipment but who cares. My long grey raincoat is ideal, lovely deep pockets that will take not only two lenses but also the camera body, spare battery, cable release, a few humbugs, a piece of cake, whatever. But if I'm not wearing that coat, I can carry only one lens. Often I make the wrong choice, leaving home feeling like it will be a wide day and then finding that all the subjects that present themselves turn out to be narrow.(No, I don't understand what I'm talking about either).

Given that I can only carry two lenses using the coat method, what is the choice? Well I shoot very little with what could be called a standard lens, the one usually sold with a DSLR camera. Instead I have two favourites, a 12mm-24mm wide-angle zoom and a 55mm-200mm vibration reduction mid-range telephoto. In theory not having access to much of the standard range, which is about 18mm - 70mm, forces me to make images that are a touch outside the normal, however that is defined.

I'm not sure it works because I still photograph far too much that is merely ordinary and gets deleted. However the image above, taken a couple of days ago on the Yorkshire coast at Runswick Bay, is one for which I did have the right lens in my pocket. It was taken at the widest angle I can achieve and I got the coat wet in the process. It's used to that. I just like the overall compass that this lens gives me, with the breadth of the sky and the immediacy of the foreground.

And it's pretty.

Mist

Going through another quiet, urge-lacking spell hence the paucity of posting (but not, it would appear, of alliteration).

Still it's good to be able to find an image from close to home for a change. Jubilee Bridge is about a mile away, providing a shortcut from our village to the south side of the Vale. I've stopped there are numerous occasions when the light's been interesting. One morning a couple of weeks ago, after a good, hard frost and with a light mist glowing in the low sun, the world (and Pixie, bless her cotton socks) begged me to stop the car and give it a bit of a going over. As always I had the wrong lens on the camera but that was to no avail. Shoot me, shoot me, said the river.

So I did.

Remembrance

War Sonnet

Is it not war that drives us to despair
That we will never rise above the mire,
The grim and festering fields of fire,
The smoke, the noise, the shrieks that rend the air,
From men we've sent across the mud to dare
The foe to take their lives amongst the wire,
A ceaseless flow of death that will not tire
Until we have no more, or come to care?
Yet if we found the means to end this game
To fix this dreary picture in a frame,
To paint it as a scene of love and bliss
Instead of blood and hate, would we think this
A better way to live our lives, behave?

Or are the ways of conflict those we crave?

(I posted the above poem a few years ago. It seems appropriate to give it another airing today.)

Abroad

Just returned from another jaunt to foreign parts. A couple of images to be going on with - words later, if I think of some.

Working

You will be pleased to know, I’m sure, that the condition of the baked beans at my hotel has improved and they can now be described as ‘comfortable’; they are once more satisfyingly gloopy. Also someone has obviously been out gathering hash browns as they were present this morning in abundance. My early morning equilibrium has been restored.

You may have observed, if you are at all interested, that my days must be pretty uneventful if all I can find to comment on is my breakfast. Well, sad though it is to say, it is the highlight; from then on it’s a steady roll downhill before gently nudging up against the buffers of ‘reading in bed’.

Nevertheless my day is not all gloom and doom, although watching people play poker for hours on end is a fairly stringent punishment and unworthy of someone as well behaved as myself. As past readers may be aware, I’m usually lucky enough to be incarcerated with some jolly companions. On this occasion it’s Tracy and Sarah, and what I don’t know now about moisturiser, eyeliner and mascara is just not worth knowing. At some time soon I expect we’ll all traipse off into town to get our nails done.

Misty Morning

Yesterday morning, before starting work, I was finally able to succumb to the call of the autumn light. I headed up into the low hills near the hotel, found a farm gate, parked up, removed the camera from its comfy billet in my backpack and pointed it into the sun. I didn’t have long; just enough time to track a few sheep strolling back and fore in front of some misty trees. It was very satisfying.

As for the rest of the day, nothing happened.

This morning I bounded from my bed (and if you believe that you are sadly delusional), opened the curtains and it was dull. Result. I could breakfast in peace, without the nagging little voice in my head saying ‘Go on, get out there, you know you want to’. And so I did, the only disappointment being a shortage of hash browns, and baked beans with a higher than desirable sauce-to-solid ratio .

Then, because I had nothing better to do, I went to work, early.

A Sonnet & A Bit More

For a few years I’ve been playing around with poems where the theme is ‘light’. The following piece is one that’s been on the back burner for some time. Last night, while much of England watched a game of rugby on television, is suddenly worked itself up into a sonnet. And then added a bit of something on the end.

I’ve got the feeling there’s a touch of Shelley about it but since I’ve not really read any of his works, I can’t be sure. Perhaps he was also cheesed off by the country’s obsession with sport and paid me a visit.

But then, now I’ve re-read my opus below, perhaps not.

The Palace of Dim Light

Within this crumbling palace of dim light,
No sun-cast shadows break the plangent gloom,
No bright-lit dust motes dance in random flight,
Unseen as draughts sweep through the mighty room.
Grim, rough-hewn columns of enormous girth,
Spring up towards the bleak, bat-ridden vault,
Scarce seen above the floor of beaten earth,
Thrust beams of stone, that light so rarely sought.
But what would turn this edifice so dire,
Once more into a monument of fame?
The fizzing embers of a glowing fire?
A single candle, with a trembling flame?
Would these drive out the all-pervasive dark,
Bequeath the stones the longed-for vital spark?

It is too late
The ground awakes
And with indecent haste
Throws down the walls
Decants the beams
Into the ruptured space
No more a place of dancing dust
No more in need of candle flame
A centre of God-given right
No more the palace of dim light