chalk and cheese..

yeah ok so maybe I did do a bit much on the bike yesterday, not feeling so great today but unable to ignore the fact that it was a nice day so met a friend for a couple of hours of messing around on the water in Mounts Bay. There was just enough of a swell to pile up into an occasional cresting wave of 3-4ft or so on one of the submerged reefs so that was fun for a bit of play and it also a good opportunity to spend some time doing a bunch of left hand rolls.. it’s my weak side and my roll that side is not as instinctive or well executed as a roll on the right, a situation I aim to rectify in short order. My Tiderace is in the workshop for some repairs so I was using the NDK Romany that has been couchsurfing, or rather shed-surfing, at my place for the winter. It’s not mine, it belongs to a friend, but I have a soft spot for the Romany as a design for various reasons.. this one is one of the original designs and is a very fun boat to paddle… one suspects that its owner might have a tough time getting it back ;-)

in the harbour of St Michael’s Mount to swap boats

John came along on his ski, I took that for a spin too… blimey, the first time I’d paddled one, very much to a sea kayak as chalk is to cheese… good fun, very quick and very ‘tender’ in terms of staying upright until one learns to relax into it and unlearn all the sea kayak handing concepts that have become so grained in. Light too.. despite it’s 20ft length at 14kg I’d say just about half the weight of the Romany.. although in defence of the Romany – it’s bombproof :-)

the enjoyment of skinny rubber… :D

it’s not what you think….. although once this post is indexed I’m sure I’ll be seeing one or two amusingly colourful click-through phrases from search engines.. I did think of other titles a little more dodgy sounding but decided against it on the basis that I’m writing this before the 10pm watershed.. or is it 9pm? I have no idea..

fetish wear….

So skinny rubber, there’s nothing quite like the whisper of skinny racing tyres at speed on asphalt to accompany the feeling of flying along with a wind at your back. Something I had been missing & one more step in my recovery, today I felt strong enough to risk getting back on my road bike.. risk because it’s a machine that inspires one to put the hammer down despite any intentions of taking it easy. As always after an enforced layoff I was gratified to find that the loss of fitness was not as catastrophic as one always fears.. Turns out I’ve still got a cruise that’ll keep me at a very decent lick on a typically Cornish ride (i.e up and down but not mountainous), so not nearly as bad as feared although as you might expect it feels like I have no ‘top end’ power at all. Not stressing about loss of fitness is a lesson I wish I’d learned long ago.. it’s only a couple of years really since  just 3 days away from my bike was enough for me to feel a bit stressed.. a week away was dreadfully hard to deal with and 2 weeks was a catastrophe.. let alone 6 or 7 weeks :-) An unexpected benefit of having been off my bike is that my enthusiasm to ride is as high as it’s been for a long time, it almost feels like returning to training in the winter after a layoff at the end of the racing season.. looking forward to putting in some solid miles as I get stronger and anticipating the feeling of getting back to some sort of form… I’m going to have to make sure I get plenty of rest and so on and I don’t plan to return to racing anytime soon but I’m still addicted to the feeling one gets on days when you have good legs, when the hills don’t exist and the bike seems to pedal itself… roll on summer :-)

a brief ramble on my state of cycling affairs

I’m on the cusp of buying a flight to Kyrgyzstan, I’ve wanted to return to Central Asia for a long time to do some riding in the Tien Shan. Ideally I’d be there for a few weeks in September. The only thing holding me back is that I’m still not very fit having been sick, my return to two wheels has been slower than hoped, it appears the virus I had may be responsible for doing something to my ankle joints in particular leaving them somewhat inflamed… although it is only May so I have high hopes that I’ll be back on form before the end of the summer. At the moment with a diet of short, easy rides of no more than 20 miles or so and some anti-inflammatories things are definitely getting easier. I still get tired easily too, the kayaking on the weekend left me feeling utterly wiped out this last couple of days. Ho hum. Hopefully by the beginning of June I’ll be feeling confident that I’ll be fit to get back to some high and wild riding in September.. stay tuned on that one :-)

Probably something to do with feeling somewhat less than my usual cycling self of late I have been trundling around on my Salsa Casseroll in baggy 3/4 longs and t-shirt rather than wrapping myself in lycra and riding one of my ‘racier’ machines…. which brings with it the opportunity to be amused at the snobbery that exists in ‘roadie’ circles. A local chain gang came past me this morning as I cruised along in the sunshine.. I see them often and know many of them. When I’m on my road bike and not dressed in ‘civvies’ I’m always acknowledged as a fellow cyclist. This morning dressed in my 3/4 length camo baggies, black t-shirt and aviator sunnies (as opposed to “sports glasses”) I was not worthy of the slightest acknowledgement, aside from a brief nod from one chap who did recognise me. It does bring with it opportunity for having fun with it when I’m back to my normal fitness, steaming past on the hills on something steel with fenders, racks and panniers, not to mention flapping shorts and t-shirt :-) 15-20 years ago, oh heck, even 5 years ago, as a rabidly competitive cyclist I remember being uncomfortable with the idea of riding my bike (when not touring) in anything other than lycra. Mellowing with age I guess…. what a horrible thought!

 

a few more sea kayaking pics..

apologies for lack of words this past week, busy and lacking inspiration .. so by way of something of a continuation of the Lands End theme in my previous post below I’ll just throw a few ‘sea kayaking Lands End on a very calm spring day’ flavoured pictures at you before I go off and soak my braincell in coffee.. I hope you had a good weekend.

despite appearances there are no nuclear power plants discharging into the seas around here, rather it is just the effect of sunlight shining through a submerged tunnel in the rock.

a very big cave… when the tide is right it’s possible to paddle deep into this cave, perform a tight 90 degree turn, paddle some more along a narrow channel in the darkness  and emerge from the cliff face some 150 metres around the corner… but not when there are seal pups on the beach inside.

the arch at Lands End. Always make a nice pic

heading out to the Longships reef (in the distance) on an uncharacteristically quiet ocean.. neap tides, light wind and no swell…

looking so very different to previous visits to the reef.. i.e calm.

below the tall cliffs near Nanjizal

into the dark…

heading through the crack just to the west of Lands End

back on the water..

back on the water after an enforced layoff of 5 weeks… I felt very out of tune with my boat and I’m still not fully recovered but it was so good to be afloat again. Some pictures follow from the last couple of days. Very little swell running but with the perigee moon we have at the moment the tides were flowing very strongly around Lands End and out around the brooding  Longships Reef.. so great for some play, rescues, rolling and re-entry practice in difficult water and so on, things that I wouldn’t normally have the opportunity to practice in such an environment without a safety of net of equally  competent paddlers, plus of course coaching from friend and level 5 coach Richard of Paddlecrest Coaching, which was the whole point really, so an extremely valuable and fun couple of days on the water, although I’m completely shagged again now with a bunch of sore joints and muscles  :-| Aside from that sea kayaking is such a terrific social sport and I’m sure I’ll be back on full form at some point soon provided I’m careful to take things easy for a while.

I was struck in particular by the clarity of the water around Lands End.. it’s something I always appreciate but not so much from below the surface, I spend nearly all my inverted/rolling time in the surf, in my surf boat, where the water is all churned up and murky and one cannot see a thing.. I’d forgotten quite how crystal clear the sea is from below around here once well away from any surf zones. Fantastic.

Rick gives it some, the wind was howling through this gap

a somewhat rough lunch stop..

one thing you won’t appreciate from this pic is that Rick has only one leg, he lost it from above the knee while serving in the military a number of years ago. The system he has worked out for managing his kayak with a prosthetic leg is simply fantastic.

a quick splash of colour

stopped by the “ancestral home” in Portmellon to see my folks , fantastic splash of colour outside the back door this morning. It’s not really my ancestral home of course, I’ve only been an interloper since I was 7 years old and there aren’t any stag or moose heads on the walls, heck there isn’t even a billiards room :-)

A Boatbuilder’s Story: update

Quick one.. an update on the progress of A Boatbuilder’s Story is way overdue… the project is still ongoing but I’ve just had rather a lot of other stuff on my mind. The photography archive is complete and the text is underway with a friend. So, it will still be out in print in the not too distant future. Stay tuned..

 

mountain shaped with a bicycle flavoured topping

Yesterday I gave a talk at Truro College on expedition cycling and riding along the Andes in particular. It went really well and was a very enjoyable thing to do. It was naturally a photo-heavy presentation  but I was a little nervous about it as the audience were a something of an unknown to my mind.. it’s one thing showing photography to a bunch of photographers, or to talk about riding bikes to a bunch of cyclists but quite another to present to an audience of 17-20yr olds whose motivations and interests, and indeed attention span,:-D, are something of a question mark. In the event however it was a big success with many more folk showing up than expected, indeed the theatre was just about full I think, and they were a really nice bunch of people, a pleasure to meet. It all came about because a chap I kayak with is an outdoor instructor at the college, and one of his students, as part of her degree course, had to arrange an “event”. So he put us in touch and I became the event. I think it was a good thing to do as that kind of adventure by bicycle is not something that one hears about so much in the mainstream media. TV at the moment is full of programs about “adventure”.. either reality style TV shows which to be honest, in my opinion, are a bit rubbish and geared towards meaningless “challenges” or the kind of show where a celebrity goes off and has an “adventure” with a film crew, back up and support crew, safety guys and a big budget…. Personally they do nothing for me at all, you just know that at the end of a days filming they all disappear off to either a luxury lodge or at the very least a catered tent camp, and nothing is done without a full safety assessment and so on. It can be interesting viewing but it doesn’t do an awful lot, in my opinion, in inspiring people to just go out and do stuff.. especially by bicycle, where the reality is you don’t need anything but a pair of wheels and some imagination to go off and have an adventure. So, based on the comments and feedback at the end I did manage to inspire a bunch of young folk to want to go ride a bike in interesting places. While I’m on the topic, if you’re in the Newcastle area at the end of May then Pete, the excellent chap I met in Peru riding his bike the length of South America is giving a talk at Newcastle University on 31st May. More details on the other end of this link. Recommended.

heaven is mountain-shaped with a bicycle flavoured topping.

Despite its success putting the presentation together did me no good at all however. When I’m not on the road  the desire to be on the road somewhere is like a dull ache that never goes away, and then every so often something stirs it all up and becomes something more, perhaps the same kind of feeling you get when separated from a loved one.. although perhaps I’m not particularly well-qualified to comment on that ;-) So just recently the dull ache has become a burning desire.. I think what with trying to get a business going and so on I can only afford to disappear for 3 or 4 weeks this year but whether I have the £££ or not I’m going to have to find the opportunity. I’ve always had a little bit of a problem with mildly depressive tendencies when engaged in what passes for ‘normal life’ and having a regular dose of adventure is the only cure that has ever really worked. Especially now as my plans for the Hebrides this summer had to change. I’m still not on brilliant form, although improving, so given that Chris needs to know he has guides and so on all lined up for his season it wouldn’t have been fair to make a commitment and then have to pull out at the last minute due to not being strong enough. There may still be some waterborne Hebridean antics this summer but going to have to play it by ear. On the bright side today was the first day in almost a month that I’ve been able to physically keep going all day. Hurrah! Definitive results next week but have become pretty sure I picked up a virus somewhere along the way. My state of mind has not been that good at all the last couple of weeks, indicative of just how important riding bikes and paddling kayaks are to my mental health :-) Now, if only one could get such toys on the National Health. ;-) Perhaps in many cases buying someone a bike could even be more cost effective than weight loss surgery or anti-depressants… now there’s a {moderately} controversial topic.

Anyway, enough of my self-indulgent ramblings.

Hasta pronto!

in an ordinary world

A few days ago I was reminded to write about something that I’ve been meaning to scribble a few words on for ages.  I was sitting in the waiting room at my GP’s surgery, there was a pile of photography magazines in the corner so I picked one up for a flick though. I didn’t like it, it was full of the usual stuff that the mainstream mags churn out.. i.e very rule based about how to take a photograph and what makes a good subject and what doesn’t, plus of course all the usual stuff about having loads of megapixels and how to hack your pictures about in photoshop. Not my scene at all. I subsequently did what I usually do and forgot all about it.  On Tuesday however I had another reminder, one of the “oh look at that” moments that characterise the way I see the world…

Tuesday.

This time however I’m going to make the effort to put down a few thoughts, but before I go any further I’m not intending to be preachy or say my way is best – it isn’t, I just thought it might be of interest if I articulated something about the way I see and respond to the visual elements in the world around me.. especially seeing as I cannot get my brain to focus on work today ;-)

The picture above is what happened on Tuesday. It happens all the time it’s just that I don’t always have a camera. It’s not going to be a particularly interesting picture to everyone and it’s not going in a portfolio or anything, it’s just a snapshot of something that “stopped me”.I was getting into my car just as a heavy rain storm passed. The light was beautifully clear and the combination of blueness, sparkly stuff, water on the windscreen and the particular geometry of the scene stopped me dead.

abandoned parking signs

I’m sure it happens to most people that are properly awake.. you’re walking down the street and something catches your eye.. whether a splash of colour, a particular flavour of lighting or the geometric arrangement of things.. whatever it is it is detached from the subject matter itself. It’s that detachment I wanted to mention.. so much photography is subject-based.. i.e a beautiful landscape, a bridge, a flower etc etc… and nothing wrong with that it’s just in my world the subject generally is of much lesser importance. I respond to arrangements of things with respect to each other, colours and light. The camera becomes a secondary factor, it’s just a way of recording the world that I respond to rather than the more conventional school of thought that says you need wide angle lenses, telephoto lenses and a bunch in between to go out and “find” and to “make”photographs.. the key there being “make”.. The photos that result from that way of doing things can be breathtaking, a stunning wide-angle landscape for instance, but they’re not really a true representation of the “world according to me”… :-)

a motorbike wing mirror

I've been accused of setting this up but I didn't, it was just there as I was walking down the street one morning in Montréal.

So, even without a camera I’m still taking photos.. in the way that I sometimes mind-surf waves I mind-photograph as I’m going about my day, but when I do have a camera with me to capture the things that stop me and make go “oh” the results from what is, on the face of it, a very ordinary world can be quite interesting. The key is to have a camera with you but not be looking for photographs, and the ideal tool to my mind is something as unobtrusive as possible with a fixed focal length lens between 40 and 75mm I think, i.e  a close representation of my own visual field and that doesn’t introduce artificial distortion.

parking meter

café window

exit sign

airports are not known as beautiful places.. (thoughts of Douglas Adams and "as pretty as an airport"..)

There’s a book a I came across many years ago which articulated to me perfectly where I was coming from and helped me think a bit more about it. I’d highly recommend it. It’s about as far from a conventional photography book as cheese is from a Blue Whale. It’s about appreciating the nature of the world as it is and being able to express it without the stress of feeling as if one must create something. When I photograph I’m in a sort of meditative state, when I’m not in that frame of mind I don’t even bother to try and take pictures, there’s no point, the results will be “forced”. It’s the same regardless of whether I’m just wandering around on the beach or enjoying some street photography when on the road in some far-flung place. As soon as the state of mind goes it’s not worth continuing. It’s not just photography either, I once spent a weekend once with a group of likeminded folk meditating and  playing about with object arrangment and calligraphy. The calligraphy was most interesting.. nothing to do with what most folk thing of as calligraphy but rather the case of being presented with a large, blank sheet of paper, considering the blank space and then choosing a brush stroke to best complement that blank space. The next stroke would be done by someone else with the similar philosophy of complementing the space and the existing brush stroke. The results were beautiful. It’s something that I’d like to do again with some friends. Anyway, I digress.. the book. It’s called Dharma Art by Chögyam Trungpa and I’d highly recommend it if you’re feeling somewhat “constipated” visually. This is what my edition looks like, dating from 1996, I think there is a newer edition with a slightly different title… I’m sure you’ll figure it out.

1996 edition

tracks in the snow

All this applies to street photography as well as the abstract stuff, with a little extension. I think the best street photography comes from not trying but rather being able to tune in to what is going on in the world around you and having moments of premonition if you like about something that is about to happen.. becoming aware of the confluence of a number of factors that will combine to produce something remarkable a few seconds into the future. Film is great for that, sometimes when I’ve taken a shot on instinct I’m not even certain what made me take it until after the fact and I can look at the negative.. pictures like that are rare but get more interesting the longer you look at them.

this image is my favourite ever "instinctual moment"..

I’m not  claiming to be even close to a great street photographer but it’s a brilliant feeling when those moments all come together.

..or possibly this one.. it's a close call.

Or something. That’s what I think anyway. So, all that just to recommend a book… blimey! Anyway, loads more street photography (and stuff…) over on my portfolio here. In the meantime I really must try and get on with some work..cheero!

just worn out.. hopefully, & a bit of beach

not so long ago when I was competing and doing high training volumes and lots of high intensity stuff.. intervals, time-trials, sprints and the like becoming chronically overtrained was a very real danger but because that awareness was foremost in my mind as I followed my training schedule and monitored my performances the risk of actually finding myself in that state was relatively low.. although I was never very good at taking it easy. With ‘training’ no longer a feature of my life however, instead having been replaced with “just riding”, sea kayak days out and surf kayak sessions I stopped paying attention to how my body was feeling. I got used to feeling tired while riding through the Andes, understandably I think…. and used to feeling tired when I transitioned from doing that to guiding 7 days per week on the water in the Hebrides last year.. got so used to in fact it just became normal. On it’s own I think it wouldn’t have been too much of a problem to recover over the winter but throw in a little of the emotional stress from setting out on a completely different career path, some sleepless nights and “bam!” Overtired. At least that’s my analysis. I’ve been in denial the last month or so as I felt increasingly rough.. couldn’t resist a good surf session or heading out on the bike. Tired in the mornings..? Yeah, that’s what coffee is for.. See I never felt like I’ve been doing much riding, only around 100 miles/week – relatively little.. but throw in a couple of good surf sessions each week – the intensity of which can be akin to a 2-hour long interval session on a bike and looking back it’s easy to see where I went wrong. So the last 2 weeks I’ve successfully stayed away from paddles and pedals.. almost, the exception being leisurely spins down to the beach. Recovery will take a bit longer with those spins but I can’t live without it. Trade-off. Anyway, that’s my version of events as to why the photo heavy posts of late and precious little re riding and kayaking. With lymph nodes approaching the size of golfballs I’m hoping the medical tests will all point towards the same conclusion :-)

I was down at the beach this morning with friends, had my surf boat with me in case the waves were unmissable.. but luckily they weren’t so while the others hit the surf I just wandered in the early morning sun. I had my Holga lens in my pocket.

I have always been fascinated by the deep pools hollowed in the sand by wave action around the rocks. Deep, clear and green. As a child I always felt the need to float a model boat on the liquid crystal. Still do I think but in the absence of a model boat I instead appreciate the painterly tones in the sand and water.. rendered quite nicely by a Holga lens.

some nice patterns in the sand too..

and a bit of colour from the lifeguard flags

April sky

fantastic sky over Godrevy Lighthouse this morning as heavy April showers sweep in from the northwest… I was down at the Sunset Café for a meeting on my bike but happened to have a compact in my pocket.

another post of a Holga flavour…

It’s been a couple of years since my original medium format film Holga died but last year I spent the princely sum of around £10 on a plastic holga lens with a micro-4/3 mount. A genius bit of kit. It’s not quite the same as using an original film Holga as it lacks the light leaks and wind-on errors that made original Holga images so much fun in a lucky dip kind of way.. but the lens itself is genuine Holga and comes with all the same desirable attributes – distortion, softness, vignetting and so on. I decided last night that a number of the Holga images I have might be considered interesting enough to go in a dedicated gallery in my portfolio… so that’s what I did. Some of the original Holga images are in there (and a couple of sneaky Lomo pictures too) but most are more recent efforts using the Holga lens on a digital body. My favourites mostly come from last summer on the Isle of Barra in the Outer Hebrides.. a particularly special place and relevant also in that I’m really excited to be returning there in a couple of months time. I figure there’s no harm in reproducing those favourites below as I have quite a number of new readers. If you’re sufficiently interested in seeing the whole collection it’s a menu selection in my portfolio here, I’ve also modified the code so now it opens the most recently updated gallery by default.

a September evening on the beach

late afternoon on Barra

view from Barra over Sandray to cloud-shrouded Mingulay in the far distance

the airport beach

Castlebay, approaching storm

rainbow...

stormy late afternoon on Barra

bird in the storm

captions coded at last

a morning of miserable weather so I finally got around to spending some time coding the captions for the images in my portfolio.  The way the gallery works is that the reference for each of the large images is contained within the “alt” tag of the thumbnail you click on, the javascript then uses that to load up the appropriate large image. When I put the content management system together I made the facility to store a caption for each image in the database, but I needed a way to pull that out and make it available to the script.. I’m not a total javascript genius nerd.. (yet, ha ;-) so I did spend a bit of time messing around with various ideas to figure out the best way of doing it. In the end I just went back to the same philosophy as used for the images themselves. When the code assembles the array of thumbnails on the page  it stores the caption in a little-used attribute of the “img” tag, the “longdesc” attribute, for each thumbnail. The javascript pulls that out, sticks it in a div that it positions based on finding the bottom of each large image and then does some animation during the image transitions. It should all run smoothly but it’s a very javascript heavy page so takes a bit of resource to run it, I wouldn’t do all that on a commercial site but for my own stuff it’s fine..  :-)

Anyway, just thought I’d say… but if you have suggestions for improvements I’d love to hear them, it’s all good fun and good for me too messing about with code to achieve different things.

Clicking the image below takes you there for a play if you so desire..

cheero!

a bit of Hayle Harbour Holga

no paddling or pedalling for me this Easter weekend thanks to being sick.. but by way of alleviating cabin fever (I’m a terrible patient.. ;-) I did drag myself (oh the drama of it, hehe) out to spend half an hour with my Holga on Hayle’s semi-derelict, desolate and empty south quay… the results are nothing special but it doesn’t half help one’s state of mind to go and shoot a few frames before going back to bed.. or the sofa – track cycling on the telly! I also shot off  a few frames on a roll of old Fuji NPH 400 I found hiding at the back of my refrigerator.. years out of date it will be fun to see what the results are like when I get around to processing it. I’ve had pleasing results from out-of-date samples of this film before – it has a nice pastel colour palette and very pleasant grain. Anyway, back to the Holga.. the ‘rubbish’ lens lends itself well to scruffy things in less than ideal light..

it’s not about the camera…. much..

I feel as if I am at something of a photographic crossroads… it’s been on the horizon for some time now but my arrival at this point was recently hastened.. well, if the end of 2011 is still recent, by the seemingly unrelated act of upgrading my Mac to OS 10.7 Lion.When I upgraded I found the driver software for my Nikon film scanner would no longer work. Nikon stopped making and supporting their range of film scanners years ago – which is a shame as they were really good, and not inexpensive, bits of kit. The simple fact of being faced with forking out for a third party scanner driver such as Silverfast or Vuescan is making me re-evaluate my whole ethos towards shooting film.

whenever I think about the reasons I like film this is one of the images that springs to mind most often.. the garbage men in Bogotá (cropped here). It's not a particularly remarkable or colourful image, and thus perhaps that is why the subtleties become more apparent. When viewed full size there is an organic quality to it that is hard to define.. it's partly a combination of a subtle graininess combined with the particular rendition of the pastel tones - due both to the film and Leica glass I think. Some folk would say that you can do that digitally.. but I don't think you can, not in the same way.

Lance Armstrong said “It’s not about the bike”.. but I think it is.. a little bit.. especially in my case. It’s the same with me and cameras.. it’s not all about the camera and it’s not all about the film  but it is about a bit of both. With regards to film I like the colour palettes and the more “organic” quality of a film rendering as opposed to a digital rendering, and I like that it is a truly genuine way of recording a moment in that there is no little preview on a screen to tempt me to re-evaluate a shot on the spot. But I wouldn’t shoot film on any old camera.. lets say my camera of choice was a standard film-based SLR like a Nikon F5 or F6. I wouldn’t hesitate to get rid of it and get a digital SLR. I don’t use SLRs however, I don’t enjoy using an SLR in the way I enjoy using a rangefinder. It’s not all about the camera but the right camera inspires me to get out and take pictures.. For years I’ve used Leica rangefinders.. first an M6, and then an M7 which with it’s aperture priority auto-exposure mode missed the point for me so I replaced it with the ultimately basic MP.. and that’s how I’ve been ever since. The MP is a wonderful tool to use so it inspires me to use it. Except I haven’t been of late.. the cost of film and processing means I shoot less and less.. I have a digital camera but it’s not an inspiring tool to use so the bottom line is that when I am at home I just don’t shoot. Much.

Leica MP... a simply wonderful thing

The digital camera is a Panasonic GF1.. it’s handling and form is somewhat similar to a rangefinder and the prime lenses are very good so as an inexpensive tool to take on expeditions, and that I don’t mind breaking,  it’s perfect (I wrote about it here). It is very definitely not an inspiring piece of kit but it doesn’t need to be because when I’m on the road I’m inspired anyway and will shoot no matter what camera I have. It’s a bit like having a beautiful Japanese knife to use in the kitchen at home and a capable but merely functional folding stainless knife to use when camping.. the end result is the same but the process is somehow so much less satisfying.  Prior to the GF1 I had a Zeiss Ikon rangefinder to take on the bike.. a much less expensive thing than the Leica MP but retaining many of the attributes, though not all, that make the M-series cameras such a pleasure to use.

Zeiss Ikon.. quite nice but not in the same league...

So now here I am looking at the cost of third party scanning software.. Silverfast (£400-ish for Silverfast 8) or a mere £50-approx for Vuescan. Each has it’s own pros and cons and relatively speaking Vuescan is a very cheap way of keeping my Nikon scanner in service.. with income low at the moment however I am thinking carefully about the ££ I spend so I could not help but consider alternatives that would get me shooting more at home… i.e with regards to film do I give up, sell up and move on and likely shoot more or stick with it for the time being. The Nikon scanner is worth a fair wedge on the secondhand market at the moment, being a sought-after bit of kit… the Zeiss Ikon would fetch some useful £££ .. and the MP would fetch “quite a lot of £££”.. especially as I have a rare Summicron-M 35mm in matching black paint finish.. the significance of which you would have to be something of a Leica nerd to appreciate. The problem comes in finding something digital to replace it with that is as pleasurable and inspiring to use. The obvious choice is a Leica M9.. but at £5K+ for the body that is out of the question right now and at that price I think I’d be reluctant to stick it in my panniers on rough-stuff bike trips… Next in line would probably have to be the new Fuji X-Pro 1… It gets good reviews but does not appear to be fully sorted in terms of its handling.. and it is a lot of wedge to fork out for something that ultimately could annoy the hell out of me… and somehow it isn’t going to have the soul of the MP.. so I’m stuck. I don’t know what else there is. It’s quite possible I have created my own private camera-flavoured holy grail in my mind that doesn’t exist… the ‘experience’ or the ‘soul’ of an MP, with the image quality of an M9 at an affordable price….

Nikon LS4000.. boring but very useful bit of kit, nearly 10 years old now and near as dammit irreplaceable. By way of an aside the background is a large flag I 'borrowed' from the finish line of the 1995 Sydney-Hobart yacht race.. good party that was :-)

Part of my problem is that the MP is such a lovely thing to use, such a beautiful piece of engineering I think I might regret selling it.. so say I keep it even if I rarely use it.. I would have to keep the Nikon scanner to be able to do anything useful with my processed films (I prefer color slide so I don’t bother with a traditional darkroom).. so all of a sudden the only thing left to sell to fund a digital camera is the Zeiss Ikon… and that probably won’t go far at all towards something else that is going to inspire me to shoot. Back to square one. The Ikon might just stretch to funding a Fuji x100.. the fixed lens predecessor to X-Pro 1.. it has a fast lens at a focal length equivalent to 35mm, my most used length.. an optical finder and has the right look and feel. Fujinon lenses have always been excellent too. It might make a good replacement for the GF1 also if I decide I can live with just one focal length (instead of 2..) on my bike trips…

So after all that thinking out loud I still don’t know what I’m going to do… all I know is that the pressure is building to do something…. stay tuned!

April Fools Afloat..

I’ve been neglecting my sea kayak over the past month or so… all my paddling time has been in my surf boat. I put that right today however with a few friends for a perfect sea kayak day out along the west coast of the Lizard peninsula. I spend a lot of time paddling in that area, it’s always stunning but today was pretty special. The west coast there is fully exposed to the Atlantic so it is very rare for there to be almost no swell at all. It’s an exciting paddle when it’s rough but today was a very different  experience – very mellow with the possibility to get properly up close and personal with the numerous caves that perforate the dark serpentine cliffs. This is a picture heavy post so without further ado…….

a trio of "Tideracii".. amongst my friends I count 6 owners of Tiderace Xcites.. they're excellent kayaks and popular down here thanks to Drew in Porthleven..

it's a good thing they didn't all come along today though, that would have been just weird... like when you see couples walking down the street wearing matching sweaters... creepy even.

John brought his big ski which was a good thing for diluting the weirdness of otherwise identical kayaks. With his wing paddles he flies on this thing, but it's not much of a rockhopping tool. Looks wicked on the water.

copious quantities of pre-launch coffee necessitated an early (very early) pee stop at Mullion. The folk on the quay are no doubt commenting on weirdness...

A nice bit of cave action. The particular variant of serpentine rock that occurs here is known, somewhat predictably, as Lizardite. My geologist friend tells me that it is typical of rocks found in the oceanic crust or upper mantle... the geology of the Lizard peninsula is very different to the rest of Cornwall, it is in fact a 'splinter' of serpentine rock formed by an ancient subduction zone.

must remember to bring a flashlight next time...

stunning clarity of the water

we did have the usual seal escorts for part of the day.. but they wouldn't be photographed... leaving nothing but a tell-tale eddy on the surface the moment a camera appears.

the dark cliffs manage to be a little threatening even on a bright sunny day

a fabulous place to stop for a bite to eat. I've never been able to get in here before, if there is much swell running it gets funnelled in and dumps in a heavy wave.. manageable elsewhere perhaps but it's very narrow between the rocks and doesn't give much room for manoeuvre.

there's a small stream here, it would be a terrific bivy spot

more caves ahoy..

some caves are big.. really big

the wind was a blustery and cold easterly. Nice clear light on the water as a result

the approach to Kynance Cove is always magical

we stopped on the sandbar for a brew.. simply because we could. The tide was high enough that the numbers of land-based visitors couldn't reach the sandbar. Always a good thing :-)

John's ski is so feathery light despite its 20ft length that we had to wedge it between sea kayaks to stop the wind blowing it away..!

a presentation project..

One of the projects I’m engaged in at the moment is putting together a presentation on ‘adventure cycling’ for Truro College.. they have an Adventure Academy there that is tied up with the outdoor-flavoured degree courses. It’s not a paid presentation but we are going to use it to try and raise a bit of extra cash for Shelterbox  so it is an entirely worthwhile project. My audience are going to be primarily first to final year degree students.. not always known for their ability to pay attention so it has to be said I am nervous about it. It is one thing to present to an audience that you know is 100% interested in what you have to say but quite another when the audience is an unknown. I started out worrying over whether or not they’ll be genuinely  interested in seeing photography from the various places I’ve ridden bikes over the years, or want to listen to what I have to say – so putting the presentation together, with a view to filling an hour, is proving a bit of a headache. I want to make it entertaining so there are certain images that I want to include.. but now I am worrying about whether or not I’m going to offend anyone.. take this picture for example..

smoking is bad for your health..

I took great pleasure from tucking into a freshly grilled chunk of sheep, accompanied by a glass of red, on a  cold and rainy afternoon in ruined Chaitén but I expect there will be a number of vegetarians/vegans in the audience (and amongst my readers too..) so are they going to angry with me if I show it…? I am going to show it I think, after all butchering and barbecuing sheep is a fairly significant and unavoidable part of life in rural communities all over the world. Choosing to be vegetarian is a luxury that, for example, for folk living on the steppes of Central Asia is simply not realistic. I also like the comedy value of the picture. I think I might include the big cauldrons of stewing sheeps heads in Xinjiang also…. I don’t generally set out to deliberately upset people but at times I confess I have been guilty of some mild provocation (another one of those comfortable human failings I mentioned yesterday)…. I guess the world is just like that. It’s a bit like this blog really, I try to avoid being deliberately provocative or directly insulting as I believe in trying to live harmoniously with the people around me…. but  I also like to write to how I think .. and this past week I’ve been thinking some fairly blunt things as a result of behaviour of some people that I have observed. None of it is directed at anyone in particular  but if you felt offended by some of my words then I do apologise anyway.

cheero!

mikesimagination on facebook..

Just a quick note to say ‘mikesimagination’ is now on facebook.. primarily to do with the web and graphic design side of things but as it develops I’m sure there’ll be some photography and other things creeping in as well. I’m still not quite comfortable with the use of the word ‘like’ as a noun, however if you’re interested in what is going on then give it a ‘like’ and stay tuned in. Clicking the image below will take you there.

 

 

on the smugness of being a cyclist..

This week I’ve been travelling to meetings onboard my Salsa Casseroll…. I mean I’ve been riding it to meetings rather than holding the meetings onboard the bike. An old-fashioned Carradice Barley saddlebag on the back has just enough carrying capacity for a change of clothes and some buns for fuel.. and it complements the retro styling of the bike perfectly.

Not that many years ago while still in the grips of a racing obsession I doubt I would have been seen with such a ‘beardy’ accessory but now I think it’s great.. no doubt a stage on the long and varied road to getting old. Indeed riding around on it now one does feel that perhaps a beard to complement the wool jersey might in fact be a necessary accessory. That and toeclips.

Salsa riding gear.. a bit of ginger carpet should suffice, or perhaps some rusty steel wool.

Anyway, on to the main topic of my thoughts while riding today. There are a whole bunch of feelings/emotions associated with being a cyclist… in my case I’ve been guilty of arrogance in the past but I’m comfortable with my human failings so I don’t worry about that ;-) I don’t feel any sense of self-righteousness.. although acutely aware of the damage cars to do to environment I’m not riding to “save the planet” particularly… I just like riding.. and taking pleasure from being able to get from A to B without having to put any ££ in the pockets of the oil companies and the government. Another one… smugness.. that’s a fun feeling. I do smugness very well I think… it’s particularly relevant at the moment with the present threat to the delivery of fuel supplies. I swept past enormous queues of motorists along the roads today, all lined up in their panic to fill up at petrol pumps. People can be pretty dumb sometimes, there isn’t going to be any threat to supplies for at least 7 days.. so if you really are a slave to your car then filling your tank now, especially given that some local garages are now rationing to 20 litres, isn’t going to do any good at all if supplies dry up after Easter. I made sure to share a great big smile with them all as I rode past. I should probably also add that I feel lucky to be physically and mentally adapted to routinely riding lots of miles, it’s not something that everyone has the option of doing… There, should’ve been a diplomat.

On a related topic as I ride around the roads of Cornwall I have noticed increasing numbers of people carrying stuff around by horse and cart.. farmers and small-holders presumably. On the cart are usually bags of grain or boxes of vegetables. I think it’s a great response to the continued increase in fuel prices.. If you have the time, and a horse of course, and don’t have to carry lots of stuff a long way then why not. Currently considered as a mark of a undeveloped or developing economy perhaps in future the horse and cart is going to also become a characteristic of an evolved society more in tune with a world of energy shortages and environmental problems. Of course it’s not going to work on a large scale but as an individual response to an energy crisis I thought it was brilliant, although I do sympathise with folk in such a position that they may feel forced to do so (there’s that diplomatic streak again..)

I’ve written before about the bicycle as a fantastic tool for ideas and exploring trains of thought… sometimes those trains of thought might be quite stupid and once the post-ride glow has worn off I write them off as such but given the overall flavour of this post I thought I might write down the next idea that occurred to me.. this followed on from the horse and cart ponderings above and could well fall into the “bollocks” category but here it is nevertheless….. 2012 is supposed to be the year that the world comes to an end.. that is if you subscribe to the notion that the ending of the 13th baktun of the Mayan calendar represents such an event. I don’t.. personally I suspect that Mayans just got bored. If you did however.. and just say there was some truth in it.. then perhaps it’s not the end of the world as a cataclysmic event, which is the preferred scenario of both Hollywood and any number of religious nuts.. perhaps what is really going on is that it represents the end of an age in human evolution.. the ending of an age of plenty driven by greed, excessive profits, materialism and so on. A painful ending. Looming crises in energy and natural resources may force a transition, with more than a few wars and humanitarian crises along the way, to a society living in tune with a world of limited resources, poorer in material terms  but richer spiritually. I’d love to live in a society less driven by greed and profit without conscience but I have my doubts that humanity as a whole can adapt to that, so the truth may very well be that we’ll all tear ourselves, and the planet, to pieces fighting over dwindling resources.. and if that happens then the Mayans will have been more clever than I gave them credit for and humanity will suffer an ending that may well be considered to have been richly deserved. There.. I suspect the endorphins were running pretty high by the time I had got to this point.. and all because of a horse and cart :-)

Cheero!

some stuff on offer.. surf kayak and a useful book

feeling mellow after a lovely morning of spring time surf in the sun and easing myself into an afternoon and evening of being productive…. Firstly however a couple of things on behalf of friends that may be of interest… in no particular order of importance:

First is a Mega Boost xtec surf kayak for sale, belongs to a surfing buddy. In really nice condition this is the top end spec – foam-cored vac-bagged carbon kevlar – very light and very stiff. It has the usual minor scuffs you’d expect from normal use but has no damage, and has never sustained any. The white flecks you can see around the cockpit rim are surf wax rather than scrapes to the gelcoat… it improves grip on the paddle shaft but sticks to everything like the proverbial to a blanket. A terrific high performance boat with a new value of £1400. Asking price is £650 (no fins), and you might get the sponge included if you ask nicely – it is a very good sponge, I borrowed it today having forgotten my own and was sorely tempted to not give it back ;-) The boat, and sponge, are  located in west Cornwall but courier can be arranged, and is not as expensive as you might imagine at £35-£40 to mainland UK. If you’re interested drop me a line via the comments field and I’ll put you in touch.

The second thing is a book and a useful one at that. I have a friend with many years in the health and wellbeing business. She’s a prolific author and really knows what she is talking about.. and at only £0.98 for the Kindle download version this one really has to be worth a look if you’re looking to lose a few pounds. I like the way it is presented as a series of useful tips, small differences that over time can result in a big change – which is by far the best way to do it rather than embark on a crazy diet. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a Kindle, you can get free emulation software as a download from Amazon that runs as a kindle on your mac or PC. Click the image below to go the relevant Amazon page.

There, obligations and promises for the day fulfilled :-)

it’s started..

Spring. It arrived a couple of days ago. I don’t know if it’s attributable to climate change or not but for the last few years in Cornwall there has been no gradual transition from winter into spring.. rather one day it is winter and one is riding around in winter cycling kit, and the next day the sun comes out, the air is warm and filled with the scent of grass and wildflowers, the sound of bees…  and the summer jersey comes out (until June when summer usually runs out…). It happened on Saturday this year. With a warm, sunny forecast for the week ahead it will only be a few days before I forget that winter ever happened. It is always such an awesome feeling to be suddenly riding around in short sleeves and summer mitts.. although the wind is still cool enough to want my full lycra legs. It is a strange time of year, with a chill still in the wind, at the beach one can observe an odd blend of people, some wrapped up in winter coats and scarves, and others strutting their stuff in bikinis. I won’t be out in mine just yet.

Now, I’m usually a silver lining kind of a person but no matter how positive my outlook I find spring in Cornwall always brings with it a little dark overcast on the horizon in the form of ‘visitors’, the holiday season vanguard of whom are already arriving, I noted while out riding on Saturday the increase in numbers of big, shiny 4x4s and luxury motors trimming the ends of my handlebars with zero respect for my two-wheeled well-being. Cornwall’s economy relies on visitors.. nothing wrong with that, I’m happy to see nice folk coming to enjoy our wonderful little corner of the world. It’s the increasing numbers of not so nice folk I have an issue with..  Recently there appears to have been a growth in the image of Cornwall as a theme park for a particular flavour of ‘the wealthy’, where villages have been turned into seasonal communities of million-pound holiday homes with the locals representing little more than a serving underclass, their lives and the local environment here for nothing more than to be treated with utter contempt. It’s an image that has been cultivated by a recent rash of TV programmes.. a couple spring to mind in particular.. Caroline Quentin and her awful presentation pandering to the wealthy newcomer, and another along the lines of “I’m a celebrity, I’ll be a fisherman for a few weeks so I can prance about in some shiny oilskins and stroke my ego amongst the ‘ simple locals’”. I’d like to reciprocate.. lets make  a show in which a regular chap gets to experience the life of a c-list celebrity prick.

Oh I seem to be on a bit of a rant.. I’ll explain. With tired legs after yesterday’s ride I settled for an easy recovery ride down to the beach this afternoon by way of enjoying some sunshine. I knew it would probably be busy on such a fine sunday afternoon but I was not prepared for what I found… the beach was lovely and quiet, but the narrow singletrack road running out through the dunes was absolutely gridlocked. Rather than park somewhere sensible and walk from there people in their lazy selfishness had instead dumped their cars in the few passing spots and on the fragile dunes, ignoring the signs asking them not to do so. The result was chaos with cars backed up 20-30 deep in each direction. Not surprisingly there were more than a few big, shiny 4x4s in the melee.. of course in their arrogance they don’t feel the need to be considerate to others and the environment and I watched  a couple driving onto the delicate surface of the  grassy dunes in their haste to beat everyone else. I despair of people when I watch such behaviour.. there’s nothing I can do. I could quite happily wish every one of them a slow and painful death… ah, no I couldn’t, not really.. but a couple of punctures and perhaps a blown head gasket would do nicely :-) I turned around and rode home.

in one direction acres of empty sand....

..and in the other.. It's so often a Range Rover isn't it.. I detest these slab-sided monstrosities. The driver of this one was engaged in a yelling match with the driver of the camper van next to him, he'd decided he wasn't going to wait and was trying to squeeze by on the inside and eventually drove by the barrier and onto the dunes. No doubt unable to take responsibility for his own behaviour, as so many people seem unable to these days, he would blame his actions and the situation on the failure of the National Trust to soil this beauty spot with more car-parks.
His license plate said "WNK". Just missing an R then.

‘street & stuff’ photo portfolio redesigned

after a short absence my portfolio is back online. I’ve completely redesigned and recoded it to match the new “mikesimagination” branding/styling.  Clicking on the image below will take you there.

I wrote myself a little content management system so my galleries are created dynamically as I upload and tag images. It also does all the necessary image resizing, cropping etc for the thumbnails. Images are tagged with captions, I just haven’t had time to code the caption overlay yet.. I’ll do it on the weekend. The gallery presentation itself is the most involved bit of javascript coding I’ve done to date so I will be honest I had to work through a tutorial to get the overall quality of effect that I wanted. No part of it is difficult or alien, just animations, positioning and so on but there’s a level of detail that I’d not incorporated in any single script before.. so a very good way to learn and I can apply the same detail techniques to my other work now. Anyway, go take a look, hope you enjoy.

bicycle induced musings on entrepreneurship.. or something

My sister gave me a copy of Steve Jobs’ biography for my birthday (yep, one happened recently, shame on you if you forgot…). I wondered if she was trying to tell me something… perhaps along the lines of “become a multi-millionaire entrepreneur so you can buy me a house“. Or something. No matter what you might think of mister Jobs you have to admire what he achieved. I don’t think I’m much of an entrepreneur, if I was I’d probably at least have a yacht by now ;-) I frequently wonder if being successful in business is compatible with a love of riding bikes and paddling kayaks. I tell myself that I’m not a wildly successful entrepreneur because my priorities are riding bikes and paddling kayaks rather than making money.. But perhaps that’s bollocks, after all one only has to look at Mike Sinyard, founder of Specialized Bicycle Company, to realise that riding bikes and being successful in business are not necessarily mutually exclusive. No, rather I think sometimes my problem is simply one of discipline and prioritisation.. and of course  ”not being a natural entrepreneur” is always a handy excuse to have in one’s back pocket. Case in point yesterday, Monday, dawned beautifully sunny.. a cheeky Monday morning session in the surf turned into a cheeky late lunch of a Cornish pasty sitting in the sun with a friend on the harbour wall in Hayle which turned into “oh gosh is that the time..! Hardly worth starting anything now“. Then again I worked on the weekend.. well, some of it, and I’ve swapped the steady security of an employed career for the hard work, uncertainty and much reduced income of setting out alone so one may as well take advantage of the non-material benefits that brings. Of course I have confidence in myself in that I’ve always been disciplined and prioritised correctly when it really mattered, I wouldn’t have the freedom I have now I suspect if I hadn’t. There it is, confidence in myself.. that’s what this is about I think, confidence in my ability to be successful at whatever I do.  Why am I writing all this.. errm, well it’s just something I was thinking about on my bike this morning, while riding home from a small business workshop I’ll have you know.. So not a ride for pleasure but rather for business -although I did very much enjoy the 60km round trip through the early springtime Cornish countryside.

Speaking of riding, despite the lack of words on the topic I’m doing plenty. Interestingly with the change in lifestyle much more of my riding is “utility” riding. My Nomad is getting more use than my regular road bikes thanks to it’s ability to carry stuff. This is no bad thing, I fitted a new Brooks saddle and it needs some serious breaking in before the next adventure.

That leads nicely into something else I was reflecting on while riding this morning… how life has scaled down, in a nice way, since leaving the corporate career. Rather than having to travel to meetings around the UK, France, Italy, Montréal etc, all of sudden I have time to make essential journeys, travel to meetings and workshops and so on all by bicycle. So much less “glamorous” but so much more satisfying. Granted I’m likely going to have to find a way to make a living well into my 70′s but “retirement” is not a concept that particularly appeals to my personality.. so long as I am doing something I enjoy. I’ll certainly have time to work as I grow older.. I’m not going to be able to sustain the same volume & intensity of cycling, kayaking, hiking etc when I’m 70 as I do now so I may as well have something else constructive and enjoyable to do. Well, that’s what I tell myself when I’m out in the surf on a Monday morning… :-)

mikesimagination goes pro…

Regular readers will know that I’ve been contracting my software skills to Design Room Cornwall by way of expanding that business. It has been, and continues to be an enjoyable, worthwhile enterprise. Not being employed directly however meant that I also needed to take control of my own future, hence my involvement with Outset Cornwall as mentioned a couple of posts ago. With that in mind I have created  my own site promoting my development skills with the obvious aim of building my own client base. The plan is to continue to work in partnership with Design Room for all their development and also where clients are looking for a full-on graphic design package (branding, brochures that kind of thing), while I concentrate on the online/application design.

I’m enjoying myself. It might sound a bit weird but writing code is a creative pursuit.. it takes me back to my early roots as an aeronautical engineer writing fluid dynamics (aerodynamics) software, taking satisfaction from creating something that does something.. and does it well. There is a pride in not just creating something but creating something that is as good as it can be. Without being deliberately immodest (!) I have a talent for both visual and technical design so I feel lucky now to be in a position where I can indulge both of those, and to be able to bring some significant engineering discipline and experience to the mix.

The “mikesimagination” brand has been around for a long time so it made sense to stick with that, a lot of people know me either as a result of this blog or my photography. For the next 12 months or so I’ll be operating on a sole-trader basis as I will be taking time out this summer to return to the Outer Hebrides as a sea kayak guide, continuing to work with Design Room of course, and I want to see how things go in general. In the future if the business grows I can shorten “mikesimagination” to “MI” or “MI-Studio” or something without changing my look or logo which is handy – may as well be positive and plan for growth.. or I may end up becoming a permanent part of Design Room Cornwall. Either way it is all rather exciting.

My photo portfolio is down temporarily while I redesign it and integrate it with the more professional mikesimagination now residing at the existing mikesimagination.net domain. Clicking on the screenshot above will take you there. Spread the word… please! In the meantime it is time for me to knuckle down to something which does not come naturally… marketing planning and execution :-|

some salt with that?

I’m just uploading some material to youtube for business related reasons but while I was at it I thought I would upload & share this.. In Bolivia I met a Canadian cyclist, James. We teamed up to cross the harsh landscapes of the southwest.. including a couple of days riding across the Salar de Uyuni at almost 4000m altitude. Quite a surreal place. We’d spent the night on the small rocky outcrop known as “Inca Huasi” and were heading to the Tunupa volcano some 50-60km away if memory serves. This is James filming, me in the red shirt with the same sunhat I’ve worn on just about every bike adventure for the last 10 years.. it could only have a more interesting story to tell if it been swallowed and subsequently “passed” by some example of megafauna… a giraffe perhaps :-)

The original post with photography is here 

desert, surf and a motherfu*king bike..

Just looking at the date of my last post.. seems there has been something of a famine of words recently, oh dear, I do apologise.. Sometimes it’s hard to get motivated to write when not on the road having an adventure. That’s not to say I haven’t been busy of course. I’m currently engaged in an intensive business start-up course courtesy of the excellent folk at Outset Cornwall. It’s proving to be a brilliant, fully funded program aimed at giving people the ‘tools’, knowledge & motivation they need for increased chances of success of starting a business. It is also a great place to meet interesting and inspiring people, so many folk out there doing interesting things. One in particular aroused my interest last week.. sharing a love of mountains and the solitude of deserts so I thought I would mention it here. It’s hard getting a business off the ground so any extra exposure isn’t a bad thing and it’s also a perfect of example of the diversity of ideas coming out of Cornwall.. something different to many “outsiders’” perception of the place as a county of little more than tea shops, surf shops and National Trust gardens…

The website should be up and fully functional in a few days. Suzi, the lady whose business it is was great fun to listen to with her stories of building a working relationship with the local Bedouin and her obvious passion for the Sinai. Incidentally the name White Heart has special meaning to the Bedouin, it is an expression used to indicate those of sincere, well-meaning character.. and hence quite appropriate I think. I quite like the idea of tagging along as “photographer” on one of these treks… hmmm ;-)

Now to a slightly wetter flavour of environment… a good friend showed up at our Sunday morning surf-kayak session at Sennen today with a GoPro HD camera mounted on the bow of his kayak. There is so much GoPro video footage floating around the web these days that it all looks the same and not particularly interesting … so very refreshing to see it used in ‘stills’ mode instead. I much prefer to see captured moments in time when one can appreciate the forms and colours in the water, and frozen actions that are lost to the viewer when presented with a video stream running at normal speed. After some comedy faffing while afloat with me trying to cycle through the settings with the camera on the extreme nose of his boat the end results were ace. I have permission to share a couple here which is handy. It was a fun morning in the waves. Incidentally if interested, someone in my kayak readership is bound to be… the boat is a Mega Proton, slightly bigger brother to my Boost :-)

Next time it will be interesting to see if we can set up some shots with other kayaks, without hurting ourselves…

And finally to bikes.. the other essential part of my life. There are lots of cycling videos going viral at the moment  and most of them are rubbish, not worth the couple of minutes of life necessary to view them… in my opinion… This one however that my non-cycling sister of all people forwarded on to me is brilliant. In my opinion… again. So for your viewing pleasure if you have not seen it already… and if you have, well it’s very watchable:

bicycle mind-surfing

The surf today was fantastic.. well over-head on sets, clean with an offshore wind.. absolute perfection. Unfortunately I wasn’t in it.. sore throat and feeling ropey meant that I instead elected to take my coffee down to the cliffs to watch my surf buddy rip up the waves, and to do a little mind-surfing of my own.  Normal cycling is far less strenuous than surf kayaking in big waves so it was the sensible thing to do. With sun shining and the scent of spring in the air staying in and working was simply not an acceptable option. I was secretly hoping to see James get his ass kicked by one of the really big sets that showed up occasionally… but he’s too good for that so I had to content myself with the packet of Jaffa Cakes I had brought along to go with the coffee.

look at those waves... bah!

It has been a while since I took my Salsa Casseroll out on the road.. winter and all that. Riding it today reminded me just how mellow a bicycle it is and stirred thoughts along the lines of “it’s about time I did another ultra-light European tour..”. It is.

for the duration of a brew…

I’m suffering from sluggish brain cells (yes, plural…) this morning so I thought in an effort to warm them up, and for the duration of a large mug of coffee, I might write something on here about what has been going on in the mikeyverse of late.. other than kayaking and riding.

A couple of weeks ago I gave a presentation on my two-wheeled South America adventure at a photographic club. When originally asked last year if I would I was very reluctant.. my brushes with such clubs and societies in the past have not always been entirely positive… especially when it comes to street photography and/or the graphic and sometimes abstract images that I like, some folk just don’t think it counts as photography at all. The requester however was very persuasive so I agreed to put together a presentation of about an hour. It was mostly street photography, some landscape stuff although I’m not a landscape photographer, and just enough cycling pictures to tell the story of the journey… The latter I was particularly worried about .. would people understand my love of bikes and cycling and accept the pictures as a fundamental part of the story or would they just be wanting to see pretty postcard pictures.. To my surprise and relief it was very well received.. they loved it. I did wonder at times though whether they were seeing the same pictures as I was when an elderly chap at the back asked why there were “people standing in the lake” when the image of the flamingos in the high altitude saline lake in central Argentina appeared on the screen…

the locals going for a paddle...

Given past experiences with photo clubs I do also, I must confess, do quite like the idea of being provocative if I can.. without being outrageous.. so my carefully  edited soundtrack was most definitely not what one might expect for such a presentation.. but it worked for me and they surprised me by liking that too. A really good bunch of people.

Speaking of street photography.. I generally fail to find inspiration when I am at home in Cornwall, too busy on the bike or on the water perhaps. It is a source of frustration for me as I look at my cameras collecting dust on the edge of my desk. I think Cornwall may be just too familiar and my head is usually too full of other things to be able to settle into that meditative state I need to to be able to photograph well. I need to kick myself into spending more time locally with my camera.. and with that in mind I’ll point you, if you’re interested, at some terrific mostly UK-based street photography I came across recently: http://www.claireatkinson.net/  Her work is fantastic and I especially like the fact she uses film and a rangefinder. Go take a look, it’s ace.

Other news… well on the non-career front you may have seen below that we just delivered our first major project for a client. I really enjoyed working on that, there was enough technical involvement to keep things interesting.. especially wrapping my head around Twitter’s apparently convoluted authentication system to allow my app to be able automatically post new opportunities to twitter as they are created.. but in the end all that confusion was down to Twitter’s own documentation being terrible. The best bit about it all was the satisfaction of  working with a good client to give them exactly what they wanted, and then some. I’m also spending a few hours each week attending a business start-up course, learning all sorts of useful things to do with marketing, branding and so on that are not always obvious to the engineering flavoured brain. A big benefit of it is the general energy that comes from meeting people in similar situations, sharing of ideas and so on. The course is funded by Cornwall County Council as a way to promote the growth of small businesses within the Cornish economy. It’s a great course delivered by very engaging people so it is very sad that funding is being withdrawn at the end of this financial year. I squeaked in just in time.

I have a couchsurfer coming to stay tonight for a few nights. I’ve been hosting people on and off for a few years, it’s a great way to meet interesting people when not travelling myself although I must admit I am quite picky about who I let stay.. a request that starts “yeah, we’re a bunch of 5 lads, we thought we’d come to Cornwall for a few days to surf, have a bit of a party” suffers an immediate kiss of death. I generally can’t be bothered with more than one person at a time and only if they’re the kind of person that I’m going to enjoy having them around – i.e they make some time to engage with me as well as doing their own stuff. For some reason I am yet to fathom I seem to be very popular with French girls… not that I’m complaining mind.. I just find it interesting although exactly why in particular is beyond me…

Right, enough of my ramblings. I’m down to the grounds at the bottom of my mug.

Cheero!

Trial Balance Consulting

Reblogged from the Design Room journal:

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Although it may seem like it but here at Design Room we don’t just swan around eating cake and hobnobbing at wedding fayres, we actually work too! Back in November we teamed up with web developer Mike Hayes who worked with us on a redesign of our own website. It’s added a new dimension to Design Room and expanded the range of work we are able to take on.

Read more… 222 more words

click the link above that begins "reblogged.." to read more. I was going to write about this myself, and perhaps I still will but in the meantime Sal at Design Room did a lot of the hard work for me. This was an enjoyable project to work on as I got to play around with some stuff I'd not done before such as Ajax for certain asynchronous elements as well as work with a brilliant client who gave us a fantastically positive testimonial. A good start to 2012 I think :-) By the way, they do eat a lot of cake at DR, especially when I'm not around but despite that I'm feeling very positive for the future growth of this side of the business. I remain self-employed however so exploring all sorts of possibilities for putting my skills to good use as I continue this adventure outside of the career world... stay tuned as always!

hiker envy…

The summers in eastern Canada and the north-east US are hot and buggy. These places were my weekend playgrounds for the years I lived in Montréal. Winter-time one could travel by snowshoe, ski and crampon without suffering the attention of hordes of miniature bloodsucking monsters, not to mention being mindful of bears and so on. In the summer months however by far the most relaxed way to travel for multi-day wilderness journeys was by Canadian Canoe… and not only because the capacity for carrying beer and wine to chill in the lake at the end of a day of paddling was unmatched amongst modes of transport. There was a concept called “hiker envy”.. it was one of those moments when you would be gliding along in your canoe, cooled by the lake breezes, free of biting insects (honestly, the bugs in the forests of the east are voracious), free of a ghastly cocktail of sweat, bug repellent and sunscreen dribbling into one’s eyes, and you’d pass some hikers on a bluff or lakeside trail. Burdened by heavy packs and sore, overheating feet they would invariably stop and stare as your canoe cruised past. Hiker envy.

a 'private' mid-lake island for a night.. no bugs, no bears :-)

some well-used beer carriers

friends will be friends...

on the move..

It comes to mind frequently here in Cornwall when paddling below the spectacular cliffs that characterise the area. There are nearly always walkers on the coastal footpaths, and they nearly always stop for a moment and stare when they spot a sea kayak gliding, apparently effortlessly, by. Yesterday being a case in point while paddling west past the Tater Du lighthouse. Being a bright sunny Sunday afternoon, albeit chilly in a cold northerly wind I wondered if they were suffering hiker envy. I thought about the cold in the tips of my fingers, despite gloves, and the chill of the wind and water and thought “probably not…”..From my point of view however it was a great day to be on the water.

heading west into a low winter sun

the light at Tater Du. My camera stopped working at this point so I don't have any decent pics. Oh well.

While I’m on…I’m going to sound awful preachy but yesterday I had cause to wonder at the thoughtlessness of some people. We passed a couple of guys out on sit-on-tops. They were a fair distance offshore and having a hard time paddling against the wind. One chap in particular caught my attention.. wearing what looked like a basic nylon overall unzipped to a t-shirt and no buoyancy aid. Overweight and unfit if anything had happened he’d have been stuffed. The water is only around 9 degs and the air was around 6 degs. He didn’t look capable of climbing back on his kayak should he have gone for a swim and with no waterproof/insulating clothing I can’t imagine he’d last very long in the water. One reads all the time about rescues of kayakers/boaters that have gone out without appropriate clothing or safety gear. Darwinism rules. I didn’t say anything for a couple of reasons.. last time I gently tried to broach the subject in a  similar situation I was told in no uncertain terms to mind my own {something} business.. and at least he had a buddy with him.. who was wearing a BA. I did keep half an eye from a distance however until they’d disappeared around the headland into Lamorna Cove. Accidents will always happen and the RNLI/Coastguard are fantastic but responsibility must always lie with the individual to ensure he is best prepared to deal with one should the worst happen. I guess I just get a bit wound up when I see such things. ho hum.

Anyway, enough of that, I’m being boring.

Cheero!