Windermere Feb 2012

Windermere Feb 2012, a set on Flickr.

A walk from Windermere station to Graythwaite, via Bowness, the Windermere Ferry and Cunsey.

Guest blog for RAW Bamboo Bikes

My guest blog for RAW Bamboo Bikes has just been published at http://www.bamboobike.co/2012/01/31/hand-built-bicycles-of-two-eras-richard-gibbens/
Reflections on artisanship and progressive materials in bicycle design.
Thank you Rachel Hammond of http://www.bamboobike.co/ for the invitation.

What's in a name?

As an afterthought to yesterday's post, it strikes me that it also touches on how the name we attach to something is more than just a label. Call a tax 'road tax', and the belief can become entrenched that the payer is funding the roads (and therefore enjoys proprietorial rights). Call it 'vehicle excise duty' and that direct linkage is broken, instead connecting (more accurately) with the personal transportation (vehicle) the payer chooses to own.

Does this matter? Yes, it does matter when someone high on proprietorial frustration, in charge of half a ton of metal, encounters someone slower and more vulnerable in 'their' road space. The behavioural and all too likely physical consequences of belief that drivers pay a 'road tax' are clearly apparent in that helmet camera video. Who says that 'sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me'?

Getting things done with social media

There is a perception that Twitter and other social media drove the Egyptian Revolution of spring 2011. Indeed, not for nothing did the crowd at the Amnesty Egyptian Revolution rally in Trafalgar Square on 12th February 2011 give the victory salute with mobile phones in hand.

Richard Gibbens Photography

However, just how much the Arab Spring democracy movements owe to social media, in particular Twitter, is still debated. Undoubtedly all the smartphones in the world would have achieved nothing if individuals had not taken to the streets and shown supreme courage in the face of brutal regimes. Here, for example is one quite nicely balanced view by Matthew Schafer: Tweeting the Revolution: Twitter Didn’t Create the Revolution, But It Didn’t Hurt It .

I make no grandiose claims nor do I suggest any comparison in scale or courage in recalling a positive experience I had yesterday with Twitter over an incomparably smaller and less personally risky matter - though not a trivial one. It's important to me as my first direct experience of achieving a real-world change using one of the social media.

On the Radio 4 Today programme there was a news story about a proposal to charge European HGV operators for using UK roads. UK operators would also be charged, but would be reimbursed through credits against (and here's the point) 'road tax'. Now, road tax does not exist. It was abolished in 1937. So why should I, or any cyclist, get aerated about this reporter's howler?

Well, if you spend any time in the saddle, or read Letters to the Editor debates, or follow any other kind of forum where ill-informed people argue that cyclists are a nuisance on the roads, you'll know that a triumphal assertion of such motoring proponents is that cyclists 'don't pay road tax' so have limited, if any, rights on the roads. This ignorance is no mere technicality if it negatively influences driver behaviour, as proprietorial delusions on the roads are apt to do. Consider the complacent reactions to this responsible citizen's brush with serious injury or death.

When the reporter for the Wednesday Radio 4 Today Programme stated that HGV operators would be reimbursed via their 'road tax', I therefore tweeted @BBCr4today to protest, and asked @BBCNews to correct the same error in the written story on the BBC News web site. I might not have been the first - there was a small chorus of similarly concerned cycling Tweeps. 

Towards midday, the term 'road tax' in the BBC News web site story was corrected to 'Vehicle Excise Duty, commonly referred to as road tax'. Not satisfied with this (as it fails to acknowledge that 'road tax' is an actively misleading term) the cyclist Twitter users requested the incorrect expression 'road tax' be removed altogether. The BBC obliged by about 4pm, resulting in this, now more accurate, article, correctly stating that operators would be able to 'reclaim the fee against their vehicle excise duty costs'. In fairness, following an outraged reaction by @iPayRoadTax , ipayroadtax.com and the cycling community, the BBC had similarly corrected the contentious TV report linked to above.

The point of this story is only secondarily a contribution to the campaign against ignorance of how roads are actually funded. It is primarily to show that real-world change in matters large or small can be achieved using Twitter. How quickly, twenty or even ten years ago, could a small group have persuaded the BBC to correct inaccurate and potentially dangerous reporting?

It's an encouragement also to my new business, Proud to Ride Classic, to carry on promoting itself through social media, and to rejoice in the very tangible opportunities and personal encounters they have already afforded.

Less hand-holding, more support in 2012

In my last post I discussed some of the influences on my decisions regarding the use of a tripod. I acknowledged that my camera support choices, whilst perhaps understandable, were challengeable. In this spirit I've entered the New Year determined to change my photography working habits in such a way as to facilitate my use of a tripod. A starting point will be procuring a more ergonomic tripod to increase the efficiency and attractiveness of using one in difficult conditions. I'll fund this by selling some equipment so heavy it never leaves base. Better to optimise my outdoor photography than the infrequent indoor work I do.

In the spirit of my resolve, I'm establishing a virtuous habit by carrying for the time being a 1980s lightweight Culman tripod. Its legs are of similar gauge to those of a full-height tripod, yet are long enough to support the camera at no more than 70cm, thus achieving reasonable stability with light weight, albeit at cost to operating comfort. The small but quite nicely engineered ball head was supplied with the tripod and similarly does the job without ergonomic refinement.

As expected, I enjoyed the first mini-session of a new photographic era for me when a tripod will move to the core of my outdoor kit. Here is the result of 30 minutes in Williamson Park, Lancaster - the same image, in two versions. Thank you for looking.

Artfully created waterfall in Williamson Park, Lancaster, UK. The cliff is a disused quarry face, and the water is circulated by pump. I enjoy the effect, though, which adds to the mountain atmosphere of the park. 

Canon EOS 5D MkII, Sigma 50mm f2.8 EX DG Macro, 1.6sec, f16, mirror lock, tripod. 

Monochrome conversion in Canon Digital Photo Professional (DPP)

High-resolution resolution

When, at 20, I took some scraped-together grant cash to a camera shop in Innsbruck to purchase Agfa CT18, the proprietor suggested substituting Kodachrome II (later called Kodachrome 25) for the out-of-stock Agfa. Those 36 exposures had to be eked out over several weeks, but when I eventually viewed the slides, it was as if suddenly the sunny mountain scenes taken on my Voigtländer Vitoret had leapt into 3D. So began a thirty year infatuation with the fine-grained, saturated, but slow Kodak emulsion. 

Another veil fell away with acquisition of my first SLR, a battered Pentax Spotmatic with three SMC Takumar lenses, in 1979. The sheer (for those days) vividness of the results drew me deeper into mountain photography. Fellow Wyndham Mountaineering Club photographer Bert Jenkins introduced me to publishers like Ken Wilson, Richard Gilbert and Peter Hodgkiss, who were encouraging about the technical qualities that I managed  with my Takumar lenses and Kodachrome 25, or equally fine-grained black and white film Ilford XP. Several photos were published in books and magazines, including my greatest coup: the jacket photo for Ken Wilson & Richard Gilbert's Wild Walks 

I must admit I was a mountaineer who took photographs, rather than a landscape photographer. The chief aim was to achieve mountain objectives, and only secondly (but for me always importantly) to record that attainment. Difficulty of access to the locations probably contributed as much to my modest success as artistic merit. Bert Jenkins once likened the approach to that of a war photographer, working fast and fluently in uncomfortable circumstances to bring home the images. His admired monochromes of helicopter rescues from the Wasdale fells reinforced the military parallel. To be honest, it never occurred to me to use a tripod. This was photography on the fly, intended to impress for its unusual viewpoints accessible only by sustained physical effort.

Maurienne, Ciamarella from Pointe Fracesetti, September 1990

I got away with this cavalier style thanks to usually strong lighting, static scenes (Kodachrome 25 was mostly hopeless for climbing action shots) and editors’, by today’s standards, lower expectations regarding resolution and sharpness. My guess is that even Kodachrome 25 has been overtaken by sensor resolution, which now reveals depth of field limitations once mercifully camouflaged by film grain.

My Canon DSLR is reassuringly chunky yet eminently portable, so dangerously reminiscent of my much missed Pentax Spotmatic. The temptation therefore is to carry on as before, hand-holding and snapping away merrily. But wait – inside that nouveau-Spotmatic lurks a medium-format wolf in 35mm clothing. Its high-resolution sensor cruelly exposes sloppiness. Just as in the 80s a landscape photographer wouldn’t have been seen dead hand-holding a Hasselblad, so with around 20 megapixels small apertures and rock-steady support are de rigeur. I could save lots of money with a used, lower-resolution camera, and probably should, if satisfied with shaky results from an expensive one. But, although I’ve for the time being suspended the pipe dream of earning a living from photography, there remains the allure of being at least publishable, if not published. So I have to find a way of integrating acceptable photographic technique with ingrained vagabond-explorer tendencies.

Recent conversations with Outer Hebridean and Seattle photographers David Fleet and Francis Zera  respectively, surely no strangers to complex photographic environments, focused my mind on the issue. The writing’s on the wall: they are both critical friends whose eagle eyes no hand-held shot can evade. If I must move on from a 35mm film approach to wilderness photography and regard a tripod as a permanent fixture on the underside of my camera, then it had better be slick and manoeuvrable as a whippet. My present tripod is neither, so a compromise might be to follow David’s suggestion of an update such as this.

The next task will be accurately to distinguish those exceptional moments when only hand-held will get the shot 

Sunburst, Caton Moor, Roeburndale, Lancashire, UK, 12 Dec 2011

(because there’s truly no time or place to set up the tripod) from those when not using one is an outmoded habit. 

Mallowdale Pike unconquered: Walking in Roeburndale

The waters from the remote uplands at the heart of Bowland flow, usually merrily, sometimes savagely, down secluded Roeburndale to the pretty stone houses of Wray. I never tire of the classic journey from homeliness to wilderness and back. The valley lacks the blazed trails of Lakeland valleys. In Roeburndale, knowing one’s patch is as useful as the Ordnance Survey in navigating the steep woodlands and, higher up, boggy pastures.

Having at last joined up the puzzle pieces of an approach, I thought the shrinking daylight might yet permit climbing the alluring cone of Mallowdale Pike, the object most resembling a mountain hereabouts.

The final, as yet untried link was between the right of way along the private road to Mallowdale Farm and the open moor rising to the summits. I thought to follow the river bank south-eastwards from Mallowdale Bridge along the edge of the enclosed farmland for a few hundred metres until the access land opened up fully to the south-west. This narrow corridor turned out to be pathless, steep, and bracken-choked. The combined effects of this and earlier photographic dallyings led to it being nearly sunset when I reached the foot of Mallowdale Pike. With Ingleborough catching the final glow I turned my back on the elusive peaklet.

I do like a challenge, so I’ll be back – but not this way, as I’ve no wish to pioneer an outlaw path on this vulnerable river bank.

An endearing characteristic of the Forest of Bowland is its freedom from mass leisure exploitation, so I don’t complain of the need to work at solutions, rather as a climber worries away at a new rock route. And, just as in climbing, there are ethics to respect. Only rights of way and proper access links are acceptable, allowing the wild corners to remain undisturbed. I only wish the instigators of the shooting tracks that now compromise the remoteness of the tops were similarly respectful of what they will argue is their, but I believe is our, wilderness.