The Ghosts in the Tunnel, the Poet and the Boxer

Self Portrait
A shot of my shadow, tweaked in Lightroom and Photoshop. Click to enlarge.
Copyright 2008 Paul Davey Creative. All rights reserved.

Sunday was one of those perfect winter days when the sky is crystal clear and the deepest possible blue, especially in the north. It was cold, so suited and booted in my arctic gear, (that's my normal clothes with an extra jersey) I decided to pop out for a day's shooting.

The plan was to head for Hackney Wick which looked splendidly grungy when I passed through on Saturday on my way to a client shoot. However, the North London Overground line was not operating so I headed by bus for Baker Street where I then picked up the Jubilee Line for Stratford. At the last minute however, I decided to get off at Greenwich North (North Greenwich?), the stop for the O2 Dome.

Skip.
Click to enlarge.
Copyright 2008 Paul Davey Creative. All rights reserved.

I thought it would be cool to walk back up river, photographing whatever came my way. So that's what I did.

The Thames turns through almost 180 degrees, wrapping round the dome before heading down to the barrier and and beyond. I started on the east side of the arc and wandered round towards the west. The tide was out and there was not a breath of wind. The foreshore looked very inviting, with streams of water meandering through exposed sandbanks where gulls picked through the debris for tasty morsels. The light was silvery and I felt immensely happy just to be there.

Wave Dance
I like exposing for harsh highlights, almost killing the other tones.
It strips the image of unnecessary detail and allows simple visual purity. Click to enlarge.
Copyright 2008 Paul Davey Creative. All rights reserved.

For whatever reasons, I very often find myself alone. I tend to do so many things on my own and have, to be honest, often felt lonely. However, I have come to value my time on my own. I set the pace. I set the topic. I do what I want. And, you know what? I quite like having myself for company. I can, if I choose, spend ages in one place fiddling with lenses, composition etc without worrying about whether I'm boring anyone who is in my company. It allows me to be a photographer rather than a companion. It allows me to focus ('scuse the pun) on each image; to distill what I see in the viewfinder. To take my time - although I still think I rush my photographs. No, I know I rush them.

Couple.
Click to enlarge.
Copyright 2008 Paul Davey Creative. All rights reserved.

Continuing round the Dome, I was stopped by two ladies. They had been peering through the security fencing into the Dome and were I could tell, pretty fascinated. They asked me if I knew what entrance the stars used. "I have no idea", I replied. "I presume they come by bus". They looked a little taken aback at this and one said "Oh don't be silly!"

"Tour Bus", I replied. "Or Limo"

"Ohhhh! Do you know what entrance they use?"

"No Idea. Who are you wanting to see?"

"Barry Manilow." (they said this in unison). I smirked.

"We've seen him on all three nights, but whenever we go to see him, we like to wave him off at the end."

Fans. Gotta love 'em.

Rope.
Click to enlarge.
Copyright 2008 Paul Davey Creative. All rights reserved.

Continuing along the river, I came to a slipway covered in frosty driftwood and slippery green algae, leading to the river's foreshore. I skied/skated down the concrete ramp and the picked my way through the debris and finally made it to the 'beach'. The low angle light and the textures of the sand, the pebbles, boulder and the debris were all in perfect combination and I spent a while there, taking less shots than I should have.

The Thames Path then continued upstream through some derelict docks (well, construction sites now) with Canary wharf slightly obscured by haze on the other side of the river. I noted that many of the puddles still had a thin layer of ice on them (it was getting on for 2pm) and that there were the occasional bits of black ice on the pavement. I was wearing my expensive (75 quid) "UK Running" cross country running (no, I don't) shoes which, naturally, have bugger-all grip. (Quick! Call the Design Police!!!) Fortunately, I managed to beat Gravity & Slippery 1-0.

Concrete.
Click to enlarge.
Copyright 2008 Paul Davey Creative. All rights reserved.

As I got nearer Greenwich the riverside becomes more industrial and the Thames path passes large grain elevator (or sugar?) past what I think might be a Tate & Lyle factory. There were several fine opportunities to shoot nice 'industrial decay' type shots which I grabbed with both hands. Eventually the path ended up at the Cutty Sark, which I just managed to avoid going into, lured as I was by the smell of hot chips... The sun was getting low and across the river, Canary Wharf was shining like burnished gold. Once again, as I have previously done, I radically underexposed and got a pretty dramatic shot of Docklands.

Cormorant.
Click to enlarge.
Copyright 2008 Paul Davey Creative. All rights reserved.

Ballast Quay.
Click to enlarge.
Copyright 2008 Paul Davey Creative. All rights reserved.

Anxious to find a Nurofen purveyor, I decided to cross the river via the Greenwich foot tunnel and then take the DLR to the Land of Plenty. Once inside the tunnel, I knew it was essential that I took some photographs, so I had a bit of a play with time exposures and post-sync flash, getting some nice, ghostly images of people walking towards me.

Ghosts in Greenwich Foot Tunnel.

Click to enlarge.
Copyright 2008 Paul Davey Creative. All rights reserved.

Took the DLR from Island Gardens to Shadwell. It was packed and I stood amongst a bushel of New Zealand kids on a school trip, listening to them discussing the names of various stops on the line: Mudchute, Heron Quays etc. Quite amusing. The teachers chaperoning them looked exhausted.

I Got off the DLR and walked through the sunset towards The Captain Kidd to meet my buddy Ian for a small pint of fizzy beer. On the way I got in some fine shots of vapour trails scratched across the sky, lit by the last rays of the sun.

Vapour.
Click to enlarge.
Copyright 2008 Paul Davey Creative. All rights reserved.

On arriving at the Captain Kidd, I saw a large table at which was seated only one man, so I chose that to dump my gear on and to strip down and pack away my camera. The gentleman sitting there was very friendly (and a bit pissed) and we struck up a conversation. He was, it turned out, a commercial eel fisherman - an Eeler - who fished the river from Tower Bridge all the way down to the barrier. Now that was enough for me. I was fascinated immediately. I asked him if I can accompany him when he goes eeling and he said any time.

Bruce Pope.
Bruce is a poet,. And he catches eels for a living. Click to enlarge.
Copyright 2008 Paul Davey Creative. All rights reserved.

He 's a fascinating character. Apart from being an eel catching person, he's a poet, a painter and a sculptor too. Amazing! I'd say something and he'd reply with poetry. Proper poetry, not just rhyming words. He thinks in poems. And he wrote me a poem too, in his lovely semi calligraphic long hand.

His name is Bruce Pope and he is a fine person! The kind of person I always hope I will meet.

With my head ramping up for a mighty headache, I thought it best that I get on my way home and so headed for Tower Bridge tube station. Unable to resist, I diverted the quay where I photographed the benches a few weeks back. There was a dude shadow boxing. So I shot him. With my camera. He was a Lithuanian and was training for a tournament. He told me his name, but its slipped my mind.

Boxer.
Click to enlarge.
Copyright 2008 Paul Davey Creative. All rights reserved.

Passing through St Katherine's Dock I got a few time exposures of Tower Bridge and the river before being overcome by my need to find Nurofen. I'd left it too late. The headache arrived with suitable fanfare and I spent a grim (KIP 7-8) journey on the tube to Embankment where I got off to try and find an open chemist. No such luck. I got on the Bakerloo and headed for Queens Park where I managed to find a corner shop that actually sold the Migraine Strength Nurofen, that I MUST take every four hours. I nearly wept with relief.

How Bright the Light?

How Bright the light?
The glow that has no flame,
The colours yet,
That have no name
Where rigid mode
Yet still it will remain

Bruce Pope

Photograph Copyright 2008 Paul Davey Creative. All rights reserved.
Poem by kind permission of Bruce Pope, Copyright Bruce Pope 2008

Oh, did I tell you I got a new battery (£69.99) for my camera? It lasted the whole day. Bee-yoo-ti-ful!

Limehouse Cut Walk

Saturday and another walk/shoot, once again in Tower Hamlets and as promised to myself last week, visiting the gnarlier waterside locations.

I picked up my good friend Ian on the way and together we strolled through Wapping investigating the odd cobbled alley and shadowy places in our hunt for views and new, interesting things to stimulate our short attention spans. The plan was to make our way to Limehouse Basin and then to follow the Limehouse Cut for a bit, looking for gritty scenes of dereliction, urban decay, vandalism etc etc. You get the picture? Well, I did. Sort of.

This is a deceptive picture. Despite the 'prettiness' of the scene, the canal boat is chugging along through a fairly industrial part of London, with several abandoned old buildings, construction sites and graffiti daubed walls.

The Limehouse Cut is a shortish length of canal that links up with the Lea Navigation (a "navigation" is a canal that runs alongside an un-navigable river) which goes all the way to Hertford in, umm, Hertfordshire. Its almost dead straight apart from a few turns near to Limehouse Basin. In the days when the canals were heavily used for cargo transport, Limehouse Basin was the narrowboat "port" in London - so densely packed with narrowboats that it was possible to cross the basin simply by leaping from boat to boat. It forms the entrance to the Regents Canal, part of the Grand Union Canal network that covers England. I digress.

Drowned Trollies. Look carefully, there's a whole fleet of them there! It seems these days that canals are considered to be reliable repositories for trollies and other valuable things - I once saw a Sony Viao laptop on the Regents Canal bed.

Where were we? Oh yes, walking along the canal into the less salubrious parts of the East End. I love it. Ian wasn't as enthusiastic, but I think he was still pretty interested. We came across a vast, long 70s style tenement block - only six stories tall but long, depressing stories. Many of the windows were boarded up with steel - it looks as though the dreadful place is about to meet the wrecking ball. What were its architects thinking? Were they over optimistic that their building would bring out the best in people? Because it didn't. Call the Design Police!

Homes for the terminally monochrome.

But I do confess, despite the building being ugly, moribund, and reeking of hopelessness, I was glad it was there. It was Canon fodder (see what I did there?) and I shot off a couple of frames knowing that there was almost no point in converting the images to monochrome because they seemed to have had their colour confiscated by the architects. Perhaps they thought poor people on housing benefits don't deserve colours? (There's evidence of a rebound against that sort of thinking in abundance: shitty 'affordable' housing tarted up with splashes of bright colour - "give them pretty colours to stimulate their dull minds").

Instant Kill. This vehicle was spotted by Ian. Thank you Sir! Click to enlarge.

After wandering back down the canal for a bit we cut through the streets of Poplar (?), through a couple of housing estates and back down to the river.

Thank God someone has done the decent thing and saved these old warehouses from demolition. They are actually swanky apartments, I think, but from the outside, they are gorgeous! The creek on which they lie is lovely too, the perfect place for me to moor my Dutch Barge.

I found a gate with stairs down to the 'beach' alongside the river and wasted some time badly exposing some old timber structures. I was trying to use fill in flash to good effect, but frankly underachieved in meeting my objective and then... nothing. No power. Clearly my camera battery is begging to be thrown into the Thames - just 46 exposures! Thank God that didn't happen on Friday's Chinese food shoot.

Chain and shackle. One of the things I love about Adobe Lightroom is that you can de-saturate images and then use "split toning" to colourise the highlights and shadows. This particular image was very green in full colour - the algae is a "chemical green colour" that looked false.

We stopped in at the Prospect of Whitby for a quick pint and then moved on to... Bugger! I cannot remember its name, for another beer.

All afternoon I'd been getting warning signals that my headaches where about to make an appearance and true to their word, they did. And when they strike, I know to GO HOME NOW!!! I won't go into the fun I had on the tube with my head. Suffice it to say, it was not the best journey ever.

Despite the headaches, another excellent afternoon. I'm seeing an image of myself doing similar tomorrow, possibly around Greenwich...Wanna come with?

See a selection of the pics here.

Railings, Pilings and Boy.

Copyright 2008 Paul Davey

I love Adobe Lightroom. It makes playing with images a breeze and if you mess up, the original is still there. I shot this last Sunday on my Wapping/Docklands walk. I was quite annoyed when the kid walked into shot - I don't like photographing random people, especially kids given the RIDICULOUS paranoia people have about anyone with a camera. Anyway, there were more people approaching, so I thought sod it, and banged off a couple of pics anyway. Composition-wise, I would like to have had the kid a little closer - the "rule of thirds"and all that, but I was hardly in a position to start directing my unwitting model. So I ask this: Is the picture improved by the kid being there, or is he a distraction? I cannot decide.

For those interested, I desaturated then used split toning - warm yellow for the highlights and blue for the shadows - just a tad, you understand...