North Coast 500 | Scotland Road Trip

In-camera pano shot on the X100V with the camera in the portrait orientation.

PHOTOGRAPHY AND TEXT BY DEREK CLARK

The road trip. It fires up a romantic notion in most of us; fuelled by everything from car commercials, old films of Route 66, and even childhood holidays from a time before every trip had to begin with a plane ticket. I started to get the urge for a road trip when I bought my fourth Land Rover, just a couple of months before COVID 19 appeared on the scene. This was obviously put on hold for the past 18 months, but with a reluctance to sit on a plane for multiple hours, the road trip became the best option. Not only that, after the various lockdowns during the pandemic, the urge to just hit the road and be free was pretty overwhelming.

The North Coast 500 is one of the worlds most beautiful and epic road trips. Starting and ending in Scotland’s most northerly city of Inverness. The choice of going clockwise or anti-clockwise is up to the driver, but we opted for the latter, travelling up the east coast fairly quickly, then slowing down to take in the epic rugged landscape along the extreme north coast and then back down the west coast. We camped, we stayed in hotels and we stayed in hostels. Wild camping is legal in Scotland and usually better than any campsite when it comes to pitching the tent in a great spot.

For a full week, I had no urge to pick up my phone and look at any of the garbage it’s connected to. The battery went flat and I couldn’t have cared less. I took an iPad and didn’t use it once. I took my kindle but didn’t read a single page. There was nothing but driving, photography, setting up camp, cooking and sleeping. It was just what I needed and just what I’ve been craving ever since.

The highlight of the North Coast 500 is the road leading to a remote village called Applecross. The road is called Bealach Na Ba and as far as I know is the highest road in the UK. A sign at the start of the road alerts drivers that it’s not suitable for large vehicles, caravans, motorhomes, or learner drivers. It has gradients of 1 in 5 and has hairpin bends. It doesn’t mention the vertical drops if you veer off the road, but you soon find that out.

We clocked up over a thousand miles on our 500-mile road trip, including the drive to Inverness and back. But we’re already planning our next road trip, but first, we need to get a roof rack to give us more space inside.

SHOT WITH FUJIFILM X100V, WCX100, X-PRO2, 18mm F2, LENSBABY COMPOSER PRO & EDGE 50 OPTIC

Headless

This image, from Robert Catto’s essay Broken Threads was my starting point for this essay.

This image, from Robert Catto’s essay Broken Threads was my starting point for this essay.

Why is it that the head, and particularly the face, has so much importance in people photography? Convention states that the face should be the bright, in focus and get to be center stage in the composition.

A couple of Robert’s pictures of headless statues made me think about the importance that is generally put on the head/face in photography. While the rest of the body can tell the story just as well or even better. I’ve never been afraid to make a picture that doesn’t include the head but until recently I also never deliberately set out to not include the head in pictures.

So in the last couple of days I tried to do just that when taking pictures around the house.

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In the last few months, I’ve been also busy figuring out and creating a new body (pun not intended) of work. And one of the the aspects that I’ve been experimenting with is not including the face of the subject.

So what are your opinions on headless photography? Is it acceptable? Is it still portraiture?

Broken Threads

Broken Threads

I got a message recently from my sister in Toronto, to say that our dad’s gravestone had been installed in the cemetery where we laid him to rest one snowy day last year, before the pandemic began.

She’d also found an older family plot, in a different part of the same cemetery, and had spent a day there cleaning up the monument—and unearthing the stones of some of our ancestors that had been covered in dirt and grass, over many years…

Negative 25

Clue number 1: A curved piece of…some kind of…part of a thing

Clue number 1: A curved piece of…some kind of…part of a thing

PHOTOGRAPHY AND TEXT BY DEREK CLARK

As soon as I looked at the picture of the thumb in Patrick’s last essay, I was reminded of the movie ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’, directed and starring Ben Stiller. In the movie, Stiller’s character goes in search of a missing negative (number 25) that is to be used on the final cover of Life Magazine. It’s a great film and self worth seeing; especially if you are a photographer.

From New Monuments by Patrick La Roque

From New Monuments by Patrick La Roque

One of my favourite shots in the movie is when Walter walks away from the camera, but the focus stays fixed.

One of my favourite shots in the movie is when Walter walks away from the camera, but the focus stays fixed.

Clue number 2: The Thumb

Clue number 2: The Thumb

I remember watching Walter Mitty (more than once), a few years after it was released, and at a time when a few of the themes in the movie struck a chord in me. The mixture of the film and the soundtrack had an alluring effect, which was a bit depressing at the time.

It’s easy to get sucked into the idea that everyone is moving forward and succeeding, while you are either stuck where you are or feel like you are going backwards. This is especially true in the Facecloth, Instasham, and all the other antisocial media platforms out there.

These days, I no longer have time for social media, nor care who is moving forward or backward (if there’s even such a thing). I’m too busy working, burning through gigabytes of pictures and video three or four days a week and struggling to keep up with the editing the rest of the week. Be careful what you wish for! One minute you’re feeling bad about not having the work and the next you’re overwhelmed by it. One minute all you’re doing is personal work and the next you are struggling to find the time to do any personal work at all.

If there is one sure thing, it’s that nothing stays the same forever. Just make the best of where you’re at at this moment, because a change is gonna come whether you like it or not.

Get vaccinated. Grow a little tail, and wag it daily!

25 is missing

25 is missing

The spoiler

The spoiler

Not actually the motto of Life Magazine

Not actually the motto of Life Magazine

New Monuments

By Patrick La Roque

In 1963, Diane Arbus submitted a proposal to the Guggenheim Foundation. Her goal was to document modern human rituals—from dog shows to beauty parlours, dancing lessons and picnics. Because, she said, “These are our symptoms and our monuments”.

Humanity exists through ceremony. I don’t just mean religious or formal events, but those small, everyday rites we use to weave stories, of ourselves to ourselves. Every trip to the mall, every soccer game and weekday dinner defines us. 

Over the years, I took for granted the quiet rhythm of our lives. I captured a lot of it, aware of the urgency, and yet these moments still seemed eternal: walking the kids to the bus stop; reading to them at bedtime. Driving up to the countryside to visit Cynthia’s mom and dad on weekends, sleeping over, waking up to the sound of chatter and the smell of coffee—that novelty bird clock chirping madly, every hour on the hour. Once in a while my sister would come over for drinks, her girls, our gang, would all play games together downstairs and have a blast; we’d find them loud and slightly annoying, not realizing this would soon pass. Not realizing we’d miss the outbursts and the laughter.

These were our monuments.
And they were made of sand.
And they’ve been washed away.

Life did most of the work. The pandemic piled on. ...

…

From Reflect - Regret or Regain by Jonas Rask

From Reflect - Regret or Regain by Jonas Rask

I chose Jonas’s very tight self-portrait as my inspiration because I saw a dissolution of reality that immediately spoke to me. And because frankly, that’s all I’m able to perceive these days: the commonplace bending to the physics of funhouse mirrors. As a photographer, it’s my way of faking something new out of the old, I guess, or tricking myself into believing a larger world is somehow accessible. It isn’t, not yet. The fact is, closeness, in all of its forms, to the point of being devoured whole, is all we have left at the moment. It’s all I have to give, anyway.

Until we build new monuments.

Reflect - Regret or Regain?

AN ESSAY (hardly) BY JONAS RASK

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The inspiration for my little series of images and words is the image of Kevins lovely daughter to the right.
The visual metaphor of reflection was something that I wanted to explore a little bit more than just doing the standard puddle photography that I started out doing back when I started photography.

I think it’s quite important, now more than ever, at the beginning of the end of this pandemic, that we all start to reflect on the past 14 months.

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We’re slowly making our way out of the crazy times of the past 14 months. In Denmark slowly, but securely. I suspect, not unlike in many other countries around the world. But there are definitely still those countries who struggle. Where the pandemic just simply won't let go. Like the giant Boxing Day Tsunami many years ago it keeps sweeping back and forth in a multitude of waves that gets bigger and meaner with every passing number.

We’re so lucky in this part of the world. We bitch and moan about isolation, solitude, lack of open pubs, restaurants, museums etc. Lack of holiday plans for the summer. It reeks of entitlement. A society that is now relying so heavily on luxury amendments that being “forced” to spend time at home with the people that are supposed to be “loved ones” has taken a toll on mental health. At least that’s how I experience it after a year of sitting in my consultation. Isolation sucks, I get it. But why not use that time to reflect on what is REALLY important? Reflect on what really gives life its meaning and purpose.

Beers and Art are great, soccer matches and fine dining too…. but I have a vague suspicion that those things are not the subject of a dying mans last words!

I can honestly say that up until 2020 I had become absent from my connected family life. I spent loads of time at work, loads more time on my own fulfilling a desire to become the best photographer in the world (whatever the hell that means!) - Travelling with businessconnections, drinking till the sun rose. It was damn fun, that’s for sure. It was luxurious! - I have a vague suspicion that those experiences will not form my last words!

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I missed out.

I missed out on closeness with my family. I missed out on quiet Saturdays in my garden. I missed out on putting my helping hands on my daughters mathproblems. I took for granted the insane amount of work my wife put into our family. I missed out on sooo many things. I had become comfortable, and my desire for “more” meant that I neglected to see that I already have it all!

When I reflect on the past years I don’t have any regrets. I’m so thankful of all the experiences that I’ve had. But in reflection, the past 14 months have definitely showed me that I needed to regain my perspective of what’s important in my life.

Truth is, I’m happier than I’ve ever been - and I will do my utmost to make the foundation of my happiness a permanent change in priorities.

/J

All shots in this series seek to explore the visual metaphor of reflections. The images are shot as symbiotic pairs. One on digital medium and the other on analog film.

I used the X-Pro3 with the XF35mm f/2 and the Contax G2 with the Zeiss 90mm f/2.8. I shot Kodak Vision 3 250D that I home developed in Cinestill CS41

One Life - Live It

AN ESSAY (of sorts) BY KEVIN MULLINS

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The inspiration for my “essay”, if you will, is the last image in Neale’s recent post.

I’ve been at pains to think of something for my turn in this cycle for a while.

We’ve all been locked at home, and, thankfully, here in the UK at least, we are starting to see the sun again.

However, I don’t have any considered stories.

So I have effectively taken a mashup of some recent images that define my world at the moment.

But the thing is, that world is beautiful, and of course, Gemma and I have had our crazy arguments and the kids have driven us mad at times, but generally, I’ve seen this period as one of reflection and certainly of one that makes me realise this is our only life.

We have one life. We can bitch about it, or we can live it and love it.

Images in this collection are from my X100V, a prototype X-E4 and even my phone.

Not content with two dogs, Guinea Pigs and her brother. She now has a MASSIVE horse.

Not content with two dogs, Guinea Pigs and her brother. She now has a MASSIVE horse.

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I actually don’t know whose feet these are. Not mine.

I actually don’t know whose feet these are. Not mine.

I feel like in this world of Zoom, this is what people think I look like now.

I feel like in this world of Zoom, this is what people think I look like now.

When your little brother uses the soap to wash his little brother bits in the shower.

When your little brother uses the soap to wash his little brother bits in the shower.

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The cuteness is disappearing. Now it’s all LED Lights and “Dad can I have a new graphics card”

The cuteness is disappearing. Now it’s all LED Lights and “Dad can I have a new graphics card”

But we taught him to ride a bike, finally.

But we taught him to ride a bike, finally.

Keep well, keep safe and remember that there is one life - live it.

LIFE AT 2MPH

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BY NEALE JAMES

I’m borrowing inspiration from Dominique’s nephew peering through a playground train window and I’ll admit to a late entry, a stretched chain if you will and a false start to this story as initially I followed a more obvious line of inquiry; a trip to a railway station. I even found the perfectly shaped porthole sunk into the side of a passenger train bound for London Paddington. The shape fitted, the story didn’t. It wasn’t and isn’t reflective of my current state of mind. And so I returned, as so often I have during lockdown to a river, a canal, close to my home; my refuge from March 2020 to date.

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There are four thousand, seven hundred miles of navigable canals in the UK. Eighty seven miles are immediately available to me geographically, if only I had a boat. When lockdown initially enforced a strict local corridor of exercise, I took to the tow paths of the Kennet and Avon Canal. It’s an ‘as the bird flies’ route that engages the cities of Bristol to the west, and London to the east (via The Thames) which, with modest periods of inactivity thanks to a Victorian growth period of the railways and latterly the arterial motorway system, has been otherwise alive for over two hundred years.

Boating types who frequent these waterways navigate their days at two miles per hour (more if the mood takes but only by a mile or two) and I find watching this, slows me immeasurably also.

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I watched a volunteer lock keeper dredging the blackened depths with a magnet on the end of a line, in between making pictures.

He asked me what I was doing. I asked him what he could see.

“Bricks,” he mused?

“Shadows,” I answered, “Deep as the black within which you’re fishing. Anyway, what are you doing?”

“I’m trying to find a windlass, (form of winch handle), which I dropped in here yesterday afternoon,” he answered.

“Do you think you’ll find it?”

“Maybe, but I’ve got all day. So there’s a chance I will.”

Life at two miles per hour.

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One hundred and five locks - some say one less, there appears a discrepancy of design on one it seems. It’s the one period of activity. I walk the stretch between eighty two and ninety six and watch. The boats rise and fall with the water and though there is activity in the winding of a windlass and pushing of a gate, much of the time is spent watching water flow and listening to it stabilise until you can hear the birds once again. Life at two miles per hour.

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Park Life

Park Life

My biggest chance to shoot has been when my nephew (for whom we’re a support bubble) has come to stay for a few days. Eager for any opportunity to go out and shoot and with my newly purchased X-E4 to try out he has been my little muse for these government-enforced dry spells. And, whilst my ever-patient nephew has generally accepted my photographing pretty much his every movement with a winning-smile (or at worst, a disdained stare), there is just one caveat on which he insists … “PESE CAN WE GO TO THE PAAAARK DADA?”

Over The Rainbow

Over The Rainbow

A little while ago I found an essay online, written by my grandfather.

I never met him, he died in 1960, almost a decade before I was born; but through an accident of timing, he spent WWI in a German prison camp. Instead of becoming a concert pianist, which is what he was studying there at the time, he became a psychologist and professor, and wrote a book about the society that sprang up in the camp in the years he was held.

Later, while working for the Canadian government during WWII, he wrote for Maclean’s magazine about how difficult it was going to be for the soldiers and prisoners returning from the war, the trouble they would inevitably have returning from that experience to “polite society”, and how their imaginations of life back at home after all that time away would inevitably lead to disappointment with the real thing.

I think that’s what the return to relative normalcy will be like for all of us, as the pandemic starts to get under control around the world…