This post/article will probably be a little messy … as opposed to my usual, highly structured and logically arranged content … perhaps akin to the Unused Punchlines section at the end of an episode of Never Mind The Buzzcocks, as there are several partially-formed slash half-baked ideas that I want to get down and out in Paris and London … speaking of Orwell texts …
Photography vs. Cycling
This was an idea that was (all the things you said, all the things you said) running through my head in early 2023. After a fairly significant change in my life circumstances, cycling regained ground in the battle for my available free time, having spent a number of years making occasional skirmishes against a land-grab by photography.
Where in Books vs. Cigarettes, Orwell prices up the cost of maintaining a smoking habit compared to a reading one, I spent a little bit of time analysing (this is embellishing it somewhat) the relative benefits of my competing hobbies. While photography for me often involved lengthy walks, these were less intense in terms of physical exercise than a long bike ride, with the latter also tending to lead to less mental upheaval. I’m far less critical of my efforts with the bike than I am of my efforts with cameras, able to enjoy what I’m achieve and celebrate my successes – talking myself up rather than tearing myself down.
Of course, this an incredibly simplistic and reductive comparison of two fundamentally different activities, but it all comes down to that analogy about there being two wolves inside you … and one of them rides for Patrick Lefevere.
Why not combine the two? I have on a few occasions, but have also found it can lead to competition between the two – a desire to press on and cover ground on the bike versus a desire to stop and photograph. Satisfying the latter frustrates the former, and vice versa. Your mileage may vary … mine certainly did on those occasions.
This is really just a spare inner tube from an article I wrote at the end of 2023, when relocating from Spain to the north of the UK had ultimately derailed both activities somewhat.
History repeated itself in the second half of 2024 as I went full Toploader from April to August and then spent most of September to December on the road, leaving my bike behind and not a lot of time to meaningfully dedicate to photography, nor was I ever in one place long for long enough to fully engage with a detailed study of the local landscape.
Tell Me Wye / Find the River
I was nominally living in Hereford for most of this period, although this was only really true on a full-time basis for the entire of June, and most of July and September. During those early summer months, I did undertake a partial photographic exploration of my new surroundings with both my digital camera and the instant camera that had seen photography sound it’s battle cry that «la resistance lives on.»
Ultimately the closest I’ve come to a cohesive body of work in the last year or so is made up of the instant photographs I made while mostly wandering near the Wye. Despite the amusement derived from the idea of a local tribute to the Backstreet Boys, I ultimately came to associate these pictures with REM’s Find The River and the following lyrics which encapsulated my thoughts about my passage through Hereford being an ephemeral one, that like the river I was merely passing through the city on my way to a goal that lay elsewhere.
«The ocean is the river’s goal
The need the leave the water knows
We’re closer now than light years to go …»
The Napoleon Dynamite Approach and Bad Photography Made Easier
The above was not conceived of from the beginning as a body of work, it came together organically as I mostly continued to enjoy using the instant camera as perhaps the fullest and most complete, joyous expression of Bad Photography Made Easier, a disappointingly unfulfilled Photography degree project idea inspired by a 1990s satirical golf instructional video featuring the iconic Leslie Nielsen.
A related school of photographic thought (this may again be embellishing the level of intellectual discourse) runs through the remainder of the pictures I made during my exploration of Hereford, namely The Napoleon Dynamite Approach – a reimagining of William Eggleston’s «Democratic Photography» (previously the subject of one of my other immensely niche self-indulgent articles) for a Millennial audience born out of the best way for me to answer the question «what do you like photographing?» being «whatever I feel like!»
The Napoleon Dynamite Approach should ultimately not be seen as antithetical to the precepts of Bad Photography Made Easier, as long as one resists the temptation to focus on having Great Skills, and instead remembers the central credo of not making good photographs to feel bad, but making bad photographs and feeling good.
Non-Dualistic Systems of Reason
At some point in the Autumn, work opened a new theatre in Fareham (it’s between Southampton and Portsmouth … and not in a good way) and we were invited to the gala night. A gala night is not my natural territory, as I later explained to a colleague, because it inevitably involves making passing conversation with people ostensibly more important than oneself, and also because even my smartest clothes are selectable items from Build Your Own Skater on Tony Hawk’s 2. As such, and because I did also think that a gala night might look pretty sick on black & white film, I brought along an emotional support camera (other objects are available) or two.
In light of the ‘night’ element of the gala night, I had attempted to get hold of some high-speed film but … well, failed. Fortunately, a little known fact* about Ilford HP5 is that the accents within its branding are a nod to its status as, like the Hobnob among biscuits, the Green Beret of films. Or for a new generation, a film that could become synonymous with what some contemporary photographers (it’s just me, for now, but it will catch on) are calling The Olivia Rodrigo Approach of «It’s a bad idea, right? Fuck it, it’s fine!»
Pushing it two stops would be nothing it couldn’t handle, particularly if I metered well … unfortunately the light meter in my remaining 35mm camera gave up working long before I acquired it, and I decided that using the app on my phone would be far too precise and that instead I was just going to guess, while focussing using a hand that was also holding a pint. An air-tight plan … for Bad Photography Made Easier.
All of the above led to the prophecy that the ensuing photographs would be «either beautiful black & white masterpieces, or utter dog shit …» but it didn’t matter, as on arrival, greeted by shots of flame, the emotional support camera did what it was intended to do, and kept me entertained and less inhibited until alcohol was ready to take over. And some of the photographs turned out not to be complete dog shit after all … although my attempt at imitating a Manet painting from way down town was hubris.
There are a few nice pictures of colleagues not shown above. Also not shown above is the picture that inspired the title of this post. I’d made an instant picture of a colleague who had worked tirelessly on the venue launch. She was then greeted by some friends who had come along to support leading to a group hug. I turned and got another nice instant picture of that brief moment, which has been a source of consolation throughout recent months that the photographer in me isn’t dead, he just can’t really be arsed right now.
I don’t have either of those pictures because they’re one of a kind and were given to my colleague, however, I did keep one instant picture of the jets of flame, at night, made with a camera with at least a second of shutter lag … again, not dead.
The Road to Basically Anywhere is Paved with Intention
I spent the final few months of 2024 with my attention focussed primarily on moving (let’s try this one more time with feeling) to London, and like when cycling, your body follows where your eyes look towards … and mine were once again not really looking for things to photograph. In fact, the money I pay Adobe each month to make their programs worse was mostly spent on being able to create memes of either pantomimes or the royals to amuse myself and at least one other person. I dye grass.
Whether it was Pants Bants in Fareham, a wedding near Bantander, multiple trips to London … including an aborted move that was mildly shit … a visit to Valencia or staying Sweet Home Los Belones, I was still making instant photographs along the way because though the photographer in me may die, La Resistance lives on.
(I have also made a much better storage system for them all … which, considering the previous system was wrapping them up in Spanish train tickets, was something of a low bar to parkour my way over.)
A video I watched on Photography YouTube (which is just YouTube but when the algorithm is good and sure you like videos about Photography … and cycling) talked about the importance of intention, and I realised that this is what has been absent from my own photography over the last couple of years, with my the focus of my intent so often elsewhere.
Since completing my latest move almost a month ago, I’ve enjoyed a little bit of stability, and not being on a train or ten-day trip away from home for a while. I have tried to go out with a camera and explore my new surroundings, even if it has been a case of trying to fake it ‘til I make it. I’m also just about to bring Penélope (my bike) down, and have an invite pending for a cycling club, so the camera might not have it all its own way within my free time diversions.
In any case, I felt like writing an(other) incredibly self-indulgent article for my largely dormant photography website. Apparently, I’m just applying the Napoleon Dynamite Approach to my life in general and doing whatever I feel like.
There’s only one way I can possibly wrap up an article whose soundtrack would be Short Music for Short People, and that is … in conclusion, Libya is a land of contrast.
Boutros, Boutros-Ghali,
Owain
Owain Shaw 