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Chap called Christopher Cox sent me a nice email about the blog and asked a question.

“Say, I know this is a strange query, but if you don’t mind my asking, would you possibly be able to tell me what people are generally like in the UK, compared with the United States (where I live)? I’ve been thinking of shifting locations to Britain (I love the climate, plus the people are undoubtedly more educated!), but I’ve been curious what the people are actually like, in general. The Brits are often said to be more polite and helpful than Americans on average; are they typically quite proper and formal, or are they often rather more casual, loud, and goofy? Do strangers often chat, or is quiet and reserve usually preferred?”

My answer would be “well, they’re kinda British” which isn’t much use, so in a rare moment of community involvement on this blog I figured I’d throw it open to my predominantly British readership.

So, what are we like?

Newhall St, Birmingham, June 25th
Full set of 25 photos

Sunday my photographic subject couldn’t have been more different with a trip to the former Museum of Science and Industry in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter. The museum was closed in 1997 to make way for the spangly new Thinktank at Millennium Point (which I still haven’t been to yet for some reason) and the listed redbrick parts are about to be converted into some mixed-use business/apartment thing like so much of the city. Before this gutting an outfit known as the Museum of Lost Heritage had the inspired notion of opening the shell up for the public to walk around with a number of walks and exhibits created from the remnants by artists Alistair Grant and Stuart Mugridge.

I must confess to not bothering with the Art side of things, preferring to make my own interpretations with my camera than view through someone else’s eyes so I can’t judge whether their efforts were a success, but if such artistic trappings are needed to open such buildings up then so be it.

As you know I have an interest in decaying buildings. I think this was first triggered by seeing a recently emptied shop on a high street with the fittings removed and the shadow of commerce revealed. I then went on to close down a couple of branches of Waterstone’s in London, again stripping away the spectacle and revealing the scars of history on the building. (Some photos, specifically of the Charing Cross Road branch closure, can be found amongst my L’Espion set from 2002 if you fancy a dig.) The facade we place on our environment is so temporary and fleeting and often the buildings are too, quickly torn down and turned to rubble. Where they are kept and augmented to new uses the ghosts remain, hidden behind the new facade. There is no permanence but still there is permanence.

Or some shit.

Anyway, the Museum had all this in spades. A visible history of 100-odd years and the decay of nine years neglect. It was beautiful and awe inspiring. I just wish I’d had a foresight to tell others about it before I went.

25 photos made the cut, which was pleasing since I was shooting in dark rooms without a flash. I also shot some film and they’ll be online in a week or so.

Bournville, June 24th
Full set of 44 photos

Oh wow. The Bournville Maypole. What can I say?

As you know by now Bournville is a slightly odd place. Originally a model village set up by the Cadbury family in the late 19th Century it’s now part of the urban sprawl of greater Birmingham and yet manages to maintain a unique personality that other consumed areas struggle to hold on to. Part of this is due to the Village Trust who enforce strict rules within the ward (no pubs, no supermarkets, no unauthorised modifications to buildings) and part of it is because the residents, who cross all classes, like it that way.

One way of looking at Bournville is as a suburb with pretensions of viliage-ness and this striving for some idealised vision of rural country life has some very odd, if well intentioned and ultimately beneficial, results.

Nowhere is this better illustrated that at the Bournville Village Festival. Last week I was at the Kings Heath festival which was a very different beast made up of a ramshackle collection of local activities that really represented the community as a whole. From the cheezy compare singing karaoke to fill the gaps to the hoards of kids from the many dance schools doing their routines it was, in spirit, just like the chaotic village fetes I remember from my youth. Bournville, on the other hand, seemed to be taken from the “How to put on a traditional English village festival just like in the olden days” book, which isn’t to say it was false or contrived or misguided. It was as vibrant and inclusive and representative as the Kings Heath one, just very very different. Remember, 100+ years ago there was nothing here but fields and a few farms. Bournville itself is a construct so it follows that everything else will be made up, including tradition.

The Maypole dance, now over 100 years old, is the lynch-pin in understanding the wonder of Bournville. Lasting an hour and featuring over 130 local children in costume it runs through an elaborate sequence crowning the Festival Queen, a local beauty chosen by a select group of three to, well, I’m not sure what she does exactly but there she is. Our queen. (Actually, if I remember rightly, she assists in turning on the Christmas lights. Which is something.) While other areas may crown a May Queen of some sort nowhere takes the ceremony quite as seriously as Bournville.

Thinking about it, this sort of thing is usually done as some kind of Heritage Tourism, putting on a show for the public to illustrate “what things were like back then” with a reenactment of some ritual long forgotten. This was not heritage, for Bournville has no real history past 1879. This is current. This is now. Those watching were not being educated or entertained in a dispassionate sense - they were intrinsically part of it.

To fully comprehend the glory of this spectacle I’d encourage you to work through my photos. Due to some high level connections on the committee (my landlord) I was able to gain access to the balcony of the pavilion overlooking the arena - a rare privilege not granted to many. Look at the photos and remember at all times this is taking place in a suburb of Birmingham, the second largest urban sprawl in the country. Look at them and marvel at the fact that this actually happens.

– — –

Next week, in my summer tour of the local festivals and related events, sees the Cotteridge Festival on Saturday (with Misty’s Big Adventure playing) and the Moseley Music in the Park festival on Sat and Sunday (I’ll only be doing Sunday, obviously). Mayhap I’ll see you there?

Bournville, June 24th

I must have taken around 500 photos over the weekend which is great but even with my streamlined Photoshop workflow systematics it’s taking a while to process them all. Here’s the easy batch to begin with - eighty photos of the Bournville Village Festival fireworks display. Usually I’d pick the best 10 or so but they’re all much of a muchness, a very nice and good muchness, but a muchness all the same.

I took my tripod along, set the camera to the longest exposure and went trigger-happy with a cable release. Some were very long exposures, most were just a second or two. Best viewed as a slideshow.

Many many more to follow…

Bournville, June 24th

I won £1.50. First prize was a fiver. Next year that fiver is mine.

Routine, it seems, is an important thing. For the last couple of months I had a routine. Get up at 7.30, go to work, come back around 1.30, do stuff, eat, do some other stuff, bed by midnight. A lot of the stuff involved taking and processing my photographs (Oh, you think?) and judging by the batch of 130 prints that came through yesterday it was a very productive time.

But that job ended on Friday and with it ended my routine. Monday and Tuesday were at chez Higgins digging soil from nine to six. I haven’t done any real digging for over a year and the full day was a bit, a teeny bit but still a bit, of a shock, but the biggest fuck to my system was the sudden absence of time as my “evening” shrunk from nine hours to four-ish.

Hence no blogging, no new photos, no nothing other than food and the odd bit of football. And sleep. The sort of glorious sleep you get after a day spent digging.

Happy to say, though, that other than some slightly sore thigh muscles my body coped wonderfully with the digging. I guess two months of window cleaning and sweeping kept me in trim.

Actually, I lie about the no new photos. Gareth kindly developed the black and white film I shot during and after the Flickrmeet and they went up today. I guess 14 out of 38 (yes, 38. Not sure how I managed that) is a pretty good hit ratio but I’m not completely comfortable with them. Bit dark, though that might be down to Gareth’s developing. Not that I’m complaining or nuffink, don’t get me wrong. The whole film thing is all about moving away from the perfection of digital so the shittier the better really. Be interesting to see how the slide films come out though. (Once I get a around to shooting something with them…)

But anyway, I’m back in the routine of not having a routine and so far I’m not too keen on it. Today was a day off (the beds need to settle before seeding) and I got less done than I would were those hours spread over three days.

It’s a strange one. I’m enjoying working for Nat and I like that I could end up in interesting places doing interesting things due to my flexi-status but it’s not terribly conducive to the pursuance of my Thing.

Kings Heath, Birmingham, June 17th

Saturday was the Kings Heath Carnival and I found it a little odd as it was full of normal people, which is a potentially wanky thing to say but there it is. That said, I also turned up on my own and my state of mind improved once I met up with Jez, and then Matt and Marv. I’m still not sure what to say about it but it was fun and lively (and very very hot). It just felt like I’d be transported back in time to some strange other England, one that never really went away. Later flatmates Andy and Alex arrived and we met up with Gareth, Julie and baby Max and an impromptu camera club emerged resulting, in part, in the above photo, taken with my digital through the focussing screen of Gareth’s dismantled SLR. Alex has also gotten the camera bug of late with a salvaged Pentax MX and it’s good to have a photo-positive environment outside of Flickr, though I suspect the two will merge in time.

Speaking of which I recently became an Admin of the main Birmingham Flickr group along with Stef which should be interesting as we’ve both got lots of very different ideas as to how it should develop and I think the flexibility of the setup should accommodate our visions and enable them to feed each other well. We’re currently throwing long emails at each other to bash out some kind of general approach but hopefully interesting times are in the pipeline, and not in the Chinese sense.

Next Saturday is the Bournville Festival which I’m looking forward to a lot as it’s on home turf so we’ll be able to pop back home for tea, and I’ve recently discovered that Misty’s Big Adventure are playing the Cotteridge Festival (aka CoCoMad) on July 1st so that’s a no-brainer. Will probably pop along to the Moselely Festival afterwards (and definitely on the Sunday) as the lineup looks pretty keen. Unfortunately this knocks Northfield out of the running but a sheepdog rounding up geese only has so much appeal.

Digbeth, June 11th

I can picture Skizz holding this…

– — –

Last day as caretaker today. In retrospect it was good to work out the week after hearing I hadn’t got the job, allowing me to put it all to bed and move on, although I was aware that I’d just reached that point in a job where I’d comfortably settled in. Quite an odd feeling, being attached to a job after all this time. Still, it’s on one of my cycle routes so I can always pop in for a cuppa (and maybe revisit that tunnel…)

– — –

I realised that this week I’d been avoiding going out for extended photography trips despite planning them, which was strange. Then I realised why. I’d loaded a film into the Nikon F5 and really wasn’t looking forward to dragging about the place, beast that it is. So today I bit the bullet and headed for the Selly Oak graffiti gardens where I knew I could rattle off 36 shots with no problem. Allowing for the fact that I’ve fitted it with an old manual lens, and therefore not using a fraction of the automatic functions, I’m resolutely unimpressed. Mostly this is down to the weight. It’s like carrying a couple of house bricks around your neck and I was sweating like a pig by the time I got home. I can’t believe pro-photographers used to carry these sorts of things around, not to mention all the extras that go with it.

Of course in the pre-digital days if you wanted auto-focus and auto-exposure you needed this kind of kit but these days it’s a serious case of overkill. (That said, I did like the extra shutter button on the side for portrait shots.)

This post may vanish for a while when the F5 goes on eBay!

– — –

Tomorrow (Saturday) I’m off to the Kings Heath Carnival, partly for the photo opportunities and partly because it just seems really mad. Dogs jumping through fire, a junior school heavy metal band, donkey rides and “Mad Dominic”. If it goes well I’ll be endeavoring to go to all the local carnivals and festivals over the next month: Bournville (24 June), Northfield (1 July), Moseley (a whole week but mainly 1-2 July) and any others that cross my path. It’s all rather fête-tastic!

Digbeth, June 11th

A Tunnel, June 14th

The place where I work has a long tunnel running the length of the building to which, as caretaker, I have full access. Since I won’t be working there as of Monday I figured I’d best make the most of this opportunity. After all, how many of you have access to a Victorian-era redbrick tunnel? Didn’t think so.

There are nine of these shots in the set (slideshow) taken by setting the camera to the longest exposure, switching off the lights and setting of a hand-held flash gun as many times as possible.

I’ve got some more photos of the tunnel itself and they will follow in due course.

Digbeth, June 11th

A string of overly hot sleepless nights have caught up with me and I’m somewhat knackered so no RvD tonight, which was a shame. I have, however, got a teeny bit hooked on the football. Not a surprise as it happens every four years - I just try to stay in denial as long as possible. I fancy Croatia’s chances myself, but what do I know? Fuck all, really.

The slow evolution of my Photoshop skillz continues and I feel I must share a new discovery, especially as I figured it out all by myself without using a book or nuffin.

You’ll remember back in January I suggested using the Channel Mixer to convert colour photos to black and white because it gives you a fine control over each colour tone. (Or some shit.) The downside of this is it’s a bitch of a tool to use.

Since then I’ve been using Curves pretty much exclusively as a layer, especially the Red Green and Blue colour paths to boost up the red and pull back on the blue without radically screwing with the contrast. Often I’d use this to prep stuff for black and white but having to flatten and desaturate to preview was a bit of a bind.

Then I had a flash of what now seems fucking obvious. Here are the steps.

1. Open your colour image.
2. Create a new Curves Adjustment layer.
3. Create a new Hue / Saturation layer.
4. Make sure the Hue / Saturation layer is above the Curves layer.
5. Pull the Saturation right down to -100 so the image is monocrome.
   (You can record these steps as an Action)
6. Go back to the Curves and start playing with the colours.
7. When you’re happy, flatten and save.

Hope that comes in handy to at least someone.

Digbeth, Birmingham, June 11th

I’ve dribbled a few more of my photos from the Flickrmeet into this set with a fair few more to come. There are currently 216 in the group pool (slideshow) and the quality level remains fucking high.

Today I’d like to draw your attention to Harri B’s Through the Viewfinder shots, taken by shooting a normal camera through a Kodak Duaflex (one of those box cameras you look down into). He’s got loads more here and, naturally, there’s a Flickr group for this inspired nonsense. Lovely stuff that I never knew was being done and it adds yet another valuable angle on the walk.

As I said before the nice thing about these meets is the mix of cameras being used, from professional-level DSLRs with fancy lenses to cheapo pocket cameras, not to mention the old-school film cameras which we’ll have to wait a while to see the results of. It’s a keen thing that we’ve got an environment where those at the top of their game can stretch themselves while newcomers just figuring things out can feel comfortable. As you can tell I’m pretty chuffed at how it’s all turning out.

In other photo news, because photo news is all you’re getting from me these days and you’ll learn to accept it, I’ve currently got a frightening number of pre-digital cameras scattered around the place which I’ll be selling on ebay for me dad (I have better feedback than him). The Nikon FM2 is a perfectly normal beast that I enjoyed shooting with at the weekend but the Nikon F5 is a monster, weighing a ton, requiring eight batteries and so complex it took me 10 minutes to figure out how to turn it on. I spent a while reading the manual this evening and tentatively popped a film into it. Tomorrow I’ll be taking it out around Brum (before Robot vs Dinosaur). Given that the lens I’m using is not compatible with all the F5’s fancy-pants auto-bobbins (except Aperture Priority mode) I’m not expecting anything radical, but at least I can say I’ve used one before flogging it.

Digbeth, Birmingham, June 11th

The Birmingham Flickrmeet Tour of Digbeth occurred today and I’m pretty sure it was a success, which is nice. Despite the laughable BBC 5-day weather forecast suggesting thunderstorms it was a bakingly hot and sunny day as eleven of us spent 2 hours walking from Moor Street to the Custard Factory taking photos and chatting.

While I had a good time I didn’t feel overly inspired, presumably because I’ve been shooting areas like this for over a year now and it’s getting a little old, but it was worth it given the results from the group so far which are very good indeed.

Here’s the pool for todays shots, best viewed as a slideshow as there will be hundreds. You can also check the post-meet thread where folk will be posting their best. So far I’ve been utterly blown away by Matt aka Brilliant Mistake’s set which took all my suspicions about how far I’ve got to go with my photos and confirmed them with a vengeance. Some serious studying of his compositions will now follow.

My photos will be dumped in this set over the week. Nothing’s jumped out as amazing yet but there’s still 100 or so to process. I also slapped a film in my dad’s Nikon FM2 which should be developed in a couple of weeks. I’m quite intrigued as to how I may have improved with a manual camera since last time.

Now, about those thunderstorms. When you’re ready, weather gods. In your own time.

“When I was one, I was just begun.
When I was two, I was nearly new.
When I was three, I was hardly me.
When I was four, I was not much more.
When I was five, I was just alive.
But now that I’m six, I’m as clever as clever.
I think I’ll stay six now for ever and ever.”

Or at least until next year.

Longbridge, Birmingham, June 7th

See how the walking bloke adds so much more to the image?

– — –

And so it came to pass that, two months after the application deadline and a month after the actual interview, I was informed that I didn’t get the permanent caretaker job. It was close though, shortlisted down to two and, as I understand it, the preferred candidate of my immediate boss, but the other guy has decades of caretaking experience and, once his references checked out, the powers that be decided he was the better choice.

I was surprisingly down about this, given that the job in itself is really nothing special and I’ve only been there for 9 weeks, not to mention the random nature of my employed life these last few years. I kinda realised I actually liked working there. The job was random enough to be interesting but, critically, not too interesting and the people were nice. I liked the fact that I could do anything they threw at me immediately and without complaint and I especially liked the fact that they were grateful for this. I think I’ll genuinely be missed, which is an odd thing for an agency worker to say. I, and everyone else, knew I was just covering the vacancy while the process crawled torturously to it’s conclusion, but had I got the job the transfer from temp to perm would have been seamless so it feels a little like I’ve been fired.

Of course in my role as temp I’ll still be covering the position for a week, maybe two, until new guy can start, which will be slightly strange but I’d be a fool not to make the most of the 9am-1pm shift while I can. The only ray of light is the last person they gave the position to only lasted a week before leaving. If this new chap also doesn’t work out then I’ll be back.

On the other hand this does open up a couple of potentials I’d had to dismiss due to my maybe-perm status (including, yes, a very theoretical extended trip to New Zealand) along with putting me back on the cash-in-hand odd-job market. You got a garden needs clearing? A load of heavy things need shifting? Something needs painting? Get in touch.

– — –

In other news, Birmingham-based photographers should note the impending Flickr meet this Sunday where we’ll be touring Digbeth with our cameras before ending up in the pub. The last one was excellent and with any luck those red bricks should glow in the sunshine. (Yes, I’ve seen the forecast but it’s never accurate…)

– — –

I’m sure I’m supposed be to doing something tomorrow (Saturday) but I’ve got no idea what it is. Any ideas?

(No, it’s not the football. I’ll be using those 90 minutes to get some shopping done in town.)

Coombes Lane, Northfield, June 7th

– — –

My chum Celeste was on Radio 4 today as one of the experts on In Our Time discussing Uncle Tom’s Cabin. As usual Melvin Bragg is an arse masquerading as the listener’s advocate but it’s still worth a listen. I’ve picked up bits of Abolitionist history by osmosis over the last year or so and it’s fascinating stuff. MP3 here for the next week.

– — –

My bike has developed another puncture in the rear wheel and I’m getting mightily sick of it, especially as the front wheel has never gone flat in the two years I’ve had it. I’m thinking it might be time to get a new tyre as it’s either got something sharp but miniscule embedded in it or it’s getting worn out and allowing stuff in. I’m especially annoyed because each time I take the wheel off the ball-bearings slip out of place and the breaks never quite sit right.

– — –

While standing at the bus stop I saw a crow appeared a few yards away from me and hopped onto the Bristol Road, a dual carriage-way of some intensity. It was scraggy and old and incapable of flight but determined to get to the other side, making it over the first lane but stopping in the second. A car approached at speed and I turned away, at the last minute looking back to see it miss by a whisker. Another car approached but this time I couldn’t look. The driver honked his horn followed immediately by a sickening thunk. There was a bright red patch where the crow had been with the crumpled corpse a few metres up the road.

I was mildly distressed at this experience and started to wonder why. Part of it was my innate cyclists negative attitude towards car drivers bombing about the place with no awareness of exactly what they’re capable of doing with their metal death machines but the reality of roadkill isn’t a radically new idea to me. And, as a meat eater who’s just this evening chopped up a substantial chunk of cow and made a curry with it, I’m not morally outraged at the notion of killing animals. But this crow, to coin a phrase, touched me.

In the end I rationalised it as a piece of anthropomorphism. When I saw the crow I didn’t see an animal reaching the end of it’s natural life. I projected ideas of humanity onto it, gave it consciousness and felt sorry for this feathered reptile descendant. Then, as the inevitability of it all rapidly became apparent I had time to build a drama in my mind building to a terrible climax. If I’d arrived at the bus stop a few minutes later or had cycled past I wouldn’t have given the carnage a second thought. It’s all about the story.

Later a greenfly landed on my arm and I squashed it with no qualms whatsoever.