Okay, here’s how I go about this blog writing business; I’m sitting here looking through this weeks photographs. There’s a large glass of Rioja on my desk, In the background I have some music playing; Led Zeppelin have just finished “The Rain Song” and we’ve moved on to Pink Floyd, “Shine on you Crazy Diamond”. With that in mind a sort random title for this blogpost and my opening image has been plucked from this weeks images on the hard drive. Music has a huge effect when you’re looking at your photos, somehow it improves or adds something to them, gentle on the wine though, they might all appear to a lot better than they actually are!
Twice in one week, I know, who’d have thought it. I’m talking, of course, about my two trips out for some Street Photography! As it happens both places we’ve seen before, a short one to Bath for a refresher to get my eye in and the very next day further afield to Bournemouth. I’m going to keep this brief, more photos than words in this post.
In my last blog entry I was toying of the idea of standing in one place for an hour, I can tell you it’s been cold here and therefore that was completely out of the question. So on my first trip this week to Bath I decided to sit it out in the window of a coffee shop for a while and see what transpired. Well, essentially it’s just people walking by, but it was warm;
No, put the coffee down, I ‘d have to walk around the old haunts and see what was going on. In one of the shots in this next batch I can’t fathom out why this girl is wearing one of these surgical anti-pollution type masks and smoking a cigarette, makes no sense!
Let’s move on to Bournemouth. I did a trip down there last summer and you can read about it here - Bournemouth . The weather turned positively Spring like, perfect in fact for a ride on the motorbike that’s been parked up for almost a month, time to blow off a little dust. A determining factor whilst in Bournemouth was that it was Valentines Day, there was some consideration to that during the photographic process and I hope you’ll see that in some of the images. Fortunately my wife shares the same thoughts as me concerning Valentines, it’s commercialised nonsense. I’m all for romance and so is Sam, but we simply don’t buy into all that declaration of love on one particular day, by no means do I want to massacre (see what I did there!) it for others. I simply feel that it puts pressure on those who are alone and perhaps those who are with someone, but would prefer to be alone!
Alec Soth once said “ I fell in love with photography because it was an excuse to wander around alone”. I know where he’s coming from and it’s the only way to photograph, but I’m always delighted to come back home to my family.
I’ve never thought of Bournemouth as some kind of surfers paradise and yet there were a lot of them this day. Surf was up, okay it wasn’t quite Hawaii 5-0, but even so;
and a few more;
The Beach Boys eat your heart out, forget California this is Dorset! You can possibly make out that I was on one of the two piers, Bournemouth and the much more photogenic Boscombe which I’ll show later. A few more from Bournemouth Pier, just stuff that caught my eye;
I came off the Pier and had a Stroll around the promenade and beachfront itself. You may remember in my previous blogpost from Bournemouth and the Project named Happyland a building which gave me the idea for the title. It never fails to disappoint, the contrast between Happyland and someone sat in front of it looking decidedly grumpy. Valentines Day was no exception with this ‘happy’ couple;
Sometimes you couldn’t make it up! I hope you can see what’s going on here, a comforting arm around him…’thanks for the overpriced roses, they were lovely, but I put them in that recycling bin and you’re still dumped by the way, general waste for you lover boy”. A misnomer, perhaps Un-Happyland would be more fitting! I was thinking of changing my music to Barry White, maybe Gordon Lightfoot ‘If you could read my mind’ would be more appropriate.
A few from around the promenade and then a quick visit a mile down the road to Boscombe. I’m still continuing with the Valentines vibe, couples, loneliness etc;
On to Boscombe then, I walked up to the Carpark to collect my bike and found myself taking a shot of some seagulls, how embarrassing….please don’t tell anyone, this is just between me and you;
I think the magic number for photography ‘three” was in my mind, I have no other excuse ;-)
You will have seen this pier at Boscombe before from the last Bournemouth blog and it also appears a few shots above with the couple strolling and the guy on his own. There were, not surprisingly, a few photographers around. A couple with tripods impatiently waiting for people to clear off, personally I see no point in taking a shot without people in it…obviously we need to put that seagull shot well behind us, just pretend it never happened. Besides I’ve already made my best effort on this pier during the last visit.
I like these piers, but I still wasn’t getting what I was after. There’s always those colourful beach huts, not much happening there to be fair and not many along the promenade, just the odd solitary figure;
Before leaving I went back to the pier, the last time during the summer I noticed two shelters at the entrance, I tried a few , but couldn’t get it right. The windows, light and shadows were ideal, so I attempted once again to get a photograph, I hung around for a while waiting for something;, a guy paced around, chatting on his phone;
One of those will do I suppose, or perhaps another visit is needed! What I know for sure is that it was a great day out, as always I enjoyed every second, life is sweet. On the way home a guy decided to overtake a tractor, going over double white lines (no overtaking in the UK) and on the brow of a hill (no overtaking anywhere in the world unless you’re a bloody moron). I was coming in the other direction over the brow at the time, it was very, very close…these could have been my last photos. I survived and so it is that you’ll have to put up with some more of my photography for a little while yet! Shine On…
As always my sincere thanks go to anyone taking the time to read this blog.
All images can be opened by clicking on the thumbnails and are taken using a Leica M with Summicron 35mm Lens fitted.
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