📌📌 PRE-AMBLE: This journal contains the scribbles of a walkabout photographer with a snapshot style. This pinned entry provides an introduction to the journal and also explains all the different ways you can access it to make it easier to find things, so click in to learn more. Alternatively simply scroll through the entries below and have fun exploring their content.
On a bright though cloudy day I visited box hill the summit of the North Downs in Surrey, approximately 19 miles south-west of London, the western part of which is owned and managed by the National Trust. Within their parkland there are a number of spectacular viewpoints, the highest being Betchworth Clump though that from Salomons Memorial, overlooking the town of Dorking, is the most popular.
Personally, shooting film is all about the joy of being out there lost in the moment of it, in the process of making real photographs, in the touch and the feel of the medium, in the thoughtful connection with my subject that it brings. It is just a very different and contemplative experience.
There is an old saw about there being three types of people in the world, "the Wills, the Won'ts and the Can'ts", which is equally applicable to each of us in the photog domain...
Bleak, dreary day, with a biting wind across the wetlands. Most of the birds had moved out, only the very few hardiest remained. Just one lone photographer in sight; me, just plain dumb I guess. Still a beautiful place though, even in the gloom of mid-winter.
We were sequestered in The Thomas Lord pub in West Meon having a spot of lunch and reading its history and how it was named after the founder of Lords Cricket Ground back in 1814. It was only later that afternoon whilst taking photos in St John's Church graveyard we discovered his other connection with the village.
With the decision to do mostly 35mm film photography this year using my Nikon F80 outfit came the realisation that most of my other extensive collection of digital gear was about to sit around unused. What to do?
Having recently sat down and reset my photographic goals and direction, the medium I wished to use to achieve them and essentially the camera I would use to do so, it was now opportune to think about optics.
There is an old saying that goes, “Buying a Nikon does not make you a photographer, it simply makes you a Nikon owner”. Well after all these years I have finally become a Nikon owner!
My photography, when I have managed to do any this year, has been pretty unfocussed so to speak. Not only have I lost direction and motivation creatively but I have become more and more bored with the press and squirt approach engendered by the ever 'smarter' digital tech out there. I have given this much thought and thus decided to reset my photographic goals for the upcoming new year.