Diversionary Tactics: Offsetting the Lockdown Blues (and Reds and Yellows)

At the moment it is complicated. For some months prior to the lockdown I have been pursuing some art therapy. Painting. To try and address an issue that arose from a life-changing episode that occurred last summer and which is irrelevant here. It has been a great success, my mental health is slowly improving and it has breached a gap in my photography; I am currently in the planning stages for two big projects and am working on the material from a current project and which is scheduled to be exhibited in the UK in 2021. On top of this I am in the process of relocating back to my home town of Cleethorpes and have already shipped a lot of my resources back there.

The Covid-19 pandemic had another impact. I had booked flights in order to begin one of my projects, which was to compare a port in the UK with one in Europe that shares many similarities. I won’t divulge any more, suffice to say the flights were cancelled. Not only would it have been a start to some work, but also a chance to take a break. Never mind. So I find myself at home. Unable to go out and make photographs as I would like to, I decided to make some pictures with my not-so-great phone. As a further challenge I decided to make them in colour – a real diversion for me.

I started off by noticing little things I had previously not paid a lot of attention to: after all, my office wall is just a wall, the dining table and chairs are just that and anyway, who cares about the relationship between my feet and the front door? Yet in a – for want of a better word – meditative state, I gradually discovered another facet to the familiar world I lived in. And light was the catalyst.

The small garden, in which I sit to smoke, is full of potential too. Not that I have particularly done it justice, but that’s not the point (if, indeed, there is a point). It is high-walled, small. Claustrophobic, sometimes. Depending on the weather.

Since I first began making photographs back in the 1970s, family photographs have always been important to me and, interestingly, I haven’t done much of that recently. My daughter often comes with me on an exercise walk around the block. And she enjoys having her photograph taken.

The streets around me, usually insanely busy with traffic, are oddly quiet at the moment. As I have said elsewhere in this blog, my favourite time of the day is first light. When the streets are empty. But this is different. Just very strange.

And then there is the ‘selfie’ a modern art form in which you can realise yourself the way you want. I haven’t resorted to an app that puts cat’s whiskers on my face…

Ok, the confinement is slowly sapping away my motivation. I admit it. Soon it will be over and I will be hard-pressed to find some peace and quiet. And I will want some. Anyway, I’m going to the garden to smoke a cigarette and check out the shadows…..

Thanks for reading. The phone used is a lower range Vivo model. The selfie was made with my Olympus mirrorless camera….

1984 and all that: Scunthorpe Free Rock, part two…

Continuing my story of when we were treated to a day of free music, laid on by the town council, I thought I would take a ‘behind the scenes’ look. It wasn’t difficult to access the dressing room of local favourites, Harry the Spider’s Coming Out Party; a friendly bunch, with an image that was both wacky and plausible (they had a strong set of original music), they were happy to have their big day recorded.

Harry the Spider’s was the brainchild of Sean Ingoldsby and his brother, Garry. Inspired by Sean’s idea of stories aimed at primary school children (or so I believe), the songs followed Harry and his friend, Elvis Goldfish through a number of scenarios (Wild Elvis Goldfish and Flies For Tea are two numbers I recall). The set was filled out with gothic parodies about Dracula and the like before finishing with a storming version of an old classic rewriiten as Ghost Spiders in the Sky.

Kevin ‘Finch’ Brown, who was also performing that day, pops in to say hello

I cannot find the pictures I made of the band on stage, so here is one that I shot on the day, downloaded from my facebook page, so apologies for the quality:

‘His name was Elvis Goldfish, Wild Elvis was his name…’

I remember that the band went down pretty well. A few more crowd shots to finish and thanks for visiting.

For the tech-minded, the camera I used was an Olympus OM1 with various Zuiko lenses. Film stock was Kodak Tri-X Pan.

1984 and all that: Scunthorpe Free Rock… part one

One day in May, 1984: I think it was a bank holiday. The inaugural ‘Scunthorpe Free Rock’ music festival took place at the Ashby Ville municipal playing fields, just beyond the steelworks and at the bottom of the interestingly named Mortal Ash Hill, the main eastern approach to this Lincolnshire town. The free concert was provided by the local council and was to run annually for a time; the last free rock concert took place in 1987. That last event was dogged by bad weather: not so, this one. It was a grand day out.

I don’t know exact numbers but it seemed to be a great turnout; most where regulars of the ‘alternative nights’ at the legendary Baths Hall but the event attracted a fair sampling of the rest of the local population.

Topping the bill that day were The March Violets, a ‘goth’ outfit from Leeds. I remember that the lead vocalist, Cleo Murray, was the object of desire for my pal Charlie. I often wonder about Charlie; I know nothing much about him except that at some time he introduced me to the music of Christian Death, but that’s another story.

Also on the bill that day were The Geisha Girls – who had some success with a single called ‘I’m a Teapot’ (check it out on YouTube) – and local heroes Harry the Spider’s Coming Out Party (they got their name from a Cadbury’s ad). The following year I joined the band as guitarist, but I digress.

The event was compered by deejay and local legend Steve Bird who maintained the tempo during breaks between acts with selections from his Baths Hall playlist.

I’ll end part one of this blog with a couple of crowd shots. In part two, I’ll be going behind the scenes and will include some more crowd shots. Later…..

For the tech-minded, the camera I used was an Olympus OM1, along with a variety of Zuiko lenses. Film stick was Kodak Tri-X Pan.

Why I Like My First Generation OMD

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The photograph above provides a clue as to why, when switching from film to digital (I put that move off for as long as I could), I chose to stay with Olympus. The OMD EM5 had the same feel as the OM1 I had been using when out and about in the many streets, byways and highways I have been walking for nearly 40 years.

1984, Scunthorpe (UK) Olympus OM1 c/w Zuiko 135mm lens

I studied photography at Trent Polytechnic in Nottingham (UK), graduating in the late 1970s. During the early 1980s I tried to make a go of it, but never managed to become a professional photographer; since then I have continued to do project based work for myself and have a visual diary of my life so far which is hugely satisfying.

2018: Talat Noi, Bangkok, Olympus OMD EM5 c/w Zuiko Digital 12-40mm

I bought my first OM1 in 1980 along with a Zuiko standard lens. I added to my lens collection over the next few years and bought another body too, I still have all the gear and it all still works fine. The photograph below shows everything I had possessed up until my change to digital.

The great thing is that, using an adapter, I can use my old lenses on my digital camera. The focal length alters, of course, but it gives me options. Or gave me; to cut a long story short, my shutter failed whilst trying out my old 200mm lens and I can’t get it into my head that this was probably nothing to do with the lens. This happened a couple of years ago and I’ve never used the adapter since. My bad. I was only a week or so without a camera, Olympus Thailand did a great job in replacing the shutter and the repair was way, way cheaper than having to shell out for a new body, which I couldn’t afford to do anyway. This episode didn’t put me off Olympus cameras and mine has worked fine since then.

1984, Scunthorpe (UK) Olympus OM1 c/w Zuiko 200mm lens

I haven’t been able to get out of my old habit of occasionally looking through the viewfinder for quite a time, waiting for things to come together; this didn’t matter in the old days but can be a problem with the digital video display, due to battery drain. Easily remedied by carrying a fully charged spare battery, just in case. Luckily I don’t make that many photographs – almost as if it was still 1980 and I was down to my last roll of tri-x – and this economy means I can continue to work as I always have.

2015: Hualamphong, Bangkok. Olympus OMD EM5 c/w Zuiko 17mm lens

Though I mainly use my short zoom I did buy a Zuiko digital 17mm lens. This is a very small lens and, with an aperture of f1.8, it’s pretty fast. Coupled with the compact size of the OMD, it is perfect for those times when I don’t want to be too visibly a photographer; I’ve never used a camera bag either, much for the same reasons. And I tend to dress down, but I digress. So there you go; I’ve looked at other cameras, including the second and third generation OMDs, but have yet to be tempted. It may be that the things are too expensive and I can’t afford to change – or it may be that I am quite happy with what I’ve got.