August 16, 2011

Detritus

I?m sometimes blinded into thinking that our beaches are relatively clean. The places I go are exposed to such a punishing surf that little detritus is left. Sometimes there?s a fishing float, tyre or rusting side of a ship lodged permanently into the back wall of a cave but the rocky shoreline can appear scoured clean with every tide. Westward Ho!, my local sandy beach also fools you into thinking that litter is a thing of the past. That is until you see it at the end of a summers day after the holidaymakers have gone. On-shore-drift makes a fine job of moving the crisp packets, beer cans, and discarded beach toys down to Saunton Sands and the fortnightly spring high tide makes a good job of finding the neatly hidden plastic bags and polystyrene cups pushed into holes on the pebble ridge or held under a stone. We?ve learnt to recycle so well now that we even crush up the water containers so they take up less space. I?ve even heard visitors ask why there are no bins on the beach having no comprehension that at high tide there is no beach; but this doesn?t stop piles of rubbish being neatly stacked together as if to say ?We believe this would make a good place for a bin!?

How difficult is it “take your rubbish home with you”? Another question would be “Is anyone ever prosecuted for dropping litter?? I?m sure we could find a few cases but how about ?Has anyone ever been prosecuted for letting a helium balloon fly off, or a lantern for that matter?? I will end up on a beach eventually.

At least this cream bottle served a purpose as a useful floating home. I threw it back into the sea so hopefully these goose barnacles survived!

August 3, 2011
2

Song of the Surf

I went home to visit my parents recently and I was reminded of an image that has been with my since as far back as I can remember. It?s a print of a painting called ?Song of the Surf? by Ed Mandon. I expect it was a popular print in its day, that being the early 1960?s. I remember often looking into this picture of the sea. Not the pretty turquoise blue of Cornwall or Greece, or the palm tree lined sun bleached cove, the peaceful relaxing sunset or the family snapshot of children paddling in the shallows; no this was Mandon?s deep green sea, wild and free, the waves endlessly crashing in my mind, a vast living breathing entity. The sky, a cold yellow with the threat of rain. It?s a picture that has influenced my subconsciously for a long time. I remember once on Marconi Beach, Cape Cod, I ran down the beach towards the sea and the waves as the holidaymakers ran in the opposite direction, fleeing (as if for their lives) as huge thunderclouds gathered over the ocean.

I?m a lot closer to that deep green wild enticing sea now living in North Devon. And getting closer to it in my own work. ?Song of the Sea?, it certainly calls you; maybe that?s the point, maybe it?s song and call is at its loudest when the sea is in its foulest mood and perhaps that is why the coast here is the ?Graveyard of the Atlantic?.

July 17, 2011

Adventures on an Ocean Kayak

Inspired by a day I spent last year photographing Sarah Adams for the catalogue to her show at the Maas Gallery in Cork St, London, I promised myself that in 2011 I would get a kayak so that I would be able to experience and photograph the North Devon coast at high tide and access places impossible for me to walk to at low tide. I?ve done a little rowing before as I had a small wooden boat moored on the mud banks of the Torridge minutes from my house; and I?d done a bit of kayaking in Manteo, North Carolina in Mayor Jamie Daniels double sit-on kayak. But it was the thrilling experience of paddling out to sea in preparation for and on the day of the shoot with Sarah that really excited me about the possibilities.

I bought an bright yellow Osprey sit-on Kayak just over a month ago and have been taking it down to the ?East-the-Water? boat ramp as often as possible. This access to the river is minutes from my house and is made swiftly on a shopping trolley conversion. Paddling up and down the river with and against the tide is relatively easy but good for building up experience and body strength. Kayaking in the sea is a different matter entirely.

The first time I tried paddling through the surf I got thrown out of the kayak all the time, especially when paddling into shore with the waves behind me; it was the equivalent of a bucking bronco whose only intent was to have me thrown off into the water. With more experience this got better but I think a good rule here is: if the sea is good for surfers then it?s bad for kayaking!

My first ocean kayak with intent to make some pictures was a couple of weeks ago at Combe Martin. The sun shone and the sea seemed quite calm, just after high tide, with the waves crashing close to the shore. I wore a wetsuit, lifejacket and a pair of old Keens; my camera and tripod were packed into a dry sack with a towel and strapped to the rear of the kayak, I attached my self and the paddle to the kayak too. I was all set to paddle off, sat in the kayak in the seas shallows, adjusting my back support I took my eyes off the surf for a split second and I was rolled over with no apology. I took this as a warning that you can?t relax for a moment, even in small surf as it will throw the kayak over any chance it gets. I got back in, ignoring the comfort and support of the seat back and paddled with all my strength straight at and through the waves at a right angle to the shoreline; not slowing down or taking my eyes of the surf until I was passed them in the relative calm of the undulating waves.

Giving a small promontory of rocks a wide berth I traversed to the right until from out at sea I was looking into the mouth of a cave I had called ?Silver Mine, Combe Martin? on a previous photo trip on a low spring tide. I could see that the back of the cave was clear of the receding tide although it?s entrance had a thick wall of surf. This was what I wanted, what I had seen in my mind?s eye, so with little hesitation I paddled as fast as I was able in a straight line for the mouth of the cave. I hit the pebbly shore at speed leaning right back to help the kayak ride as far into the cave as possible. I climbed out quickly and dragged the kayak to the back of the cave.

The view from here was awesome. All of my senses felt heightened as I observed this familiar cave?s entrance being pounded by the surf and sunshine shining through it from behind. Sometimes with a big wave the walls of the cave would slightly darken, then for a split second, was bathed in an incredible refracted, diffused light as the wave eclipsed the sun.

I dried my hands on the still dry towel and set up my carbon-fibre tripod in the shallow water, attached my camera and made a series of images, exposing the dark inside walls of the cave for a lot longer than the mouth and the incoming breaking waves.

This sketch (above) is the first of I hope many images that I?m hoping to get to make along the North Devon and Cornwall coast at high tide. It?s made from a selection of 60 original frames, and is far from perfect in it?s present state, but I wanted you to see a direction that I?m heading as I?m really pleased with the power and fury of the surf and the way it gives a sublime beauty this coastal landscape. Below is the second sketch image of the cave next-door which I refer to as ‘Lead Mine, Combe Martin’.
All I had to do then was to get back to the beach at Combe Martin?..

May 23, 2011
3

the Changing Landscape

I went to a conference recently and learnt about the changing landscape. I think of the term often in my own practice and I wondered if it might be a reference to environmental changes; climate change, deforestation, destruction of wilderness, the ever expanding suburbs, sea level rise and the erosion of our coast which is paramount in my work. Alternatively it might have been in a ?then and now? context like the much inspiring work of Mark Klett making new landscape photographs from the same place as an historical photograph from 100 years ago or more, using the same focal length of lens, same angle of view, same time of year, time of day etc and adding the original historic black and white image to the new colour one to demonstrate how that landscape has changed through time; the image below is by Mark Klett. This use of the changing landscape is also becoming a major part of my practice as I explore and research the history of where I live in North Devon. My most recent work uses old postcard images from the Beaford Old Archive as a basis for making new work. My intention is to bring the ghosts of the past to life by leaving literal ghost like images from the old pictures in the new photographs. These will initially be show as handmade postcards in the Bideford / Manteo Postcard Exchange in the Burton Art Gallery, Bideford, Devon and the Dare County Arts Gallery in Manteo, North Carolina during June 2011. Below is Northan Village / Northam Town from this work.I have been reading Richard Louv?s ?Last Child in the Woods? and it had occurred to me that the changing landscape referred to how children don?t play outdoors anymore. The landscape of nature with trees to climb, meadows to run in, mountains to conquer and secret caves to explore has been changed to flickering screen to passively sit in front of at best get a second-hand audio-visual of the landscape outside.
However, it seems that ?landscape? is becoming a rare word in ?art speak? today, with its original meaning and context. The changing landscape in the conference I attended referred to the economy and essentially how art institutions will have less money in the future.

April 26, 2011
2

Grand Sky

I’ve been over in Tucson AZ seeing friends, enjoying a holiday and playing with a new camera. I got an Olympus Pen EP1, so that I can keep a small camera with me all the time which should be good enough to take a professional picture. We’ll see! It performed extremely well under the hot desert sun. The pictures here are, in some respects, examples of where it isn’t comparable to the E3, however let the camera talk finish there.
These are both night photographs from the rim of the Grand Canyon on a moonless night. What a fantastic sight, it’s really unbelievable just how many stars there are. I’m used to seeing stars in North Devon where light pollution is minimal, but here at the GC, 7,500 feet higher, you feel you can touch them. I remember feeling disappointed that I wasn’t going to see a full moon whilst in the USA, but no moon, in some respects, is better.
The light on the canyon wall in the photo below comes from dimly lit Bright Angel lodge, a mile away. I was also amazed at how much a little light can make in such a dark place. Even my small, LED torch (flashlight), could make a huge difference. One would have thought a place as wild and pristine as the Grand Canyon could restrict their lights to the floor and the inside of buildings rather than lighting places miles away. I guess light waves are much like sound waves; you shout to someone across a room 30ft away, but when you shout on the rim of the Grand Canyon those waves travel 12 miles and reflect of the North Rim wall and travel 12 miles back again as an echo less than a second later.
I’m reliably corrected by Paul Madgett, thanks Paul: “sound travels at around 1100ft/sec at sea-level (though a little slower at higher altitudes) – ie roughly 5 seconds for a mile – thus any echo from a shout across the full 12-mile width of the Canyon would take about 2 minutes – if you were hearing an echo in less than a second, this must have been from nearby canyon walls on your side of the Canyon. Light, on the other hand, at about 300,000km/sec would take less than 1/10000 sec to “echo”.