I stepped out onto the midway

I meant to do a lot today but ended up napping on the sofa, so I went for an early even­ing walk along the beach to see the sunset and get some fresh air. The funfair was in town but there was almost nobody there on a Saturday night. Surreal.

Bulgaria- toy camera vision

In the fuzzy zone between Christ­mas and New Year I scanned a lot of old negat­ives. I’ve recently star­ted going through them and edit­ing the photos. It’s not like travel is going to be much of an option this year, so might as well sort out all my old travel photos that I over­looked.

Versailles Xpro- Summer of 2005

I’ve recently scanned around 60 old rolls of film, which I’ll gradu­ally post. These are some photos of the palace of Versailles taken on some extremely expired slide film. At the time I worked in a photo lab, and ended up with a huge bag of all the expired film from the shop for about £20, and also got free devel­op­ment as a perk. Half-melted and degraded Kodak slide film + Olym­pus XA2 camera, cross-processed as C41.

Inns­bruck

Here’s some more old films I scanned- this time of Inns­bruck from two years ago. Stand­ard Ilford HP5 with a 70s Pentax SLR.

Read­ing Diana Xpro

I’ve been work­ing through scan­ning a moun­tain of old films. Here’s some from 2004. I was living in Read­ing and study­ing at the univer­sity there. I also hand­ily had a part-time job in a film lab, result­ing in free devel­op­ment. At the time I got a cd of the photos, but I have no idea what happened to it.

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Le Haut Boulay /​ Fomapan 400 review

Some photos of a place called Le Haut Boulay in North­ern France near where my mum lives. I have never seen a soul in the hamlet. There’s a hand­ful of houses and the road­side shrine, and that’s it.

It was really a test roll for the film. Fomapan 400- a very cheap black and white film from the Czech Repub­lic.

Lunatrak­t­ors at Halloween

I took some photos of my “broken folk” musi­cian friends the Lunatrak­t­ors doing a Halloween perform­ance. The setting was an art install­a­tion of a crypt of obsol­ete tech­no­logy in a tunnel on the seafront by  Sadie Hennessy. The metal­work head­pieces were created by local jeweller and metal­work­er Billie M Vigne. 

Robert Smith’s Cabbages

A couple of years ago I went down to Aldwick, near Bognor Regis for the summer to house-sit a relative’s house. I ended up being stran­ded there due to a lengthy train strike. Robert Smith of the Cure is prob­ably the only famous local resid­ent. The owner of one of the local shops told me where he lived, and I went along to see it once out of curi­os­ity. The house was dull and expens­ive look­ing, but the beach it stands next to was much more Robert Smith like, with windswept shingle like Dunge­ness and rare sea cabbages. I never bothered to look at Robert Smith’s house again, but I made many trips to the beach because I liked it so much. I was usually the only person there.

60s slides: Costi­era Amalf­itana

Here’s some more 60s tour­ism slides from my grand­par­ents’ house (you can see others here). This time from the Amalfi Coast in south­ern Italy, now a UNESCO site. Again I have posted all 36 images. It looked pretty much the same when I was there about 10 years ago, minus the annoy­ing coach party of loud Texans who kept appear­ing every­where you looked and complain­ing there was no Taco Bell and you had to walk places. Further along the coast in Sorrento I bought a very fancy waffle-knit towel that still serves me well for trav­el­ling. The shop assist­ant seemed very confused that I wasn’t buying a whole match­ing set of them like the major­ity of their custom­ers. Afraid I could only afford one small one. 

60s slides of Hercu­laneum

When clear­ing out my grand­par­ents’ house a couple of years ago I found seven pack­ets of these 60s tour­ist slides of vari­ous places around the Medi­ter­ranean. I’ve been scan­ning and restor­ing them. First up, these from Hercu­laneum.

Hercu­laneum is a smal­ler coastal town near Pompeii that was also destroyed by the volcano. It’s not as well known, but there are some magni­fi­cent villas there in a simil­ar but smal­ler archae­olo­gic­al park to the one you can visit at Pompeii.

Lunatrak­t­ors

Last week I went down to Pegwell Bay in between Rams­gate and Sand­wich to take some press shots for my friends Carli and Clair- aka the Lunatrak­t­ors. They describe their work as “broken folk” and combine folk, ambi­ent vocal over­tone work and choreo­graphy into it (Carli is also a choreo­graph­er and clown by profes­sion).

Infrared print

I liked one of the images I got from the Lomo­chrome film so much I decided to offer it as a print in the shop.

Lomo­chrome Purple

Shortly before I left London a couple of years ago I got a roll of the Lomo­chrome Purple film, a new formula designed to mimic the surreal colour infrared film you used to be able to buy.

Nuns contem­plat­ing Dog

I took some press shots of “”pineal-poking punked-up psyche­del­ic speed­freaks” Casu­al Nun at Dream­land when they came down to Margate to play a gig recently. While everyone’s back was turned, Irak­lis won a huge toy dog from a sideshow on the first attempt.

Bismuth

Hello from the south­ern hemi­sphere. Here’s some new press shots of my friends’ band Bismuth I took a few weeks ago at the origin­al UK Botany Bay…

Dachau

On my way back from the Tyrol, I stayed in Munich en route to the airport, and visited the Dachau concen­tra­tion camp museum- it was the first Nazi concen­tra­tion camp and served as a template for many of the others…

Schwartz­see

A short train ride or couple of miles walk outside Kitzbühel is the Schwartz­see (“black lake”). It’s full of miner­als washed down from the moun­tains that give it the glassy black effect…

Kitzbühel

So here’s a couple of assor­ted photos of Kitzbühel town. It’s a ski resort in the Austri­an Tyrol, about equidistant between Salzburg, Inns­bruck and Munich…

Hahnen­kamm

In July I went to Kitzbühel in Austria for work. I was there to run a work­shop in the local middle school, and the mayor gave me and my three co-work­ers tick­ets for the local ski lift…

Very Friendly

Here’s some photo­graphs I took of my friends’ band Very Friendly. For a while we had inten­ded to take some promo shots with a miser­able day at the beach theme, and then the beach was suddenly covered in thick snow, so this happened over a lunch break. Harry even­tu­ally got warm again. Even­tu­ally.

Zilin­ski album launch

So here are some much more recent gig pictures- from this week in fact. Local label M8s Records held an album launch party for Canter­bury band Zilin­ski. With Lazy Pilgrims and Trash Mammoth in support.

Marjan

If you keep walk­ing out of Split you end up on the Marjan penin­sula. The first time I visited I made the mistake of climb­ing up to the peak in 35c heat. After that I sens­ibly took the coast road.

Split

Here’s some photos from my trip to Croa­tia this summer. It was a real last minute thing, I suddenly had a week free in a packed summer of teach­ing engage­ments and still didn’t actu­ally live anywhere yet, so I bought a cheap flight to Croa­tia and did some sight­see­ing.

Metelkova

Metelkova is an area in the centre of Ljubljana that was origin­ally a milit­ary barracks, then was squat­ted in the early 90s when the Yugoslav army pulled out after Slov­e­nia declared inde­pend­ence, and is now full of social centres, work­shops and gig venues. (And a hostel where I stayed overnight before cross­ing the border to Klagen­furt for work).

Indi­ana Jones and the Temple of Deer

Our final stop in Japan before flying home from Osaka was Nara. In the 700s it was the capit­al of Japan, at the time when Buddhism really became estab­lished in Japan. Nowadays as well as Buddhism, it’s known for the tame deer who live in the forest park surround­ing the temples and shrines. We stayed in a hostel in the forest. It seemed a short walk from the train station, but we ended up walk­ing along dark forest paths drag­ging cases seem­ingly forever, with deer star­ing at us accus­ingly like some­thing out of Prin­cess Mononoke. (The hostel turned out to be a pretty weird place too).

Okun­oshi­ma- Rabbit Island

While I was in Japan we visited the island of Okun­oshi­ma. In the Second World War it was a top secret chem­ic­al weapons plant, but now is a nature reserve famous for its free-ranging tame rabbits, who are prob­ably the descend­ants of the lab rabbits.

Naoshi­ma

Naoshi­ma is tiny idyll­ic island in the Seto Inland sea devoted to modern art. The open­ing of the Benesse modern art museum (owned by the same organ­isa­tion as Berlitz language schools) revived the island’s fortunes, although it’s still a small and quiet place with only a few villages and a lot of old people.

Kyoto Shrines and Temples

Kyoto is famous for its Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines, many of which are UNESCO world herit­age sites. There are so many in the city that even though I spent a whole day walk­ing round differ­ent sites, I only saw a small percent­age of them. People place stones on these Shinto torii gates for good luck. You can also see my photos of ema good luck plaques here.

Torbole

After Malces­ine, Limone sul Garda and Riva del Garda, I present to you Torbole. I went to Torbole just because the boat from Riva del Garda to Malces­ine stopped there along the way, and I’d never been there before. It was a weird little place. Like Riva, it used to be in Austria until 1918. Every­one except the staff of the restaur­ants seemed to be German, and really into intensely star­ing at you in the street. The light and the way the water looked along the harbour front was beau­ti­ful though, and I spent most of the hour before the boat back sitting on a bench soak­ing it in. I don’t think this is a real place, I think it’s a screen from one of those new-age computer games from the 90s like Myst.

Riva del Garda

So far I’ve shown you Malces­ine and Limone sul Garda. I also took the boat to Riva del Garda at the north­ern end of the lake (which is also in a differ­ent province- Trentino). It was rain­ing all day, so I figured I might as well go to the colder, rainy end of the lake and visit the museum, and save the outdoorsy stuff on the south­ern end like archae­olo­gic­al sites for a sunny day.

Limone sul Garda

Now I’m head­ing over to Limone sul Garda on the other side of the lake. I didn’t spend much money while I was in Italy, but a hefty chunk of the (tiny) budget went on ferry tick­ets. Boats constantly criss-cross the lake to all the towns, and it’s the most scen­ic way to see the area. If you’re in a hurry, you can take the bus on land, but I was on holi­day, so by defin­i­tion, not in a hurry.

I’ve got it on, your favor­ite tee, it never looked as good on you as it looks on me

Talk­ing of 90s reviv­al, I real­ised that the clothes I was wear­ing yester­day were some­thing I could easily have been wear­ing 20 years ago. This isn’t the actu­al shirt I had as a teen­ager (that one, like all of them, inex­plic­ably had a German flag on the arm), but it’s pretty much the same. I got this one from an army surplus store at some point in my 20s for £4, but by mistake they gave me two, so it essen­tially cost me £2. I recently saw some identic­al shirts in Topshop for about £40. Some­times it pays to be a loser who never throws anything away. Until about five years ago I actu­ally did have a top I’d been wear­ing since the early 90s. It was a burgundy and black ribbed thing that seemed to be made of near-indes­truct­ible mater­i­al.

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Malces­ine, Lago di Garda

At the end of May I went on a last-minute trip to Italy by myself. I had given up my tenancy in London, because I was fed up of paying a small fortune to a land­lord who was unwill­ing to fix the seri­ous leak in the ceil­ing that was prob­ably going to bring the plaster down some­time soon, and a relat­ive asked me to house-sit. The house-sitting date then changed, but it turned out to be cheap­er for me to visit friends in York­shire, and then go on holi­day for a week than it was to extend my tenancy, which shows how ridicu­lous the prices are in London now. As it was a last minute thing, I had to go on my own. I don’t mind trav­el­ling solo though, I used to do it regu­larly for work, and trav­el­ling alone is better than going on holi­day with someone who doesn’t want to do any of the same things as you. (In my case, wander­ing aimlessly for hours and hours, taking hundreds of photo­graphs and eating a lot). I also got to re-read The Name of the Rose in peace.

Mont St Michel

I went to Mont St Michel last week for the first time in years. It’s a medi­ev­al abbey on an island on the border between Normandy and Brit­tany, about an hour’s drive from my mum’s house in France. We went there a few times when I was a kid, and the last time I was there was in the late 90s on a school trip. It has dramat­ic­ally changed since then.

There was some­thing a bit seedy and cynic­al about the place in the 90s despite the spec­tac­u­lar town itself. Buses and cars drove over the cause­way to the island, and parked in a decrep­it carpark on the shore, which had a tend­ency to flood. As you made your way up through the snak­ing medi­ev­al street to the abbey at the top of the peak, there were endless shops selling cheap replica hunt­ing knives, saucy post­cards and boxes of fire­crack­ers. It must have been a night­mare for teach­ers super­vising school groups.

Actu­al Crimes

Last week I took some promo shots of my friends Kirsty and Aaron’s band Actu­al Crimes. They recently became a two piece after the depar­ture of Lenny for a job in the US, but are hope­fully becom­ing a three piece again in the near future. No expense was spared for this photo shoot, we bravely walked five minutes down the road to a brightly painted garage door, and devoted ourselves to posing for ooh, at least half an hour.

Gener­al wander­ing round Copen­ha­gen

About 6 weeks ago I went on a short break to Denmark and Sweden. It shows how busy I’ve been lately that it’s taken me so long to post these. I unex­pec­tedly had some extra holi­day days I had to use up quickly before the end of my work contract, and none of my friends were free to travel on the specif­ic week­end I had to use them, so I went by myself. I saw cheap flights to Copen­ha­gen, and booked them on a whim, on the grounds that I’d never been to Denmark before, and it was also easy to visit Sweden from Copen­ha­gen. I also have a danish friend Sanne I used to work with in London, so I arranged to meet up with her while I was there and drink some Mikkeller beer at normal prices (rather than the exor­bit­ant prices they charge in the UK). (Good luck with the PhD viva Sanne!). I liked Denmark a lot, although I’m not sure if I’d want to live there. They seem very set in their ways. In fact it reminded me a lot of Austria, but with sea rather than moun­tains.

On Light Fest­iv­al

A few weeks ago, Univer­sity College London held a light-themed street fest­iv­al, with stalls run by the differ­ent univer­sity depart­ments with demon­stra­tions and free activ­it­ies. My friend Mel was there to win a Guin­ness World Record for the world’s largest cyan­o­type print (she’s already the hold­er of the record, which she did as part of an arts fest­iv­al in India earli­er this year, but she wanted to beat her previ­ous record).

If it ain’t brack­en, don’t fix it.

I refuse to apolo­gise for that pun, you’ll just have to suffer. Here is a photo I took of myself recently in my dad’s garden. I can’t remem­ber the last time I had a new photo of myself bar a few awkward phone snaps when I’ve been out. Perhaps you could say I was commun­ing with nature when I took this photo, but I was sat on a plastic bag to avoid sitting in anything nasty hidden under­neath the plants, so I don’t think I was that in touch with nature. Luck­ily we don’t have pois­on ivy or danger­ous snakes in this coun­try, I was more worried about the milder perils of sting­ing nettles or fox drop­pings. I was also a little limited with angles and fram­ing, because stick­ing a wide-angle lens in your face is rarely flat­ter­ing, but I couldn’t get the distance to use my portrait lens because I didn’t have a tripod with me.

Morocco

Here’s some photos from a trip to Morocco I’ve dug out of the archives from when I first got a digit­al camera in 2004 (you can see the whole album here). I was in between my first and second years of univer­sity, and bought a cheap digit­al camera from Aldi, it was surpris­ingly decent though, and it’s hard to take bad photos in Morocco because the light is so clear and the colours are so vibrant. Most of these pictures are from Rabat or Essaouira.

Slide film photo­graphs of Whit­stable

I used to do a lot of photo­graphy, but I don’t do half as much now, which is a bit of a pity. My flickr account (which I star­ted in 2007) has 376 albums and 4976 photos. I thought I’d do some regu­lar posts with photos from some of the older albums. I’ll tag them as “from the archives”, espe­cially as a lot of them are from well before I star­ted this blog, or moved it from blog­ger to word­press. Here are some photos from a trip to Whit­stable in Janu­ary 2008. It was my birth­day, and I went on a trip to the coast with my friend Bryony and our then boyfriends. I had this Kodak slide duplic­a­tion film I’d got in a giant bag of expired film I’d got for 50p per roll a few years earli­er, and kept in the freez­er. I’m not sure if it was taken with a Lomo LCA or an Olym­pus XA2. I had both at the time. I still have them in a box under the bed, but they’re both slightly broken, because I got them very, very cheaply second-hand (I think they were both about £15). I should get round to fixing them at some point. I think they’re fixable. These pictures were cross processed in C41, and then scanned. The pictures on my flickr account are a little small by modern stand­ards, but screens were smal­ler then, and stor­age space on Flickr limited. I still have the negat­ives filed away, anyway.

Wander­ing along the canal

I often like to get some fresh air in my lunch break by walk­ing along the canal near my work. There’s not a lot there, just some house­boats and a small lock, and a lot of lunch­time joggers and the odd person eating sand­wiches on a sunny day. I’m a big fan of canals, and I think I’ve walked along pretty much the whole length of this one at vari­ous points.

En train de flân­er. Aucun train-train.

Here’s some more photos from Paris (again taken with a Pentax ME super and expired Pound­land film with a strange red cast), from my gener­al wander­ing around. Wander­ing is one of my favour­ite things to do. In French it’s flân­er, and someone who wanders around a city, observing things and casu­ally explor­ing is a flâneur or a flâneuse, much celeb­rated in liter­at­ure. I did a lot of that on my recent trip, both because I was on such a tight budget, and also because I was on my own, so I was free to spend my time as I liked. I’m in the middle of writ­ing a new zine about the trip. Hope­fully I’ll have it finished by the Shef­field Zine Fest next week­end.

Jardin de Luxem­bourg

Here’s some more film photos from the Jardin de Luxem­bourg in Paris. (Luxem­bourg is one of those words I always have to look up the spelling of, other­wise I’m temp­ted to insert all kinds of extra vowels).

Canal St-Martin

Here’s some more pictures of Paris, this time of the Canal Sainte-Martin, once again taken with an old Pentax ME Super from the 70s. The film was expired and from Pound­land, and went through the x-ray machine at the airport, which resul­ted in it having a red cast. I colour correc­ted it out where I could, but the pictures don’t quite reflect the aqua green water as I saw it. I also took some b&w pictures of the same area, which I’ve developed but not yet scanned.

Graveyard/​ghost town double expos­ures

While I was in Paris I visited the famous Père Lachaise cemetery, and took a lot of photos both mono­chrome and colour, which I will post later. One roll, however, turned out to be half-used already and I ended up with double expos­ures. It turned out I’d already taken photos of a place called Domfront in Normandy with it. Domfront is a bit of a ghost town, which made me laugh to get double expos­ures of a liter­al grave­yard over a figur­at­ive one.

Mont­martre Photos

I wandered up from near the Opera (where the hotel was) through back streets up to the top of the hill, where the church is. I think it’s a much better route. You see lots of inter­est­ing tucked-away things, and avoid crowds and having to climb lots of steps.

Toy Camer­as in Brighton

My flickr account has 370 albums on it, dating back to 2007, before I star­ted this blog. A little while ago I dug out some pictures of Brack­nell from the archives, and I thought I’d find some more things from the oldest albums.

Daniel Mead­ows, Tony Ray-Jones and Martin Parr

Recently I went to two exhib­i­tions of Brit­ish social photo­graph­ers’ work of the 60s and 70s. Daniel Mead­ows at the Library of Birm­ing­ham, and Only in England- Tony Ray Jones and Martin Parr at the Science Museum. All three photo­graph­ers were contem­por­ar­ies and friends, work­ing on simil­ar topics of noti­cing the arrest­ing and unusu­al in ordin­ary people in every­day settings. All photo­graphs in this entry are from the photo­graph­ers’ own websites.

Salzburg

On the way from Nieder­ös­ter­reich to Vorarl­berg I stopped off alone in Salzburg along the way. I had to change trains in Vienna, and after a week of hearty, dairy-laden alpine food I was very, very thank­ful to eat some dhal and chapat­tis at the station. I really, really liked Salzburg and would gladly return there. I don’t know what it is about the city, but it just had a really nice atmo­sphere. I arrived at about 5pm, found the hotel really easily, and dumped my stuff and went for a wander. It’s an old univer­sity town, with a castle perched on an outcrop of the moun­tain look­ing down. There is a stereo­type in Austria that people in Salzburg are snobby, but I found them friendly enough.

Hermannshöhle

While in Kirch­berg am Wech­sel I also got to go on a tour of Hermannshöhle with anoth­er teach­er. It’s a series of caves inside one of the moun­tains, with lots of stalac­tites and a bat colony. Usually the tours are at set times and only in German, but we got a private tour in English, which was really nice.

Kirch­berg am Wech­sel

Last Summer I spent a week work­ing at the juni­or school in Kirch­berg am Wech­sel, a tiny moun­tain town on the east­ern end of the Alps on the border between Lower Austria and Styria. It is essen­tially one long street between some moun­tains, with “Lower Austria’s finest stalac­tite cave” (more on that later) and a yearly Wittgen­stein fest­iv­al. As moun­tains go, by Austri­an stand­ards they are pretty tame, mostly being below the tree-line. When I said some­thing to the kids about the moun­tains they basic­ally went “what moun­tains?” and when I poin­ted out of the window they went “oh yeah, those, there are much better moun­tains in other places”. Still, I like any kind of moun­tains, and the Wech­sel is still 1,743m high, so it’s hardly a hill. Mountains/​hills and water, that’s what I like. I wouldn’t do well some­where like Kansas.

Where you’ll find me now

Long time no see. I moved house a few weeks ago, and the inter­net connec­tion has been a long-running (and very boring) bureau­crat­ic saga. Hope­fully from next week we’ll finally have prop­er inter­net. I’ve been keep­ing up with stuff like email either on my phone or work computer, but that isn’t really ideal for things like updat­ing a blog. At least I have unlim­ited data on my phone, which has been very help­ful, although I never want to have to use my inter­net bank­ing site on a phone again as long as I live.

Kostel Sv. Mikuláše

We also went to the baroque St Nich­olas’ church in Prague. I’m not at all reli­gious (and it seems neither are the Czechs), but I like visit­ing churches for the art and archi­tec­ture. I really liked the faces of the statues inside, espe­cially this bish­op type who seems to be going “who? me?”.

Prague Puppet Shop

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Puppetry is a big thing in the Czech Repub­lic. As well as being the home of Jan Švank­ma­jer and Jiří Trnka, there are a few puppet shops in the Old Town in Prague selling the work of local puppet artists. I’m afraid I didn’t get the names of the artists who made these ones I photo­graphed. I really wanted to buy a small puppet, they weren’t hugely expens­ive, but I didn’t have much chance of getting it home in one piece, so I reluct­antly gave it a miss.

Prague

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After a week in Dresden at the end of August, I went to Prague for the week­end with my work colleague Hazel. We both had to go to Vienna en route to our next assign­ment, so it made sense to fit in a quick trip to Prague on the way.

Starkes Vier­tel- photos of Dresden Neustadt in the 70s and 80s

When I was in Dresden, I bought a photo­graphy book by a local photo­graph­er. Günter Starke lived in Dresden Neustadt, the area just across the river from the histor­ic­al centre, in the 70s and 80s, and took a lot of photos. Despite the name, Neustadt is full of old build­ings that escaped bomb­ing during the war (it’s only new compared to the baroque city centre), and in the commun­ist days, the local coun­cil concen­trated on build­ing blocks of flats and hous­ing estates to house famil­ies.

Stef Kamil Carlens at Neu Gallery

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I wrote before about going to a gig at Neu Gallery run by Greek artist Stefanos Rokos. I returned the follow­ing week, to see Stef Kamil Carlens, ex of dEUS. Like Matt Friedberger’s perform­ance, it was quite differ­ent stuff to the bands both of them are known for- more sing­er-songer­writery in this case. I partic­u­larly liked the songs which were in French. I think I’ll leave this picture to do the talk­ing.

Concrete wonder­lands

Flickr have massively changed their website recently, and I took the chance to go through all my old photos and re-organ­ise them a bit, so I’ll be digging up vari­ous things from the archives over the next few weeks. Here’s some of Brack­nell from 2005.

Regent’s Canal

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The other week I went for a walk along the east­ern end of the Regent’s Canal with my dad. I used to live down the other end of it, and I’ve pretty much walked the entire length a lot of times. It’s one of the few short canals around here, most of the others are long inter­city ones.

москва в брайтон

I have been busy recently, and the ever-present back­log of photos and so on I mean to post gets ever longer. Here’s some photos I took of Brighton Pier at some point. I have no idea when I took them, prob­ably when I lived in Brighton, but I scanned them the other week.

Mystery film

I found this film at the bottom of a plastic sleeve full of collage stuff. I’d care­fully cut round each picture on the negat­ive, so it was indi­vidu­ally cut out with a neat border, and I have abso­lutely no idea why I did it. The orange mask on c41 film makes it impossible to see the picture unless you hold it up to the light, and cutting the pictures out indi­vidu­ally from 120 film is a stupid idea, and I would have known better since I was about 16. I first star­ted using medi­um format film in 2004, when I was about 20, so I really don’t know.

Through the pinhole

Last night I scanned about 20 rolls of film. Here’s the first one, some pinhole photos I took in Corn­wall a few years ago, using the Diana + (you can remove the lens and use it as a pinhole camera). I think they’re of St Ives and Mouse­hole. They’re pretty soft look­ing, because I just rested the camera on a wall rather than use the tripod. Here are some I took using the tripod and with colour film with the same camera, they’re much sharp­er. I like these mono­chrome ones though, they’re quite eerie look­ing.

Versailles in the summer of 2005

I’ve been sort­ing through my things, and found some old negat­ives. I’ve already scanned the one from Italy in the late 90s, and here’s some more. (There’s a lot more to come). In 2005 I went camp­ing with my mum in Yvelines, just outside Paris. You can get into the city in about 15 mins on the RER, so it’s a good combin­a­tion of camp­ing and sight­see­ing. Versailles is just down the road too. I took a lot of photos there, but I can’t find the others right now. These are taken with an Olym­pus XA2 and some cheap expired Kodak slide film, cross-processed.

Pop 9

I was given a Pop 9 camera for Christ­mas, and this is my test film (Ilford HP5 400asa). There’s the oblig­at­ory cat photos for any test roll, and some of the river/​waterways around Canada Water and Roth­er­hithe. The rest of the roll can be seen here.

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Palma de Mallorca in mono­chrome

Here’s some black and white photos I took in Palma de Mallorca in the summer, and developed the other day. There’s no real reas­on for me to return there. I had one lovely trip there, and one horrible one, so that balances out. I can’t say much for the qual­ity of the company, but Mallorca is a beau­ti­ful place (minus Magaluf of course). I took these on Ilford HP5 with my Pentax ME Super (my favour­ite camera). I also had a roll of 50s style Efke film, but some­thing happened to it, either mois­ture or humid­ity. When I opened it in the dark bag and tried to load it onto the reel, the cart­ridge was all full of goo, and the emul­sion came off in a big clammy mess onto my hands. The film was unload­able, and unres­cu­able, so I’ll never know what was on it.

Lago di Garda in the late 90s

I was tidy­ing up recently and found these photos of Lake Garda. I’m not sure when I took them, because I’ve been there a few times, but it must have been between 1998 and 2001 when I was 13-16.

The world is not my oyster

Here are the other photos from Whistable. I took more of the boats, seashore etc with my wide-angle lens on film, and I haven’t had it developed yet. I much prefer my film SLR to my digit­al one (70s Pentax camer­as just feel so nice to use), but I’m too broke lately to use much film, and I still have 5 rolls sitting around that need devel­op­ing. I didn’t eat any oysters while I was there, because I’m veget­ari­an, but I did have a really great mascar­pone, truffle and rose­mary pizza.

Rooflines

These are from some photos I took in Whit­stable a few weeks ago, a pretty oyster fish­ing town in Kent (and some­times *too* popu­lar with the daahn from londons for the taste of the locals). The roofline of the school took my fancy.

Smooth down the aven­ue glit­ters the bicycle

I’ve always had a soft spot for 30s subur­bia. These two pictures are a place called Twydall, near where my mum lives. I went along there to buy some wool, and I wasn’t disap­poin­ted, the area is full of old ladies. Also, the fact that the wool shop is called World of Wool­craft and is run by what could be the broth­er of the Comic Book Store Guy made me laugh.

Aban­doned school science lab

I was doing some resid­en­tial teach­ing for the last 2 weeks. A group of year 9s from Chile came on a school trip, and I gave them lessons about English and Brit­ish History/​Culture and took them to vari­ous histor­ic­al places like Cambridge and Canter­bury. I was work­ing in the middle of nowhere, in this old manor house in the middle of a nation­al park. The house had been a board­ing school from the 1920s to 2005, and the company I worked for was only using part of the build­ing.  We were the last school tour to be there before it was going to be handed over to the new owners, who no-one knew much about, but didn’t seem to be using it as a school. There were lots of locked up rooms that had been used by the board­ing school, but weren’t used for the language holi­days, like the science lab, and they had piles of school stuff lying every­where. The atti­tude was pretty much feel free to explore, just make sure the kids don’t get into anywhere that could be danger­ous.

Anything and everything a chap can unload

I took these couple of pictures on a visit to Porto­bello Market a couple of weeks ago. The film was expired slide film anyway, and it went through the airport xray machine twice on my way to and back from Bulgaria, and it ended up with a large red section. Not an attract­ive red tinge, a muddy red effect that blew out high­lights and blurred details. I took more pictures at the market, but they ended up unus­able. That’s expired film for you.

аз съм английска, от лондон

Last week I was in Bulgaria teach­ing. I didn’t have too great a time, because all of us teach­ers got food pois­on­ing, and there was one partic­u­lar class of kids who were a pain, and due to all round tired­ness and illness, I didn’t get to leave the dull suburb we were stay­ing in and venture too much into Sofia. I went twice, and here are some phone pics. I’ve got some 35mm ones too, which I need to scan, and some diana ones, which need devel­op­ing still. I think if I went again to Bulgaria I’d go some­where in the moun­tains or coast. Sofia isn’t their top tour­ist destin­a­tion, it’s really more some­where where people work, and the natur­al scenery of the coun­try is stun­ning. I’m in the process of writ­ing about the trip in more detail for my zine.

Little Venice in orange

These are some photos I took in Little Venice with my old Pentax film SLR a few weeks ago. They call it Little Venice, but it’s really just a canal basin out the back of Padding­ton Station with lots of house­boats, some nice pubs and a cafe and a puppet theatre on boats. I guess “Little Holland” or “Little East Anglia” don’t sound as excit­ing. The slide film was much more out of date than I real­ised, but I like the orange and purple impres­sion­ist look I ended up with, some of the photos look more like paint­ings than photos.

Hast­ings Summer of 2006

I got some films developed a little while ago, and it turned out some of them are from quite a while ago, and had been lurk­ing around in draw­ers for a long time. This one is from 2006. I’m not sure what camera I took these with, some kind of box camera or Diana or some­thing.

Oh Vienna

In Septem­ber I returned to Vienna to teach anoth­er English in Action programme. I’ve got photos of galler­ies and exhib­i­tions I need to sort out still. Here’s some odds and ends of photos of other stuff.

Enfold­ing sunny spots of green­ery

I haven’t posted here for a while because life has over­taken me a little, and I’ve been dash­ing from place to place. I’m in Palma de Mallorca right now visit­ing Marcos’ family, with a perman­ent move to London on the cards for the end of the month (it can’t come too soon). I’ve got a back­log of photos to work through.

Patterns in the trees

I snapped some pictures of the patterns in this tree bark a while back. I might do some­thing with them later.

Mari­po­sas

(This is my 200th entry here- do I get some kind of prize, or should I just get out more?)

When I was caught outside without an umbrella in torren­tial rain on my break when I work­ing at the museum over the summer, I took the time to snap some more butter­fly photos. My previ­ous efforts are here. I went back with my film SLR just before the exhib­i­tion closed too, but I haven’t got round to scan­ning those yet.

Widder­shins

And a shot of Stone­henge look­ing like there’s no-one there. I took this when I worked as a tour guide for one week­end. I didn’t want to do it again after that. The day out at Stone­henge and Bath was fine. I wandered round Bath for a few hours after doing the brief tour of the town on the sched­ule, and the staff at Stone­henge made me a cup of tea and gave me biscuits and gave me a free audio guide to listen to. I think it’s funny that the path encour­ages you to walk round Stone­henge anti-clock­wise while listen­ing to a record­ing about super­sti­tions, magic and myths as it’s tradi­tion­ally supposed to be highly unlucky. I don’t think I’d pay to go to Stone­henge anyway. Maybe it’s differ­ent if you come from anoth­er coun­try where they don’t have anything simil­ar.

Mystery film- Friends and Places

This is anoth­er ancient film scanned. It’s defin­itely from 2008, but it skips about all over the place, there’s shots of Medway and ATP and Brighton, but I didn’t move to Brighton until the August of that year, and ATP was in May, and I have no idea when the Medway pics were taken, so it seems to have been hanging about in my camera for quite a while. I don’t even know what camera I used. I think it might be a Lomo LCA, the one I got in an Esto­ni­an junk shop for £20. It’s since half fallen apart, so I’m glad I didn’t pay those Austri­an rip-off merchants much money for it. Whatever camera I used, it’s some really grainy 400asa cheapo Ferra­nia marked film, prob from pound­land

St Ives 2008

Here’s some photos of St Ives from 2008. They were on the same roll of x-pro’d Sensia as the Lille photos. I think it was the last of my freezer­full of expired slide film I got when I worked at Jessops as a student.

Lille 2008

Here’s some photos I took in Lille in 2008 on a day trip. I only just got them developed.

Bath Mono­chromes

Here’s some b&w pictures I took in Bath a few winters ago. I finally got the film developed after find­ing it in a draw­er. Pentax ME Super + 28mm lens + Ilford HP5. I’ve been to Bath a lot, both as a Clas­sics student to look at stuff in the Baths, as a tour guide, and visit­ing my ex’s family, who were from a village not too far away. It’s stopped look­ing exot­ic to me.

Bird has flown

Here’s the rest of the pictures from where I took the panos at the River­side Coun­try Park. There’s a promon­tory which goes out to an island in the river, almost at the mouth where the Thames and Medway meet, with narrow beaches with reed­beds and aban­doned boats along the edge and woods and pools in the interi­or. I used to come here a lot. I partic­u­larly love it in the winter when there’s prac­tic­ally no-one there except me and some water birds.

The seas will reach and always seep

Today it was sunny and I had the day off, so I went to the River­side Coun­try Park. It’s where the Medway meets the Thames Estu­ary. It’s one of my places. I exper­i­mented with making some stitched panor­amic pictures. I also took some normal pictures. I’ll post them later. I’d love to have one of those turny Russi­an panor­amic film camer­as, but I’m too poor.

Butter­flies

At my work they’ve got a butter­fly garden in a heated tent over the East­er holi­days. I popped in to take some pictures in my tea break earli­er this week. I don’t know what any of the species are, I don’t know much about butter­flies. They had a refer­ence board to compare the live ones to, but I didn’t have time to look closely.

Get Out of the Office and Into the Spring­time

At last, some sunshine. Today me & Tukru went out for some coffee and draw­ing. It’s the London Zine Symposi­um on Sunday, and we have stuff to do. We didn’t actu­ally get much cafe time, because we forgot how early stuff closes round here. I’ve got some new stuff up my sleeve, but I don’t want to show it until it’s done.

Wander­ings

The other day I was round my dad’s. It was a sunny day, and I didn’t fancy spend­ing the whole day cooped up indoors. I got my dad to give me a lift up to Kit’s Coty, a strange isol­ated place nearby, which has the remains of a Neolith­ic barrow there. The barrow isn’t very evid­ent these days, but the gate into the tomb is still there. There are more houses round there than I’d thought, all detached with big gates and long drives and beware of the dog signs, and on unpaved roads. It was totally quiet and a bit David Lynchish round there.

A Bee See

On Friday I checked out my friend Pete’s gig, and then went to Moogie Wonderland’s Sipping Sessions event at a local cafe. This is Bee (short for Bian­cha) who’s one of the people who organ­ises it. She’s very photo­gen­ic, and enjoys having her photo taken, which is great as far as I’m concerned.

Forgot­ten Holgas

Anoth­er forgot­ten film scanned, Holga + Fuji Provia 400 xpro. This was my test roll for the Holga. You can see the other photos here, they’re not very excit­ing.

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