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 :-)

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!

‘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.

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:

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!

winter ocean

While the rest of the nation apparently froze it’s collective nuts off yesterday, west Cornwall was, at +4C merely a bit nippy. With light winds and just a lazy groundswell running paddling conditions out along the west coast of the Lizard between Poldhu and Kynance were particularly mellow… although later in the day the tide, in spots, was running at between 2 and 3 knots and kicking up some impressive overfalls, adding a frisson of excitement to an otherwise very lazy session.

wonderful late afternoon winter light

the Lizard's cliffs are always dark, but on days like this they are positively brooding. In stormy weather it can feel a particularly unfriendly place to be in a kayak.

there was only a very small wave on the beach at Kynance but swirling currents and waves reflected from the cliffs made landing and launching off the steep patch of sand, dodging barely submerged rocks surprisingly tricky

winter kayaking is fantastic, the ocean feels especially lonely

Orange wellington

have been feeling somewhat under the weather the last couple of days, I suspect something to do with being unable to remember the last time I saw proper sunlight rather than just a rare glimpse of a watery disc through veils of cloud and rain… but the forecast is better for next week so looking forward to some time on the water. I did however find a really cool old welly washed up on the beach today, the only bit of colour in the landscape as far as I could see… and I washed my bike. Exciting stuff. I am wishing now I had brought the boot home to plant something in… it’s the fact that it is orange. Orange is by far the best colour, top of the colour food chain in fact.. for example did you ever see a yellow tiger.. or a blue one, or even a green one? Nope, thought not.

<not sure if I can justly dignify this old boot with a ‘photography’ tag… oh what the heck>

at last, winter light

after what feels like weeks of endless storms… rain, high winds and days that never seemed to get properly light that left me feeling utterly uninspired at last today the sun broke through on a cold northwesterly gale, bringing with it a wonderful winter late afternoon light down on the cliffs at Gwithian…

Design Room Cornwall

A couple of posts ago I mentioned Design Room Cornwall, henceforth referred to as DR… I uploaded the new site yesterday so now I can write a little bit about it. Although not directly employed by DR I am part of the team so I can say things like “we are a talented bunch” rather than “they are a talented bunch“.  It is true too, although “bunch” might be too plural, we are only 3 after all ;-).

I don’t need to write too much, the site should speak for itself. Given most of DRs business comes from the small, local businesses that make up the Cornish economy the site needed to be something appealing to that market that showcased the diverse talents and growing portfolio of the team.. it needed to avoid being overly and intimidatingly trendy, easy and intuitive to navigate, avoid superfluous content and clichés, and be nice to look at. I also wanted to keep it very light in terms of processing. It’s all CSS/XHTML.. no javascript or flash to weigh it down. I think between us we managed that very well, certainly feedback received so far has been very favourable.

We operate out of a fun little studio in Truro.. well, it’s an executive shed really, but I don’t mean that in a dirty, cobwebby kind of way. Rather it is that office rental in Truro is very expensive so instead of weighing the business down with unaffordable rental we have a very groovy wooden studio on a patch of private land a short walk from the city centre. It’s cosy and a darn site nicer than some of the office spaces I’ve worked in over the years. There is also very good coffee, visitors are most welcome… bring jaffa cakes :-)

So, please go and have a look around, clicking on the image above will take you there.. or simply point your browser at http://www.designroomcornwall.com . So now you know where to go for all your graphic design, photography and web needs.. and coffee of course :-)

not really a rainforest kind of a guy

“What next?“.. it is a question I am hearing with increasing frequency from friends and ex-colleagues.. Of course I know full well that what they really mean is “when are you going to stop messing about and get a proper job?” words that have followed me ever since one very (very, very) short reversed charges phone call to my father from northern Sumatra on my birthday back in 1996. When I hear it however of course it really means “where next?”. While it is true that to some people I suppose I have been dossing around in the almost 14 months since I left my aeronautical career it has been a most worthwhile exercise what with the two-wheeled return to S America and summer guiding in the Hebrides.. and in between the development of those carbon surf kayak fins that made it to the world championships on the bottom of a boat in the British team… more satisfying than that however is that friends are using them and enjoying their performance benefits. In the year or so since making the decision to leave my employer I’ve managed to earn a grand total of less than £2000, hehe… but I haven’t exactly been trying very hard it has to be said. I’m lucky in that I have no family to support and I have savings behind me.. besides, these kind of transitions from ‘employed’ to ‘free agent’ are bound to take time.. aren’t they…;-) It’s not all about ££ though is it… so far the non-monetary benefits have been huge, mostly my health.. stress is no longer a feature. I am enjoying life immensely and it shows in the absence of the severe eczema that blighted much of the last 8 years or so..

Anyway, enough of that, I’m in danger of getting boringly introspective… so what next indeed. Well, inevitably as the rain lashes against the window a significant proportion of my mind is always thinking about the next adventure. I don’t have firm plans but I do have a woolly sort of idea along the lines of big mountains and deserts… think Tibetan Plateau kind of a place… though sadly the Chinese will not allow a cyclist to go there independently… fortunately however there are plenty of other similar places. It is hard to describe, all my life I have had a yearning to be in such epic places, every time I see a picture in a book or on TV I feel an overwhelming desire to be there, on my bike. I’m just not really a rainforest kind of a guy…

I shall illustrate… in my recent delves into my archives I came across a set of pictures I am sure I have not published before… a grand excuse for a blog post in it’s own right I think. I took these in 2001 on a journey through northern Pakistan into China’s Xinjiang Province and they illustrate perfectly the kind of place I feel the need to ride. This is approx 12,000ft up on the edge of the Pamir, a wonderfully remote place characterised by vast, dry plateaus and monumental peaks. To see where I am click this link to open a satellite image in Google Maps .

yum...

a yurt in it's proper environment, not in a tacky campsite on the cliffs at Newquay..

So places that are on the list..a return to the Himalayas definitely.. which part.. not sure yet – it could be India, Pakistan, China.. or Nepal.. in such a vast area there is so much to do… the only potential spanner in my Himalayan plan is a similarly strong desire to revisit northern Argentina in slow time. I loved it there and ticks all the right boxes.. wonderful people, arid mountain wilderness on a monumental scale…  and the icecream is among the best in the world too. At the time I was heading for Bolivia but could not help but recognise the potential for a leisurely couple of months exploring the backcountry in that northwestern corner.

It was August but bitterly cold.. just a few degrees above freezing

It is going to be almost a year before any of this happens I suspect. Opportunities have come my way to make my way in a different, and very much more fun kind of working environment so despite the fact that a highly corrupting influence in the form of a friend of mine heading to Nepal last week with her bike dangled a very attractive cycling adventure flavoured carrot I got all responsible and declined in favour of spending the winter at home in Cornwall and knuckling down to some ‘work’. My one concern is that is winter is the best time for good surf… I shall have to have a scrape around down the back of the proverbial sofa for some self discipline.

village & livestock enclosures dwarfed byt the surrounding peaks

I’d also like to make a sea kayak expedition in the Aleutian Islands where something like 20 active volcanoes stick up out of the Bering Sea… damn..

street & stuff… live

It is something of a character trait that when I get my teeth into a project I can’t leave it alone until it’s done.. so just one week on my new portfolio is live online. I didn’t swing a paddle or turn a pedal all weekend… as a result of which it is complete to a state where I’m happy for folk to explore although I’ll be twiddling around I expect for weeks to come.

mikesimagination.net rides again...

I’ve based the site around a Graph Paper Press theme, Sidewinder. The gallery functionality is quite fantastic and it hasn’t taken much messing with the CSS to get it exactly the way I wanted it but the homepage functionality is very restrictive so for the minuet navigation is restricted to the menu. I suspect I will be hacking deeper into it for a while longer to get it to do exactly what I want.. this will do for now however.

lovely big image sliders

It is mostly about street photography with five galleries dedicated to that flavour of work. It is something that fascinates me, the way a photograph captures a brief, chance and quite unique moment in time (and place) that can never be repeated. I also like it because it suits the way I see the world as I trundle around the world on my bicycle. I have not the patience to be setting up in one spot for hours to wait for the perfect light, or to fiddle around with lighting and so on. I’ll leave that to folk more focused (ha..) than I.

it isn't all street however....

Despite that you will find a few non-street flavoured photos on there, again mostly captured while out riding, and as with the street content a large proprotion of fresh work from my most recent journey along the Andes. I have left in a few favourites from other adventures however… by saying which is really just an excuse to bung more pictures in this post….

such as this one from Pakistan..

and this one from Morocco..

So.. having introduced it I think it is time for you to explore.. point your browser here.… or click the top image in this post. By the way, for now this blog remains the place for all the random photography such as the Holga stuff, and the ever present messing about on bicycles and in kayaks.

street & stuff…

I suppose really I’m writing this just as an excuse to post a couple of favourite photos, to keep the content rolling so to speak in between adventures…. so having been honest about that here are some words.. and some pictures. For a number of years I maintained a photographic portfolio online before I just let it die… I went through a phase during which I didn’t see much point in putting in any effort to maintain it, after all I don’t photograph in the pursuit of $$, I just like taking pictures. It is also true that for a while on & off depression killed off the creativity within me.. but since leaving the aero engineering job just over a year ago that problem has gone away and I’ve been persuaded that I should put a new one together.. especially with a winter of dark evenings on the way.

I am still in the early image selection process and haven’t yet knuckled down to the hard part.. editing.. so at the moment I’m just enjoying going through my library of transparencies and negatives and revisiting stuff I’d completely forgotten about. The primary focus I think is going to be street photography as that is what I like best but there is also an awful lot of stuff that I haven’t figured out how to categorise so I think I’m just going to keep it as ‘stuff’.. ‘street & stuff’.. or something. The mikesimagination ‘brand’ will live on as over the years, since 1999 in fact when it was a spur of the moment idea in a Montreal office, a lot of folk have come to recognise it, so it stays.. briefly my sister and I thought it would be quite fun to play on the title of some pretentious, no wait.. I can’t say that… lets say “arty”  London establishment… Buttock of Cow (Haunch of Vension being the original) was one idea that occurred but also one that would rapidly go off so to speak… .

I have lots of new content but it is probably not hard to figure out that there will be precious little local material.. I only feel truly inspired when I’m on the road. I can either make more of an effort locally or just keep on heading off on my bicycle. I think I like the latter idea… and there are plenty of ideas of a two wheeled flavour bouncing around in my head. For now though stay tuned & I’ll let you know when it goes live..

this is The End…. again

Lands End that is. Something of a Cornish classic paddling day out and my own favourite stretch of water. I never get bored of paddling around Lands End.. every time the character is different. It is magical on a glassy calm, sunny summers day when you can get in all the tiny little nooks, crannies and caves, and basking sharks are cruising close to the cliffs. It’s intimidating as hell when Atlantic swells as big as houses are rolling in with violent overfalls and spray shooting 100ft or more up the cliffs.. the rebound from those gets exciting.. and, as it was yesterday it can be wonderfully playful for a competent paddler with a couple of metres of swell cruising in and a big spring tide racing through.. provided you keep your wits about you. It is a good trip as a one-way from Sennen to Penzance but compared to the stretch from Sennen to Porthcurno the bit from Porthcurno to Penzance can be pretty dull.. so we rarely do that, instead preferring to lunch at Porthcurno, or Porthgwarra if the surf is dumping too heavily at Porthcurno, then turn around and paddle back. It is always different – the tide will be at a different state so opportunities to play are renewed, and the sea-state will often be different too… as it was yesterday with a rising tide and increasing swell which left us with the opportunity to do some surfing in fun shoulder-high waves on return to Sennen.

Interestingly the Romany that Ben and then Taran paddled belongs to a good friend of mine.. I’m looking after it by making sure it gets plenty of action.. or rather making sure ‘she’ gets plenty of action as apparently she is called Rosie.. a girl in other words. Perhaps this why Taran made the comment “she’s a playful little thing”.. hmm. My boat needs a name.. I could call it Colin perhaps, or Frank even…. but Bob might be more appropriate…

Enough of the words, having rectified the waterproof camera situation, hurrah, it’s time to wave some photos around… mine and a few from Taran at the end as well. A great day out with like-minded friends I am lucky to have.

see if you can spot the paddler... <hint - blade @ left>

a sheltered inlet @ low water

like threading a needle around all the rocks.

lovely bit of Cornish granite

Sam timing the swells...

it was quite violent on sets so timing was key

thinking about lunch

fabulous beach

lunch. It doesn't get much better, especially on a Wednesday. We're all professional work-shy layabouts it seems....

Taran & Ben swapped boats for the return trip.. this is Taran... no longer wearing yellow :-)

I like the 'frozen' waterdroplets in the foreground here

The next few are from Taran’s lens… more words & pictures over on his site.

this made me laugh... they're all watching the lamb go to slaughter as I paddle off to investigate a particularly interesting stretch of water..

the swells were rolling in..

& as I'd been lazy about my sunglasses strap I promptly lost them. Oh well, luckily I only buy cheap ones....

good tide flowing...

Ben awaiting his moment..

me & my Tiderace.. or should that be "my Tiderace & I".. or something

and again..

 

final few island images…

I’m leaving these islands on Sunday morning… feeling a little sad, I feel very at home here. However all being well I’ll be back next summer for another season of kayaking and in the meantime I have a whole winter of ‘stuff’ to look forward to back in Cornwall. I have no travel plans as such for a change – just riding and paddling at home.. & I could do with earning some proper wedge for a bit… well, trying to at least.

Anyway, a final few island images…(most with the Holga lens..)

Vatersay bristles & more Holga..

the weather continues in a stormy vein up here.. Before heading back to Cornwall next week I’d hoped to get down to Mingulay in a kayak for a couple of days exploring & wild camping but with Hurricane Katia on the way it ain’t going to happen. The wind did drop off a little last night for a cracking evening surf… offshore winds on a perfectly formed head-high wave with wonderfully stormy evening light. Magic.

idle hands on a storm-washed beach...not sure what this is.. a Vatersay Beach Bristle Monster perhaps... whatever, he's coming back to Cornwall...

wonderful storm light in Castlebay...

the coast of Vatersay

painterly hues of the airport beach near high water

Because the airport is the sheltered beach behind the dunes backing the west-facing  surf beach of Traigh Eais the free parking, in contrast to Cornwall’s hideous beach parking charges, is very handy and the baggage reclaim shed makes a cracking foul-weather changing spot… but not in this photo taken one fine evening earlier in the summer. Bearded guitar minstrel optional.

a little more Barra & Vatersay

Just a few more images of Barra & Vatersay as seen through a plastic Holga lens. It has a focal length equivalent of 50mm & aperture is fixed at f8. Ideal snapshot lens if you can work with the low contrast, vignetted, unsharp look… especially at the moment as the weather remains very unsettled with terrific lighting  :-)

three carrots and other things

just before I brought myself up here to the Outer Hebrides I picked up, for a very few £ indeed – £10 or so,  a Holga lens in a micro 4/3 fit. I used to have the original medium format film Holga camera, before I broke it, and rather enjoyed the somewhat distorted & heavily vignetted images in produced. The plastic lenses are now available in various mounts for digital cameras which is rather a fun thing. Mine came from the far east via fleabay. Postie delivered it as I was packing my gear for the trip north so without unpacking it I tossed it in my bag and forgot all about it. Until yesterday that is while digging around for a clean(er) pair of socks… With 90km/hr winds and driving rain the weather was fundamentally unsuited to anything much except for a walk out onto the exposed west coast with my GF1 & Holga lens in my pocket. The weather suited the lens.. or rather the lens suited the weather. Whichever way you look it the images seem appropriate to the bleak nature of this island when a storm blows in…

 

through the rainy window of my luxury sleeping quarters....

Anyway, enough of that. Last weekend was the Barra & Vatersay Produce Show… an important event on the local cultural calendar… really it’s just a heap of fun and while some folk take it deadly seriously most seem content to have a good laugh.. and unintentionally come away some prizes…

inevitable really....

Chris won a prize with this creation...

.. and with this decorated wellington boot entered, appropriately, in the fishing & crofting section...

it's serious stuff this...

deadly serious.. quality not quantity, 4 carrots would not have done

for some reason I found it all rather amusing...

Finally, before I crack on with more kayak repairs, and completely unrelated to any of the above.. an evening scene on Vatersay snapped while on the way to the beach for a surf.

Sixty Degrees of Latitude – a reminder

It’s time I gave my book another plug I think. It has been receiving some lovely feedback from buyers, so thank you if you have a copy… and if you haven’t it is a beautiful book printed on a very heavyweight lustre paper that would make a very nice addition to your book shelf if you enjoy travel.. or photography or cycling… or even if you don’t. One chap with a copy said this about it which I thought was rather nice.. “…I’m glad that the book doesn’t force feed you “a journey” but rather offers you some insight into the allure of travel. Especially by bicycle. And that is getting to know something of the personality of a place you visit. And above all, this is a collection of beautiful photographs.“

SIXTY DEGREES OF LATITUDE

“A journey by bicycle following the spine of the Andes from a latitude of approximately 5 degrees north in Colombia to 55 degrees south at the tip of Tierra del Fuego. These are some of the places in between.“

http://www.blurb.com/books/2205982

If you would like a copy I have a couple left from the first batch at the initial price of £33 + shipping afraid none left of the initial batch but it is available to buy online here  - print on demand so delivery will be a week or two but it’s worth the wait.

Sixty Degrees of Latitude…

First presented in preview form here Sixty Degrees of Latitude is here at last and available to order. 132 pages of interesting photography, printed on a very high quality ‘lustre’ finish paper.  It is not a travelog as such, nor is it exclusively street photography. Rather it is just a look at some of the places in between on my cycle journey through the Andes. Of course I’d be very happy if you all ordered a copy.. and you “should”* if you like interesting photography… or are interested in South America.. or bicycles and travel by bike.. and especially if you enjoyed reading this blog as I pedalled my way along through the Andes ;-)

You can preview the book in full below and order directly here

“A journey by bicycle following the spine of the Andes from a latitude of approximately 5 degrees north in Colombia to 55 degrees south at the tip of Tierra del Fuego. These are some of the places in between.”

Sixty Degrees of Latitude by Mike Hayes | Make Your Own Book

Granted it is not dirt cheap, such is the cost of print on demand, but it is a very high quality book and to put it in context.. for £25 you can go and buy 70 pages of rather dull (in my humble opinion of course ;-) photography in the form of Moby’s new book.. because he is Moby.. or you can have this instead <hint>.

cheero!